Dave,
Thanks for the feedback. That's just what I was after, following our first experience of the venue. Just to address a couple of points you raised... The car parking could be a small problem if we all want to park in the area adjacent to the venue, but we visited on a lovely sunny day in the Autumn and believe it or not it wasn't too bad. Also, we can use the Holiday Inn car park which has ample space (confirmed with the venue). Secondly, the menu... The reason it's chicken biased is because it's a Harvester! The main reasons for moving here temporarily is that our previous venue does not offer such a good inside space for us to get together, those wanting to eat are immediately segregated from the group and they don't start serving proper drinks until 11.30am. Also, it gets so busy very quickly as many will remember when there were queues for the carvery earlier this year.
However...
The main plan is to find a venue that suits the majority of the members, meeting or exceeding the criteria above. The location needs to be accessible to the whole of the region covered by Southmids Sportsters. Before choosing the Toby Carvery, we did an extensive search of pubs and restaurants in the south Northamptonshire region, but they were either packed out on Sundays, the food and drink was rediculously expensive or the car park was only able to take half a dozen cars! So, any suggestions are more than welcome and we can try them out in turn. In the end, it's hoped that we can have a rotating pattern with a meeting place in Northants, Bucks and Oxon, running in between the various activities of the events season. We have already had a successful meeting at the Lamb & Flag (Oxon) and we'll no doubt use this venue again.
January's meeting will be at the Harvester again as it's a little too late for everyone to be informed of a change (bearing in mind quite a few of our members don't read this forum or have emails). But where do you all want to meet in February????
I've started a new thread in our section to cover all this, so please feel free to post...
Here!
Rich.
