Just outside of York is a service station, on the A64 (East) York Ring Road to be exact. Not unusual to have a petrol stop just before a motorway you’re thinking, but this one brags of being the last stop before Mars… It’s not a film location but I’m making an exception in a year were every comic-con and sci-fi event has been cancelled so far. This place was an unexpected joy to find and it deserves bigging up.
Heading over to the east coast last month for a few nights break, my husband remembered that he’d seen pictures of a service station somewhere near York with a geeky twist – Daleks! As he was driving, I was able to quickly google “sci-fi petrol station York” and up popped the ‘Inner Space Stations Service Station‘. From the pictures I knew it was the place and best of all it was en-route to Scarborough and only a five minute detour!
With much anticipation we came off the motorway and approached the service station, indeed there was not one, not two, but three Daleks! A Cyberman too and to our delight a full-size TARDIS. As we didn’t need any fuel, we parked up at the B&Q next door and giddier that two grown adults should be practically skipped over to the forecourt.
Now I’d have been more than happy with the Doctor Who stuff – but it got better. There’s a Transformers car wash, with two very large Autobots. By the cashpoint is a Han Solo in carbonite watched over by Boba Fett on the roof above. Finally, the entrance to the shop is guarded by a lone Stormtrooper. After taking far too many photos and the obligatory TARDIS selfie we did finally pop into the shop to buy some bits for lunch.
When we got home, I had a look at the background of the service station and found that is was the idea of the owner Graham Kennedy who used the sci-fi theme as a selling point and way of getting attention – well I can say it works! We certainly wouldn’t have made a detour for just your ordinary petrol station and little shop.
It’s a business strategy that must be working as it had a full refurbishment in 2019 and one of the articles reveals that it cost £2000 to ship the Bumblebee Transformer from Cambodia – that’s on top of however much Mr Kennedy paid for the Autobot (and all the other toys). Now that’s a level of geekiness I can only aspire to! I’d highly recommend stopping by if you’re passing. It’s just simply fun and wonderfully eccentric in a world that desperately needs some joy at the moment (and useful if you need fuel too obviously).
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From scene to seen 