News Articles in the category 'Development'

Our refurbished visitor accommodation will be finished by Easter by lacks beds!

 

If you have a bed frame and/or flame retardent mattresses that needs a new home.  Would you consider re-homing at Longridge.  We need to find another 40 beds by Easter...

 

Contact Amanda if you have something suitable and we will happily come and collect - amanda.foister@longridge-uk.org or 07540 411779

Our accommodation will be finished by Easter by lacks beds!

Longridge office move to house achieved with only the minimal amount of pain! Thank you to all those that came to help. We have however lost all emails sent to Longridge between noon Friday and noon Saturday. So please, if you emailed during this time, would you send your email again.

We are moving our office on the weekend of 19/20th March. There will  be some disruption of service from Friday afternoon (18^th) through to probably Monday afternoon (21st).

We are moving the office to the brick house that is at the front of the centre and work is underway this week transforming the house into offices and transforming our reception into our new accommodation block.

If you have any spare time that weekend, particularly on the Sunday and are feeling energetic - help moving would be hugely appreciated.

 

Weekend of 19/20th March we are moving our offices to their new location, which means that we will have limited access to phones and our bookings system.

We don't quite have enough money yet to complete the project but as we need to finish this refurbishment by 14th April, work starts this Saturday on converting the reception at Longridge into visitor accommodation.  This exciting new development has been designed with schools and youth groups in mind to give 40 beds in small rooms of 4, all with en-suite toilets and separate staff rooms too.  For those that don’t want the Longridge café to cater for them, the accommodation block will also include a self-catering kitchen, fully equipped with ovens and cooking and serving equipment.  This is a much needed and very valuable resource for all the existing schools and youth groups that visit us and we hope some new people; as no more will local schools and youth groups need to travel all the way to Wales and Lake District for their outdoor activities residential, they can make their budgets really stretch further by foregoing the huge transport costs and coming to us, here on the Thames at Bisham. 

To complete the project, we need to raise £40,000 by the 14^th April.  So if you would like to help make this important local facility happen, get in contact with us, the person or company that makes the largest donation will be able to name the building and as 85,000 visit us every year, this could be quite a significant opportunity!

Works start this Saturday to create new visitor accommodation

Longridge, the outdoor activity centre in Marlow is celebrating the wedding of the year with a street party and full activity day from 10am to 5pm on Friday 29th April 2011. The wedding itself will be shown live on screen in the new Training Centre.

To buy tickets to the celebration, follow this link.

Longridge is also marking the occasion by officially opening its new accommodation block which is yet to be named. Local schools are invited to try and think up a really great name for the block that resonates with the Royal Wedding theme. The winning class will be invited to take part in the activity day and will see their chosen name unveiled on a plaque on the building.

The plaque will also honour major donors who have contributed to the new accommodation block.

Amanda Foister, the Centre Director said,

“This new accommodation will enable us to expand our youth volunteering scheme and our activity instructor training programme for young people.  We desperately need donations to get this project completed and any one who donates to this will be invited to the Longridge wedding celebrations and substantial donors will be honoured with their names on the plaque. ”

If you, your school, youth group or company would like to get involved with our wedding celebration, email or call Amanda on 01628 483252 - amanda.foister@longridge-uk.org

Longridge, the outdoor activity centre in Marlow is celebrating the wedding of the year with a street party and full activity day from 10am to 5pm on Friday 29th April 2011. The wedding itself will be shown live on screen in the new Training Centre.

It looks amazing and it means we can now use the top floor - just internal walls, gym equipment and heating to find funding for now ...............

With our great thanks to Wycombe District Council we have been able to put a proper floor into our new Training Centre

An enthusiastic bunch of MarlowFM staff and supporters turned up last Friday night at Longridge to start adapting the old gents toilet and changing rooms into their new studio (see  pic, although this was taken before a few more helpers arrived). After 3 hours the place was stripped of latrine, sinks, benches and even the tiles and mirrors from the walls.

There's still a fair amount to be done before they can start putting the equipment in place, but they are really pleased with what we've achieved in a relatively short period of time. 

 

We are delighted that Marlow FM are to transform our old toilets into their new state of the art studio

Follow this link to find out more about this rare species.

This beautiful creature has been seen at Longridge before, but very infrequently, so a group resting from doing their Paddle Power Passport course were very honoured to get a peek of this shy animal. Below is the last know sighting of this fantastic mythical creature.

