It’s been a very hectic month and this has mostly been in part to the fact that I’ve just sold my house which I bought in March 2009. Regular readers and friends may remember that it needed a lot of work done to it and I even made a video to show how bad a state it was in:

It was a great first house for me but the time came to sell it as I want to buy somewhere with my fiancee and after many viewings someone decided to buy it for a bargain price. It’s quite a tricky time to sell a house with the few buyers around wanted to pay as little as possible. I’ve done fine though as I bought the house cheap and although I won’t be making much profit, I won’t be making any losses so I can’t complain.

I was a little sad today though as I said goodbye to he house for one last time, checked all the rooms to make sure I hadn’t left anything, and then I locked up and that was that. The end of an era.

I’ve got good memories of the place though and I thought it was fitting that I made another video to document the changes from when I first bought it:

The end.

We’re quite a pessimistic lot over in Thanet and for the past few years there hasn’t really been a positive thing said about the Turner Contemporary by the residents of the Isle and so to have thousands of people heading in mass exodus to Margate shows that something has changed. I even found myself heading over there on Saturday and I felt a huge wave of optimism and hope as I made my way to the newly opened art gallery.

I didn’t even go into the gallery as it was a bit too busy but just walking around, hearing people excitedly talk about the future of Margate, seeing all the busy shops, seeing the busy harbour arm, made me feel that maybe the Turner Center is the catalyst that the place needs. Throw in the Dreamland Heritage Park, add it to the amazing beach, cafes and restaurants, and other attractions such as the Shell Grotto, and you have a place that I really do believe tourist will want to come to.

The other fact was that there were actually things going on, it wasn’t just smoke and mirrors, people were actually enjoying themselves… in Margate! Now there are more things to be done to the town but having spent millions on the Turner Contemporary there is no chance that we can let this momentum stop and think that the job is done.

So it’s finally arrived and the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate is due to open at the weekend. There was a time when I thought it would never happen, when £7,000,000 was spent without even laying a brick, but here we are, an exstimated £20,000,000 later and it’s actually happening. So 10 years in the making and here’s the history of its development:

• October 2001: £7,000,000 design unveiled and due to be completed by 2004 (link).
• February 2003: Planning permission granted and due to be completed by 2006 (link)
• August 2005: Work due to begin, and completed by 2007 (costs now £25,000,000) (link)
• October 2005: Projected costs rise to £29,500,000 (link)
• February 2006: Design Scrapped after projected costs rise to £50,000,000 (link)
• April 2006: KCC promises Turner Contemporary will cost no more than £15,000,000 (link)
• June 2007: £17,500,000 design unveiled and due to be completed by 2010 (link)
• February 2008: Planning permission granted and due to be completed by 2010 (link)
• November 2008: Work starts on Turner Contemporary and due to be completed by 2011.

Two years ago I wrote an article called “The Future of Thanet” and it was all very doom and gloom, but now that something concrete (pun intended) is in place then perhaps there is a future for Margate, and hopefully the rest of Thanet too. What is needed now is continued investment and belief in Margate so that the shops start opening again, Dreamland Heritage Park becomes a reality, and so that tourists start coming back to what was once a popular seaside town.

Hopefully the Turner Contemporary can be the catalyst for this.

photo credit: robef

I think it’s good to be proud of the area you live in, and although there’s a view that Ramsgate is a bit downtrodden nowadays, I still have hope for the place and when you cast your mind over the amazing history of the place then you will be proud of the place too. We’ve got a great history and I love knowing that I’ve had a (small) part in it.

I’m going to point you over to a great site called www.ramsgatehistory.com which has managed to archive a great deal of information including movies, photos, documents and also stories.

If you want to find out more then head on over to the site and you could spend hours going through all the information.

I haven’t been fishing for a couple of years, but when I found my self with a free day I thought I’d give it ago and had a walk down to Ramsgate harbour and fished off the Harbour Wall.

Sufficed to say I didn’t catch anything apart from sunburn and some crabs, which could be misconstrued for something altogether different if this were an 18-30s holiday. I never go fishing expecting to catch fish, and just use it for a bit of a time-out and an excuse for some fresh air.

It wasn’t just me who was failing though and apart from a few flatfish there was little being caught and so I accepted my fate, and headed home after a few hours. I think I’ll have to go elsewhere to catch any sizeable fish which casts my mind back a few years when I caught this Moray Eel on holiday in Gran Canaria.

