Mobile car wash in Rochester, Kent

Parking reality

Permit zones, a medieval street plan and a space you do not want to lose

Rochester's streets were laid out by the river, Watling Street, the priory and the castle, and they have not got any wider since. The lanes off the High Street and the Victorian terraces of Troy Town and The Delce were built long before cars, so parking is tight and much of the centre sits inside Medway Council's controlled parking zones. The council only sells resident permits inside those zones, one zone per permit, valid for a year, and it shows the boundaries on an address map on its website. A 2016 council briefing lists a zone R1 in Rochester East ward among the areas reviewed, and the resident permit terms limit R1 permits to one per household.

What that means for a wash is simple. Driving to a car wash from a zone street means coming back to find your space gone. We come to the car instead, and your washer sorts their own parking, so the only vehicle that has to be legally parked is yours. If you are on a drive in Borstal or Horsted, or in an allocated bay at one of the newer riverside blocks, it is simpler still: the car does not move at all.

The town centre on a busy day

Rochester fills up for its festivals and its Saturdays, and the council points visitors at pay and display car parks a short walk from the High Street, as it did for its Local Plan drop in at the Corn Exchange on Northgate. On those days the last thing you want to do is drive out and back in. Book a window, leave the car where it is, and come home to it clean.

What Rochester does to a car

River air, hill roads and the A2

Rochester is the lowest bridging point on the Medway, about 30 miles from London, and the river shapes the weather on the paint. Cars parked along the Esplanade and the riverside blocks pick up damp, salt tinged air and the bird droppings that come with gulls and a castle full of jackdaws; both etch into a clear coat if they are left. Up the hill, Borstal and Horsted sit against the North Downs, with leaf fall from the tree lined streets in autumn and sap through the summer. The A2 and the M2 slip roads add the usual film of brake dust and grime to anything that commutes.

None of that is unusual. The point is not to leave it on for months. An outside wash every few weeks lifts the salt film and the droppings before they mark, and for a newer car a ceramic coating puts a hard layer between the paint and all of it. Your washer photographs the car before and after, so you can see the difference without being there.

Who lives here, and the clean that suits

The 2011 Census counted 62,982 people in Rochester. In the 2021 Census the three Rochester wards tell three different stories. Rochester West, the historic centre and the riverside, has 11,000 people, 37 percent of its homes are flats and 81 percent of households have a car. Rochester East, the terraces towards Chatham, has 10,700 people, 19 percent flats and 75 percent of households with a car. Rochester South and Horsted, the drives and closes up the hill, has 13,600 people, fewer than one in ten homes a flat, 85 percent of households with a car and 45 percent with two or more.

• A flat with an allocated bay by the river: Essential Exterior every few weeks keeps the salt film and the gulls at bay.
• A terrace on a permit street: Deluxe Inside & Out, done at the kerb, and your space stays yours.
• Two cars on a Horsted drive: book both and your washer does them in one visit.
• A car that lives on the Esplanade: a ceramic coating is the long term answer to river air.

More on this: how a wash works on a permit street and why bird droppings and sap damage paint.