Communal seating at Winchester Southbound, located right of the main entrance, primarily serving Burger King and Costa. None of the food units at Winchester South have their own seating area, so this seating is in high demand, especially during the summer period when the sites busier. Some of the seating here was removed during 2020 when Costa removed their main store and extended the kiosk to become the only Costa at the site. Now, the customer seating at Winchester appears to be for Costa only, however, customers of Burger King and WCP can use it. The interior of Winchester South is bright and airy, with high ceilings and lots of open space. It being built by Roadchef in 2001 means it appears similar to other Roadchef’s built at a similar time, such as Northampton and Strensham South. We have large glass panels flooding the interior with natural light. The sloped, metallic roof design is characteristic of late 90s/2000s motorway services and outside, the Days Inn motel can be seen (rare for Moto’s to have Days Inn and this motel is operated by Welcome Break). There are picnic benches dotted around the exterior but Winchester South is limited on green-space, so during summer most customers would want to still use this seating area. All the furniture is recent. Winchester South was built with a 333-seat restaurant, likely referring to this seating area. Interestingly, Northbound’s was 232-seats and basically 2/3 of the size, making Southbound considerably larger. Nowadays, there’s not much difference as the amount of seating has been reduced at Southbound. Winchester South was very quiet during my visit, as it was the morning and it’s on a silent stretch of M3, directly after most traffic leaves for the A303.

Photo taken on 03/04/2024 by Tom Moon.

Assigned to galleries: Winchester