Less than five weeks since Ledbury Road Services re-opened following damage from a lightning strike, the Essar forecourt fell victim last weekend to another unpredictable blow.
On Friday night (August 7), the driver of a Land Rover Discovery lost control on the A438 at Bushley, near Tewkesbury, smashing into the site’s totem pole, and taking out signage, fencing and planters, causing £30,000-plus worth of damage.
The Gloucestershire business, owned by Oliver Arnold and Susannah Moffat, is still waiting for its insurance company to pay out on electrical damage valued at around £40,000, caused by the storm earlier this year.
The couple had also lost around £500,000 income from having to shut the site after the storm, to sort damage to the pumps, fuel gauge, the till system, CCTV, wiring, fridge and coffee machine.
The latest incident has meant that they have had to temporarily close their recently opened Spoke Ice Cream Parlour on site to reduce congestion.
It would have been a peak trading period for this arm of the business, with its locally-produced Winstone’s Ice Cream, thick shakes, smoothies, homemade lemonade, iced teas, and Barista made iced lattes and mochas.
But Arnold and Moffat remain as resilient and stoical as ever. They have faced multiple challenges since transforming what was a derelict petrol station into a farmshop style community hub in November 2024.
“We are just very relieved that nobody was killed in the crash,” says Arnold. “We had shut at 7pm on Friday night, and the incident took place at 10.30pm.
”Rich our manager went in to find the carnage on Saturday morning, waking me up at 6.30am to tell me.”
CCTV footage showed how the vehicle had flipped over six times, careering 80m across the site.
One of the drivers, ejected from the car, was believed to have fractured his pelvis and collar bone, and the other has since been to the site to collect his wife’s car.
Arnold is optimistic of getting a payout from the driver’s insurance company. He says that he sees the damage as an opportunity to reposition the totem, and entrance and exit signs.
But he admits it has been a “heart racing” experience since acquiring the business, starting with borrowing costs increasing around that time.
The couple, who had just had a baby, faced a 14-month wait for planning permission, and then more recently had to navigate the collapse of Prax forcing them to find an alternative fuel supplier.
“We are very pleased that we are about to go on holiday, the first time in four years,” says Arnold. “Touch wood, nothing else can go wrong while we are away, and we will come home reset.”
