Article by: Lee Jones
From the A1, the Marriott Hotel in Peterborough is approx 3 miles away.
I arrived at around 12:45pm and parked my car in one of the free car parking spaces within their very spacious parking areas in front of the Hotel.
This is where I met one of the other Music Extravaganza Guests and his Father, but didn’t know this at the time, funnily enough they were also the last people I spoke to in the car park when i left on Monday Morning
I intentionally arrived early to get myself familiarised with the Layout of the Hotel, and had some time to kill as I could not officially gain access to my room until 3pm, so left all my luggage in the car and entered the the Hotel Lobby via the main entrance.
This Hotel has a 4 Star Rating, I am not an expert on Star Ratings, but from my point of view this Hotel looked to be quite plush and very pleasantly presented.
The Main Reception area was very spacious and could easily accommodate a coach load of guests arriving at the same time.
The Cast Iron Grill
With time in hand I had a good look around, there are a number areas and restaurants open to all guests, these consisted of the
Cast Iron Grill
which was very nice and clean, Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, although non of the guests staying for the Music weekend would require it’s services as full board accommodation, Breakfast, Lunch, Afternoon Tea and Cake, as well as the Evening meal are all included in the price, and because of the numbers attending, all of these meals apart from Tea & Cakes where in the main large circular hall, aptly name the Emperor Suite.
Emperor Suite
The Emperor Suite is a stylish room with a hexagonal shape adding that little bit of extra character, and has a maximum capacity of 130. obviously it is suitable for a variety of conference meetings, wedding receptions or events such as this one and had been set up with large round tables and seating to accommodate everyone.
All the meals were on a self service buffet style basis, so basically you could eat as much or as little as you wanted, and trust me I took advantage of the vast array of Breakfast items available each day, as did a lot of the other guests, so I felt I was in good company.
Lunch was excellent on each day with a variety of different foods, little pieces of steak on toast, aubergine and tomato tart-lets, or Eggplant is the common name in North America, Australia and New Zealand, but us Brits use the French word aubergine, and these where exceptionally good.
The afternoon Tea & Cakes was a very laid back affair where you can help your self to Tea or coffee as well as a range of delicious cakes, all of which could be consumed within a room allocated for just the Extravaganza Guests or you could retire to the Senses Lounge and relax there with live football events or news displayed on a very large TV screen mounted to the wall.
On each of the 3 days evening meals, you were presented with at least 2 choices of Starter, 2 Main Courses and a number of different sweet, and while all these choices where very well catered for, there was on one day a particular sweet that actually ran out, and to be fair it was not surprising and must be very difficult to look into the future and prepare for the amounts required, but having said that there were equally 2 other sweets available so no one actually missed out on anything.
Sorry got a bit carried away with all that food talk, but it was exceptional quality and needed to be mentioned. On one of the walls next to some double doors was a sign stating – Music Extravaganza Only
well that was why I was here so I opened the door and entered this room and was greeted by the Company director of Allens Music, Mr Corneleus Curtin and Lucy Curtin, both of which where standing behind 2 tables with racks full of Music Books to purchase.
To the left of where I was then standing was a table, where a number of guests were starting to collect a large white envelope from those that were laid out on the table. In fact I learnt later that this room and a corridor to the right of this entrance door that leads off to a number of smaller conference rooms, as well as the main Concert Hall and all of the Hotels ground floor accommodation was allocated just for us, so basically half the Hotel.
After collecting my envelope, I asked Lucy if a site map was included within the pack as this Hotel and the facilities allocated for this event where quite overwhelming to say the least, and she replied, “No I’m afraid there isn’t” at which point she very kindly suggested to give me a personal guided tour of this allocated area, which I thought was a very nice gesture, and instantly knew then, that these guy’s from Allens Music where a very friendly bunch and willing to help anyone.
Lucy first showed me the Main Concert Hall where all the evening Concerts and a few of the workshop/day concerts were to be held, unfortunately for Tom Horton and Trevor Flunder of Allens Music, who were both having a spot of lunch, and unusually for them , both in Jeans and T-Shirts got up and came over to greet me, a little initial embarrassment on both sides I felt, but Tom quickly defused the situation with “Ahh, I have recently spoke to you on email…….. You’ve got a Lowrey Stardust haven’t you ? “ Yes I replied ! – and from what I have seen so far I am really glad I decided to come along !.
Leaving there, Lucy directed back across the room to another corridor that led to a number of smaller conference rooms, and left me to have a look around at my leisure. In every room, (i believe there were 4-5) were at least one, some having two Lowrey Organs from the full range available at Allens music, which by the way are the official main Lowrey Dealers in the UK and Europe.
These rooms are allocated exclusively for the morning and afternoon workshops, but in between times any of the guests are quite welcome to sit down and have a play on any of them, earphones supplied can be used if required and after about 9pm it is compulsory, so if you cannot sleep and want to play at 3am your more than welcome.
Still with time in hand, I thought I would go across to the Bar,
and sat in what i can only describe as a very large conservatory for a pint and have a read through the contents of this pack.
Within this pack were 4 items, a brief welcoming letter and priority booking form for 2018 from Jill Alcock the events Organiser. A lanyard with my name , town and county, A workshop Booklet which outlines the activities, music scores with spaces to take notes while attending any of your chosen workshops of which there are a number, more about those later.
To see the full timetable of events for Friday – CLICK HERE
And finally a 12 page Full Colour Music Extravaganza Event Programme, with further details of how the 3 day event will proceed, individual pages for the 3 days with times and full details so your never in doubt at what is going on at any given time, and with so much to do on each day, you really need to decide before hand which of the workshops or day concerts you want to attend the most as there are at least 3 simultaneously running at any one time, but if you miss something in the morning you can rest assured that in the afternoon it will be repeated again, so at least 2 out of the 3 available to you can be attended. One thing i did notice in this programme on the Friday was from 2pm onwards – arrival and check-in (rooms from 3PM) so at just after 2pm i went to reception to check in.