Four thousand Page Views!

I've just checked the statistics page for this blog and received a very pleasant surprise! Whilst I was away over the weekend this site had it's 4,000 page view!

And the fascinating statistic is that the posting with the highest number of hits was the Joules clock story (not a great surprise) closely followed by my suggestion about using the police station site and car park to create a full one way system around the top end of town (very surprising!).

So a big thank you to everyone who comes to look at my blog.

My annual pilgrimage!

Call me an anorak if you wish but I just love steam trains! I'm old enough to have have used them regularly when I was a schoolboy. I used to catch the 8.35 from Barlaston Station to school at Newcastle. Yes, that was in the days when Newcastle had a railway station. No trace now of course - the D road obliterated the line completely and the station site opposite the Borough Arms Hotel now forms part of the walk through the gardens to Queen Street. And Barlaston station is no more, either.

The largest loco - 70000 Britannia

So whenever I have the chance I always try to get down to Minehead for the West Somerset Spring Steam Gala. And Janet takes advantage of my trip to go and see her girls in Dartmouth. So we were up at the crack of dawn on Friday and made good progress down the M5 to Taunton. There Jan dropped me off at the bus station and, using my bus pass (one of the advantages of age!) I enjoyed a delightful  bus journey through the beautiful countryside of North Somerset to Minehead. I saw so much more than if I had been driving a car.

And the smallest !

I then spent the rest of the weekend hopping on and off steams trains. Wonderful! The West Somerset Railway is a proper railway - over twenty miles long and eight stations. Apart from a handful of paid employees, the whole operation is run by volunteers - over 600 of them. I've been a member for several years and just wished I lived nearer. If I did, you'd never see me! I'd be there with my sleeves rolled up at every opportunity!

But the weekend brought home to me just how important leisure and tourism is to the local economy of towns like Minehead. Every hotel, guest house and B&B was full; restaurants and pubs were doing a roaring trade and, due to the brilliant weather, the ice cream stalls all had long queues. I had a conversation with a local who was of the opinion that without the visitors to the railway the town would have gone out of business years ago. We've no similar attraction in Stone but we must must make the most of what we've got to attract the tourist pound. Which make our Farmers' Market and our Festivals all the more important.

Great excitement!

Over the last few weeks, I've been heavily involved in helping to organise a new food and drink festival at Uttoxeter Racecourse in June. The events team at Uttoxeter contacted us a couple of months ago and asked if Stone Food and Drink Festival would be willing to work with them to put on a summer festival and we were only too pleased to help. Indeed we were honoured to think that they valued our input so highly.

Obviously we had to negotiate an appropriate financial arrangement with them and we were able to do so on the basis that Stone Food and Drink Festival would receive all the benefits accruing from our involvement. So it's been full tilt ever since!

This morning I popped over to Uttoxeter to have an updating meeting with Dan Whitehead and came away 'on a high'. Both Dan and I had been receiving exactly the same positive responses from traders and public alike. Bookings for stalls are well above expectations and a couple of hundred entrance tickets have already been sold online!

We're lining up several meetings for next week with more traders and a couple of potential sponsors. Busy times ahead! And the beauty of it is that all the work involved is being done in tandem with our own Stone festival. So we all benefit!

Credit where credit's due!

Some time ago I was highly critical of the new boxes which had been installed to contain the electric power supply in the High Street. They were unpainted galvanised steel boxes and tarmac had been tamped around the bases - all looking pretty ugly.

That's better!

Well, today, I am pleased to report that the boxes have been painted black and the tarmac replaced by cement. A vast improvement! I asssume that the Town Council are responsible so I retract my original criticism and thank the council for finishing the job properly.

I sincerely hope that traders at the monthly Farmers' Market and stallholders on the town market, such as the oatcake trailer, will have access to the electric supply. Traders who have refridgerated cabinets and who require lights will only come to town if they can plug in.

Somethings happening!

At long last, something is happening to the old Joules wine shop in the High Street. It traded for a while as Victoria Wine and then as a Sue Ryder charity shop but it's been empty now for many years. There have been numerous rumours about new tenants over the years but it has always been said that no-one would take it on because the roof was in such a state.

