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Home Ground & Googies have teamed up and will be holding our first annual Belgium Beer Festival this coming Bank Holiday Weekend. There will be a selection of over 30 Belgium Beers to choose from plus a weekend of live music events at both venues. More details to be revealed nearer the date. So make a note in your diaries for this fantastic Summer event.

There will be a A good mix of well known, Blonde, Brune / Double, Triple, Fruit, Wheat, Gueze / Sour and Strong… there is sure you will find something to raise a smile.

For such a small country, Belgium has an astonishingly wide range of breweries and beer styles. Add to this the fact that the number of different beers carried in many bars are often numbered in the hundreds
(for example, Kulminator in Antwerpen lists over 400 beers on its menu) and someone new to Belgian beer can easily feel overwhelmed by the choice available. It’s not for nothing that the Confederation of Belgian Brewers describes the country as “Beer Paradise.”

Googies and Home Ground have 30 different beers, 15 in each venue. For those of you who apply yourselves and complete the score card of all 30 over the 4 days, we will be presenting a specially engraved Belgian beer festival glass.

Saturday 28th…. THE FAUX-HEMIANS play @ Googies from 7.30pm.

Sunday 29th… Surprise guests, classically trained entertainment from 2pm - 5pm…expect to be amazed

BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY 30 August….. CLUB BELINGO present Nick Harrison, The Magnets, Dan Lucas and the Tatterrattles performing out front of Googies

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The Chichester Memorial Hall in Sandgate has, over the last year or so, had a significant amount of work done to roof to make it watertight and to the front of the building to bring it back to its former glory - or as close as we could get it given that the building is more than 100 years old.

After tendering for the work - we have used Folkestone Scaffolding on three occasions initially because their price was very competive. But in subsequent months we have used them because they are flexible - they fitted into our sometims quite tight timescales, helpful - they advised us the best way to overcome potential problems with bridging North Lane, and trustworthy - they always did what they said they would do, when they said they would do it. In short - you couldn’t ask for a better company to do business with.

Folkestone Scaffolders

Annfield, Coombewood Lane, Hawkinge, Folkestone, Kent CT18 7BZ

Tel: 01303 892428

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The Chichester Memorial Hall was badly in need of some tender loving care after decades of coastal weather and neglect.

The building was never going to win prizes for archicture but we wanted to get it looking as good as it could. A main feature of the Chichester Hall is the front entrance. The terracotta around the doors was badly in need of cleaning and repair.

After much looking to find a company who could undertake this type of work, which is a specialist job, we found Heritage Stone Restoration Co. Ltd.

Day one on the job saw a guy turn up who worked all day in a dust mask to clean the terracotta down. The next day we saw the terracotta stonework repaired - in some instances whole pieces of stone work had to be cut out and replaced. But the finished job looks great and the front entrance now looks the best it has looked in many years. Trustee Richard Grundy who supervised these works said he would definately recommend Heritage Stone Restoration Co. Ltd to anyone - they were efficient and reliable and did a great job for us.

Heritage Stone Restoration Co. Ltd

Building Preservation Specialists.

1-7 The Parade,  Woodside Crescent, Sidcup, Kent, DA15 7JN.

Tel: 020 8300 4127

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We were looking for a company to do the brickwork repointing for the Chichester Memorial Hall, Sandgate. The buiding is more than 100 years old and some of the pointing had long since fallen out due to the coastal weather and needed to be replaced to keep the weather out.

We knew that it couldn’t be re-pointed by just anybody because if it was done badly the pointing would all fall out again and cost us more to do it properly. And after going out to tender we settled on Gun-point to do this work which was started in August.

The job is finished now and the scaffolding came down today and we are very pleased that you can see what a great job they did. Their aftercare is good too - and Trustee Richard Grundy says he is thouroughly happy with the work and would definately recommend them to any other organisation wanting this work to be done.

Gun-Point - The repointing people

Key Pointing Ltd t/a Gun-point

Goodwood, Broomfield Road, Kingswood, Maidstone, ME17 3NY

Tel: 01622 843 161

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The Business Barometer is a monthly snapshot of tourism business performance in Kent.  Over 50 attractions,  200 accommodation providers, 20 conference venues, 5 cross channel carriers and 16 Tourist Information Centres submit their figures to Visit Kent on a confidential basis.  This confidentiality enables businesses to report on the issues affecting their results allowing them to benchmark and react quickly to market conditions.

To see results for 2010 click HERE

Some highlights include:

♦ Visits to the Visit Kent consumer website rose by 26%, the thirteenth month in a row.
♦ Kent attractions performed 3% better overall than the South Eastern average in the first quarter of 2010.
♦ Port of Dover handled 15% more passengers in April than a year earlier, with figures boosted in part by the closure of UK airspace for six days. The ash cloud resulted in a 20% boost to cross channel passenger numbers overall, a 20% boost in car crossings and a 27% boost in coach traffic as stranded
holiday makers made their way home from destinations such as Spain by coach.
♦ The Ash Cloud had an impact on three visitor information centres, and in particular Dover where many visitors contacted the VIC for help with up to date information and travel
♦ The High Speed Rail link has some Visitor Information Centres reporting an increase in visitors, with more people using the train, and enquiries from those selling homes in London to move to the coast.

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