Welcome all, to another diary newsletter. We arrived back on Rockley Park on the 5th March and were welcomed with an impromptu party with some of our friends within one hour of our arrival. It’s grand to be back! Having spoken to quite few of the owners it seems we will all have to look at travelling a lot further south in the winter to get the lovely sunshine guaranteed.
We have already enjoyed a very tasty barbecue (in our view the best we have had on the Park for food quality and quantity) and, although we didn’t attend, the general opinion seems to be that the welcome back party was also much better than recent events. This is good news, as we have stopped going in recent times having not been happy about the standard of entertainment. For example the so called Four Tops (from Peckham?), who managed to clear the showbar faster than a fire drill and the catering arrangements (free-for-all) in recent years. Sadly it would seem that the sound system in the show bar is still totally unsatisfactory, it seems to us that the only way to solve the problem is to look at the structure of the building not the sound emitted from the equipment. The problem is clearly the reverberated sound bouncing round a room made largely of tin, which makes it virtually impossible to understand much of what is said from the stage!
The Park looks generally spick and span and is pretty well ready for the first invasion of holiday-makers which comes earlier than usual this year. Presumably this accounts for only having one owners welcome party, there being little time available for a second event.
The refurbishments to Oasis have much improved the atmosphere in there making it much more like a bar/restaurant and less like a canteen. Also the new decking and potential outside dining arrangements look very promising, although, the overhead canopy has yet to arrive. Work has now commenced on the new crazy golf course adjacent to the shop. I hear that the charge will be half price for owners. Whilst not wishing to be too carping in the face of improvement, this would still seem to be yet another nail in the coffin of ‘free park leisure facilities’ (remember free sun beds?) that we enjoyed for many years and, indeed, were sold. (How long before tennis and bowls become chargeable?)
The events calendar has again been produced for the whole season, and, whilst we are now routinely paying for some events that were free, in fairness, it is a very comprehensive programme with much more going on than in the past. We were pleased to see that the popular line dancing lessons on Tuesday mornings have been retained, if you haven’t tried it yet, come and give it a go! Equally, the coffee mornings on Mon, Wed and Fri continue to be well attended and popular. Also some of the more popular acts have been brought back in Hardy’s.
We were very sad to hear of the impending departure of Kevin and Carol Alsop after several years on the Park. They are lovely people and were among the first to make us welcome when we joined the Park ourselves. I’m sure they will be greatly missed by many. It is, without doubt, one of the sadder aspects of life on the Park, seeing the turnover of owners and saying good bye to so many good friends.
On the Staffing side we welcome Amy as our new events co-ordinator and are very pleased to see Pauline and Tracy are back for another season in Hardy’s. Sadly, we have lost Sharon from the OE reception and Bev (our excellent shop manager) who has left due to health issues. We all wish her a speedy recovery and hope to see her back with us one day.
Finally, it was a huge disappointment to see the cynical annexation of half the beach for the dreaded Hobies. I don’t know whether this move is down to Bourne Leisure or the local authority but it seems to be a bit of a slap in the face to the non-boat orientated majority who wish to use the beach for the purposes for which it was originally used. I foresee many disappointed junior ‘crabbers’.
See you on the Park
