Finchale Abbey
News
Special
points of interest:
·
Welcome to our New residents
·
Date for your diary
·
Eco News
·
How are you finding the new recycling
scheme?
Welcome to
the latest edition of Finchale Abbey News
This years annual get together will be
on Tuesday 24th June. We’re having a casino night which will raise funds
for Cancer Research in memory of Mrs Nora Sowerby. As the casino setup itself
is expensive to hire there will be a fee of £5 per head, we’ll provide
the food again but please bring a bottle. Dress code will be dress to impress,
ladies get your diamonds out of the family vault and gents get those
tuxedo’s dusted off!
There will be more details closer to the time but we’re
giving you plenty of warning so you can book the Wednesday off work if you need
to!
Would you like to contribute to your newsletter or our website?
If anyone has anything they’d like to say or share then Finchale Abbey
News could be the place to do it. If you’d like to add a message please
let us know.
The park is looking great and we’d like to take this
opportunity to say thank you and well done to all of our gardeners. We’d
considered having a ’best garden’ competition throughout the park
but have decided against it as the standards are just too high to judge! Keep
it up and we can’t wait for the summer blooms!
Welcome to New Residents
Since our last edition of Finchale Abbey
News we have a number
of new lodges
onto the park. The new
lodges from both NJS and TingDene are really making the park look fantastic.
We’d like to formally welcome Mr.
& Mrs. Graham, Mr. & Mrs. Lane and Mr. & Mrs. Smith to the park. We
hope you all settle in quickly to your new life here at Finchale and we wish
you many happy years with us.
Mr
& Mrs Humphries and Mr & Mrs Charlton will be joining us shortly, their
lodges are already on the park and the final touches are being made ready for
the big move!
Decking and the introduction of several
rockeries around the lodges is really helping to make the park look
established.
Eco
News
The park is continuing to do well with
regard to our green credentials. We’re currently in the middle of filling
in our self assessment form for the David Bellamy Conservation Awards 2008,
please see how you can help us go for gold below.
What have you spotted?
Have you seen any unusual animals, birds,
insects or flowers around the park, if you have we’d love to hear about
them, we’d like to start to keep a check on our local wildlife to see if
we can help them out in anyway so if you see anything special please let us
(and David Bellamy!) know!
We’re currently in the
process of purchasing a couple of ‘Green Cones’ to be situated on
phase one. The ‘Green Cone’ is a revolutionary solar powered food
waste digester. The cones are partially buried and will break down all food
waste, cooked and raw, meat, fish, dairy products and fruit and vegetables.
Unlike a garden composter they don’t need to be empties as 90% of the
waste is absorbed into the soil.
Residents will be provided with Kitchen caddies for their waste which
can be emptied into the top of the cones as necessary.
Michael, Chris and Ann have kindly
agreed to be our ‘guinea pigs’ for this new scheme but if all goes
well we hope to roll it out throughout the park.
This could reduce our regular rubbish collection
by 25% as well as reducing bin ‘smells.’ The cones themselves are
fully sealed and should not attract vermin or flies as the lid is only removed
when new food is added.
The wild flower field below phase two
is now starting to show signs of growth. Let’s hope the hard work of last
year is rewarded with an abundance of wild flowers that can be enjoyed by all.
Again the field will not be cut until the autumn to allow the wildflowers to
come through and we wait with anticipation to see what grows!
Have
your say!
As part of the assessment of the park
for the David Bellamy Conservation Awards 2008 we are requested to supply
visitors and residents with postcards to give their views of the park. The
postcards are an important part of the process and we’d like to encourage
as many of you as possible to fill them in. Please share your opinions on the
how you feel the park is working to support the local environment. We’ll
have a collection point for the cards in Reception that we’ll send them
on in batches, if you’d prefer you
can send the cards directly, they are already addressed but will unfortunately
need a stamp if you are posting individually. Please remember to mention the
name of the park on your card. You should hopefully have received a postcard
with this newsletter but if not more cards are available in Reception.
Living the Dream
We have now passed the landmark of 3
years since we moved into the village and it is now well and truly established
with Phase 2 quickly being occupied.
You might think after 3 years
that we would be over the feel good factor that we expressed in our earlier
letters, but just last Easter with those few days off work we thoroughly
enjoyed our break even though the Easter
weather was the worst for over 40 years.
We spent the weekend totally
relaxing by not having to rise for work at 5.30 in the morning, we were still
getting up early around 7.30 and at this time of year the sunrises we view from
our living room with the dark outline of the woods against the red sky are
spectacular.
