Play area:Phase I will open as soon as the turf has had chance to anchor itself to the underlying soil. How quickly this happens will depend on the weather. We want lots of warm, wet weather but unfortunately it's been a bit on the cool side since we laid it. Rest assured though, we're monitoring it regularly and hope it's only a matter of 2-3 weeks. Let's hope for lots of 🌦☀️🌦 We can't wait! Phase 2, which will include toddler and inclusive play items, will be delivered this year. However, so far we have only raised enough funding for about three items of equipment. We have submitted a number of grant applications but it's also really important we raise as much as possible locally. We'll do this via fundraising events (look out for our post on Monday evening 😃) but we also need as many donations as you, our community, are able to contribute: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/strathpefferplay2 . Every donations, no matter how small or large, helps. We will let the Phase 2 contract over the summer, regardless of whether we have enough funds to include all the play items, so the more we can raise between now and then the more items we'll be able to deliver. Thank you for all your contributions so far 🙏💚 Bike ZonePhase 1 of our exciting new bike track was constructed last autumn. Since then we are still waiting for that magical few weeks of dry weather to allow the surface to settle and set hard. We're almost there but, like the play area, we're at the mercy of the weather. The recent dry spell (did you spot it😄) helped, but it's not quite ready yet. Over the next couple of weeks you'll see our volunteers out giving the surface a final compact. So, not long but weather dependent, so sorry we can't give an exact date.
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After yesterday's rain it was touch and go as to whether we could lay the turf required to protect the play area safety surface today. We decided to keep the team small and, as you can see, managed to get it all down. We hope you agree it looks amazing! It's been a massive effort the past week but we made it. With the help of our friend James on his digger, we spread over 20 tonnes of earth and laid 130 m3 of turf. Thanks so much to all our volunteers and those of you who have been on standby ready to help, donated material, kept us fed and otherwise supported us. As you will appreciate, the ground is still very soft. We'll monitor how it responds to the next week's weather but hopefully be able to open the play park imminently. We'd like to give a huge shout out and thanks to S22 Contracting Ltd for donating all the turf we laid around the play park this weekend. Phase 2 of our play park will focus on equipment for younger children and additional inclusive items. We have already raised £65,000, however, the full estimate for the design illustrated below is just over £100,000, so the more we can raise through donations and grants the more we can deliver this year. Evidence of local match-funding is also incredibly helpful in helping us secure our grant funding.
We know many of you (80 of you!) gave generously to our 2023 appeal for Phase 1, so sorry to ask again so soon. However, given our recent funding success, let's see how much we can get over the line this year because we may not get another chance and the more we raise of the next couple of months, the more amazing equipment we can instal. We planted our community orchard in spring 2022 and it was time, this week, for the annual pruning workshop led by local expert, Graham Sullivan. We learnt about how, first, to remove dead or damaged stems and then to think about the structure of each tree. We removed branches that were crossing each other, or growing into the centre of the young trees, and then halved the lenght of last years growth, cutting just above a shoot bud that was pointing in the right direction. Low branches were cut down to one or two buds to encourage the formation of fruiting spurs. So, lots to think about! Thank you so much Graham for a wonderfully informative and well presented workshop! Thank you to Strathpeffer Primary School's 'Community Committee' for helping us expand our park's native woodland. Conditions were a bit chilly but this didn't impact their enthusiasm at all! The kids knew so much about why trees are important; as food for wildlife, to clean the air and help combat the terrible impacts of climate change. What a knowledgable bunch. The trees were donated by the Trust for Conservation Volunteers (TCV)'s I Dig Trees initiative, which is an amazing project that provides native British trees for communities. The TCV would welcome donations via the above link to help them continue to provide this wonderful service. We hope the childrent enjoy watching their trees grow with them in the coming years. Watch this space for more 2024 planting event news.
Play parkWe are getting closer to the first Phase of the play park being installed. The contractors have been on-site, put the safety fence up and are hoping to start work the week commencing 16th October. This phase will deliver three amazing items aimed at 4-14 year-olds, including a six tower mega deck climbing frame, swing unit (including flat swing and inclusive basket swing), and multispinner carousel. How quickly we are able to open the park will depend on a few factors such as a dry weather window to pour the safety surface and availability of volunteers to lay topsoil, turf, and access paths. If you think you could help with the volunteer tasks (barrowing, shovelling, use of trailers, power-barrows etc), please get in touch. Exciting times! We have already started fundraising for Phase II of the play park. This will focus on toddler equipment, a shelter and more inclusive play items. We're busy writing grant applications at the moment and would welcome support from any experienced grant application writers out there. Bike ZoneConstruction of the first phase of our Bike Zone is now complete! However, frequent and ongoing heavy rain means the surface isn't getting chance to dry and seal. The track will, therefore, have to remain closed till we've had a couple of weeks of dry weather, which might not be till the spring now. We know this will be dissapointing to the many people who have told us how excited they are to try it out (we're pretty impatient too!), but it's worth it to ensure the trail doesn't get damaged. Hang in there! Rain, rain, rain and volunteers to the rescueWe had about 80 mm of rain over the weekend of 7th and 8th October. Blocked road drains were not able to cope with the volume of water so flowed over curbs and into the park. Large amount of surface water also ran off the school playing field. As a result we lost about three tonne of material from our lovely path network :( However, thanks to our amazing group of volunteers we have made a great start fixing the damage already. Please bear with us while we complete repairs at the upper end of the park near the bus-stop.
If you would like to join our volunteer WhatsApp group please send us your name and mobile number because we'd love to have you on the team :) Alternatively, if you would like to help towards these ongoing maintenance costs, please consider a one-off or regular donation via our JustGiving page. Great fun had by all celebrating Highlands and Islands Climate Festival.What an amazing afternoon and evening yesterday celebrating the end of the Highlands & Islands Climate Festival Everyone seemed to have fun! Highlights included mini-beast adventures with the Highland Council ranger, traditional meadow management techniques to promote biodiversity, apple tasting from our community orchard, nature quiz and fire-pit social. It was a great opportunity to celebrate how our park is contributing to tackling the climate and nature emergencies.
We would like to thank the Highlands and Islands Climate Hub for funding and support. Celebrating how our park is helping protect nature and climateWe really enjoyed the Strathpeffer Science Festival this weekend! It was a wonderful opportunity to talk about the many things we're doing in the park to help nature and the climate alongside creating an exciting and accessible outdoor community resource.
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