Festival Place
As a change to our normal shopping trips to Reading, we decided to try out Basingstoke’s Festival Place. The local adverts show Festival Place to be some sort of super-mall full of beautiful people buying beautiful things and we thought it would be a nice change from Reading’s Oracle. We’d bought all the gifts we’d needed before the end of November, but that still didn’t stop us venturing out into Basingstoke on Christmas Eve morning for a “mooch about the shops”… it all seemed like such a good idea at the time.
The shops themselves were pretty much the same as you get anywhere and I don’t feel the need to review them here, although there were a lot less people about than I was expecting. Every shop seemed to start playing “All I want for Christmas is you” as we walked in and there were lots of stressed parents queuing to buy this year’s must-have gift that would probably be discarded after 20 minutes.
What I did find was the big difference between Festival Place and just about every other mall I’ve visited in the UK is the parking. These days one expects that any major shopping centre car park fulfills a certain minimum standard. I’ll forgoe complaining about the poorly signed turning into the car park that required a little detour. Now most carparks I have ever been in have a standard layout that is repeated on each floor and are designed such that exiting traffic and incoming traffic are kept seperate to keep everything free flowing. You can probably tell where this is going. Festival Place’s car park was a nightmare of a random layout, with up and down ramps higgledy-piggledy and not consistent from floor to floor. With yellow “EXIT” signs near every ramp and turning, it was difficult to navigate without fear that we would end up at the exit barrier.
We all know car parks have tight turns to maximise parking space, but we don’t normally expect the corners to be covered in sheet metal and mud. We thought that our tyres had gone, but soon realised that every car was screeching around every corner. Once we had parked, I felt very exposed and unsafe with each passing car. Considering that it wasn’t raining torrentially outside, there was no good reason for the slippery conditions inside. On heading down to the shopping levels, I was pleasantly suprised that the stairwell did not smell of stale urine - a huge plus point.
After the mooch, we headed back to the car. The payment machines were not on every floor of every stairwell (possibly due to the maze like construction of the car park itself) and the signs that directed me to the nearest pay machine were non-existent to infrequent and made me dice with death between the skidding cars racing for free spaces. I was fortunate in that, for once, I had cash in my purse as the credit card reader on the payment machine was broken. The cost per hour was reasonable (£1.80 for up to 2 hours), but I’ve never been so glad to leave a place as when the barrier raised and we were set free.
It’s no wonder the adverts show such a sparking shopping and dining area - they’re hardly going to promote the parking, but powers that be really need to think about improving the layout and surfaces of the car park before there’s a nasty accident there.
Overall, I’ve nothing against Festival Place, I’ll just get the bus next time.