IT’S NOT CHANGE WE DISLIKE, IT’S DESTRUCTION

‘Saundersfoot Harbour Phase One is Complete’

We read in the press - we’re in for a treat!

So we pack up a picnic, with rugs for the seating

And invite our friends for open-air eating.

We’ve waited so long to return to ‘our spot’

Overlooking Back Beach, which we love such a lot.

We eagerly drive to the harbour by car

But cannot proceed past the barrier bar.

‘Access Denied’ the sign there dictates

And I slump in my car as our joy dissipates.

I suppose we are meant to walk on, past the sign here

But I never will make it, not with my angina

And you, with the pain of your arthritic hips -

This means the end of our beloved Back Beach trips.

So I turn and drive back past the harbour fish shop

And look back, aghast, at the ugly backdrop

Of a structure that looks like a giant scaffold

And suddenly realise that we just weren’t told

That the price we must pay for SHC’s grand ideas

Is to live with some facts that are tough on the ears :

That the harbour no longer belongs to us all,

It’s for those who can walk, not those who may fall.

If the most we can manage to walk is 10 yards

Then the choices for us are really quite hard.

No longer the view of the Glen to enjoy,

Never to sit where I sat as a boy,

No idea what’s built along the Back Beach

As that is, for many, now far beyond reach

And in aiming to attract all the boaties and yachters

We locals are trampled by bulldozing plotters

Who think it’s THEIR view for the future that matters

And hard cheese for those whose dreams are in tatters.

They’ll destroy our Barbecue Lawn and, ye gods,

Replace it with ugly cheap digs they call ‘pods’

Enclosed in a structure of glass and of steel

That has a municipal bus-station feel,

A Covent Garden-style place they call a ‘Piazza’,

In short, a grotesque and unwanted disaster.

We’ve lived through world wars, we’ve struggled so hard

And now we are threatened in our own dear back yard.

Their plans in the Regency Hall brought a frown

The questionnaire set to funnel us down.

With Phase One of Saundersfoot Harbour completed

I’m left feeling helpless and really defeated

I fear for the centre of our beautiful village

Now threatened by a team who seem set on pillage

Posing for photos all smiley and charmy,

One wearing a suit like the spiv from Dad’s Army

But if they proceed with this ugly construction

And our village lawn lost by their wanton destruction

SHC will be known as the group that put

A knife through the heart of our Saundersfoot.

B.D.I.