20/10/2023
We’ve had lots going on over the past three months, here’s a quick digest:
We installed a rainwater harvesting system.
We camped for a week – during that time we cleared the building, reinstalled the log burner, and gutted & cleaned the kitchen and windows.
We upgraded the rainwater harvesting system, (from a wheelie bin and barrel to two IBC tanks.)
If you’d like to see more, we’re also up to Towford 19.5 on the official YouTube channel.
We also created a Facebook page for the project. There are two pages on that platform for Towford, neither are being updated – but people do check there – so we thought we’d better have a presence.
We’re camping again this weekend – yeah, not great timing, thanks Storm Babet… We were supposed to be down for two nights, but it’ll be one night only.
Many thanks for all the donations that have come through, we really appreciate it. Because of them, and the work done by young volunteers – the grounds are now good for wild camping by organised groups.
Please don’t just turn up, the site may be booked. Since we cater to youth groups mostly – safeguarding rules mean they can’t share it.
For more info, get in touch.
20/07/2023
Another snippet from our new YouTube channel.
We’ve had a bit of a problem, at an awkward time too – but we think we’re on top of it.
Our water tank ran dry. We think the in-flow pipe was blocked. We think with no one using the centre, the tank overfilled, (the overflow pipe is also blocked, we need to dig that out.) So the water level had risen to the inlet pipe and silted it up.
We’re supposed to be down camping for a week, and without water, cannot flush the toilets – it’s an old-school summer camp (heavy weight camping), but not so old school we want to take chemical toilets.
With that in mind, we’re also going to fit a rainwater harvesting system – which makes sense – we don’t need filtered water to flush the bogs anyway. But we’re hoping the off-grid tank will fill too, or we’ll be humping water up from the river.
We’d also like to say thank you to The Robertson Trust, who are the first grant body to fund the renovation of the building. The money they’ve donated will cover the costs of a measured survey and production of drawings for builders to quote on. A big thanks to them for getting us on our way. (Remember, the CAF donate link is still live here on our website.)
And finally, meet our tractor. This was donated to us as a non-runner. We fixed it up a bit – got it running – and it’s now for sale. It’s a wee bit big for us, we’re looking for a ride-on mower or mini tractor. Get in touch for details.
15/06/2023
It’s that time of year when everything starts to grow – and quickly. So lots of mowing and strimming. We’ve also continued work in the river clearing fallen trees and other detritus – we’re happy to report, the section of the Kale Burn passing through the grounds is now clear and ready for paddlers.
We’ve been down twice to camp over the past thirty days, both times cooking over an open fire.
For the next few weeks, we’ll be concentrating on keeping the grass down on our campsites. We’re also noticing significant growth of bracken, so our world-famous, (not really,) bracken maze will be recreated by our team of young workers soon.
We’ve also started fundraising in earnest for the building renovation – making a number of requests of charitable trusts and other grant-awarding organisations. To give you an idea of the scope – the development costs alone, (and we’ve trimmed them right down) – still amount to the thick end of £25k.
That being said, the outdoor centre has always suffered from a lack of investment – so we think it’s a good idea to make this investment now so we don’t have to keep patching things later on.
In other news, we’ve launched our official Towford Outdoor Centre YouTube channel. (Apologies about the presenter, we feel sorry for him and don’t quite know how to sack him.) As usual, we’re also active on Instagram, so check us out there.
Our ‘CAF Giving’ page remains live, if you or anyone you know is interesting in donating – don’t be shy. We’re also now offering wild camping to organised youth groups, get in touch for details.
Thanks all.
29/05/2023
Some photos of work carried out to date.
A lot of this isn’t particularly glamorous, coming on to the grounds – you wouldn’t necessarily notice it’s going on – it’s not a new roof or windows. However, keeping the grounds maintained makes the place look lived-in and looked-after. Widening the road means we can get a skip lorry in so we can remove old plaster from the building. Clearing fallen wood from the river means it flows well and detritus doesn’t build up – that’s good for the river and good for wildlife.
It’s hard work, but it’s necessary. It’s also giving young people a taste of real life. When we’re doing work on the grounds or on the building, we follow workplace rules. Health & safety is important, PPE must be worn and safety rules adhered to.
