Swanage Pier has been voted best in the country!
Thanks to the hard work and dedication of its energetic volunteers, trustees and supporters,SWANAGE has been chosen as PIER OF THE YEAR 2012 by the National Pier Society’s 650 members. It was runner-up last year,this is the first time it has won the award and marks the Pier Trust's achievements in providing an "excellent visitor experience, keeping the pier in good condition and maintaining excellent websites."
No fewer than 22 different piers received nominations this year: BLACKPOOL NORTH (which recently changed hands) and CLEVEDON in North Somerset tied for second place.
Swanage has a pier to be proud of. Several volunteers have had to hang up their hats recently due to age or ill health and the Pier Trust is looking for extra help on the gate and in the shop - if you have a morning or afternoon spare they would love to hear from you.
office@swanagepiertrust.com
http://www.piers.org.uk/pierpages/NPS0POTY12.html
29/3/12 12:57 PM
Thursday, March 29, 2012
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29 comments:
Excellent news. I enjoy going for trips from the pier on the Waverley. The ironwork on the pier looks splendid and I like the names on the planks.
Well done.
Well done to all who have worked hard to get this;) keep up the work. Great news aswell for swanage.
Well done, the Pier Trust and its members.
I assume 'The Pier' that has been awarded first place begins after the dive shop. The Pier Approach is hardly worth an award.
It could all be so much better, minus the portacabins, with an airport style seafood and champagne bar, proper tea rooms, diving boards, aquarium and gelato bar at the end to encourage people to walk the full length (maybe one scoop included in the entrance fee).
Then all that above would make it takky as anything. Bit like Blackpool :)
Crikey - I agree with David!
Nah...not Blackpool. More like Cromer.
Well yes it is a great old pier, well restored but under used due to a lack of facilities. How about some amusements, a bar and a cafe?
The whole point is that this is a Victorian pier, not the ad-hoc jumble of poorly designed rubbish you can see on other piers. Unfortunately not everyone recognises a gem when it is on their doorstep.
You pompous arrogant cretins to believe that Swanage Pier could not be given a commercial heart without becoming tacky.
3.41
I respectfully suggest that you look in the mirror.
Look at the beautiful ice cream shop just opened by Fortes under the Mowlem -how well would that sit on the Pier! Snack bar cocktails on the Pier -the young people could be as loud as they liked out there! Gee Whites seafood -free from all the planning obstacles. Bring it on!!!
Swanage Town Council seems to have learnt its lesson regarding operating catering establishments. The days of them running the ice cream huts on the beach (closed one hour for lunch and on bank Holidays); and the mindless expenses at the Vista bar seem to have done the trick.
Not so DCC. Up at Durlston they HAD a busy cafe serving tea and coffee, sandwiches, ices and the like. Then they brilliantly decided to let a restaurant up there; but with no account of the displacement of their old clientele. So what do they do? They allow a caravan outside the new £5M restoration that looks like at should be on a B road layby next to a toilet block. No seating. That IS tacky Dave. Why not do something like the National Trust have done at middle beach, they aren't short of space up there?
I do like the previous comment. It takes a swipe at council run cafes and then points out that a privately operated one is equally useless. Its no good blaming DCC for the menus offered by the private firm they have awarded the franchise to. Who else is there to run them? How about the church? Just a minute, it was the Christian Tea room that always closed for lunch when it was in the High Street, so they are no better. How about a WI field kitchen for Durlston. Trish Lewis has a very amusing one man show as a WI lady and counld be offered a management role. In fact the whole thing could be staffed by actors and comedians. Do I hear a muttering of "plus de la meme chose" from the stalls?
Sorry you missed my point. The gentleman who is running the franchise at Durlston is doing a stella job. It is the county council and their petty restrictions and the "no talking, keep off the grass, single file" mentality at Durlston which is the problem.
What petty restrictions were you thinking of? The Feedback I hear from visitors to Durlston is that the restaurant management has aimed at the fine dining market and ignored the demand from walkers etc for more simple sustenance. In other words the management may be doing a first rate job but it is the wrong job.
They are not doing the wrong job, demand from fine diners is just or perhaps more important than from dog walkers, it's that they have not been given sufficient space to provide both.
That's interesting. Was this not apparent when they were negotiating the arrangements? It seems a little odd to take on the operation of a restaurant without establishing what you are getting and if it is shared space when you will get to use it. We all know councils like everything to follow rules. This was written up by Max Weber over a century ago so bureaucrats being bureaucratic is not exactly a novelty. I still don't know what the petty restrictions are and why they were no clarified in advance.
I forgot to ask, is there established demand from fine diners or are they hoping it will materialise? Its intriguing.
Re: Durlston:
-We have strayed a bit from the point of this thread.
-Back to the Pier: any privately-run food concession requires sufficient footfall to succeed. Hence my point: any food concession on the Pier must be positioned BEFORE to toll booth.
There as a mobile food unit on the pier a few years ago, operated, to the best of my knowledge, by the people from the Seagull Cafe. It does not seem to have been a success, possibly because this kind of think looks very "greasy spoon, A14 layby" and the public did not find it attractive. Visually, and that is what the peir is all about, it as hardly an enhancement. Unfortunately Swanage seems to have rather a lot of very vocal visually illiterate citizens and I suspect this point will be derided by them.
If you had enough attractive amenities on the pier you wouldn't need to charge. For starters how about a Victorian tea room and bar plus some classy souvenir shops? They could be visually pleasing, commercial and an added feature to the town bringing in additional tourists and enticing locals with some money to spare.
4.32
Are you prepared to invest in that 'business plan'??
Footfall is minimal. That is a business fact.
The suggestion of, in effect, turning the pier into a shopping mall seems to have been posted a few days late. What a pity it missed April 1st.
There was a request by someone to put shellfish holding tanks, some seafood processing, a fish cookery school and small sea themed cafe on the pier some years ago, where the poracabins are. I think £10,000 a year rent was to be offered. There was no interest from the volunteers at all. Which is irritating given they are apparently always short of money.
Nick-
There is always a possibility that either its charitable status, or some covenant in the original gifting of the pier to the charity, could be breached by such a long term commercial investment.
Anyway, the Pier Head (just steps away, and no 'stolling fee' to reach it), seems to be doing a roaring business.
3/4/12 6.13 pm Surely the lack of footfall is because it is more or less an empty shell, totally devoid of attractions apart from the wonderful sea air and views. Not enough for the 21st century though...... Visit the piers in Bournemouth and Eastbourne, with facilities, and see how popular they are in summer (and no admission fees) .
It would apPEAR that Swanage PIER has no PEERS.
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