Dear <<Salutation>>,
I hope you are enjoying your membership of Warwick Boat Club. Throughout the summer the club has been busy with all of our sports – the Regatta was a great success, the Bowling Green has been in near constant use, on the Tennis courts we have had matches, mix-ins and junior tennis camps and the squash players have enjoyed the extra bounce of the warmer weather.
Club Administrator
During the summer we appointed Louise Street as the Club’s Administrator after her predecessor, Deborah Highton, was offered a job at the Castle. Louise works Monday to Friday 10am – 2pm at the club and handles all of our membership and other administration work. From October she will take over the bookkeeping for the club. I’m sure you will join me in wishing Louise well in her new job and in thanking Deborah for eight years of hard work. You can find Louise in the club office, call her on 01926 407938 or email her on
admin@warwickboatclub.co.uk.
Clubhouse Manager
I’m delighted to announce we have also promoted our Bar Manager, Aaron Corsi, to be our Clubhouse Manager. Aaron will now look after all the services we provide for members in the clubhouse. He will help each of the sections make arrangements for use of the pavilion, whether for match catering, for social events, for meetings or for other activities.
The clubhouse and social facilities of the club are available to hire by club members and their families for drinks parties, lunches or dinners for personal, business or charity purposes. We can generally make the pavilion available at times that do not interfere with the club’s normal sporting activities. These include Friday and Saturday evenings, Sundays and lunchtimes during the week. If you are interested in using the club house for club activities or for hire, please contact Aaron by email
clubhouse.manager@warwickboatclub.co.uk or call him on 01926 492043.
Aaron will promote WBC activities to members and a wider audience by using social media and our new web site. Now is a great time to follow @WarwickBoatClub on Twitter and to visit the website at
www.warwickboatclub.co.uk to keep up to date with news and events at the club.
The Clubhouse Café
As part of improving our services to members, I’m pleased to announce that we are going to open The Clubhouse Café – a small coffee shop providing hot drinks and light catering during the periods that the club is most busy. We will provide beautiful, reasonably priced Lattes, Cappuccinos, Americanos, etc. made with freshly ground artisan coffee. We will also have a selection of teas to suit all tastes, hot chocolate and pastries freshly baked at the club. When suitable, we will also provide Paninis, Bacon rolls, Soups etc.
Don’t worry, we will not remove the free of charge instant coffee and tea bags available in the foyer for self service, and will continue with Wednesday night suppers throughout the year. However, you will now have more choice!
We plan to open The Clubhouse Café on Saturday 13
th September and it will initially be available as follows:
Monday 10am – 6pm
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 11am – 2pm
Thursday 11am – 2pm
Friday 11am – 2pm
Saturday 9am – 12pm
Sunday Closed
We will adjust the opening hours based on demand and will operate The Clubhouse Café on a trial basis until the end of the year. We will only be able to continue if the café is self-financing and not a drain on club resources. Please support Aaron and WBC by using The Clubhouse Café!
Car Park Shut Monday 8th / Tuesday 9th
Our tree surgeon, Matthew Finney from Arbortech, will be working on the Oak Tree in the car park on Monday 8
th and Tuesday 9
th September. We will need to keep the car park closed during the day to allow this work to be done safely. We will re-open the car park each evening and as soon as the work has been completed. Please do not enter the drive if the red light is displayed and always remember the drive rules - no queuing, no speeding and no overweight cars. Unfortunately, a few careless members can easily damage the club's hard won reputation as a good neighbour!
You may be aware that we have temporarily lost one space in the car park where the manhole cover is currently weighed down with paving slabs. This is to prevent a repeat of the sewer surcharging into the car park during very heavy rain. This occurred twice last month and Severn Trent attended to clean and disinfect the car park. They have subsequently visited to assess the work necessary to bolt down the manhole cover, but have not yet completed the project despite many assurances that they will do so. We will keep chasing up the work so we can operate the car park at full capacity once again.
New Surface on Tennis Courts Five and Eight
Thank you for bearing with us during the disruption while courts 5 and 8 were renovated. We now have our front ten courts all beautifully surfaced with Tiger Turf Advantage Pro. Our Tennis Captain, Tony Baker, has confirmed that the new courts are already playing beautifully. Our next project is to extend the floodlights to all the remaining courts. We obtained planning permission for this earlier in the year and are now working on the power supplies and capital investment. These improvements are part of our commitment to maintain top quality sporting facilities. I don’t think there can be much debate that we now have some of the best facilities, as well as one of the most beautiful sites, in the whole country! Our thanks are due to Tony for all his work managing the contractors to complete this improvement work with minimum disruption.
Regatta
The Regatta held on August 16
th was a great success. Thank you to Kate Rider and the whole Regatta team for organising an event that the club and the whole town can be proud of. You can see pictures of the day on our web site at
www.warwickboatclub.co.uk/rowing-news.
Squash Boundary Wall
We have commissioned a supplier to rebuild the wall between the changing rooms and the squash courts and expect this work to begin soon. The new wall will make our site more secure as well as being visually better now that the Leylandii have been removed. Unfortunately, the squash court heating system has become very unreliable and having nursed it through last winter we are now looking at the most cost effective replacement. We hope to have a more reliable heating system in place for this winter.
Thank you for your continued support of our club. I hope you enjoy and make full use of your membership. If you have any suggestions or topics you wish to discuss, please do contact me using the email address shown below.
James Alty
WBC Club Captain
captain@warwickboatclub.co.uk