Our new Training Centre is now water tight, if you haven't already do come down and take a peek - it is an amazing building and we now only need £80,000 to complete it.

It is now looking like a proper building - completion date is end of July for the bottom floor which giving us fantastic new toilets, showers and changing rooms. We are seeking another £90,000 to complete the 1st floor Training Rooms.

Fundraising is moving forward but painfully slowly.  Had very welcome donations from The Bernard Sunley Charitable Trust and Thames Valley Police, putting our new total to raise at £90,000 but with time running out it is looking increasingly desperate that we are going to be able to create our training rooms this year but at least we will have fabulous new loos, showers and changing areas - which let's face it are rather crucial!

The foundations are in and the builders are now putting in the steel frame. So it is starting to look like a building now and not just a huge hole!

All the development here at Longridge are "new for old", so before we can build a new building we have to knock one down of equal footprint.  In order to build our new training centre, we have sacrificed the Rifle Range.  Howard's Shed becomes the new bosuns store and Simon will be found doing an impression of an icicle in his new workshop in the compound (very bracing for him).  We will be down one lecture room over the winter, which may cause some logistic issues but nothing hugely intelligent people like us can't solve (!!) with a bit of creativity.....

As well as knocking down the rifle range, Shorts Services are digging up the concrete of the boat compound, so that we can start building our Giant Team Swing, which should be available in January and Mark is creating a Go Kart track for our new Go Karts.

I will try and remember to post regular updates here (if you don't see one for awhile, send us a nag) with pictures but we hope to start building the training centre in November with it completed by June 2010.  We are still £200,000 short of the final amount for this building  - so don't stop nagging folk for their financial support.  The additional cost is to equip the first floor and build additional disabled facilites - so if you think of anybody that might be able to help fund this, please let Amanda know.

 

On Monday October 5th, the very lovely people from Shorts Services knocked down the Rifle Range

So, with the wonderful grant from Sport England the building of our training centre can go ahead, which means that by next May we will have fantastic new loos, changing rooms, showers and training rooms.  And fundraising for the visitor centre and car park can now begin in earnest - wouldn't it be fantastic if we could build these autumn next year?

For full details of our new buildings can be seen in the Longridge cafe and reception - pop in anytime.

We have formally been given planning permission by RBWM for our new training centre, visitor centre and parking.

The refurbishment to our boathouse is completed and it is stunning.  The building gives us 19 single rooms, with washbasins and very swanky shared washing facilities, with a lounge and kitchen.

Our thanks for making this happen go to The National Sports Foundation, Mike & Penny Taylor and Family, Julie Record & Family and of course Carlton Barnard, who has been donated to us by Skanska to project manage our development plans and a good chap to collar if you'd like to see the designs for our future building projects.

The new boathouse accommodation was officially opened on Monday May 4th, with our seasonal team moving in the following day and now destruction of the horrible caravans can begin.

Where the caravans are we are planning to convert into over-flow parking and a games area - hopefully with a Go-kart track, if we can tempt local businesses to each sponsor a Go-kart that is!!!

 

The refurbishment to our boathouse is completed and it is stunning. The building gives us 19 single rooms, with washbasins and very swanky shared washing facilities, with a lounge and kitchen.

Work started immediately after Christmas and our builders, Prestige, have been working a 6-day week to meet the deadline of 13th April for completion.  As of 6th March we were on target to achieve this deadline - which is quite an achievement, considering the centre was flooded for a week!

Once the building is complete, we will finally be able to destroy those horrible caravans and open up the garden at the back of the boathouse as an additional (and much needed) campsite.

 

A grant from the National Sports Foundation enabled us to convert the Victorian boathouse onsite into 20 single rooms for our seasonal instructors to live in.

We are celebrating the news that Sport England have chosen to support our development plans for the centre with a £1.1million grant which will enable work on our new training centre to go ahead.

This will be a beautiful building, housing new loos, changing rooms and showers on the bottom with training rooms with river views and balconies above.

Work on this building will start in October 2009 and we hope to raise sufficient additional money to build a new visitors centre and reconfigure the parking at the same time, giving better access and movement around the site.  To achieve this we need to raise another £500,000 by September.

If you would like to see the drawings for this building and how it fits into the overall improvement of the site, please contact Amanda at amanda.foister@longridge-uk.org or pop into reception when you are next at the centre.Below is an initial artistic impression of the new training and visitor information centre.

Sport England have made an award to Longridge of £1.1m to build a new training centre