Can I and should I park here? (School run)

[neverquitesure]

DS has just had his place at our village primary school nursery class confirmed for September. 5 mornings per week, 9-12.

We live 1 mile outside of the village, a total of 1.6 miles from the school. I will be doing the school run with 3 year old DS (obviously!) and 2 year old DD. I had planned to drive the mile into the village and park on the outskirts at the village hall (where the pavement widens) then walk the rest of the way with DD2 in the pushchair when her legs get tired. However, the last few times I've happened to drive past around 9 I have noticed that the car park barrier is still closed. Now, to be fair, there is a Polite Notice saying that the car park is for the use of the hall etc, etc but the car park is massive and the hall is always bloody empty and I didn't think they'd mind.

So, to cut a long story short, there is a small section of car park (about 4 bays?) before the barrier section with the recycling bins etc. Again, you are lucky to see 1 car there.

WIBU to park there? Surely it's better than cluttering up the roads around the school?

What age are they when you can just open a door and chuck them out?

Well I tried it at 2yrs old but the little gits got back in through the cat flap

I have a similar situation - live about a mile walking distance from the school if we use the unmarked track through the woods to walk! We walk on sunny days and when I don't have a massive list of jobs to do, drive other days. Our school catchment area includes 9 small hamlets as well as the main village, so people drive from the hamlets too. The school has an agreement with the village church, hall and pub to use their car parks for collecting parents. I had no idea about this till I started taking my daughter to school and got talking to people.

I'd ask about and see whether there are any agreements like this. (It's better than doing what the parents at the other local village school used to do - park on our private drive in our space. We used to live about half a mile away down a very secluded dirt track. I was heavily pregnant. To arrive home and find that I couldn't park in my own space because some bloody parent picking up their kid thought noone would notice - again - was really, really annoying!)

I don't think they could widen the pavement at the bridge. It's an ancient old stone thing with a river under it. I guess they could make it single carriageway and widen the pavement that way? Might slow the bloody lorries down a bit too.

He might qualify for the school minibus as there is no safe route with him & DD in tow but I think that only applys from year 1.

applies
I can spell really!

We don't have a cat flap, problem solved

Back - I think some of the parents do use the pub car park actually. I presumed they were being a bit brazen but I didn't think to check. Might be a perfectly simple solution already in place. I shall ask around.

I used to do a similar "park and stride" with my DC, from the car park in a municipal park. The car park was only ever 1/3 full, if that. Then the council decided to charge 50p per hour for parking there. The same council that wanted to encourage walking to school.

I tried to contact the council, but the only man who could possibly speak to me about parking always seemed to be out of the office. In the end, I started to use a car park which was attached to the registry office. I felt this was reasonable, as there were plenty of spaces for staff and people registering births at the time I parked there, and no big weddings between 8:00 and 9:00 on weekday mornings.

I think you would probably be okay to park in the church car park, but perhaps you could contact the church to ask permission first.

Oh dear, just read my last but one post back and I'm starting to ramble. I think what I meant to say was it would require some sort of one way/give way system to widen the pavement so fairly major changes for the very small number of potential users. Not saying they couldn't be persuaded though, and actually it would greatly improve the safety of that section if they could slow the traffic. Visibilty might be an issue as it's on/directly after a blind bend though.

I had quaint visions of cycling when we moved here but that particular section of road puts the fear of God in me.

That's terrible Hand! I have seen the national press encouraging walking to school initiatives but not much out here in the sticks. We have a very small municipal parking area in the village square but the spaces go so fast. I think I'm just going to have to ask around a lot.