RECENTLY I begun thinking and after the shock of this rare activity wore off, I began to think again.

Between Chistmas, New Year and the first bank holiday, relatively little happens in Penarth.

Now Penarth is a wonderful place to live, shop, drink and do other things. It has the refurbished pier, which we all should be proud of, a fairly compact town centre, it's on the coast, near to countryside and close to Cardiff with all it's attractions and many other things.

With this in mind, I had a wander around the net to find out what other places do and discovered that a few towns dotted around the UK had themed weekends and these activities bring in much needed visitors. Now as I understand it, most of these events occur at Christmas which is fine, but, I thought, what about later in January or February, after the Christmas hang-over and after the sales have lost their charm, what then? What about Penarth?

What could the town do to attract visitors at that time of the year? Well, Victorian weekends seem popular, you know the sort of thing, women dress up in long white dresses, promenade the streets carrying a parasol and the men don't! Could this sort of thing happen in Penarth? What would it take, how much would it cost?

I don't know, but there maybe someone out there who does. The sort of things I have in mind are having the town centre closed off, with traditional stalls in the streets, shop staff in traditional dress with or without parasols, maybe a fun-fair, hansom cab rides from the centre to the beach where more activities complementing the agreed theme could take place, steam rail or boat trips, full use of the parks and gardens, maybe even live music, events in the Paget rooms and so much more.

I suppose the biggest thing would be cost followed by organisation. Getting the business community, local authorities and the like to do this wouldn't be easy and it may well not be worth while. Anyway, those are my thoughts, now its over to the Penarth Times readers.

Des Lloyd

Penarth