The Go Folkestone magazine is available online now, and our next members’ meeting (you may join after one taster) is on Wednesday week 13 March at 6.45pm at Wards’ Hotel in Earl’s Avenue. Please advise if problems with reading it. The hard copy magazine is being delivered today and will be delivered locally by volunteers to most of you, in time for you to see if you can see the Folkestone Brighter Future exhibition at Folkestone Town Hall on Friday and Saturday. We need more deliverers – who only get bothered 3 times a year. Outside the town the magazine will be posted to our large minority of diaspora members who want to keep in touch. Please advise if you are an ‘outside’ member and would be interested in attending a late summer social event.
We still have fewer than 10% of our original 2024 calendar print for sale at £5. Just buy them for the photos! The money supports our projects, the most recently successful of which is the moving of the Victoria Pier Foundation Stone on which we have spent just over a thousand pounds in renovation etc (see magazine), in association with the excellent Six Mile Excavators and the helpful Green Administration at FHDC which should be installing it on the seafront soon
More news soon on the Viewpoint Balcony and the Recycling Post we are setting up on Saturdays, which has funding from the Town Council, Go Folkestone and Folkestone Rotary, and one secure wheelie-bin site, but needs a second one in the town centre. IF YOU HAVE A SHOP, PUB or CENTRAL HOUSE DO YOU WANT TO HELP AN IMPORTANT GREEN INITIATIVE? DO YOU HAVE A SECURE YARD FOR ONE WHEELIE BIN FOR OUR RECYCLERS TO PUT ELECTRICAL RECYCLING IN? Please email info@gofolkestone.org.uk.
The Road of Remembrance trees and landslip problem is worse than our over-optimism of last week’s mag layout. Cabinet sources say that following a second landslip at the bottom it has become apparent that the trees on the steep slopes are much thicker than a few years ago and perhaps haven’t been managed sufficiently in the past. This has caused a ‘drastic precautionary measure’ of road closure and removal of some trees near the bottom and a whole single line below Albion Villas, plus a serious study to see what else needs to be done to stabilise things.
This doesn’t appear to have an ulterior motive because the wet weather has been exceptional. And there are houses that could make expensive claims in Priory Gardens and other roads above. Not to mention the insurance claim if a tree falls on a car. Mark Hourahane and Phil Carter are asking if anyone knows if the long lease says that bushes and shrubs only should be allowed on the Road of Remembrance? However, the road remains green on both sides and there is no development potential. And the RR is a vital link between lower Folkestone and upper Folkestone, two areas which the Harbour Co is already obliged under planning for the seafront to link up more rather than less – with the Lift. So, the Road of Remembrance should stay green for the most part.
As has been said, the little Remembrance Garden in RR will stay, but will be poppies and wild flowers, not rosemary for REMEMBRANCE. This is because of dangers to weeders on a busy road! Go Folkestone planted that rosemary in 2014 and has tentatively asked if it can fund a few bushes at the top, subject to committee and the meeting on Wednesday 13th March.
Incidentally there is also a landslip in The Riviera in Sandgate this week. AND Folkestone Warren was created by an 18th century landslip. So this is a perennial problem !