Second Year, Second Lake.
Our second blog post, so why not talk about how the second season of the Wake Park is blossoming! Kick starting 2018 we were overwhelmed and truly grateful to be awarded PembrokeshireTourisms ‘Best Activity Provider’. Even Mark, scrubbed up and put on a shirt and tie!
Expanding in our second season hadn’t even crossed our minds. But here we are, 2 months in to year two and soon we will become home to Wales’ First Aqua Park (a big inflatable obstacle course, to those of you who aren’t familiar).
It was not without blood, sweat and a few tears. Having had one of the worst winters in a few years, at some points the Aqua park didn’t look possible. Being a clay based boggy field has its pros and cons, however for the dig to start we needed the sun to appear and rather than starting end of November as planned the dig only took place 2 weeks ago, YES only two weeks ago.
Although a much smaller lake, it didn’t prove to be any easier. We decided a liner would be best for this one and due to the lake dimensions it was custom made. Great we thought…until we had to lay the liner! We’d asked a few friends to come in for a couple hours one morning and no word of a lie, 8 hours later, 15 people, 2 tubs of sun cream, 1000 litres of water, some bacon butties and the liner was down. Easy peasy, lemon difficult.
Imagine laying a black liner, on one of the hottest days of the year with no wind. It was a ‘socks on’, ‘socks off’ kind of job with the liner being too hot to stand on or even hold at times and with it weighing 1.2 tonnes it wasn’t a job for the faint hearted.
With that job out of the way, the next morning our alarms went off at 6am and the three of us along with a friend found our selves at the bottom of the empty lake with 50 tonnes of sand to move by hand before we opened at 10am. And like all things the Harris’ do, it took a lot longer than imagined. 10am came so we split, Mark and Sarah went up to the wake park to work and Steph and her friend stayed down to shovel, rake and wheel barrow the sand around the base of the lake. Another 8 hours, we reappeared as two lobsters but it was finished!
That night we fed the pump in and and wallah! It began filling with water. We said good bye to IWG Plant Hire and Groundwork and his team of hard workers, we’d gotten to know them over the past week especially when working 6am-9/10pm each day. Even Bryn became very familiar with the workers.
Next job, convert 2 containers into functioning changing rooms, build a new reception, tuck shop, lay chippings and create a spectator area. Not to forgot the Aqua Park installation with some of the biggest features weighing 210kg, luckily there’s only twenty individual modules to move by hand.
End of June is our expected grand opening but we’ll be keeping everyone up to date on our social media pages!
So if you want in on our next adventure, give us a like or follow us on Instagram @pembrokeshire_wake_park or Facebook Pembrokeshire Wake Park