Theatre company off on Wales summer tour from Caernarfon storage unit

“Struts and Frets” are taking their Welsh language Y Mabinogi back on the road this month in a tour taking in castles, theatres and a bishop’s palace.

The show’s props and stage scenery have been under wraps at Lock Stock Self Storage’s Caernarfon park since last year’s successful Wales tour and the touring company are about to hit the road again.

They start at the National Botanic Garden of Wales at Llanarthne, in Carmarthenshire, on Friday, June 23, and continues to the Beyond the Border Festival at Dinefwr for the weekend of July 7-9.

They will then take in St David’s Bishop’s Palace, Raglan, Caernarfon and Harlech Castles, before finishing at Mold’s Theatr Clwyd.

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Struts and Frets artistic director Francesca De Sica said: “We had a very successful tour with the show last summer and played at 10 Cadw heritage sites with almost 3,000 children from 49 schools seeing it.

“Being able to store the props etc with Lock Stock in Caernarfon has worked really well for us ahead of this summer’s tour and with any one-off shows we’ve done.

“It’s great that we have been able to come at any time, get access and come and go as we please because theatre touring is not a nine to five occupation so you need to know your stuff is safe and secure.”

Lock Stock regional manager Lee Hanson is in charge of the Caernarfon site along with others in Porthmadog, Bangor, Holyhead and Llandudno Junction.

He said: “This is one of the more unusual tenants and one of their stage props is a tree which comes in several sections but it works very well for them.

“The Caernarfon site has proved very popular since we opened here and is getting bigger as we respond to demand and while we don’t have many theatre companies we have plenty of interest from local businesses and tradespeople as well as from people moving house and those who are just looking for somewhere safe to store valuable possessions.

“We have a mix of units here as well as high security fencing, floodlighting and electric gates with coded 24/7 access.

“It’s not just the units that are green either.

“We use recycled surfacing and we are also trialling solar-powered lighting as part of our own drive to be as renewable as possible and if it works well then we plan to roll it out across all our sites.

“Our insulated storage units are recycled too after making 12,000-mile sea journey from China.

“The sites are conveniently located in the heart of the local community, we offer flexible deals so tenants only pay for the days they use the unit, there is no minimum term and we have recently introduced a student discount.”

Lock Stock, founded in Denbigh in 1999, is the UK’s largest containerised storage company with almost 4,500 units providing over four million cubic feet of space at storage parks across North and Mid Wales and the border counties.

The company estimates that 60 per cent of their containers are rented by people moving house or keeping treasured possessions but up to 40 per cent, almost 2,000 of their containers are used by small businesses for storing materials.

Lee Hanson added: “Businesses, especially small businesses use our sites because they have storage needs and with three different sizes of units they’re ideal whether people are looking to grow or to downsize.

“We respond to demand and where it is coming from and if it is from an area where we need more capacity then we look at opening somewhere new or extending our existing premises.”

Lock Stock also specialise in the off-site hire of containers, delivered to your location by their specialist lorry and hired on a month by month basis.

The sizes range from 10-feet long up through 20-footers to 40-foot units, all eight feet high and eight feet wide, from 640 to 2,560 in cubic feet in volume.