Reports - Events & Days Out 2022

Cornwall Country Link held a dinner dance on 9th December 2022 at Penmorvah Manor, Falmouth. Over 40 members attended the event.

During the evening a raffle was held which made £141.00. The proceeds of the raffle will be donated to Go Beyond (formerly Chicks).

Go Beyond provide holidays for children aged 8-15, from all over the UK, who wouldn't otherwise be able to have a holiday. They have two holiday centres - the Coastal Centre in Cornwall at Twyardreath near St Austell, and the Daleside Centre near Ashbourne in Derbyshire.

More information about Go Beyond can be found on www.gobeyond.org.uk/about-us

It is so good to be back to some form of normality after our difficult couple of years with Covid.

With the beginning of Spring, we were happy to be meeting up with each other again on a more regular basis and attended quiz and games nights, a visit to the cinema, and 3 members enjoyed catching up with everyone at the spring weekend in Buxton.

Summer arrived and with it all the celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The sun kept shining on the 5th June for our garden party when we toasted Her Majesty, enjoyed traditional coronation chicken, the newly created platinum pudding, strawberry cream scones and other tasty bites. We played a few games of our version of croquet - Corgi Croquet - you can see one of the little dogs in the bottom left of the photo! Lots of bunting flapped in the breeze, although no photos captured the decorations!

Later in June, a few of us spent a lovely afternoon strolling through Blair Estate near Dalry, and had a lovely meal to follow by the coast over at West Kilbride.

Troon RNLI held it's Open Day in the middle of July - a boat pull through the town in the morning was followed by an afternoon of fun down at the lifeboat station ,where a number of our group met up and enjoyed the activities together.

Farming work has gone well throughout the summer, and the weather has been a mixture of a few very hot days - allowing us to make some hay in addition to the silage - cool breezy days and the usual Ayrshire very wet days. We still have green fields and gardens, so really can't complain about our typical west of Scotland weather when we hear the reports of water shortages and burnt grass south of the border.

As we look forward to the rest of the summer, we are keeping our fingers crossed for a nice day to go on our annual ( but first since 2019 ) car treasure hunt in the middle of August. Of course, a meal will follow - we love eating out in Ayrshire!

At the end of the month we have booked a visit to a relatively new heritage museum which has wonderful displays of all things agricultural, emergency services memorabilia and local history. It promises to be an interesting day, and yes, we will eat afterwards!

And all too soon it will be cooler days again, and we should be back to holding our autumn/winter meetings in Kilmarnock. Quite a few interesting talks are planned over those months.

We send everyone good wishes from Ayrshire, and hope you enjoy the rest of the summer with your own club activities.

On Wednesday 6th July 2022 Nottinghamshire Country Link met for their Annual Photo Walk / Quiz.

This event has taken place for several years now and is held in a different village each time. The format is that someone (usually Vicky) goes out to find a suitable village, with a pub and some parking, and takes some photographs. Questions are created from the photographs, then the photos are 'doctored' to hide the answers. Members go off either as individuals or in small groups looking for the answers. We reconvene at the pub afterwards for a drink and to go through the answers.

This time we met in a small village called Bleasby. It has a population of around 800, and one pub - The Waggon and Horses. It's amazing what you can find when you get out of the car and start to walk around rather than just driving through. For example, in Bleasby there is an Air Force Memorial for the crews of WWII aircraft. This is easy to miss despite the village being so small.

We nearly always have a good turn out for these meetings - even if it is pouring down with rain! This time 15 members turned up to take part in the quiz, as well as Vicky who had set it. It was a lovely evening, and we were able to sit outside at the pub for our liquid refreshments afterwards. While we were sat enjoying our drinks the barmaid came out with two fairly substantial porkpies, with the compliments of the landlord. One was a traditional porkpie and the other had a Stilton Cheese topping. There was mustard and chutney too, and there was plenty to go round so that we could all have a portion of pie to enjoy.

What a lovely gesture, and a nice way to round off the evening.

As we finally move into the endemic stage of Covid, after two years of a pandemic, we find ourselves looking forwards.

We managed to keep our, admittedly small group, going over the last two years by virtue of walks and barbecues, eventually moving onto outdoor pub meets. Running up to Christmas three of us have managed to join the Worcester group for some of their very enjoyable meals out.

Moving into 2022, eleven of us made a return visit, after an absence of a number of years, to The Theatre Chipping Norton for the adult version of their pantomime Rapunzel. Including members and guests from as far afield as Worcestershire and Northamptonshire. A very jolly time was had by all, even if I got wet and didn't get any sweets.

On the 25th of January, probably much to our Scots friends' dismay, we held a very enjoyable Burns supper with seven in attendance , many thanks to Kate and Paddy.

Now as I look out of the window and see the snowdrops and winter aconites fading and daffodils appearing everywhere we head into spring. Moving forward a new program is being drawn up to include pub quizzes, walks, including one around the Otmoor Reserve, meals out, point to points, and going into summer, firework concerts, barbecues, and possibly a few competitions against other clubs. Hopefully a varied program will give new members something to look forward to.