The Friends of The Wick Country Park

Introduction

Welcome to the Home Page of our Website!

Courtesy of the links to the left, you can read all about the Park, the 'Friends' group, and find details of the events organised by the 'Friends' in collaboration with the Park Ranger. Through the 'Wick Country Park' link you will find directions and a map of the Park, and you can find notes about the history and development of the Park, the management of the Park, the children's play area, the park's plants and animals, fishing in the lake, and much, much more. Other links will take you to details about the events we organise - most of which are absolutely free - plus details about our volunteer group - The Friends of the Wick Country Park. If there is something specific you are interested in, but cannot find, please use the 'search this site' link at the top of the list of LInks.

Register to receive our Quarterly Newsletter

Some great news!!!! There will be no charge to register your email address with the membership secretary, so that you can be kept up-to-date about events and other developments at the Park, through our quarterly newsletter, and the occasional e-mail. . Please see our membership page for more details.

Basildon Borough Council Parks and Countryside Services

The Wick Country Park Park is owned by Basildon Borough Council and is managed by the Parks and Countryside Services Department. To report an issue concerning mis-use of the Park, or to enquire about hiring facilities at the Park, please contact the Countryside Officer on 01268 533333 (option 5). Please note: the Friends group has no authority over the usage of the Park and therefore we cannot deal directly with any such requests

'Hot' News......

Programme of Events, 2020

The provisional Programme for 2020 is now available - click on the 'Events' Link to the left. Note that some of the later dates are provisional, but they will be finalised as soon as we can.

If you would like your own printed copy of the programme, then please click here for our full 2020 guide to the Park and our events. Please be aware that the booklet includes some provisional dates; it will be re-issued when all the dates have been finalised.

The Skylark Regeneration Project

There are many references to skylarks on this website - for a start, our logo is based on this irresistible and intriguing bird, and it is also provides the title of our quarterly newsletter. Back in the early days of the Wick Country Park, Skylarks were common flying here in the sky but now they have sadly gone. Our next project is the regeneration of an area in the Park to encourage the Skylarks back. Mark, the Countryside Ranger has suggested the use of teasel seed for this purpose, so we have purchased enough Teasel seed to cover a substantial area within the Park.

The teasel is a tall plant and is identified by a cone-like flower head with flowers that are tiny and purple, and then the seed heads turn brown in winter. Teasels are visited by bees when in flower and by birds when in seed. Importantly, the plants also provide essential cover for ground-nesting birds, such as skylarks. The Skylark plot will be prepared in January 2020, and a suitable date for sowing in March 2020 will be decided nearer that time, when we will start the process.

We will keep you informed of progress!

January Jaunt & AGM, January 19th 2020

More than 30 people joined the Park Ranger, Mark, for our annual 'Jaunt' on January 19th 2020 on a beautiful sunny, calm Winter's Day. Amongst the participants were several children - and an extremely well-behaved dog on a lead. Members of the Wickford Wombles also joined us, and cleared litter on the way round! Please click here for a fuller gallery and report. (Updated on Monday, 20-Jan-2020 19:22:34 GMT .)

Afterwards, we all enjoyed the mince pies and hot mulled wine or fruit punch back in the Pavilion. The refreshments were followed by the AGM, a full report on which will appear in the February 2020 edition of Skylarks. To see the Chair's report to the AGM, please click here

New page - Volunteering

Please visit this new page to read about ways in which you can become involved with the Friends group

Past Events

Please click on the picture links below, which will take you to reports and pictures from the various events listed.

Kites & Classic Car Display - Sunday September 17th 2017

Skylarks 3K race, Wednesday July 26th 2017

January Jaunt & AGM Sunday 15th January 2017

On-line support while you visit the Park

If you have a smart-phone when you visit the Park, you can now carry a map with you - please click or tap here to see the map and the accompanying notes.

General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) - May 25th 2018

The new GDPR regulations, effective from May 25th 2018, require us to make a 'Data Policy' statement available to all of our members. Please click here to access the policy. Please see the 'Why not Join us?' link to the left for details about membership.

Litter at the Park

Most visitors to the Park do as we all would hope they would do - take any rubbish or recycling generated while visiting the Park back home with them and to dispose of properly. It is a tiny minority of extremely thoughtless and lazy individuals who spoil the Park for everyone else.

From time-to-time there is an organised 'litter blitz', as a result of which bags and bags of rubbish are often collected. One local resident, out of the kindness of her heart, often fills a bag in her own time. Earlier in 2019, the Wickford Wombles had a cleaning session. But none of these very generouas donations of time would be necessary if that tiny minority of thoughtless visitors could learn to be more caring about the Park! We would like to thank those individuals who generously give their time to clear up after others, often selflessly braving adverse weather. The net effect is a beautiful and relaxing environment that can be enjoyed by all visitors - humans, other mammals, birds, insects, etc.

These pictures show the 'proceeds' of a major blitz held in February 2018: bottles in the lake, rubbish thrown in the bushes - and even a discarded fishing reel!

FoWCP Picture

Here are our youngest - and also less young - helpers with some of the bags of collected rubbish.

FoWCP Picture

The aerial video of the Park!

In February 2016, Keith Savill, having got the appropriate permissions, kindly took a second video of the Park. Please see the link in the list to the left!

The On-line Archive

Please visit the the on-line archive, through which all the editions from 1 to current of our Skylarks Newsletter can be viewed. Have a browse through them for a fascinating insight into the Friends' perspective as to what has been happening at the Wick Country Park since 2002! And if you would like to go even further back in time, then please note that the on-line archive, also includes the complete set of eight editions of The Wick Country Park News. These newsletters, which were published by the Countryside Division of Basildon Council, chart the progress of the development of the Park, spanning the years 2000 to 2005. Editions 1, 2, 3 and 5 all include a map of what it was thought the Park would look eventually like when the work was finished. The Park today is fairly close to the vision first presented in 2000, the main divergence being that the building originally described as the "Education and Information Building" is usually referred to by its shorthand name - The Pavilion - and it is now leased to a Commercial Pre-School Nursery.