A personal trainer has said he’s forced to park his car in extra-wide parent-and-child bays because he’s too muscly to open the door and squeeze out in normal spaces.
There’s no denying that working out is good for you, but Chris Goodwin, aka ‘The Greek Stallion’, is a prime example of how going to the gym has its downsides, too.
The 20-stone personal trainer recently appeared on the Channel 5 show Britain’s Parking Hell 2020, which details all the little daily battles faced by British drivers trying to park their vehicles.
Issues include private parking, council restrictions and fines, but Goodwin’s struggle isn’t down to finding open parking spaces. Rather, his biggest difficulty is finding parking spaces big enough for him.
Speaking on the programme, the gym-lover explained:
I’m a muscle-model champion. I’m a beast. Even if there are parking bays, I never bloody use them.
To avoid attempting to rearrange his limbs in order to escape his car, Goodwin has taken to parking in parent-and-child bays, which offer extra space to make it easier for parents to manoeuvre young children in and out of vehicles.
Parking in a parent-and-child space without a child could result in a fine, but the personal trainer is willing to take the risk.
He commented:
I’ll just go and park in the same parent-and-child [bay], even if I’m on my own – I always do it.
I don’t give a crap what people think of me. I’ll do what I want. I can’t fit out of my car – I’m too big. I don’t think it is selfish, I really don’t.
Goodwin admitted he’s received backlash for his decision, with frustrated members of the public trying to ‘fight [him] like Mike Tyson would’.
He was once met with a woman ‘shouting abuse’ at him for using the spot, but at the time he pointed out he and his pregnant partner both needed to fit out of the car, claiming they wouldn’t have been able to so in a normal spot.
Though not everyone agrees with him, Goodwin believes he has every right to park in the space.
The muscly man continued:
People take it way over the top because you’re parking in a bloody parent-and-child bay. I still think anybody should be able to park there and that’s not being selfish.
When people are taking up lines in parking bays or using two spaces that’s annoying but if someone needs to use the parent-and-child bay they should be able to do it without any judgement.
Goodwin believes he should have his very own parking bay, reserved as ‘The Greek Stallion’s Bay’. Though the spot might get some funny looks, at least it would leave the parent-and-child bay free for families, or perhaps even for other particularly muscly people.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.