Well what a week it has been. Those of you who read my last weeks blog, before I took it down , will be pleased to know that I shall be around for a bit longer!!

The main thing to report is that all of the doors & windows have now arrived, and work is underway to get them all fitted.

Well that was until Tuesday morning when a phone call from the builder told me that we had a bees nest in one of the window spaces, and so we would need to get it removed asap. So after a few telephone calls, a pest control company arrived on site and were pleased  to confirm that they weren't bees but they were wasps - easier to deal with than bees!

Several hours later, and the nest had been treated and the wasps were no longer, and things could get underway again.

My thanks to Martyn of ABM Pest Control, who reacted speedily to my first telephone call, and had the whole thing sorted by early evening on Tuesday.

So with the weather looking favourably dry for the next week, we hope to have all the doors & windows fitted & painted in the coming days.

Then we will be at the end of Phase 1 of the development, and we can begin getting valuations etc. underway to be able to seek new tenants to the Units.

And while all this is going on, we are busy looking at a Courtyard Programme for Spring/Summer 2019. So far we have got the possibility of a woodturner who works with a traditional petrol driven lathe, and who I met recently at the Ashover Show, and a chainsaw sculptor who turns pieces of tree trunk into wooden sculptures. We are also looking at having musical evenings etc. under the title of "An Evening With ......

We have also extended an invitation to U3A in Bolsover to take over the Yard for a weekend in the Spring/Summer, to showcase what they do in the 'craft area', but are still awaiting confirmation of our invitation.

Add to that a locally based steel band, and you can see that we have not been sitting on our hands doing nothing!!

We remain committed to making Old Bolsover Yard the place to visit, providing a new & exciting tourist venue for the town, and adding to the economic development of the town, through our provision of craft workshops for up & coming small businesses

So watch this space, to paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator - 'We'll be Back'!!

Firstly, thank you to all of you who sent me messages & comments about the blog which I published last Wednesday.

You will see that I have taken the blog down from the website, and I shall write further about it in next weeks blog.

In the meantime, keeping watching out & reading the weekly blog.

Greetings fellow travellers!

Been a bit of a mixed week at OBY. We seem to have been busy but then have had time for lots of other things too.

But perhaps the news of the week is that the doors & windows are on their way. News from the builders is that they will all be finished by the end of next week, so then the building team can get to work fitting them. And once that is done, we are nearly there.

Well let's qualify that - we will have almost all of the building work done, we will be watertight & secure, we will have electricity, and we will be able to think about tenants.

But (and isn't there always a but?!) we will still have to get valuations done on the property now that it has been renovated, get advice on rental values for each of the units, talk to the electricity board, the water company, the District Council about Business Rates etc. and our insurers about insurance cover.

And they are just the things that I can remember off the top of my head.

Another piece of news is that we have submitted a formal bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for some possible funding to look more into the history of OBY, and create it as a tourist destination. My thanks are due to Richard Godley, for all his help in doing this. We expect some sort of indication of success or otherwise in the next 10 days.

Last week we launched our first Old Bolsover Yard Christmas Craft Fayre. If you missed the detail, have a look back at last weeks blog. We publish our blog in a number of places on social media - our website (www.oldbolsoveryard.com); our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/oldbolsoveryard); the FB page of Bolsover Opinions (https://www.facebook.com/groups/492899270876387/), and thanks to all those of you who share the blog on your own FB pages. The more we can get our message out, then the better OBY will be able to contribute to the tourism & economic development of Bolsover.

Well that is probably about enough for this week, I'm off today to have a trip on the Chesterfield Canal with my grandchildren & family. So - Bye for now 'shipmates'.

Until next week.

Yes indeed, Christmas is coming - 138 days - to be precise, and today we are are launching details of our first Old Bolsover Yard Christmas Craft Fayre. More about this later.

But before that, our usual weekly update on progress at OBY. The electricians are continuing their work, with lots of wire, plug sockets, & light fittings etc. going into the units. Darren & Dom, have been working in the recent hot weather, and are doing a first class job.

We have some news on the doors & windows. The big doors to the workshop, that you see when you enter the yard are ready for fixing, and Steve & his team will be returning 'on-site' from next week after their holidays, and work will pick up again, with locks being fitted to doors, door frames being 'siliconed' into their final place, and a painter with a big tin of Bay Green  paint, starting to wield his brush.

So, after a bit of a lull, we seem to be picking up the pace again, and moving toward that day when we can say - "It's all done!!"

Now, about that Christmas news! We had already told you in an earlier blog post that we would be having Creswell Colliery Brass Band joining us in the Yard on December 1st - the day of Bolsover Christmas Festival & Lantern Parade. And we had hinted last week at news of a Christmas Craft Fayre. Well at the end of this post, you will see more information about the event. As well as the Band, and (hopefully) our resident tenants, we will have six other craft stalls, showing off the work of local crafts businesses. They will all be different crafts, and be drawn from the local area. Booking forms can be obtained from this Friday - 10th August, and the closing date for booking applications is September 30th.

Other than that it has been fairly quiet really!!

Until next week then!

Right - not a lot has a happened at OBY since last week, but that will give me a bit of space to tell you about some other exciting things that we are working on for the coming months.

But before that, an update on work that is going ahead. The electrician has been busy putting in lots of wire, plug sockets & light fittings, ready for when we have all the doors & windows fitted. We still await the rest of the said doors & windows to arrive & be fitted, but I remain optimistic that things will be happening in the coming days.

So what have we got 'up our sleeve' for the coming months. We look forward to being able to have a 'Grand Opening' of OBY just as soon as the last nail has been put in the wall, and the last light bulb put in the bulb socket, but until all the work is done, we can't set a date for that.

What we can tell you about is something that is definitely happening. On Saturday 1st December, we will be having the first Old Bolsover Yard Christmas Craft Fayre, to co-incide with the Bolsover Christmas Fair & Lantern Parade.  If you would be interested in having a stall at the Fayre, then watch this blog next week when there will be more details.

And then something that might or might not happen at all. You might remember me telling you in a recent blog that I had been to a workshop run by the Market Towns Initiative. One of the ideas talked about was to hold a 'festival' of flower pots in the town during the Spring/Summer of 2019. Well I have been doing some research on the idea, and will be sharing it with my fellow 'Market Towns' friends in the coming weeks. Just imagine the idea of a 'Bolsover Goes Potty' festival!!

Other than all of that, it has been a relatively quiet week, and a chance to soak up some of that sun that we had, and look like getting again at the end of this week, and some 'family time'.

Talk to you again next week.