At the Friends of Daisy Bank Fun Day

Woodpeckers went to town this morning whilst I stayed at home. I then went up to Daisy Bank, the small park just a hundred yards up the hillside from our house, as I wanted to join in the Fun Day. A new community group was started a few months ago to try to have a say in how the children's play area was maintained as there had been a range of concerns about the facilities there.

The site is a very old play area where an old footpath crosses Horns Road and ascends the hill to join the Old Bisley Road. I have seen photographs from the 1890s of people in their Sunday best playing with their children on swings in the same place that they do today. I am involved as a town councillor, partly as Daisy Bank is in the middle of my ward, but also because the finance committee has been involved in the maintenance not only of the whole grounds but particularly the children's play area and its specialised equipment.

The council has supported the new group which has become Friends of Daisy Bank and encouraged it to take ownership of these facilities for the Horns Road community. We wanted them to get as many people as possible involved in how Daisy Bank should be managed for them in future. So today's Fun Day was organised by the new committee, which Stroud town council has helped to fund. Today there was a stall asking everyone to join in the consultation process to find out exactly what the parents and children, as well as the dog walkers and others wanted.

There was a marquee as rain protection with a few stalls and games areas for children, whilst parents and others, like Helena and I, could buy a pint from the pub next to the entrance to the park. The landlord is on the committee of the Friends, whose meetings are all held in the pub, the Crown and Sceptre, where I often meet up with DailyKeith, and where he first told me about Blipfoto some years ago.

I was really pleased to see how many people had gathered for the three hours, so that both parents and children could all meet up and be involved. Near the end, this juggler stood beside the marquee and entertained us all with three flaming juggling sticks. He finished his performance by juggling these three large steel knives over the body of one of the parents. We are so lucky to have all this happening on our patch, a short walk from home along that ancient footpath.

You may have to go LARGE to see the knives and the expressions on the kids' faces.

The play area is behind the wooden fence at the top of this steep slope. Behind that is the wall of the town's Old Cemetery, and the building used to be the formal entrance to the chapel. The views from all of this are are fabulous looking out south across the valley to Butterow and Rodborough Common, and west over the town and out the Severn Vale and the Forest of Dean.