Each day we did a different
walk, we have even found a few more walks through the woods that end up in the
I have to mention the
excellent contribution from Bruce one of our residents who has taken the time
to create 3 paths through Finchale woods with some lovely seats by the river
made out of Extrudawood so it will never need any maintenance, these walks can
only be accessed by Finchale residents and I am sure the newcomers to our
second phase will find this very attractive, so we are all very privileged to
have this on our doorstep, there must be very few people who can claim to have
these surroundings unless you have a title!
The village has now been
complimented by our new security gates and the rockeries which has now given
the village an established look and being the first residents we are always
amazed at how over these 3 years we have arrived at where we are now and our
expectations have been exceeded.
We were reflecting a few
weeks ago as we often do at how lucky we are to have this lifestyle and to have
no regrets which is very important and Chris said it was ’Living the
dream’.
This turn of phrase totally
encapsulates everything we do and feel about living at
Many of the residents have
expressed to us that they also love living at Finchale and that proves it is
not just us.
Michael & Chris
Storey
New
recycling scheme…how is it for you?
We have had a few weeks now of the new
green bag recycling scheme and all seems to be going well. Remember you can put
paper, cardboard and plastics into your bag and continue to put cans and glass
into the green bins around the park.
The
recycling will continue to be collected on a fortnightly basis (Thursdays) but
if you have too much for your bags/boxes please let us know and we’ll try
to empty them to prevent any overspill of rubbish around the park.
When the recycling was collected for the first time the men who
collected it couldn’t believe how much we’d collected so a big well
done to all of you. There has also been a notable reduction in the amount of
household waste going to landfill so fantastic news all round.
Our local councillor, Mark Wilks is very pleased with all of
your efforts but if you have any questions about the recycling scheme he is
more than happy to be contacted. E-mail: cllr-wilkes@hotmail.co.uk
Hopefully the ‘GreenCones’ will prove a success and
they will further reduce our waste.
If you have any used ink cartridges or old mobile phones please
pop them into the shop, we’ll recycle them and any funds raised will be
added to the total for Cancer research from the casino night.
Wondering
what’s going on at the farmhouse?
You may have noticed some work going on
at the Farmhouse. Suzie, Ann’s daughter and her partner Nick are in the
very early stages of transforming the upstairs of the farmhouse into a
self-contained apartment. Still subject to finalised planning consent from
English Heritage due to the age of the building, they hope to complete the
project over the next year. Nick is a stonemason by trade and his skills will
be put to good use in this mammoth task. The downstairs will continue to
function as it currently does as office, reception and shop.
It will be lovely to see a member of
the family take up permanent residence in the main house and should further
confirm our commitment to the park in the long term. We are a family run
business and the business will stay with the family through the next
generations.
News from around the park
Window Cleaning
Although there are already arrangements made for window cleaning
on Phase One Joe Lane is offering a service for Phase Two and Three. He can be
contacted on 0191 3842668 or 07972250203 Joe is also offering a competitive
taxi service for all residents on the same numbers.
Coffee Morning
The coffee morning is still going strong from this Thursday it
will be in the meeting room adjacent to the touring park at 10.30all are
welcome come and share a book, a coffee and a homemade scone!
Craft Morning
Are you handy with a needle or a dab hand with the decoupage? If so come and join the craft morning, they meet at 10.30 on a Monday morning in the meeting room on the touring park all are welcome.
Stage Three
Stage three is still on hold, unfortunately since the last newsletter
we have had little progress and despite getting the go ahead from English
Heritage we are at stalemate with the council over a planning issue so watch
this space!
Speeding
Speeding on the park is unfortunately still an issue.
Particularly when driving through the touring caravan park area where children
may be playing we must insist on a speed limit of 10mph.
Dog Owners
Please remember that we expect you to
be considerate owners and clean up after your pets at all times both on and off
the park. There are ‘dog litter’ bins placed around the park but if
you feel there is an area in which it would be particularly useful to have an
extra bin please let us know and we’ll see what we can sort out.
Ever wondered what affect living in a
home made from recycled material is actually having on the environment?
Hopefully the illustration below will help you realise the
impact our community is having.
We hope this illustration helps you all
to appreciate how your homes are helping the environment.
Each home clad in Extrudawood is preventing 225 cubic metres of
packaging waste going to landfill or being incinerated and preventing six 50
foot trees from being felled.
Added to the lessened environmental impact your homes are having
the benefits of low maintenance and reduced fire risk we know we have made the
right choice for the park, for our residents and for the environment.
Please send us your comments on
our newsletter we’d love to hear from you!
E-mail
or phone (0191) 3866528
For
more information on the Park, our new development and availability of
residential plots
please call Ann or Bill on 0191 3866528 or E-mail: godricawatson@hotmail.com