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One year on....

August 3 2009

It's a month of anniversaries. 100 years since the first flight across the English Channel (by a Frenchman - for shame!). 40 years since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. And just one year since Weston Pier burnt down.

Being brought downstairs in my pyjamas to see the first moonlanding is one of the first things I can remember. And I suspect most Westonians will remember where they were when they heard about the pier too. Its one of those awful landmarks that stick with you forever, and the TV pictures were beamed around the globe. I was on holiday with my family when the news broke, and I remember being shocked by the twisted metal wreckage when I came home early to help deal with the aftermath.

The good news is, of course, that the rebuilding programme is underway. The burnt remains are gone and we've chosen a great new design that Weston will be proud of for years to come.

It hasn't been plain sailing either. At an early meeting to discuss the rebuild I counted nearly a dozen quangos with their fingers in the pie. The scope for bureaucratic delay and frustration is huge, so all credit to the Michaels and the Council for keeping the show on the road when the going got tough.

And the site is tricky too. Doing heavy engineering work at the end of a long thin pier, with nothing but thin air or several meters of Severn estuary water between you and the mudflats, is extremely challenging.

It isn't finished yet, of course. The work is halfway through, so there's a long way to go still. As Weston's town motto says, 'Ever Forward!'