Newbury & District

Latest News from Newbury & District

After the summer holidays, the club returned to meetings in early September. We had lost a few members just before the break for various reasons, but from nowhere, we find we have gained 8 completely new members and our membership now stands at 21! What a great bunch of members we have, all very friendly and very keen on joining in with everything. What is a real bonus for us is the support we are getting from the new parents too. They have come to meetings, offered to host meetings and even joined the advisory committee already. We are incredibly grateful to them all for the support.

We were lucky enough to have a visit to Plantation Farm, Wolverton which is a racehorse breeding and training facility hosted by Richard Bandy.

Our AGM in October was a great evening of club reports and prize giving. It is always lovely to be able to share our successes with our members, their families, our vice presidents and supporters.

Our members had an evening of First aid training with M&M Medical where they were taken through resuscitation, recovery position, basic bandaging and also making a stretcher. These important skills were well delivered and everyone took part. Our smallest member was even able to put an adult in the recovery position without any effort at all.

Members were then presented with a certificate at the end of the evening.

No October would be complete without an evening of pumpkin carving and as usual our members came up trumps with some great carving. We were joined this year by Lorna Matejicek who brought along some Halloween things to decoupage. What fun that was!     

Keeping to the crafty theme, we started Christmas early in November where we visited Blue Beetle Ceramics studio in Thatcham, and members painted some Christmas items. The results were great, what an arty bunch we have.

Our annual trip to Willis Farm for Christmas Wreath making was, as usual, a great start to Christmas. In a barn, with soup, hot chocolate, cakes, marshmallows on sticks over the fire, and, of course, lots of wreaths. Members raised good money for our charity Newbury Cancer Care Trust.

We started the new year off in January with ice-skating at the new training centre in Thatcham. We had sole use of the rink great fun and great value for money, we will be sure to visit again!

A club quiz and games evening followed. Marshmallow towers and a beetle drive are always a good bit of fun. It will be great to be able to present our cup for the quiz at the AGM this year, as we haven’t done a quiz in a while.

A visit to Donnington Grove Vets, hosted by Henry O’Neill was fascinating. It was interesting to see how big the equipment has to be for dealing with equine.

By far the most interesting and educational visit we probably ever have had, was a visit to Thatcham Research in February half term. It was fascinating to see and hear all about all the testing they do for car insurers and manufacturers to make sure that we are all driving around in safe cars. Did you know that for every crash test they do, the manufacturer delivers 20 cars, of which 4 are picked at random. This is to ensure no one can meddle with the results.

Our last meeting was a club evening discussing show classes and also had fun making and flipping pancakes. Always a favourite.

Obviously, we are all now on a break until the country has recovered from the current crisis. We wish all our members and families, friends and supporters all the very best. Stay safe and most importantly stay at home. We can beat this!

Emma Collins ( Newbury YFC Club Leader)