News-in-brief from Draycott-In-The-Moors in late December 2015
News of…: a bad year for Izaak Walton Inn / Draycott bus shelter to be refurbished / sports centre offers a Weight Watchers class / hard drive for Parish…
(NB – There are also dozens of events in our locality – including a New Year’s Eve ‘casino’! Check out the Events page)
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In the dark about the Izaak
It is now almost a year since the Izaak Walton Inn in Cresswell closed. The restaurant-pub has had a dismal record of closing and shutting and closing and shutting over the last five years, which makes one wonder just what the management company that owns it is up to.
Mornington Pubs, which seems to be an offshot of the Wellington Pub Company (which owns a number of other pubs across the Midlands) and they have a chequered record of being able to run pubs successfully. The Izaak is not one of their best examples. To try to get it going again, Mornington reinvested in the pub in early 2014, but the experiment didn’t even last a year.
Hanging baskets at the Izaak Walton – now withering away
For months Mornington have not responded to any enquiries from us (on this website) or from our local councillors, and the pub (from the outside at least) seems to have just been left to ‘go dark’… so, maybe they are not too concerned about what the local community thinks. The pub doesn’t even seem to be on the market anymore.
Who knows what will happen?
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Stopping the rot
Some good news is that, at last, there will be repairs to the bus shelter by the Draycott Arms. No buses stop there anymore, but school children do use it to keep out of the wind and rain when they are waiting for their school transports.
The fact is that the old wooden apex was simply rotting – including the tiles in the roof -, and leaks were coming in by the bucketful – and it was going to collapse sooner or later.
Missing tiles on Arms bus-shelter
So, Draycott Parish council has now found £400 from its accounts to do the necessary repairs, ordering felt-shingle instead of the current wooden tiles for the roof, but still keeping the ‘rustic’ design look.
A local man, Louis Cotterill, has been called in to do the work, and it’s hoped the renovation should be complete before the Spring.
Talking of public transport, it has been reported that the Cresswell to Blythe Bridge buses have had problems with… their tyres (!). One parish councillor says that an eighty year old lady was recently asked to get off the bus a mile before her stop, because the driver was worried about the state of his bus’s tyres.
Has anybody else had issues like this? Please email us if you have – we’d like to know.
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Invisible sign
Thank you to Joey Marston who emailed us this photo.
Joey says: “… do you have a problem with speeding cars in Cresswell? I wouldn’t be surprised. This speed-limit sign is so faded it’s virtually invisible.” The sign is on Cresswell Lane, just 50 yards from the Uttoxeter Road junction.
Well, we did report it a while ago…. but nothing has happened.
(If you too have any photos or items of info you think others would like to see, just email them to us!)
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Watch your weight at sports centre
You’d have thought the wonderfully mild weather lately – which has seen the flowering of daffodils already in Draycott! – would have meant we all could walk off the extra pounds gained at the Christmas tuck-ins. However, the miserable and continuing rain has forced a lot of us indoors.
So… Draycott Sports Centre is coming to the rescue – if you really are wanting to lose weight over the next few months, the centre has set up a group that will help you achieve your goals. Yes, Weight Watchers has reached into even our sleepy little corner of the world.
The WW class is starting at Draycott Sports Centre on Friday 8th January at 5.30pm. Good luck!
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Digital breakthrough for Parish
It seems amazing to think that, less than five years ago, all the records of Draycott Parish Council were kept on single pieces of paper. To check the decisions of the council one had to go to the Clerk’s house and read over the papers…!
Well, two years ago, the parish council finally entered the 21st Century and the so-called ‘Age of Localism‘ – and started to create digital records. Nowadays you can see all the discussions of the council online …
But, believe it or not, actually, all these official, legal digital records were backed up on a helpful & friendly individual’s private computer – not the safest option! So… now at last, the parish council has bought an ‘external hard-drive’, on which all its records can be stored, and which is the full and legal property of the council. Welcome to the 21st Century!
And a happy 2016 to all…
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