THE two projects which have just been completed at Lochore Meadows Country Park certainly look like they are going to make 2018 a bumper year for the facility, which attracts over 600,000 visitors a year.

The new Willie Clarke Visitor Centre has brought the park's facilities into the 21st century and when you add the new golf clubhouse and football changing facility on to it, the £1.8m project will give the park management fresh impetus to get that visitor attraction total to over 800,000.

In our article on the completion of the park developments, Mr Clarke made his observation that he sees the new facilities as only the start of the way ahead for the Country Park.

As a person who can remember the Meedies as pit spoil, Willie has always felt that the layout around the Mary Colliery pithead gear was something which could have, by this stage, been much more developed to make the park one of the most attractive spots in the United Kingdom.

There is certainly the space to do more than is currently there.

The Water Sports facility is good and the introduction of the St Andrews University Rowing Club to practice on the loch and hold regattas has been a major plus.

However, the loss of the dozen or so dinghies which people used to go for rows in was a big reduction in the facility.

Willie Clarke has always believed that the vast areas of ground at the Meedies could have been used for a camp site or perhaps cabins which people could holiday in during long hot summers.

That in itself would have increased the park traffic considerably. No doubt Willie will continue to promote that idea and others and it could well be that the opening of these facilities is just the beginning of a new era at Lochore Meadows Country Park.