Kevin Pyne, of Lake Street, Dartmouth, writes:

Coronation Park may not be as splendid as it has been in the past, and it and might well need an urgent tidying up as it’s been a wet old winter, but I don’t see that in the past three decades the boat park has spread at all. Sure, the boats change and there have been a few wrecks, but that’s what boating is like,

as not everyone has swish, expensive boats, most have boats just to get by in.

On weekends the Seine boats come and go, as do the gigs, as literally hundreds take to the water for healthy exercise and a chance to be out on as beautiful a river as there is anywhere.

Yes, the odd car comes onto the park and they should stay on the hogging path, if they are there at all.

Personally I cheat as I’m unable to carry much, but then I am disabled and in fact very lucky to be alive. But I know it and appreciate every day, which I consider a bonus.

A friend of mine always says: ‘The less you have the more time you have to fuss over them.’ Which I feel is true.

However, the majority of folk out on the park are busy people just getting by.

And if I am honest and could get my way, I would like to see a boatshed for the town boats over in the corner, but it won’t ever happen as it’s too simple, especially when some folk have little to do other then see what other folks are doing wrong.

Personally I think we should enjoy what we have, and while it’s okay to wish for more, we are lucky to have what we do have.

Now who doesn’t love to see the cricketers there in the ­summer, having usually ­attracted a fair-sized crowd? And boy, don’t I wish I could catch someone out or crack the wickets apart with a neat fast, inswinging, shiny, new cricket ball (as I might have once).

And what of the mums and grandparents keeping an eye on the kids with a cup of tea or whatever bought from the cafe in the park as they natter to each other? And what of the veteran tennis players?

My goodness, if you added up their ages it would be in the ­thousands, as on they play the whole year through.

The fact is, it’s our park, and it was very helpful of the ­district council not to get in the way of those leisure boaters who needed somewhere to store a boat, as over the years all the flat spaces have been developed or built over.

Whoever heard of a harbour without some hard standing, or worse an adjacent slipway? Mind you, I hope never to see a fence around the dingy park.

So if you come to a harbour to live, then please expect to see boats. And not always, I am afraid, a new one. And you must expect to share what we have as we all do, because that is how we all of us seek to get by as best we are able.

I am sure that with the onset of March the wind will go into the north and dry stuff out and the park will be fixed up and off again, hopefully forever.