The reward? (Hopefully,) a sense of achievement in a job done well.
22/04/2023
It’s that time of year again where everything starts to grow, and it seems to grow more quickly and higher on the outdoor centre grounds.
But it’s also an opportunity for young people to learn about land management – and health and safety around machinery.
Lots of strimming, lots of mowing, and lots of chainsawing – albeit, the last under strict supervision. We’re always on the look-out for equipment, so if you have anything lying about – even if it’s not working, perhaps we can fix and use it?
We’d especially like another ‘mulching’ mower, or better yet, a sit-on mower. (Although we think the young folk just want to drive something…)
On the admin side, with the paperwork signed, we’re also busy investigating funding sources. We had a great meeting with an architect who had lots of useful information about all aspect of the renovation, so we’re acting upon that now.
We also made a start on the inside of the building – stripping rotten plaster off the walls upstairs:
Going forward, we need to get a skip lorry in, so plans for the immediate future are:
1. Order aggregate (type 1 sub base). (Done.)
2. Strimming. (Doing.)
3. Get young people to spread type 1 sub base to widen & reinforce access road for skip lorry.
4. Mow. (Doing.)
5. Order skip.
6. More strimming and mowing.
7. Move old plaster down into skip.
8. Probably more strimming and mowing.
In between times, we’re hoping to get other youth groups on site to camp or to help out with – guess what? Strimming and mowing.
If you use it – we have weekly updates going up on Instagram – @gosfordbayoutdoors. Official YouTube channel also coming soon.
05/04/2023
Towford gets it’s first visitors for, well, we’re not sure how many years. Technically, these were our first paying customers, but they’re from our own scout group so didn’t really have a choice. (And we didn’t charge anyway.)
We had 21 young people camping on the grounds and during our stay, we had a visit from a BBC reporter and his dog. He did a couple of interviews, (the BBC journalist, not his dog), about Scouts and how difficult it is to get volunteers, and about Towford and the renovation project.
The article can be found here.
It’s already attracted interest, and some donations via CAF Giving (link on the front page), for which we’re hugely grateful. We’ve been coming down since 2019 doing work on the grounds, (although sometimes it might not show.) We’re still waiting for our option to lease, but our camp and the BBC article has made things feel real.
We’re looking forward to an active summer season and to many other youth groups getting involved and using the grounds for activities.
23/12/2022
Final update for 2022 – a year of hurrying up to wait.
We finally got the option to lease in place, we’ve signed our part, but we haven’t heard from other signatories – which is annoying, but not unexpected. (We signed it in September…)
Other than that, there’s been a lot of tidying up, and we’ve been doing our best to prepare wild camping pitches for 2023. Our priority is to get those established while also organising toilet facilities – we can then get some cash flowing, and the grounds back in use.
In other (boring) administrative news, we have our first accounts almost done. We’re a wee bit late with them, we’re now looking for someone to ‘inspect’ them, (it can’t be any of us). There’s literally six or seven receipts for the first 18 months of ‘trading’, we’re not setting OSCR on fire.
If you can assist with this, or want to be involved in the new year, please get in touch.
Have the best Christmas and New Year you can.
All the best.
GBO SCIO.
29/09/2022
Yowsers. The final wording of the option to lease arrived, and we’ve signed and returned it. It’s gone. In the post. (Tracked and signed for, we’re taking no chances).
We have no idea how long it’ll take for the other parties to sign, and we assume we’ll get a signed copy back at some point… But it’s done. We can now begin work on the building – we say that, but it’s more about beginning the work, that will allow us to begin the work, on the building – if you see what we mean.
It’s been over three years since we had any sort of estimate done for the work, and even then, potential contractors were asking for architects drawings – which we didn’t have, (and still don’t.)
We’d also agreed that we’d do as much of the prep work and stripping out as we could, and that costs money. It’s difficult to raise funds for the non-shiny parts of a project like this, and due to the way it’s having to work, we’re having to split tasks up in ways that might not make much sense if it were a commercial renovation.
Anyway, we digress. THE PAPER WORK IS SIGNED – yeeha!
