Nominations for the best town for driving award 2014
Our first nomination for this award goes to Stone in Staffordshire
What makes Stone such a great place great to drive?
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Stone has lots of parking spaces
We visited Stone Staying at the excellent Stone House Hotel
Note the limited parking space in this old picture. Now the excellent hotel has removed the lawn to make place for many more cars to park
There’s not even one cycle rack.
(This poor cyclists struggled to get his bike through the warren of passages in this quaint hotel to his room
Hehe)
You can park on the pedestrian precinct
You can park behind most shops and banks on the high street.
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In Stone parking is free or cheap
£3 a day to park in town
Parking is free if you drive to health centre
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Stone has clear separate space for driving
Barriers help prevent walkers from getting in the way and those pavements make it difficult to walk. Walkers are safely behind barriers decorated with flowers that can best be seen from a car. It maybe hard to cross the road on foot but no-one really needs to walk anywhere. Restaurants and pubs all have good sized car parks.
Most of the space in town is given to people who choose to drive. Locals would rather drive the short distance to work in town rather than walk or cycle since driving is so easy. The town centre is surrounded by a multi-lane gyratory which makes passing through Stone easy for people driving from Stafford to Stoke-On-Trent. Some people would rather drive through Stone than use the motorway (see map below).
There are some problems with this as noted on a local website A Little Bit of Stone. It seems that people who work within the ring road gyratory can’t get their cars out of the centre car parks after work because all the other drivers enjoying the space for driving.
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Stone has great views for drivers passing through
The pretty town centre looks best through the windscreen of a car. The railing by the road are decorated with flowers as part of Stone on Bloom. So beautiful we’d rather spend the day riding round the ring road than walking round a National Trust garden
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In Stone you can drive anywhere
Driving along the pedestrian precinct is fine. You can’t cycle there, (note the ‘cyclists dismount’ sign) and no one seems (needs) to walk there.
You can drive on the grass in the recreational spaces around the town
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Stone people tolerate a little collateral damage
A little pollution, noise,occasional congestion, obesity, heart disease and the occasional injury or death are a small price to pay for the freedom to drive