Service area
AL8 service area
Garden city planning gives AL8 something no other district in this territory has: wide verges, tree belts and roads that curve rather than turn. It is pleasant to drive and easy to work on.
It also produces its own kind of tyre damage. Verges are soft, kerbs are set back behind grass, and drivers reversing off a wide road onto a narrow drive clip the edge they cannot see. Rear alloy damage is more common here than front.
The Howard Centre and Bridge Road are the busy part, with a station on top of the shopping centre and a car park that fills early. Lemsford is the opposite end of the scale — a village street off the B653 with a ford's worth of width and nowhere to pull in.
Stanborough sits by the A1(M) at J4, which makes the western edge of the district quicker to reach than the middle of it.
Key facts
- District
- AL8
- Places listed
- 6
- Nearest trunk road
- A1(M) J4, with the A6129 through Stanborough
- Drive band
- Standard
- middle distance, north of Hatfield on the A1(M)
- Based at
- Potter's Bar, Hertfordshire
Places in AL8
| Place | Nearest main road |
|---|---|
| Handside | Handside Lane |
| Howard Centre (Welwyn Garden City) | Bridge Road |
| Lemsford | B653 Lemsford Village |
| Sherrardspark | Digswell Road |
| Stanborough | A6129 Stanborough Road |
| Welwyn Garden City | A1000 Bridge Road |
Reversing damage on rear wheels
Rear tyres get kerbed more often than people think, and drivers rarely notice because they never see that corner. Once a month, look at the inner shoulder of both rear tyres. Feathering or a bright scuff on the wall is the early sign, and it is cheaper to know about it then.
AL8: give us the road and the tyre size
Call and tell us where the vehicle is standing and what is on the sidewall. If the size has gone with the tyre, the make, model and year will do. We confirm what we are bringing before the van moves.