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  Potty Pottery Painting

  1st May 2026
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  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

  20th April 2026

  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...

  Movie

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  Rowing across the Atlantic

  20th April 2026

  

  

  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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