It is truly amazing how quickly the town returns to normal at the end of the summer holidays. From roads jam packed with traffic, having to queue for parking, standing 20th in the checkout line at the supermarket, suddenly no traffic, a choice of parking bays and supermarket tellers almost vying for you to use their till. Certainly we welcome, and need, the holidaymakers but it is nice to have our town back. A comment though from reader Trevor Tennant commenting on the SFT post “Season Almost Over” does however sum it up “It would be nice to have a little less a little more often”.
The information booklet that St Francis Tourism published this past holiday was certainly a successful initiative by an agency that does its best with a very limited budget. Without budget there is little more the agency can do but thanks to their efforts and those of Cape St Francis Resort, The Links and to a lesser degree The Chokka Trail, St Francis is able to attract tourist out of season. More needs to be done to attract year round tourism and it shouldn’t be left to these three and St Francis Tourism alone.
Hats off to St Francis Tourism for the splendid job they did over the season and in particular the Morning Market. Vendors at these markets certainly cannot have any complaints other than there were too many potential customers. Market day in St Francis is always an enjoyable outing to meet friends and renew acquaintances. Thank goodness the area now defined as the “Village Common” was available for paring both the market on market days and for those shopping at the Spar centre.
And on the subject of the Common, the vegetation has been cleared to a large extent and so here is hoping the community will pu;; together with ideas (and donations) to develop the area into some where we can all enjoy be it for bigger morning markets, art in the park exhibitions or music in the park on a Sunnday afternoon.
One last comment on The Ruins & Billy’s.
No doubt lessons have been learned by all involved and lfe can go on. Certainly thought should be put into Angela Cadman’s suggestion (READ –“A music solution for St Francis Bay holiday season”) for there is no doubt these music festivals do attract visitors to our shores over tehe season.
Finally thank you to Benno Dippenaar who has become involved in ensuring the aftermath of The Ruins as mentioned inn our post “Is someone going to clean up after the Ruins – stop plastic pollution” is being finally being dealt with. Apparently the Port Elizabeth company tasked with the clean-up didn’t do the job properly hence all the hazard tape and other plastic pollution being left to blo in the wind.
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