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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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  Irish Night April 2026

  21st March 2026

  The 30 or so members who came to the Irish themed social on Saturday night made a real effort to dress the part. With costumes, many hats and even one or two beards, it was a very colourful evening. See photos.…
  Leslye, as usual, with her team of willing helpers, pulled out all the stops to make it a fun night. The entertainment just kept going all evening, a card game followed by Bingo, a Beetle drive, competitions for the best costumes, a professional photographer with lots of props, a selection of Irish jokes, a Raffle which raised a hundred pounds and the grand finally, a paper aeroplane competition to see who could make, decorate and fly their plane the furthest. Altogether a very enjoyable night, so a big thankyou to the events team for yet another successful social evening. John Harris

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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