Brue Valley Rotary have worked together with Morrisons in Wincanton to raise £551.12 for BBC Children In Need.
In previous years members of the Rotary Club of Brue Valley dressed up in fancy dress and collected for BBC Children in Need in pubs and restaurants in our area.
We could obviously could not do that this year and we had to think of another way.
We put our thinking caps on and came up with the idea of contacting Morrisons in Wincanton.
They could not have been more helpful.
If we prepared some suitable collection buckets they would place them on their tills, count the donations and transfer them to BBC Children In Need.
Many thanks to the staff at Morrisons in Wincanton as well to all those who placed a donation in the buckets.
On the 1st December we marked our 10th Anniversary of becoming a Rotary Club. We had planned a big party for the 28th November but that has been postponed because of coronavirus. Nevertheless, we marked the occasion via Zoom and President Andrew D declared
“Over the ten years we have been a Rotary club, we have grown from a band of 20 members to 36 (soon to be 37), including two Paul Harris fellows and two honorary members.
We have donated over £80,000 to local and international causes, as well as our part in raising £250k through the Classics and Supercar Show.
We have helped numerous local charities and causes as well as projects in Bulgaria, Zambia, Zanzibar and India. We have travelled to Zambia and India, not least to help in the National Immunisation Day there to give polio vaccinations to 172 million children in one day! We have also received a Rotary visit from Turkey.
We like to think we are famous for our bacon baps and we are widely regarded as a friendly, lively and informal club that nevertheless gets things done, even if the banter is a little much at times. I am proud of the fact that over a third of our members are ladies in what used to be an exclusively male organisation and also that we have seven couples as members.
So, I think our first ten years have been a great success and we have built a strong foundation for the next ten. Let’s raise our glasses to Brue Valley Rotary Club.”
A toast was duly drunk and we sang “Happy Birthday” to celebrate. We all look forward to the real party, which has been re-scheduled for June 2021, when we hope to be able to hold such events again.
Andrew D and his partner Sandra donned high viz, gloves, litter picker etc. and tackled a mile of quiet country lane that is a favourite of some young people who seem to like leaving their litter behind. After an hour or so, there were two bags full of rubbish and the lane was much cleaner. We will return to do another stretch of this lane in due course!
We are lucky to be living in a semi-rural area, and as such our towns, villages and hamlets are generally kept in a reasonably tidy way by the communities.
However, we felt that it would be a good way to get out and about with fellow club members for a socially distanced task.
Several small groups of 2’s & 4’s have taken their litter pickers, black bags, gloves, and hi-viz vests out into the streets of Bruton, Castle Cary, Wincanton and surrounding villages. It wasn’t long before the usual bits of offending materials were being retrieved.
We were also able to enjoy some nice exchanges with local members of the community, increasing some awareness of our Rotary club along the way.
Thanks to all our participating club members. More photos below.
Three men went to pick, Went to pick some litter, Three men two metres apart, Went to pick some litter.
[OK, so it was really three men and a women]
On a gloriously sunny autumnal afternoon (Sunday, 11 October), Graham, Roger and Janet Lowe and Andrew M assembled in the Wincanton Sports Fields’ car park ready for a litter picking circuit of Wincanton.
An hour and half later six bin bags of litter had been collected. Included in our finds were a complete change of clothes right down to underwear – we didn’t find the shivering owner!
Whilst is was hard work and perhaps not the most fun one can have on a Sunday afternoon, all agreed it was wonderful to see fellow Rotarians in the flesh (so to speak – they weren’t our clothes) after so long apart.
Andrew Davies the President of Brue Valley Rotary Club and humble Rotation Chris Ringrow spent a couple of very pleasant socially distanced hours helping to clear the paths of vegetation overhanging the paths.
The areas cleared by Andrew and Chris are shown in orange on the map below.
After two hours of weeding and pruning Andrew and Chris retired to Chris’s garden for a well deserved beer.
