We hold an open members' meeting very month except for May, August and December. This is on the 3rd Monday of the month in the Jubilee Hall, Wellow Road, Ollerton. Doors open at 12.30pm when people can meet together and find out what is going on from group leaders and a display of forthcoming events. After refreshments we welcome a guest speaker presenting a matter of interest to u3a members. March's meeting is an open meeting for members and non members where our group leaders showcase our groups and is also our annual subscription day. May's meeting is our Annual General Meeting and in August members enjoy an indoor picnic. December is our Christmas party and entertainment.
Please see the link below for details of the programme for our monthly members' meetings. More information on the speakers is below. Also visit our Groups page for the programme of activities and interest groups which are of open to all members.
Please note that Dukeries u3a members will have priority for events, and guests will be invited once members have had a chance to book.
Our programme of social events and trips for 2025 is under way and events and trips are planned for 2026.. Our guest speakers are already lined up for 2026. Please see below for more details.
For the U3A Christmas Party 2025, Sue North made this beautiful table decoration in memory of Wendy.
It was raffled off and made another £123 for the John Eastwood Hospice. 😊
Many thanks to all who bought a raffle ticket.
A message from Pam Hardwick our charity coordinator
Mmmmm a good party and it was great to see so many new faces, I hope you were entertained well and enjoyed yourselves.
The sale of bingo and sticky thirteen games came to £125 and the generosity of the winners in donating back their winnings swelled the proceeds to £145.
A member donated £5 and others donated 23p,( that was a funny story which has been repeated much to the amusement of the listeners)
My lovely group of gardeners donated £17 this month and it all added up to £167.23 which I have just transferred to our chosen charity.
So we have smashed our hopeful target of £9,000 👏👏 and have up to today raised £9,150.00.
My thanks go to you all for being so generous in supporting this life saving service and my hopes are that you will not need them to rescue you at any time in the future.
So I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year.
See you soon
Pam Hardwick
Charity coordinator.
Useful Links
Social Events and Trips
Monthly Programme 2026
Monthly Programme 2025
Forthcoming events
Past Events
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Potty Pottery Painting
What a lovely evening at the Sherwood Forest Arts and Crafts Centre organised by our amazing Events team. The first course was cake, fruit cream and drinks including Prosecco followed by browsing in the shop to choose a pot to paint, we then had detailed instructions from Melissa and Teresa who were on hand to help where needed.
Everyone settled down to a concentrate for a couple of hours, there was lots of banter and a certain section were known as the special needs corner LOL. There were lots of different styles, some freestyle, some detailed and some more abstract but all beautiful designs.
The pots were left to be fired and will be collected in about a week when everyone can see the results and decide where to put them in their home, It's a brilliant way to spend an evening.
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Easter Bonnet parade and winners
Here are a few pictures from the Easter Bonnet parade at the Monthly Meeting on 20th April 2026 at Jubilee Hall
Click the button for a short video...
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Rowing across the Atlantic
George Nelson (great name for a rower) and his brother-in-law Russell Davis who is a long distance lorry driver decided to row across the Atlantic to raise money for dementia after an illness with George's mum. After some practice runs in the UK they rowed from Lagos in Portugal to Antigua via Gran canaria, which was 3542 miles in 96 days 23 hours 14 minutes and 43 seconds the boat was called the Blu Banana and along the way they to contend with merchant ships, they had storms, they thought about life and noise, the waves were up to 8 metres high. They used a parachute anchor to keep them steady when they had to and they had floods in the cabin that capsized them at one point. They had to replace the solar panel and a motor, they had no water no navigation until it was fixed. They would take it in turns to row with two to three hours on to three hours off doing about 50 miles a week. Thier rations started at 5,000 calories per day but as they run short of food this was reduced to 2,000 calories which meant they lost around three stone each.
After one storm the rope was tangled under the boat so George had to dive under to untangle it and also sometimes dive under to remove the Barnacles clinging to the boat.
Once the rudder was at 180 degrees the wrong way so they couldn't steer so George had to dive again to fix it.They saw some beautiful sunsets and sunrises, dolphins, minky whales and as they caught some fish to eat Russell revealed he didn't like fish!
They once encountered a hammerhead shark with black eyes and decided it was wasn't really safe to go swimming anymore, they had a frigate bird befriend them at one point which rested on George's oar and they suffered skin damage due to the sun and weather.
A friendly lone ship tried to help them but they had to refuse otherwise they would have been considered as 'supported' which would have ruined their record
They did have an emergency tracker on board which emitted a sound or a signal every four hours and once it was activated accidentally and sent out a distress call eventually they turned that off.
They had a tot of whiskey every 500 miles or so and they did raid their chocolate stash with about 100 miles to go
Eventually they could finally shout 'land ahoy' and their wives were there to greet them in Antigua which was very emotional to say the least and they received a fantastic greeting from all the other boats in the marina.
As they get off the realised that they had suffered a lot of muscle atrophy in their legs and could hardly walk but they had some rum with chips and ketchup to celebrate.
They had 25,000 Facebook followers and raised £55,000 in aid of for the dementia charity!George has kindly donated his speaker fee to the fund that Mary has in memory of her husband, Brian's Brain based at Kings Mill hospital
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