Now, where do we start, ummm…
09/09/2022
We have agreed the final wording of the option to lease and lease itself. All that’s needed, (haha, ‘all’), is to get it signed, get the money raised, then get the building renovated.
That all sounds straightforward, I think we all know it won’t be.
No idea how long it’ll take to get things signed, hopefully not months.
Otherwise, we continue to look after the grounds – disposing of the many fallen trees dotted around. With autumn approaching, already the grass and ferns have began to die back.
Still lots to do however.
16/08/2022
In order – Those two big trees. The remains of those two big trees. Path through the Jurassic Bracken Field to the water tank. Heroic strimming. A boy clearing a path. Another two boys at the old (but tidied-up) campfire circle.
We’ve had a busy summer holiday, taking advantage of the good weather. The grounds generally were quite over-grown, so we tried to get on top of what we reasonably could. It has been very dry, so everything grew, then stopped.
We still don’t have the option to lease signed – which is now causing problems with funding we’ve already received. At this stage, it would be advantageous, (we think), for Borders Council to just get it done – if only to get it out of whoever’s in-tray it’s currently cluttering up.
There are two significant expanses of quite impressive bracken growth. We’ve cut a number of paths – which we’re optimistically calling a maze. If you’re passing by, feel free to have a look.
15/07/2022
The Mikaeel Kular Memorial Playpark. Our intention is to renovate and rebuild this area of Towford’s Ground. But the speed at which things grow here, can almost be seen with the naked eye, so the area becomes overgrown very quickly.
We’ll keep on top of it as best we can.
23/05/2022
A quick trip down to Towford yesterday, not much accomplished, it was too wet. But we did clear the driveway – part of a fallen tree was blocking access.
It was too wet to cut grass or strim, we’ll get back down and spend a day soon to catch up. It is surprising how quickly everything begins to grow.
We’ve also returned the option to lease document with a request to extend it’s duration from two, to three years. If the time it’s taken to get this in place is anything to go by, if we have questions going forward (and we will), we might need the extra time to get them answered by stakeholders.
06/05/2022
Finally. We have the text for the option to lease, with the full lease attached. This is a big step forward, (only took about five years – although there was a pandemic in the middle of it all).
We have some queries about the wording, but once sorted, we’ll get it signed and move on to the funding part of the operation.
Due to the current cost of living crisis, this may be more difficult than planned – but we’ll do our best anyway. We will reply with the small changes we require at the beginning of next week, then it’s back to Borders Council to agree/not agree/make the change.
That’s all for now.
22/03/2022
First off – the building. It’s still there – just. We’re still waiting for the Option to Lease paperwork from Borders Council and Roxburghe Estate – that’s taking time, a lot of time. That being said, the words have been agreed, we understand they’re being checked by the council’s legal department.
The youth work side – we’re now fully insured for activities. We’re piggy-backing our Scouting PVG’s for now, (we have no new adults, it’s all existing scouty people). We have no plans at this point to recruit adult volunteers, (although parents are always welcome – in agreement with their kids of course.) We appreciate we do need fresh PVG’s for Gosford Bay Outdoors, and we’ll get to that as soon as we can.
Safety Training – When ever we’re away, at least one adult leader will have a first aid qualification. It’ll be an extensive, preferably outdoor-orientated course, which exceeds the requirements of the Scout Association. Paul B has just completed the First Aid Cooperative’s two-day Outdoor First Aid* course at EICC at Ratho.
(Course equivalence: RQF (Regulated Qualification Framework) Level 3, SCQF (Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework) Level 6, IoL (Institute of Outdoor Learning) Band 3 Course, and REC (Remote Emergency Care) Level 3).
Activities – now that we’re insured and on a more established footing, we want to start offering activities to young people in Longniddry. Whether it’s trips to Towford to look after the grounds or camp, or local activities – we’re keen to start.
The bad news is, we’re going to have to start charging for activities. This is down to insurance costs, and the current fuel crisis. We won’t be profiteering though, all activities will be run at cost.
Check back here for updates on the option to lease – in terms of the building, it’s what we’re waiting for. Otherwise, we’ll be putting out info about how young people can get out and about with Gosford Bay Outdoors over the summer.
Paul B.