Gavin Henry, Inter Club Quiz, Social Meeting, Christmas is Coming and Barging about on the Kennet & Avon.

Last Week
It's back to normal after the very successful Youth Leadership Course.

Our speaker was Gavin Henry, Chairman of the Bedfordview Community Policing Forum.  He became involved following a burglary at his own home.
I got the impression that Bedfordview was rather like the Wild West and dangerous to visit let alone live there.  From 6 police vehicles they are down to two one of which has a puncture that hasn't been repaired, the detectives, all 35 of them are sitting in a room little bigger than a broom cupboard as they have been evicted from the building where they used to be owing to non-payment of rent and so it went on.
He told us that we cannot rely on the police, that we have to be vigilant when driving home in case we are followed and we should turn our home into a fortress and then ensure that electric fences etc are working.  He also told us how few electric fences are turned on and how criminals check that they are functioning.  I was tempted to run round the neighbourhood and see if the criminal electric fence checking system works.  If the alarm goes off run away and then come back later.  If I was about 11 years old it would create lots of fun possibilities.

It was a great pleasure having our former Exchange Student from Alaska, Emily Longbrake,who is an  artist and designer and her husband Bill Jamison as guests as well as Stewart Mutegeki.

Stewart Mutegeki

Emily Longbrake & Bill Jamison

The Inter-club Quiz, Friday 16th November
Please be in touch with Pam Donaldson about this as soon as possible.  I know it's quite a long way ahead but Johannesburg Club are having to estimate the numbers coming and they have reckoned on 20 people coming from our club.  Last week Pam had heard from nobody....so you can see that I am as bad as everyone else!







Social Dinner in Cyrildene on Thursday Evening
Don't forget to book with me if you still want to come. 
There are 15 at the moment and we have booked for 20.

This Week.
It's a Social Meeting and it's also a Board Meeting.  One thing that you should always remember is that any Rotarian can attend a Board Meeting though if there is a discussion that results in a vote you can't vote.  In all my years of being on various boards I can only ever remember one vote!

Christmas Lunch

Friday 7th December.  We will try to book Parkview Golf Club again.

For years, Rotary Newbury has been running canal barge trips for charities in Berkshire and Wiltshire. This year, they took out guests over two weekends on the picturesque Kennet & Avon canal.

Fair weather favoured the guests and volunteer crews for the Rotary Newbury annual barge week which took place in September.

The week gave the Newbury Rotary crews the opportunity of giving local community groups a day out on the beautiful Kennet & Avon canal on sections between Great Bedwyn and Woolhampton and back to Bedwyn.

This year, the Rotary club entertained groups from Eight Bells Mental Health, Fairclose Day Centre, Kintbury Volunteers, The MS Society and The Polio Group.

The final leg between Hungerford and Great Bedwyn proved to be hard graft with low water levels causing two other boats to be marooned.

Not so with the Rotary team who managed to get the boat ‘Hannah’ back to base.

This is an annual event in Newbury Rotary’s community calendar in which the club uses a specially adapted barge from the Kennet & Avon Canal Trust (KACT) fleet.

This event fully demonstrates our Rotary community focus. We get great joy from operating the barge week and seeing the pleasure that this gives to those members of our local community and charity groups that join us.”

‘Hannah’ is a specially-designed, purpose-built, wide-beam canal boat which can be used by disabled, disadvantaged or elderly people.

It has wide-access ramps for boarding at the stern deck and a electro hydraulic lift down into the boat.

The extra width of the boats provides excellent manoeuvrability for wheelchair users and they all have special built-in facilities.

Since the late 1980s, Rotary Newbury has used one of the Kennet KACT Bruce Branch canal boats to treat local charities to day trips as part of their community programme.

To date, in excess of 200 day trips have been provided enabling more than 2,000 charity members to enjoy the tranquility of canal barge travel and the Kennet Valley scenery.

Irene Waters, the current Newbury Rotary President, said: “This event fully demonstrates our Rotary community focus.

“We get great joy from operating the barge week and seeing the pleasure that this gives to those members of our local community and charity groups that join us.”