It's a long time since this tongue and grooved boarding last saw daylight!

As you’ll have seen if you’ve been to the station recently, work is now well and truly under way on the refurbishment, and there are all sorts of things going on inside. So far, Honeyfields, the main contractors, have:

• Set up the site and made it safe
• Lifted the rotten flooring
• Stripped out the obsolete electrics
• Demolished an internal wall to give us access between the kitchen and café seating area
• Stripped the plywood cladding from the external rear wall to reveal the original timber boarding
• Carried out survey work to locate the sewer under the car park

Meanwhile, we’ve been finalising the kitchen equipment and services we need, and looking at lighting and other internal fittings. So all in all, on schedule so far!

Our next big step is to appoint a Cafe Manager, who can help us get everything in place for the opening – we’re hoping to be able to make an appointment in September. The closing date is only 10 days away, so if you know the right person for this job, please tell them to get their application in.

Lots more pictures on our Facebook album, and great that we’ve got lots of followers of our Facebook page now – keep the comments and suggestions coming!

With work now underway on the conversion works ready for the cafe to open in the Autumn, we need a cafe manager! We’re hoping to get the person in post before the work is complete, so please see our Jobs page for details, and pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Planning is now in full swing for the cafe opening later this year, and although the immediate focus is on getting the builders on site, we’re also thinking about what the cafe should be like, what we should be serving, and a million other questions….

We’d like to know what you think about all this – do you have any ideas or suggestions? Are there other cafes you know which you think have got it right? Are there particular things you think should be on the menu? We’ve already got some ideas of course, but we’d be delighted to hear yours – just post a comment on this page, go to our Facebook page or Tweet us!

We’re ready to go! With final funding now in place from the South West Regional Development Agency, we’re delighted to be able to pass on the good news that we’ve now got the green light to bring in the builders at last. It’s taken a long time, but with the support of our funders, fundraisers, and partners, and many people’s hard work, we’ve reached a milestone in the project. Our full press release is below, and there’ll be more news soon on plans from here on, but in the meantime, huge thanks to everyone who’s made a contribution, and we’re looking forward to that first coffee!

Rail passengers at Yatton station will soon have somewhere to get a coffee. After two years hard work, the Strawberry Line Cafe Project now has enough money to restore the downside station building, which is Grade II listed and originally designed by IK Brunel himself. Work will start in July.

Marina said that both paid and unpaid vacancies would be advertised soon, as the cafe hopes to be open for business in the autumn.

The sponsored ride on Sunday was a great success, with over 600 participants and a lot of fun. We’re still collecting sponsorship money, so please keep it coming – and there’s a £20 voucher for the person who raises the most! We’ll wait until the end of June to tally up, so please send a cheque to the address on the sponsor form asap.

We’ve also got a couple of great donations to the project to report, firstly £1,000 from Woodspring Masonic Lodge, and £5,000 from the Trusthouse Charitable Foundation. This support is fantastic, and we’d like to thank these organisations for their help in getting us towards our total. More news on funding on the way soon…

Our cycle ride for the cafe is in just over two weeks, on 20th June, and if you’ve not got your sponsor form yet, there’s still plenty of time to pick one up. They are now at Clive’s (Yatton News), the Post Office, the Railway Station and the Library – or you can download one using the link on the left.

It should be a great day out, especially if the weather stays like this, and there’ll be plenty going on – North Somerset’s Go4Life team have organised quizzes, refreshments, stalls and even one or two freebies. Full details and registration on the Go4Life website – hope to see you there, and just drop us an email at info@strawberrylinecafe.co.uk if you’ve got any questions.

PS – We’re hoping for good news on our funding applications soon, but in the meantime we need to raise as much as we can to provide the matched funding, so what we raise from events like this can be worth double.

We were very pleased this week to receive a cheque for £1,000 from the Millennium Oak Trust – this will help us towards our target of £13,500 for matched funding to unlock the ’Access for All’ grant from the Department for Transport. Many thanks to them for their support!

Start of the ride in 2009

While London today is full of people running 26 miles for their chosen charities, we can offer you a slightly more leisurely alternative – join our sponsored cycle ride on 20th June and help us raise some funds for the Strawberry Line Community Cafe at Yatton Station! Last year the event was very successful, and this year we’ve joined forces with North Somerset Council’s Sport and Active Lifestyles team to make it an even better event – it’s in National Bike Week too, so there are plenty of reasons to give it a go. It’s going to be suitable for all ages, with quizzes for children, stalls at both Yatton and Winscombe, and help with mishaps like punctures.

Full details are on the North Somerset Go4Life website, but in the meantime you can download a sponsor form and get going!

We’re delighted to announce that SLCP has been successful in obtaining a grant of £13,500, representing 50% of the  cost of the installation of an accessible toilet, and of some associated costs of refurbishing and re-opening the disused waiting room. This grant is from the Department for Transport’s ‘Access for All’ Small Schemes programme, and will need to be matched from other sources, but we’re already working to identify these, so we’re confident of being able to use it.  Hoping for more good news soon on other funding applications!

Under the expert supervision of the Rev Peter Cresswell from Horsecastle Chapel, our Easter Draw took place on Saturday 3rd April. All the lucky winners have been notified, but for the record the winning tickets were 00246, 00516, 01105, 01149, 00004, and 00271.

Big thanks to our willing band of ticket sellers, and of course to those who kindly donated prizes – Eurostar, First Great Western,  ‘theclub’ at Cadbury House, and Mrs Williams. The draw raised close to £1,000 for the project, which all goes towards our all-important ‘matched funding’.

On the subject of funding, we’re in waiting mode now – though we’ve had some encouraging noises in response to one of our applications, we can’t do much except wait and see whether we’ll get the funds we need to start on site this summer.

And moving on to the summer… after our very successful sponsored cycle ride last year, we’re following this up with another ride this year, tying in with North Somerset Council’s ride along the Strawberry Line in National Bike Week. The date will be 20th June, and sponsorship forms will be available on the website, along with more details, very soon. We hope you can join us again for a great day out!