Words and photos - John Lymer

15 turned out on Saturday 6th April, all hoping it wouldn't be quite as windy as advertised. With gusts to 60mph that turned out to be very wrong! Most had a go; a short go (Graham, one of our beginner/intermediates managed a 30 meter stretch before throwing in the towel). My rib will be sore for a while after catapulting heavily onto the boom, Norbert damaged his board, our club banners were both damaged ... so business not quite as usual! But 5C warmer than it had any right to be did at least feel good ... and 3 new members signed up.

By Sunday people were expecting similar ... and they got it - 60mph gusts again! This time there were just 2 out. Mild again, but the rain arrived, it got colder and the wind dropped. Here are a few photos of Darren while it was howling (Mark came in as I arrived) ...

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Eighteen members attended the first event of 2024/5 - our Annual General Meeting on 24th March. The official business was covered in about 45 minutes. Graham Snowdon was thanked for his service and stood down from the committee, to now be replaced by Fred Freeman. Vix talked everyone through the accounts and budget for the coming year - a healthy financial position which has been helped again by income from ITV's filming of detective series 'Ridley'. Darren reported membership close to 100. John led discussion on a variety of issues such as events, coaching, and recent and planned improvements by the Club and our landlord United Utilities.

After a short break we got down to some maintenance work! Eight to ten members got a very useful amount of work done:

• Gary's solo effort cleared weeds from the entire paved area around 3 sides of the clubhouse using our new high powered weed burner. We've never managed to do as much with previous tools/methods even with 4 or more people, so we'll be better able to keep on top of this job in future
• 6 of the 12 timber bollards near the building were replaced and concreted into place (Fred removed the previous rotten/shabby/crooked bollards last week in readiness) - the remaining 6 look good for another few years
• The fence around the central car park 'island' was replaced. Previous posts were rotten and some rails broken. Fred had also prepared for this job by removing all the old timber. A small amount of similar work for the West car park will probably be done by some of our retired members in the next fortnight and we may cap all the posts and paint the new fence
• All padlocks were lubricated
• Some vegetation next to the access road was trimmed, but there's a bit more still to do
• We deliberately postponed pothole repairs to the road. Ridley have paid a contractor to repair the damage from their vehicles. When this is done in April we'll tackle any further work needed ... using the small trailer just bought for this purpose (genius idea from Andy Pepper) which will make it a much easier job than walking several hundred metres with a wheelbarrow!