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Well, that's our order for Phase 2 of the play park confirmed, with installation provisionally scheduled to start in early September We worked hard with the supplier to secure the best possible mix of equipment aimed at our younger children. It includes accessible items, including a wonderful trampoline that can be used by everyone, including wheelchair users. None of this second phase would be possible without your support and generous funding from the Community Regeneration Fund, Foundation Scotland EDF Renewables Corriemoillie Strathpeffer and Contin Community Funds, Scottish Children's Lottery , The Pat Munro Foundation , the Community Benefit HCES ( Allt Dearg) fund (Strathpeffer and Contin allocation), RSE , @strathpetal, and all your personal donations. THANK YOU! Donations are still welcomed and essential to help us put the finishing touches to the play park, e.g., benches and landscaping. You can donate at anytime, either directly, or via our JustGiving page: https://www.justgiving.com/strathpeffercommunitypark
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What an amazing turnout for the official opening of Phase 1 of the play park and bike zone on Sunday. Thanks to all who helped us celebrate, in person or otherwise. Well done to all the young riders who took part in the Strathpeffer Community Park Bike Club event yesterday. There were some great efforts and determined faces on the course. Thanks to the Ben Wyvis Cycle Club marshals and Averil Milligan for organising it. Oh, and the BWCC, Highland Trail Riders and Dutchess of Westminster funded bike track was put through its paces as well. At last! We're so pleased to be able to announce that we opened the Phase I play park gates this week. To celebrate the event all the Strathpeffer Primary School children came to try it out for their Fresh Air Friday activity. There was unanimous approval We hope everyone enjoys and cares for it for many years to come. We aren't stopping here though, oh no! We need equipment for our younger children/ grandchildren. We're well on the way to delivery later this year but urgently need your help. Please consider donation to our Phase 2 funding appeal and share far and wide! https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/strathpefferplay2  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.  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.
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