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Welcome to |
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Crawley - Leisure Facilities Leisure is something that Crawley residents should know a great deal about. |
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Was this Crawley’s first Archery Club? Crawley has more facilities for keeping fit than you could imagine. Many of the local hotels have a ‘fitness’ facility for both the guests and local members. Evening & day classes in many aerobic activities are held in community centres, evening institutes and schools. Parks in Crawley These are your parks! The council are charged with maintaining them on your behalf, out of your council tax! Rathlin Road fields are being nibbled away with the creation of the new Crawley Town football stadium (the old one had to be abandoned when the Council needed to sell the land for development), the ‘storage facility for the Fastway contractors, and now the development of ‘affordable’ housing where the changing rooms and play-group area stood before a mysterious fire totally destroyed the entire structure. Green space in Crawley is slowly being taken up for ‘essential’ ‘affordable’ housing! The Memorial Garden, which is in the centre of the town, offers a slightly quieter haven to relax and rest the aching feet - weather permitting. Goffs Park, is about 1/2 a mile from the Town Centre, I went fishing there once as a young boy, all I caught was a cold, I've never been fishing since! I also used to go sledding there, but that was in the winter and in the days when snow was white. Now the park offers wildlife ponds, a paddling pool, a putting green and pitch and putt course. On sunny summer Sundays the miniature steam train might be enjoyed together with the slap of leather against willow. Goffs Park is a peaceful park. Except when the Annual Spring festival takes place. Somehow this also seems to occur on sunny days. Buchan Country Park - 170 acres of beautiful countryside on the western edge of town is owned and maintained by West Sussex County Council. Open 8am - 8pm in summer and 8am - 6pm in winter with car parking facilities it is less crowded and less commercial than Tilgate Park. The attraction of Buchan Park is the peace and quiet. It offers a network of hard surfaced paths to explore the area, a visitor centre and toilets. |
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Tilgate Park, with over 400 acres of landscaped gardens, woodlands and lakes together with the nature centre offers something for everybody. A gentle stroll around the lake after a week in the office or hours on an aeroplane can be very therapeutic. For the more energetic try jogging or if, you are very energetic, running in the woodlands at the back of the park. There are some very good hills. If you are not that energetic just laze in the sun on the slopping grass above the lake, it is also near the pub. In Tilgate Park can be found the Nature Centre, which is a member of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. White Park cattle, wallabies and peacocks are a few of the species that may be seen here. Tilgate Park is the home of the 'Proms in the Park' each year. Book early. The weather is usually good. Take a picnic, it is a great night out. Tilgate Park facilities include:
Our wonderful council have decided to charge a parking fee of £1.00. No doubt they have overspent on the Leisure budget! The latest suggestion is that an area of Tilgate Park will be used to develop a campus for a local university. That’s a neat move, bring impoverished students to one of the most expensive locations in the country to run up their student loans and create even further housing problems in the area. It’s a fair bet that CBC are fully behind this scheme Update March 2005 At the top of this page I hinted that Broadfield Park will be sold off for housing development. Unfortunately I was correct and now, without any fuss or fanfare some of the park has been devastated and ‘up market’ homes are under construction. As you can imagine I do glance through the local papers on a regular basis just to try and work out what is happening to my town but I missed the notice of planning application on this one, my apologies! Usually when CBC grant development rights a ‘social housing’ requirement is attached as part of the ‘payment’. This, of course, artificially inflates the ‘value’ of the new houses and can possibly reduce the standard of the construction as was demonstrated during a national TV program featuring a Crawley neighbourhood some years back. It remains to be seen where the ‘social housing’ is developed but if CBC’s previous form is anything to go by I’m thinking that the Rathlin Road playing fields are a prime target. A report following discussion with local residents about development of housing at Rathin Road reported that the residents would prefer housing development to a gypsy encampment! Go figger as they say across the pond. - watch this space! It’s not all doom and gloom - early this month (March 2005) a flock of waxwings graced us with their presence. They gave a lot of enjoyment to quite a few people. We also had a flock of redwing but that is not such a rare occurrence, apparently, they were spotted to the north of town over a period of about a week. |
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