British man completes 'magnum opus' - using every single spot in his local supermarket's carpark

Gareth Wild's local supermarket carpark.
Gareth Wild's local supermarket carpark. Photo credit: Gareth Wild/Twitter

Beethoven wrote 'Symphony No 9'. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Tommy Wiseau made The Room.

But a British man's "magnum opus" might have outdone them all. 

Twitter user Gareth Wild announced on Tuesday that after six years, he's finally used every spot in his local supermarket's carpark. 

"I live in Bromley and almost always shop at the same Sainsbury's in the centre of town," he wrote.

"It's a great car park because you can always get a space and it is laid out really well. Comfortably in my top 5 Bromley car parks."

Six years ago he decided to find out how long it would take to park in every spot, because his "life is one long roller coaster".

"Rather than walking around the car park counting each space and exposing myself as a lunatic, I used the overhead view to mark out a vector image to make it easier to identify each space," he wrote. 

Not counting motorcycle and disability spots, he counted 211 eligible parks he had to "conquer". He mapped them using a spreadsheet.

"The spreadsheet has been given a bit of extra razzle-dazzle to spruce it up a bit for presentation but this is it, this is 6 years of monotony," Wild wrote, showing the data colour-coded by zone and with an image of Sylvester Stallone's movie character Rocky celebrating. 

He initially estimated it would take a minimum of four years, but "annoyingly a global pandemic slowed me down".

"For anyone keen on taking a pilgrimage to the Bromley Sainsbury's car park to bathe in my glory I've also marked out the best and worst spots to park because I'm such a swell guy. Seriously though, avoid the spaces next to the trolley bays, they're just terrible."

Wild then took questions for the "carpark nuts" out there, including Americans who'd never seen a parking space dedicated to parents of young children before. 

"You think the gun violence rate in America is bad now? Imagine the fights over a handful of Family Sized parking spots close to the store entrance," one person wrote. 

Asked what his next "quest" was, Wild said he was "keen to use a running app to spell out 'no one cares about your running route' across the entire borough".