So it's great news to now see the building clad in scaffolding and to see that the contractors hard at work are - yes, you've guessed it - roofing contractors!

There are, of course, several rumours flying around the town as to who will be taking up occupancy once the repairs have been carried out. I'm sure the suggestion of an Anne Summers shop is being put about by the same person who told us about the lap dancing club that was about to open in Stone some years ago! My money is on the other name that is doing the rounds - Starbucks.

Costa Coffee has been  a great success, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see another coffee shop come to town. When Jan and I were in Cardiff a couple of weeks ago, every other shop seemed to be a coffee shop. They seem to create their own demand. And, contrary to some people's opinion, I don't think it would sound the 'death knell' for Custodio at the Lounge. As well as serving coffee, The Lounge is also a restaurant providing a good range of meals throughout the day and has the added advantage of being in a superb location on the Square especially in the summer. And if Cus supplies good coffee, served quickly by trained and smiling staff, he has nothing to worry about.

But then perhaps it's all a rumour! So whoever takes over the old shop, it will be good to see it occupied again. Contrary to the view of one councillor, we don't have an 'ailing' High Street and the fact that this shop could soon be open again is great news for the whole town.

Friends of Stone Station's first meeting

On Tuesday evening seventeen of us assembled in Stone Station and agreed to form a Friends of Station Station group. We have tried to do this once before but this time it was for real! And we were delighted to welcome Richard Chadwick , London Midland's local Delivery Manager who took a very active and positive role in the discussions which took place.

We were able to discuss various issues which he agreed to look into, such as the possibility of installing a sheltered seating area on Platform 2, the installation of a cycle rack and the possibility of the old lamp house being used buy us as a storage facility. In addition we passed on to him concerns that sometimes passengers were not always able to buy tickets on the train before completing their journeys to Stoke or Stafford and the impact that might have on passenger figures.

On a positive note, we also looked at various ways we could improve the appearance of the station, the platforms and the surrounding areas. Floral displays were very much favoured and the location of hanging baskets is to be discussed  with London Midland at a future site meeting.

So, all in all, it was a very positive meeting

We've set up a website and we're also on Facebook and Twitter. Oh yes, all the modern social media techniques!

The Pheasant on tour!

What a weekend! Dave Smithwick celebrates his fiftieth birthday in a couple of weeks time so he had this daft idea of starting the celebrations early!  A group of a dozen or so of his mates would spend a couple of days on a cultural tour of Kilkenny in Ireland!

He went  over there ten years ago and has always longed to go back to claim his family inheritance - Smithwicks Brewery! So a bleary eyed group of us piled in to a minibus outside the Pheasant last Friday morning at 5.00 am - yes am! It was still dark and I even met our milkman on the drive - first time in seventeen years!

Someone you may know
 - in disguise!

A quick flight from Manchester to Dublin and then a short minibus drive to our first pub for a full fried Irish breakfast! A crate of tins of Guinness was then put on the bus and it was off to Kilkenny. We soon booked in to the Kilkenny River Court Hotel then down to the riverside bar for a couple of pints of Guinness before we set off on a tour of the town. Now I don't intend to go into too much detail because "what goes on tour, stays on tour" as someone once said! But let's just say that the only lengthy interruption to our consumer research of the bars of Kilkenny over the next few days was a two hour long enforced abstinence whilst we went on a conducted tour of the brewery.

Smithwick did take us see the family stately pile whilst we waited for the pubs to open the following morning and I reached the conclusion that this was definitely a place to come back to. Kilkenny is a delightful town and is well worth a visit. What a pity the Town Council's moves to arrange a twinning agreement some years ago came to nothing!

Great Uncle Edmund's little place in Ireland

Then sadly another early morning call yesterday to get back to Dublin airport to catch an early plane back to East Midlands. And so it was that we all sat in the Pheasant again at lunchtime eating beef baps and downing the final pints of Guinness of the holiday. A great weekend!