Off to Bury St Edmunds earlier this week to the tapas bar, La Tasca, in Abbeygate Street, to celebrate Nick’s mother’s birthday.
We had a bit of a stroll around before dinner and took the opportunity to look at the new shopping development that has been built on the Cattle Market. Well, I have to say that we didn’t find it very appealing. It looks like a line of beach huts on stilts all painted battleship grey! The powers that be have called the precinct ‘Arc’. This very strange and inappropriate designer type name was probably developed by a focus group of London property developers and architects. In my view the name is unlikely to catch on and the area will still be called the Cattle Market for many years to come.
This redevelopment was a great opportunity to do something interesting in Bury. In my opinion it has been an opportunity missed . The new area seems to have no proper relationship to the rest of the town, which has not been in any way enhanced. Immediately facing onto the former shopping area is a hideous blank wall with strange gabled ends, also painted an indeterminate shade of grey. I gather that the Suffolk Preservation Society is none too pleased about how the scheme has turned out.
I feel sorry for the good people of Bury. I hope when the time comes to redevelop the bus station site in Sudbury that a more sensitive and less self regarding scheme is decided on.
Supper was a success. Although part of a chain, the food at La Tasca is not at all bad and at present one can order all the tapas one can eat for a tenner, which has to be good value!The bar feels quite authentically Spanish, with nice warm colours and glossy tiles. It quite took me back to our holiday near Madrid last year, which I have to say seems a long time ago. On the whole, the evening brought a bit of southern cheer to a gray March evening.
