We are absolutely delighted that our local Councillors approved our application for £96,878 via the Highland Council’s Community Regeneration Fund this week
This is a massive boost to our target of £155,979 to deliver the first phase of a new inclusive children’s play area in Strathpeffer. With additional funding from the Strathpeffer and Contin EDF Renewables Corriemoillie Community Funds (Foundation Scotland), the Mackenzie New York Villa Trust, and your generous donations via our community fundraising events, we have now secured an amazing £122,878. As you can see, high quality, long-lasting play equipment and safety surfaces are expensive. As such we are now reaching out to local businesses to secure additional sponsorship. We have three sponsorship packages available starting at £50-£300 for our bronze-level supporters. Please contact us if you are interested, as a local business, or are able to introduce us to a business that might be interested. Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far.
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The SRA Board welcomed past trustees, volunteers and others who have supported the park to officially celebrate the opening of our all ability path network. It was wonderful to share this moment with so many and reflect on how far we've come over the ten years our community has worked on the project. Our fire pit did us proud providing warmth and BBQ. If you would like access to the grill for your own event please get in touch. We are very grateful to Phil Armshaw from the Crystal House Hotel who kindly demonstrated how to cut and hand-bale hay this weekend. There was plenty for our team of volunteers to learn and do! We were particularly impressed with Phil's home-made baling machine, which produced some perfect bales. By cutting areas of our meadow in the late summer we will maximise the number of flowering plants that can compete with the grasses. This in turn leads to more pollinators and a beautiful display of colour throughout spring and summer. We are leaving some areas of long grass for foraging frogs, newts and other animals but aim to rotate the areas we cut each year. Ideally we would have let the cut grass dry a few days to make dry bales for winter animal feed, however, this is very difficult to time and coordinate for volunteers. We'll still get all the nature benefits though. We are absolutely delighted with our new paths. Our contractor, James Maclean, did a wonderful job ensuring a smooth finish and gentle gradients to ensure the park is now accessible to all. It's been wonderful receiving all the nice messages from across our community and even better seeing everyone using them to walk their dogs, travel to school or to avoid having to walk along the edge of the main road. If you need to work out where the paths are, pop over to our access page.
Many thanks to everyone who attended the Strathpeffer Residents' Association AGM, whether in-person or via our live web link. If you weren't able to attend, here's the annotated presentation or you can download it to access the hyper-links here. As the path works come to an end (more on this later), we have installed two new picnic tables in the park. One by the fire-pit and the other next to the orchard. What a great place to have a picnic :)
Sorry you've not heard very much from us lately, but we've been very busy in the background:
We need to say a massive thank you to Corriemoillie Community Funds, Foundation Scotland and the Mackenzie New York Villa Trust for their amazing support and donations. We have also been awarded a massive £59,497 by the Highland Council through the Place Based Investment Programme. Thanks to these absolutely amazing funders we have been able to let the Paths contract, which is the final prerequisite for planning to allow us to build the Playpark. The work will start Monday 4th July and last 2-3 weeks. Our next fundraising goal is very exciting as its for the Playpark! We need to find significant funding to deliver the park - find out how you can help here Our new fire pit is now available for all to use, but we ask that you keep the below in mind:
Let us know you see any problems with the fire pit of the park. |
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