Bradfield & District

Latest News from Bradfield & District

As always, we have enjoyed a very busy start to the New Year, January saw Bradfield putting their public speaking skills to the test. We entered almost all of the competitions, Reading, Speaking, Call My Bluff, Debating, Junior Member of the Year and Situations Vacant.  Our results were fantastic, and Bradfield had some very strong entries ready to represent Berkshire at the South East Area Spring Comps Weekend in February.

We had lots of fun meetings in January, these included indoor football, in preparation for Berkshire’s 5-a-side football at St.Bartholomew’s school. We had 2 junior teams and a senior team. We were successful in the juniors with Bradfield Gold winning against Shefford. Bradfield enjoyed an evening at the new Ice-Skating Rink at Thatcham, some members showed off their skating ability while others clung onto the sides! It was a great evening and we can’t wait to go back.

‘Field to Fork’ cookery night was a hit with all our members, they cooked and ate a meal with locally sourced pheasants and duck and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Spring Comps weekend, held in Thame, was soon upon us and what success we had! Our members who were competing did themselves and Bradfield proud.

The Reading, Speaking, Call My Bluff and Debating teams all won and are going through to the National Finals in July. Congratulations to all Berkshire members who competed, it was a great day watching you all work as a team and support each other. Unfortunately, the sports events that were planned to be held on the Sunday were postponed due to the arrival of Storm Ciara.

We made use of Bradfield Village Hall and had a couple of games of Kwik Cricket, some members proved very skilled with a cricket bat as well as being able to dodge the ball when needed! It was a good relaxed meeting following on from the weekend’s competitions.

Thanks to Chris Webber we had a very informative and educational evening learning all about ‘The Farming Year’ and what happens on the arable farm, linking in with our Field to Fork meeting we had a few weeks earlier. At the end of the meeting we all took part in the #Februdairy Milk-boat Race Challenge. This was a challenge that started trending on social media and we wanted to take part and show our solidarity for the British Dairy Industry especially after the very highly publicised Veganuary. A great effort by club members, downing pints of milk proved to be one of our strong points! If you haven’t already seen the video, you can find it on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

The following week was Pancake making! Our members had lots of fun flipping pancakes and seeing how much chocolate and cream they could put on them. All the previous years of pancake making have paid dividends as not one pancake landed on the floor!

Last week Gordon ran a car and bike maintenance meeting, this was very interesting, our younger members learnt how to inflate a bike tyre as well as changing the wheel on a car. Something that will definitely come in handy at some point!

Hannah Walters (Bradfield YFC Chairman)