New Margate Leisure Centre in Cliftonville is opening its doors next month and will offer the two unique experiences and some slap up street food

Take a massive empty building, bring in 17 tonnes of gravel and make sure there’s enough room to throw an axe.

Then add in a bangin’ food operator, a place to grab a drink and you’ve got yourself Thanet’s newest activity complex - Margate Leisure Centre (@margateleisure).

The new attraction, due to open its doors on May 12th, will offer urban pétanque under the name Klak (@klakmargate) in one area and axe throwing in another.

Kent burger boss Radburger (@radburgerco) will be serving up its proper juicy burgers and there’ll be a pop-up kitchen at the site, too, for other tasty dishes.

The new Margate Leisure Centre, behind Bugsy’s in Cliftonville, is the brainchild of Gareth Fairlie, founder of Black Axe Throwing Co, and Ian Johnson.

The pair dreamed up the idea over a game of, erm, pétanque.

“It’s a great activity where any age group can play and enjoy a drink at the same time; it’s really social,” says Gareth. “It gives people an opportunity to have a night out but also participate in a game.

“We played a game ourselves one day and thought ‘maybe we can do this’.

“We looked into it and the logistics of having that much gravel delivered to us and decided to take the plunge and that’s when Klak was born.

“So we’ve just moved 17 tonnes of gravel and built this massive replica pitch that you’d find in provincial France.

“Klak is the noise the balls make when they hit each other so hopefully that will translate.”

But what about the axe throwing? When you think of pétanque, throwing an axe doesn’t immediately spring to mind.

Yet this forms the other part of the venture, with a separate area on the other side of the building for this activity.

“I already have Black Axe Throwing Company and I’ve got places in Edinburgh, Belfast and Lancaster,” explains Gareth. “I’m Kent born and bred, I lived in Margate about 20 years ago and I grew up in Faversham, so I always wanted to have one near me.

“When this place came up I thought ‘I can do it here’.”

Bugsy’s, which still operates on Ethelbert Terrace, had the large vacant building behind it, which used to be part of an old bowling alley.

Image by Michał Parzuchowski - a classic game of Pentaque

Gareth says it’s huge with enough height to bring in the new axe throwing site, which will have three lanes.

“There’s loads of floor space too so it works perfectly for pétanque and so we decided to marry the two together,” he says. “They also compliment each other quite well; axe throwing is high energy whereas pétanque is a bit more genteel but still exciting.

“It doesn’t have to be played on quite as much adrenaline so it’s quite a nice compliment.

“The idea with pétanque is to book a session and you get the piste to yourself for a group of up to six people. We’ve got four pistes.

“Axe throwing is different, we take bookings ahead for that. We also have to stress that you can’t have a drink before axe throwing - there’s no having a beer then throwing an axe around.”

Once launched, the centre will be open Wednesday to Sunday, from 10am to 10.30pm, with activities winding up at 9pm.