There are several charter boats running fishing trips out of Ramsgate and that might have to be the next option if I’m ever to catch a fish again…

We of Thanet love our history, due partly to the fact that we have so much of it here and one of the sights that greet visitors entering Thanet is the Viking Ship Hugin which is found at Pegwell Bay. I’m sure most of you know the history but just to recap in 1949 the ‘Hugin’ sailed from Denmark to Thanet in celebration of the 1500th anniversary of the traditional landing of Hengist and Horsa at Ebbsfleet and the betrothal of Hengist’s daughter, Rowena, to King Vortigen of Kent.

We can go a lot more into that historical line but I’m more interested in 1949 rather that 449 and I’ve come across these great videos from British Pathe that show the Hugin arriving at Viking Bay (originally known as Main Sands until this event), the thousands who celebrated its arrival, and the presentation ceremony in 1950 by Prince Georg of Denmark with the ship on display at Pegwell Bay.

Just click on the photo and you’ll be taken to the relevant video.

VIKING SHIP ARRIVES

KENT GREETS VIKING INVADERS

THE VIKING SHIP ‘HUGIN’ AT RAMSGATE

It really is amazing having such a link into the past. Yes it’s a relic that’s only 60 years old but it signifies something a lot older and normally gets me spouting off about Vikings et al.

This week I’ve been happy to see that my good friend Hannah has started a blog and that it has got past the all too familiar ‘single post then forget about it’ stage that many blogs get too. In fact she has been rather prolific these past few days and it’s great to see someone so animated when it comes to the wonders of blogging when I’ve been doing it for almost six years (started May 2004).

Hannah’s start to blogging has also inspired the return of another good friend Andy who last blogged in 2007, but we shall have to see if he gets past the initial first post.

This all takes me to the Thanet Blog List, which I took over from Kevin in September 2006 and initially spent quite a lot of time on, including the switchover to WordPress which allowed more scope for development. One of the big developments was a live feed from listed blogs as a sub page and this proved to be very popular, so much so that many people would by-pass the home page to go to the live feed. Last year Blogger, the company that hosts many local blogs, introduced a feed-widget for users to show pretty-much the same on their blogs with whatever blogs they wanted, and so it was time for the TBL to step up.

Last year I moved the live-feed to the front page, which meant the focus was on blogs that were actually updating rather than those who gave-up the ghost and were maybe still listed but not updating. This went well but there were still-hiccups until I used new plugins for WordPress which offered better options for the huge amount of blogs that were listed. I also edited the template so that readers would only be faced with a short excerpt from the blog feed which would entice them to click the links to visit the actual blog, directing visitors to Thanet blogs which of course was the main aim of the Thanet Blog List to start with.

I also brought in Twitter and now the live feeds from Thanet Blogs goes out on http://www.twitter.com/thanetbloglist so people can keep in touch.

Now all I need to get new Thanet blogs listed is add the URL of a blog to the back-end of the TBL and everything else is automated. If you have a blog that isn’t listed then let me know and get more exposure for your blog.

Tonight Euroferries were featured on BBC 1′s Inside Out programme in an investigation by Glenn Campbell under the title of ‘Will Euroferries start a new ferry service?‘

You will shortly be able to watch the programme on BBC iPlayer on this link.

I’m not sure of the viewing figures for the programme but I’m sure that quite a few people in the South-East watch it so it really could be seen as a good PR opportunity to set the record straight and let the public know what is happening, something the blogging community has been asking for the past year, but Euroferries declined to be filmed and instead released another press release (some of which contradicted what Thanet Council were saying.)

Glenn went down to their ‘offices’ at the Port of Ramsgate to find that there weren’t any, and then went to find Adrian Gillan (Director of Euroferries), but he wasn’t available either, so yet again it was left to the viewer to speculate and grow even more pessimistic about the chance of a cross channel ferry from Ramsgate to Boulogne.

This is from Auntymoo in the comments section:

Announcement was made today at 1pm. Norman Spirit to run out of Ramsgate and to be renamed Ostend Spirit. LD Lines in partnership with TEF, service to start approx 15th March !!! Whats next ? perhaps a fast craft to Boulogne or Ostend ??? – Auntymoo 8th Feb 2010 @ 2:29 pm

This has also been corroborated by Your Thanet via twitter and also by the Thanet Extra.

So Ramsgate does get a new passenger ferry, but not to Boulogne. I somehow have more confidence with this than with you know who. There will be two return crossings a day which will be 4 hours each way, and single tickets will cost £24 for a car and five passengers.

Useful Links:

• LD Lines
• Trans Europa Ferries
• The Noman Spirit

As I mentioned in this post Euroferries will be the subject of tonight’s Inside Out programme (7:30pm on BBC1 South-East or Sky 983) where Glenn Campbell asks whether Euroferries will ever start a new ferry service from Ramsgate. It should make good viewing.