A bored shopper went on a six-year quest to park in all 211 bays of his local supermarket car park – using a map and spreadsheet to track his progress.
Gareth Wild began his project, which started in 2015, as a way of making the weekly food more interesting.
Now the dad-of-two has left his car in every single space in the car park at Sainsbury’s in the center of Bromley, southeast London.
He took to Twitter to reveal the completion of his unusual mission – including diagrams of the superstore car park and advice for fellow parking enthusiasts in the area who want to emulate his feat.
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On his Twitter thread, which has been liked more than 50,000 times and retweeted by over 10,000 accounts, the production director explained his method and shared his spreadsheet to his thousands of perplexed and delighted followers.
Mr. Wild added that disabled and motorbike spaces could not be counted as he is not a blue badge holder and does not own a motorbike.
But he does have children, so included the parent and baby spaces that made up the total 211 spaces for him to conquer.
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Mr. Wild said: “I do the weekly shop in our family and I’ve been going to the same Sainsbury’s for the last 16 years.
“And it was only six years ago when I said to myself, ‘wow I could probably park in every single one of these spaces given enough time’, and time is on your side when you’re doing the weekly shop.
“It’s a long time to do anything, let alone something as trivial as this. I’ve been through three different cars in that time. I find enjoyment in the little banal things in life.”
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Not wanting to keep his hard work to himself, Gareth posted a handy diagram of the best – and worst – parking spaces available in the Sainsbury’s car park.
According to his detailed map there are just 11 ‘god-tier’ bays but as many as 29 to avoid.
The car parking enthusiast added: “I also assigned different zones – the more I say it the more stupid it sounds – to each of the areas so each time I went it was easier for me to know which ones I still had to tick off, rather than a scattergun approach.
“I wanted to go into it fairly clued up, because when you’re doing something this daft it’s important to be thorough.”
Throughout the six-year slog, Mr. Wild discovered some spots that were almost impossible to snag, requiring a few extra late evening trips.
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He said: “Without getting too technical, when I say B7 and B8 you’ll know exactly what I mean. They were really difficult to get. I don’t know what it is because they’re not even great spots but people seem to love them.
“So I went down one evening for snacks quite late and I managed to snag B8…ooh that was quite a moment in my life.”
When asked if the snack run was an excuse to tick off the coveted space, Mr. Wild laughed and replied, “I’ll never tell”.
Reasons to not use certain spaces include their proximity to trolley bays and their walking distance away from the store.
To keep himself from obsessively driving down to the car park daily and finishing the project in record time, Gareth stuck to weekly shopping trips and the odd top-up shop to complete his mammoth task.
Sometimes that meant hanging around waiting for an as-yet unticked bay, much to his children’s frustration.
He said: “My kids are quite young, they’re two and four, and they have no patience whatsoever, so if I’m sitting idly by waiting to try and get in a spot they’re screaming at me.
“Sometimes you’ve got to park where you’ve got to park, and give up on your quest.
