"It was like something from East Germany"
Friends and family were last night rallying around a distressed Londoner whose dream day out to an upmarket shopping village turned into a nightmare. Hilary Cholmondley-Smythe, 33, an investment banker from Kensington, West London, explained how a mix up over parking led to the horror of finding herself not in the swanky designer outlet, but instead in the centre of the adjoining town. "I had a few grand left over from my quarterly bonus so I decided to treat myself to a trip to Bicester Village. I wanted to see if I could pick myself up a nice dress for a dinner party some friends of mine are throwing in Belgravia next weekend. So I drove up the M40 in my Mercedes-AMG to see what I could find. Everything was fine until I got off the M40, then I started seeing signs saying the car parks were full and directing me to a park-and-ride system. Obviously, a person of my social class could not possibly be seen dead on a bus, so I ignored those and carried on driving. The traffic w...