OCTOBER NEWSLETTER 

Well, for the first time this year there is an event to report! Ellen and Tony Simons organised a reduced-numbers event at Breezy Knees Gardens.  Ellen reported “despite the weather forecast 11 cars turned up on 6th September and after a few showers the sun shone for us so we could look around the cars, catch up with friends, enjoy our picnic and look round the lovely gardens”. Looks to have been a very pleasant socially distanced event.

AGM and COMMITTEE

We have considered holding our AGM via Zoom,  by emailing our MailChimp list and/or by letter but we have decided to follow the example of the main club and postpone our AGM until November 2021.

As I said last month, Tony Simons, our Webmaster, and I intended to retire at our AGM. Despite personal approaches, advertising the vacancies in last month’s newsletter and by word of mouth, there have been no responses/nominations from anyone interested in taking on the vacant posts,

Officially, therefore we are without a Chairman or Webmaster. However, as the AGM is postponed until next year and we cannot be certain what club events we will be able to hold, Tony has offered to continue basic maintenance of the website and I have agreed to continue nominally as chairman until such time as we are able to hold a General Meeting. Kathie Rudd will continue as secretary and Kiz Mackisak as treasurer. Charlotte Dixon has offered to take over the newsletter from November, so I'm sorry to say, this will be my last.

The future of York Branch depends on help from the membership and we have been fortunate to attract many new and younger members to our events over the last year or two. We have also attracted more members to organise some of our events, but so far no one has felt able to help in the running of the club. I would urge you to give some thought to how you can help, in any capacity, but particularly the two vacant posts mentioned above.

EVENTS 2021

The committee have discussed a programme for 2021 and agreed that, due to the long term uncertainty surrounding the Covid 19 pandemic and the unavailability of key personnel through retirement and other commitments, we will be unable to organise Sledmere next year.

The general consensus was that we should concentrate on small, NECPWA members-only, events and informal social gatherings as allowed. In the absence of income from Sledmere it may be that we will need to introduce a small entry fee for branch events.

The organisers of the following events are currently planning to run them in 2021 and have made provisional arrangements:

22nd August     Scampston – Trevor and Kim Lund

28th August      Pocklington – Claire Partington

In addition, Thwaite Mills and Breezy Knees  are probable later in the year and the September Autumn Borders Tour, cancelled due to the pandemic in 2020, will go ahead as planned in 2021.

All take care and I hope to see you in the not too distant future.

Derek