First things first... our opening times for the upcoming weekend and future weeks have been set as:
Bank Holiday Weekend: Thurs 1 May 10am-3pm • Friday 2 May CLOSED • Saturday 3 May 10am-4pm • Sunday 4 May 10am-4pm • Monday 5 May 10am-4pm
Our Normal Opening Hours will resume after the Bank Holiday: Tuesday 8am-6pm • Wednesday 10am-3pm • Thursday 10am-3pm • Friday 10am-6pm • Saturday 8am-6pm • Sunday 8am-6pm • Monday 8am-6pm
You might have noticed we have been keeping some slightly unusual opening hours lately. So we thought it would be good to explain why as we don't like to keep our customers and friends in the dark. Since we opened the doors we have had a truly amazing response from the local community, the clubs (big shouts to NTR, Breeze Riders, Sky Riders, Backpedalers) and the many people who have just passed by whilst hanging out by the sand. We thought it would take ages to build up a list of regulars... but that didn't take too long at all either (more shouts to James & Family, Colin & Family, Alan & Shana, John on the recumbent, Paul and Sue, Ed, Tanya & Gobi, Kate, Tatiana, Andy & Christine...the list goes on), this response has meant a bit of a scramble to hire more staff to keep us going.
The need for more staff originates from the fact that we originally had planned on lots of help running the shop and Snug from Susan (Simon's Mam) as she is semi-retired, had some free time and is a real lover of the great outdoors. But she took a nasty tumble on some rocks whilst hiking last week and now needs an operation on her wrist, so she is out of commission for a good long while until her bones heal. Mrs CBK (Mary) has also been getting over-tired too, as she was seriously ill in Jan/Feb and still needs rest, so Simon has banished her from the long shifts! Simon, the head honcho, is doing as much as he can, but is balancing two other jobs (soon to be one other job) with CBK and has now been sent to Turkey on a short work assignment. The net result is that it's not always possible to keep the doors open as much as we had originally hoped.
So are we making excuses? We really hope it doesn't sound like that, it's more that we have encountered a scenario that we didn't plan for, being busy and having key people off sick. But the million dollar questions is - what are we doing to address this? We are working really hard to sort it out and this is how:
1. Simon is rapidly scaling back his commitments and is now leaving one of his roles at the University. He is still doing a bit of work at the Dove Marine Lab though so might still pop up on Countryfile again :)
2. We are hiring people ASAP. In case you missed it, we are looking for a store assistant and freelance guides - more details here.
3. We have tweaked our mid-week opening times in the short term, mostly as the mornings and evenings were quiet
We hope these three things will improve the situation in the longer term, but for now we are just thankful for you patience. By mid June we hope to be back up to 8-6 daily, maybe even longer hours than that.
Lets all hope for a beautiful summer and many evening kayak and bike trips, maybe the odd BBQ too.
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