The parking signs in Wilbury Road, Hove, are very unclear, especially to elderly people such as me.

I saw a "Pay at pay meters" sign as I motored along this road and saw a space ten yards from a pay meter, where I parked.

I paid 50p for two hours and attached the note inside my windscreen. I returned one-and-a-half hours later and was astonished to find a penalty notice also attached to my windscreen.

I immediately went to the parking office in Hove Town Hall, where it was explained to me that residents'-only spaces and "pay at meter" spaces are intermixed and I must have parked in one of the former. I was told many people had been caught like this.

I returned to my parking space and found it was a residents'-only bay, so I was at fault. But the notice saying so was much further away from my parking bay than the meter.

I had not walked to examine it. I had, wrongly, assumed the bays closest to the meters were pay spaces.

I have learnt my lesson but it seems very unfair to me. Can signs in intermixed parking areas be made more clear?

-J G Davies, Ovingdean Road, Ovingdean