Hello everyone
Well – it’s been a challenging weekend! I am reliably informed that this is the first time in the club’s history that we have had to cancel the Mince Pie Ride, but in the end there was no doubt that it had to be done – it was a rare and severe weather event and it was clear that pretty much the whole of Oxfordshire came to a standstill. The Committee put in lots of hard work in the course of our journey from ‘normal business’ to Hanney contingency plan to final cancellation. Particular thanks to Steve S for quick work on getting the Hanney Hall on board and also to Steve B for quick and good communications with all the other clubs.
After some Committee discussion, here are a few things to note following on from yesterday:
– we have thought about trying to re-run the whole event next weekend. However, we have decided against this as we will not be able to get the other clubs involved at such late notice and we don’t want to upset our own programme with two good rides already scheduled for next weekend. We have concluded that the moment has passed!
– thanks to your generous donations, we now have approx 200 mince pies stacked up. As they are mostly sealed in six-packs, we are contacting the Ray Collins Charitable Trust to see if they can use these as part of their good work with local elderly and vulnerable people. If not, I have contacts at the Oxford Night Shelter so one way or another we will make sure these go to a good cause.
– we also have quite a few litres of Carin’s extremely fine home made mulled wine (trust me – I’ve tried it!). As a way of saying thanks to our members for the kind donations of raw materials in the first place, we have decanted this back into 12 of the original wine bottles (screw tops come in useful here) and we will leave these in our porch from tomorrow onwards to be taken as wanted (I suggest only one bottle per family though).
– Steve and Lorna have scheduled the tea stop on Saturday’s 1* ride at their house and so we will set aside some of the goodies for that as well.
– clearly we are lacking on the cash donations side, although the new PayPal initiative has helped here as we already have £80 donated there by members plus another £51 kindly raised by Corallian CC and sent over. If anyone would still like to make a donation to Whizz Kidz, you can transfer money within PayPal via my email: john@tranters.net or electronic transfer to the club bank account: 20-90-91 23556050. Please mark your transactions “Whizz Kidz” and we will make sure this gets to them. This is being communicated to the other clubs who would normally have joined us as well. We will close this ‘appeal’ next Sunday and send what we have to Whizz Kidz. Here is a link to their website to give you an insight into the great work they do: www.whizz-kidz.org.uk.
And – hopefully sometime this week the snow will melt and we’ll all be back on our bikes again!
Best regards
John
John Tranter
Chairman – Cycling UK Wantage
john@tranters.net
07836 238350
