Can you come to my Estate?
There are various reasons that we visit the places we do.
We do most of our visits on Sunday evenings and our members and friends are happy to give their time (for free) to do this, despite the many other exciting things that go on during December. This means that we are limited to the 3 or 4 Sunday evenings in December.
Although most of our members work, which means that weekday evenings are difficult for us, we have tried mid-week visits, but generally we’ve found that a lot less people are at home at 6pm when we start (we like to finish around 8pm as little people who like to see Santa go to bed early!) .
Our biggest limitation for visits though is based on the roads!
Our sleigh is on a trailer, which we tow behind a car, and this can’t easily be turned around, so we cannot go down cul-de-sacs. Lots of roads, especially in the newer parts of Milton Keynes are quite narrow, and often winding, which make them unsuitable.
Also many roads have a lot of parked cars and we need to make sure that there is somewhere for the float to pull over if vehicles come the other way (though we’d also like to thank people who do meet us coming the other way, who are always very patient while we pull over).
Finally, and most importantly, is the comfort and safety of Santa. Speed bumps are not very pleasant for Santa, and so we avoid them where possible, and have to choose routes with only one or two bumps in total.
We have driven around a number of estates in Milton Keynes, and found that either there are very few “through” roads we can link into a route, or there are too many speed bumps, or the roads are winding or narrow and if there is nowhere to pull over on a sunny summer Wednesday afternoon exploration trip, then we know there will be even more cars on parked on Sunday evenings in December.
If you think that your estate, or somewhere else you know might be suitable for a visit from Santa, do drop us a link from our “Contact Us” page and we will consider it. Please bear in mind that we finalise our plans in September, so we may need to pop your idea aside to check out for the following year.
