Page 63 - Phonebox Magazine May 2011

Time to Play at Emberton Country Park!
by Steve Clark
A new inCluSive play area is currently being installed at emberton Country Park with funding from Milton Keynes Council Short Breaks Grant. This is ring-fenced capital grant funding introduced to allow the council to carry out newly introduced duties under Section 25 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008. The vision behind the Short Breaks Grant funding is to allow ‘all families with disabled children to have the support they need to live ordinary family lives as a matter of course’. The new play area will allow children of all abilities the opportunity to enjoy the site and play together. A mixture of both traditional and imaginative play is included, along with specialist cycle hire at weekends and during school holidays. visitors to the site can expect to have fun through the woodland walk, where a tree house and castle ruin join up with the interactive maze and sensory garden. There will also be the opportunity to have a go on the wheelchair-accessible sunken boat, roundabout or seesaw, lounge in a basket swing or bounce on the ground-level trampoline.
The new play area is an exciting inclusive site that should immediately become a day- out destination for local families. The official launch event will take place from 12 noon to 2 pm on Saturday 14th May. everyone is invited and vehicle entry to the park is free of charge for the duration of the event. Councillor Debbie Brock, the Mayor of Milton Keynes, will be performing the official opening at 12 noon. Council Play Rangers and a clown/conjuror will lead a variety of activities for children. Music and visual entertainment will also be provided. The range of specialist cycles that can be hired at weekends and during school holidays will be on display during the launch event. Anybody wishing to find out more about this initiative will be able to get more details on the day.
visitors to emberton Country Park before the day of the official launch will see that much of the new equipment is already in place. However, it is hoped that people will respect the barriers that have been temporarily installed to protect newly-seeded areas to enable the grass to become established. it is also interesting to note that the new play area has been established without using any funding from the gate receipts or Council Tax, as everything has been achieved with a ring- fenced grant of £131,000.
Recent visitors to the park will have noticed a number of other new features. Six items of outdoor gym equipment and an outdoor table-tennis table have been installed near to the visitor Centre. Most of this equipment was donated to the park and external funding paid for the remainder and for the installation of all items. The gym equipment is ideally suited to older children, teenagers and adults
rather than small children. The gym equipment and table- tennis have proved very popular with visitors during recent weeks, although the latter can be quite a challenge on a very windy day! if you wish to play table tennis it is probably wise to bring along your own bats and balls, although it is hoped that these might be available for hire in due course.
There have been many other improvements to the park. Significant landscape management has been undertaken during the winter using volunteer labour and specialist tree works have been funded by the Ouse valley link project. volunteers from the Community payback scheme have been attending the park for one day a week and have carried out various tasks such as cutting back vegetation, painting benches, litter picking and car park clearance. The Friends of emberton Country Park group, formed in June 2010, have raised funds and purchased 50 primroses and 1,100 bluebells ‘in the green, for the park.
T
Regular visitors will also be
delighted to learn that the café
should be open for business
before the end of May. The
council invited tenders for
running the café, and the
successful tenant will have a
five year contract, which will
hopefully allow some much-
needed investment in this
facility. A number of further
events have been lined up over
the coming months. emberton
Park Sailing Club have their
annual ‘come and try it’ day on Saturday 11th June. According to the ePSC website: - ‘This event invites members of the public to come and try our sport of dinghy sailing. we offer a free taster session with experienced helms and established members of the club, volunteering their time and boats to encourage more people to take up this excellent sport. Obviously we would like to increase our membership, but we also aim to promote the sport to members of the public who think that they may like to take it up either now or in the future.’
There will also be a ‘Dragonfly walk’ in July, date yet to be announced. later in the season there will be a sponsored ‘Generation
walk’ on 18th September, organised by Age uK MK in association with Big Cow. All in all, it looks like being an eventful season at our local Country Park!
links:
email: stephen.clark89@yahoo.co.uk
website: http://tinyurl.com/km9hdd
Steve on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/n695mt emberton Country Park: http://tinyurl.com/5rwgqdr
Friends of emberton Country Park: http://tinyurl.com/3q3zf4d
emberton Park Sailing Club: http://epsc.org.uk
Phonebox Magazine 63