Sir,
Like Mrs. C. Cox (last week's Letters page), I enjoyed last year's Café Culture event in Tenby. It was a well conceived idea and was very well supported on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon.
My abiding memory of last year's event is the transformation of Tudor Square into a traffic free zone, filled instead with a vibrant 'continental' scene of groups of happy, relaxed people seated at small tables, eating, drinking and in animated conversation, with many others milling around in the roadway, enjoying the cookery demonstrations, the live music, the stalls and the general carnival atmosphere. Everyone was having a whale of a time.
I remember thinking how lovely it would be to close the Square to traffic and have this type of event each Sunday afternoon during the summer and what an attraction it would be for our visitors. What a pity now, that because of petty carping by some of our retailers, features of last year's event may be scrapped this year. Are they that afraid of a little competition on a Sunday afternoon?
Tenby is a lovely town, but sometimes that is not enough to bring in the visitors. Events such as Café Culture, the Summer Spectaculars, last year's Sealed Knot battle re-enactment on North Beach, the Vintage Car Rally and the Boxing Day Swim show how Tenby can pull in the crowds when it makes the effort. And when people are having a good time, they spend money. They are also more likely to return either for holidays, days out, or to buy that 'little something' they spotted in a Tenby shop a while back.
The enjoyment of our visitors should be a top priority during the summer because they are our lifeblood. Those retailers who try to put a damper on initiatives such as Café Culture are only 'shooting themselves in the foot'. During the season we should be encouraging more such events, which bring people into the town, where they can discover for themselves the quality of our shops, the facilities on offer and the beauty of our surroundings. We cannot just sit back and let things be. Visitors expect much more now than merely hiring a deckchair to sit all day on the beach, while their children build sand castles.
Incidentally, whatever happened to another excellent idea mooted a while ago for a 'quality' Antiques Market to be held in Tenby on a regular basis? Another potential crowd-puller which will probably never see the light of day thanks to opposition from the usual quarters.
Mrs. J. Gryckiewicz,
4 Seascape,
Tenby.