Gillingham has a railway station and almost nobody uses it. That single fact explains most of what follows. The town is on a main line, which is rare for somewhere this size in this part of Dorset. Under one in a hundred working residents commutes by train. Roughly six in ten drive instead, and about one in five never leaves the house to work at all. The connection exists. The town has simply arranged its life around the car and the broadband instead.
Gillingham (Dorset) Rail Station puts the town on a line most rural Dorset towns lost decades ago, and around 1% of working residents commute by train, which is the lowest-effort way of telling you how the timetable actually performs against the school run. Buses are similarly theoretical: there are 71 stops in the area, and around 0.4% of working residents commute by bus.
What people do instead is drive. Around 59% commute by car, about 22% work from home, roughly 11% walk and around 1% cycle. Car ownership follows the same logic, with about 43% of households running two or more vehicles and around 13% having none at all. In a town where two cars is closer to standard than exceptional, the second driveway space is not a luxury feature, it is infrastructure.
The Department for Transport's modelled journey-time statistics put the nearest town centre at around 9 minutes by car against roughly 21 minutes by public transport. Those are modelled figures for the area rather than a route from any particular front door, and the public transport ones date from 2019, so services may have thinned since.
Broadband is where the town quietly outperforms its transport. Gigabit-capable service reaches around 82% of premises, superfast reaches about 99%, and nothing at all sits below the universal service obligation. For the 22% working from home, that is the more relevant piece of connectivity anyway.
Mobile coverage is effectively complete, with all premises reached by at least one operator on fourth or fifth generation service and around 97% reached by all of them.
Charging an electric car is something you plan rather than something you do. There are 3 public charge points in the area, offering 5 connections between them, and none of them are rapid units. Home charging is the practical answer here, which the town's driveways mostly allow for.
For everyday destinations, the same modelled journey-time statistics put a food store at around 17 minutes on foot or 8 minutes by car, a doctor's surgery at around 30 minutes walking, 9 minutes driving or 21 minutes by public transport, and employment centres at around 25 minutes by car or 40 minutes by public transport. A hospital is the outlier: around 44 minutes by car and roughly 86 minutes by public transport, which is a serious consideration for anyone with a condition requiring regular appointments. To the nearest town centre, the modelled walk is around 29 minutes and the cycle around 14. Again, these describe the area rather than any specific address, and the public transport figures carry the 2019 caveat.
On buses, the stop count flatters the reality. The average stop sees around 9 scheduled weekday departures, and at peak time the average is roughly one bus an hour. About 90% of stops with service data see something at a weekend, which is better than most rural areas manage, though the frequency question applies there too. Nine departures spread across a day is a service you build your morning around, not one you turn up for.
Road noise touches the whole area to some degree, with every postcode sitting near or above the 65-decibel level at which official mapping treats road noise as significant, and the loudest band present reaching 75 decibels. Rail noise registers on no postcodes at all, so the trains that few people catch are at least not keeping anyone awake.
Connectivity is the middling part of the Gillingham case, and the reason is not the absence of infrastructure but the thinness of the timetables running on it. If you drive, or if your job is on a laptop, none of this will trouble you. If you were planning to sell the car and live off the station, look harder at the departure boards before you commit.