News letter

May 09

As I write, tomorrow is May Day, the baby ducklings have hatched the May blossom is blooming and we have a new road! A beautiful tarmac service road that goes from the car park behind the café to the refuse skips .Not far, not to any where important, just to the skips, where there is a hammer head turning point where you can turn round again and come back. There and back to see how far it is as we used to say. It’s sloped so that it drains into the ditch through nine drainage gulleys’ just like a proper road that goes somewhere. Because of the slope the ground on the café side of the road has had to be built up with rubble and top soil so we have temporarily lost some grass and gained brown earth , but it’s been seeded and you can still park on it and eventually it will  green up,then it will be lovely The bad news is nobody asked how big the largest vehicle that comes on site is and the brewery dray is an large arctic and the turning area isn’t large enough for it ,so it has to partly go on the grass which will over time undo a lot of good that the road has done. The good news is that the lads who laid the tarmac had some left over, so for a few free cups of tea they laid it in the car park entrance and filled in the pot holes! Hurrah!

ALL CHANGE

Talking of brewery drays we have changed from Carlsberg lager to Fosters chilled today because we understand it’s more popular. This is now available in Café Wharfside and on board Bosworth Lady. Banks’ smooth is still the bitter we sell, as it seems popular with many.

BACK IN TIME

I had to smile the other day, outside the cafe were parked three beautiful scooters, two Lambrettas and a Vespa, if my memory serves me correctly all were in what looked like perfect condition, each one covered in mirrors, one even had a tigers tail on the Arial It didn’t half take me back! I thought for a moment Sue had brought me a present and given me a choice of three (I didn’t really, I’m not that daft!) Then I noticed three chaps in the cafe with their backs to the window they were all wearing Parkas with roundels on the back and all the kit, proper Mods, transported through time from the 60’s. Then they turned round and I realised they’d not been fast tracked through time at all but travelled the slow way, same as the rest of us, each one sixty if he was a day, and drinking pots of tea! Oh well my scooter never went very fast either!

Now lads it’s great to see you but we get a lot of bikers in here and we don’t want any trouble! But then, times a great healer, so the Rocker can sit down with the Mod and we’ll all drink tea together!

Rosebud the shark

Rosebud had a bit of an outing the other week-end and went down to Trinity Marina to do some trips on their open day. Captain Pete had gone to Lanzarote for a week so Adam and Tom took her down, a bit of an adventure,apart from nearly boiling the engine dry all went well (just a little matter of bleeding something when you fill the header tank with water) It wasn’t very busy at the Marina as the weather was poor but the lads enjoyed themselves on a new length of canal. Rosebud and Pete are both back from their holidays and Rosebud is operating every week-end school holiday until the end of September. See the web site for details (Watch the Temperature lads!)

It can’t be easy

With forty pubs a week closing around the country it’s obvious that life in the pub and restaurant business must be very difficult and I can only assume that our local pub must be feeling the pinch. Why else would they try and steal our business by placing a board right outside our car park trying to entice people up the road to their premises? At first I was annoyed but then I just laughed about it, you’d think they’d be embarrassed, but it’s still there so presumably not. I doubt it’s doing them much good as it certainly hasn’t done us any harm! We’ve not used that pub for years, and that’s all I have to say on the matter.

I’m happy to say we are reasonably busy with the cafe doing particularly well on sunny days, people love to sit and watch the boats go by whilst enjoying something to eat and drink. The boating side of the business is also pretty buoyant, sorry, with the low occupancy charter really doing well. People still want to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays ECT but are wanting to spend less and are happy to invite fewer people and keep the cost down.

Facebook

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Vacancies

We still have various vacancies within the organisation and are starting to collate a list of names of people who would like casual work on an ad hoc basis

If you are interested please give Sue a ring 01455 213838 ext 20