Join This Weekend’s Go Folkestone Events

FRIDAY 25TH OCTOBER   2PM

At 2.00pm at the Leas Arch at the top of the Road of Remembrance . LITTER PICK WITH PATTY KEY OF GO FOLKESTONE AND GARY OF VEOLIA. Come and get your gloves and litter pickers from the van and then walk in different directions. More experienced pickers will tell you the best routes; it’s easy and sociable. There is one car to drive to any litter hotspots you actually want people to help you with. Otherwise you usually wander in the F51 and Dover Road direction, north to Radnor Park, or  or west to The Leas or down to the Harbour via The Bayle and Bayle Steps . Dump rubbish at bins or take back to the van by 3.45pm .

SATURDAY 26TH OCTOBER 10.00am to 2.00pm .

RECYCLING STALL OUTSIDE HSBC BANK OPPOSITE BOOTS , SANDGATE ROAD :

Barring very heavy rain or wind , bring yourself to sign up on our volunteer list or bring small electricals from your cupboard under the sink or your bottom drawer . We are building expertise with different routes for computers , mobile phones , tangles of wire , household electricals , small tvs , vacuum cleaners etc . IF you yourself can repair special classes of items such as radios or electric bikes make yourself known.  The percentage getting repaired is small but increasingly significant. The rest goes to our own wheelie bin and on to Sweeep in Sittingbourne which does some state of the art recycling.

Special Note : Can you use or repair a rare, not really electrical  item that has been made known to us  :   VAN MOOF NO.5  2002 BICYCLE . Internal lights in frame , powered by dynamo , just stopped working .   info@goflkestone.org.uk

GO FOLKESTONE MAGAZINE IN PRINT .

GO FOLKESTONE 2025 CALENDAR AVAILABLE.  Orders via website or email info@gofolkestone.org.uk.

Calendar £9 (available at AGM – £8 on the day)

COME TO AGM Wards Hotel , Earls Avenue . 6.30pm Wednesday 13th November 2024 and talk by Leas Lift Company CEO Floortje Hoette. THE LEAS LIFT 2025 PLANS .

Non members £5 but does include magazine.

APOLOGY AND MAGAZINE CORRECTIONS : Patty Key wasn’t given as the Panto author ;  Westbrook School was called Westbourne School . We shouldn’t have mentioned Hill Road Baptist Church ( sorry Alison ) ; We said a little too much on Grace Hill Library, though nothing surprising ; Folkestone Estate is more properly The Radnor Estate  .

EXTRA NEWS  : IS THE SHOP PEAK MOVING WEST ?

A noted local shopkeeper , said to me earlier this year that the Harbour Arm and OHS were doing very well, but most of Tontine Street should be flats , because every shopper & tourist coming from the harbour turned left up the OHS. I agreed. Grace Hill and Guildhall Street also need urgently to mix in residential. Fortunately Wetherspoons, which is rationalising , have closed boring boxes in Hove and Sevenoaks this year, but have a tourist showpiece in Grace Hill in the magnificent former Baptist church , The Samuel Peto ; a box would have closed . But Sandgate Road is a worry. What emphasises this for me is the splitting of Keith Grahams and the Brasserie into 4 new shops on Rendezvous Street and two facing the OHS. Would anyone have put money there 20 years ago? But Sandgate Road is getting a few gaps : Folca , Wilko , the former  Job Centre/Woolies . And some poor new tenants nearby . Is the peak going to be  Rendezvous Street and the OHS , with only the most adjacent piece of Sandgate Road ?

If not the library moving, then certainly it needs the long promised council services moving from the Civic Centre, and the long promised surgery. A GF committee member has suggested that the Folca staircase should centre a high class indoor market . No council has got any money, but decisions are needed.

Fortunately the letting of the former H Samuel in Sandgate Road to Bon Marche , moving to smaller but still very worthwhile premises,  seems nearly completed by the agents Motis Surveyors . If it is finalised, hopefully next week ,  it will mean Bon Marche will continue  in town ,near to its sister company  , Edinburgh Woollen Mills.  See the magazine for more .   

Richard Wallace
Editor (Magazine)

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