A number of people have contacted us recently regards making bookings, assuming that we’ll be opening on or around the 4th of July. However, this permission only applies to English pubs and restaurants and since The Boat is in Wales this doesn’t apply to us.
It’s obviously a very difficult time for everyone and politicians are mostly doing their best but Mr Drakeford is being particularly tight-lipped over when and under what conditions pubs and restaurants in Wales might be permitted to re-open, so we continue to speculate and make tentative plans based on the English guidelines
Gov.Wales did finally throw a few verbal crumbs to pubs and restaurants yesterday by saying that we might be able to trade outside only from the 13th July. Opening up or closing down a rural pub restaurant isn’t like turning a tap on or off and given the unreliable British weather (for example periodically sunny yesterday, wet and windy today) we just can’t see how it is practicable or economically viable to just trade outside, so we will be staying shut until we can open up on sensible terms to trade inside as well.
We think that from the moment that we’re given a green light it will take us 3 weeks to be ready to open. This may seem a long time but given so much uncertainty and the need to implement physical alterations, restock, un-furlough the staff and retrain them to operate in a quite different way, it will take all of that. Also, if the guidelines re social distancing remain at 2m, given the layout of our particular pub, we may not open at the earliest possible date as, commerciality aside, we want to keep everyone safe but don’t want to make spending time in our pub feel like socialising in a hospital.
Worryingly, during yesterday’s Q&A they said that there would be no further announcements regards when we might be able to open for business inside until they have seen how trading outside goes. Given outside trading won’t start until the middle of July we are reading no further announcements on the inside until the end of July, meaning we may not be able to open until mid to late August!
Nevertheless, just in case there is an unexpected turn of events, we shall cross our fingers and prepare for week commencing 3rd August as the earliest that we might re-open, although we won’t be taking any bookings at all for any dates until we have decided for sure.
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Thanks for taking an interest and we hope to see you again sooner rather than later!