Permission Slips and Parking Bays: Our Diary From Five Days in a Supermarket Car Park

Somebody once told us that the British high street isn't dying, it's just waiting for something to happen in it. We took that literally. Last month we rigged a twenty-metre zip wire between two lampposts in a supermarket car park and let several hundred children loose on it. This is how it happened, roughly in the order it happened, warts and all.

Week Minus Nine: The Phone Calls Nobody Warns You About

Before a single bolt was tightened, there was the small matter of permission. Three layers of it, actually. First the landowner — in our case a supermarket's head office, which required a formal application, a £5 million public liability certificate and a surprisingly friendly video call with a man named Gavin who asked, in all seriousness, whether the zip wire would 'detract from the retail experience.'

Then the council. Retail car parks sit in a grey zone: technically private land, but the moment you invite the public onto it for an event, the local authority wants to know about it. We needed a temporary event notice, a traffic management plan (because delivery lorries do not stop for play equipment), and written confirmation that we weren't blocking any emergency access routes.

Finally, the centre manager on the ground — the person whose actual opinion mattered most and whose name appears on none of the paperwork. Bring them a coffee early and often. Trust us on this.

Week Minus Two: The Risk Assessment Gets Real

We write risk assessments for a living and this one still made us sweat. A zip wire in a car park has three natural enemies: cars, trolleys and weather. We solved the first with a solid barrier of cones, water-filled barriers and two very visible marshals in hi-vis. The second we solved with a trolley-corral zone and gentle signage. The third we couldn't solve, only plan for — which meant a wind speed trigger point of 24mph, checked on an anemometer every hour.

The paperwork ran to fourteen pages. Nobody will ever read it. It is still the most important document we produced.

Day One: Tesco Has Opinions

Our first morning was punctuated by the arrival of a home delivery van at 7:40am, twenty minutes before we'd cleared the run-off zone. The driver was lovely about it. The zip wire was not yet live, so we simply paused, waved him through, and learned our first lesson: build in a delivery window. Every supermarket car park has a rhythm — deliveries, click-and-collect peaks, the school run — and your event has to bend around it, not the other way round.

By lunchtime we'd also met the car park's unofficial mayor, a taxi driver who parks in the same bay every day and had strong views about where our queue barrier should go. He was right. We moved it.

Day Two: The Loiterers Become the Audience

Here's something we genuinely didn't expect: the crowd that just stays. A car park pop-up doesn't sell tickets, so your audience is whoever's already there — people nipping in for a meal deal, grandparents killing time, teenagers with nothing else on. On day two, a group of about eight lads aged maybe fourteen hung around for nearly two hours, initially ironic, eventually fully invested, taking turns on the wire and cheering each other on.

That's the quiet argument for taking play to the high street: you reach the families who would never buy a ticket to a play centre. They didn't come to you. You came to them, and it cost them nothing but a Tuesday afternoon.

Day Three: The Birthday Problem

A mum approached our marshal with a phone in her hand and a very reasonable question: could she book the zip wire for her son's birthday on Saturday? He'd be seven. There'd be about fifteen of them.

We had to say no — the installation was licensed for open public sessions only, and a private party on public land opens a box of insurance and safeguarding questions we weren't equipped to unpack on a Wednesday. But she took a flyer, and we've since put her on the list for our bookable venue events. Lesson logged: if you build something bookable-shaped, people will try to book it. Have an answer ready.

Day Four: The Wind

The anemometer hit 26mph at 11am. We closed the wire for two hours, which felt like a disaster until we saw the forecast for the rest of the week. The marshals ran a chalk-drawing station and a conker rolling game on the tarmac instead, and honestly? Some of the younger children preferred it. Flexibility isn't a backup plan. It is the plan.

Day Five: Pack-Down and the Numbers

By Friday evening the lampposts were bare and the car park was, to all outward appearances, a car park again. The tally: just over 900 rides, zero incidents, two complaints (parking, predictably), one birthday enquiry and one very happy centre manager who has already asked us back for October half-term.

The Road Map, If You Want One

If you're a brand or community group eyeing up a bit of retail tarmac, here's the short version:

1. Start with the centre manager, not head office. The person on site can make or break you.
2. Budget six to ten weeks for permissions. Nobody moves quickly on car parks.
3. Plan around the delivery schedule. Lorries always win.
4. Write the wind plan before the wind. You will not think clearly at 25mph.
5. Have an answer for the birthday mum. She is coming. She is always coming.

We don't own a single square metre of that car park, and we never will. For one week in September, though, it was the best playground in town — and then it went back to being a car park, which is perhaps the most pop-up thing of all.