Committee meeting synopsis
Meeting date: 8 May, 2017
Another month and more activity.
Our Committee meeting in May reviewed our two April events. The
'Simnel Cake Walk' on Saturday 15 April had
gone well, and generated a small, but much needed surplus for our funds.
Aside: We need to find at least £200
every year just to stay in business - £100 for our membership of Walkers are
Welcome and £80 for insurance for walks and any other events. That’s before we
consider any other running costs.
The arrangements for crossing the A47 were well received, with a number of
comments from people who said they had felt ‘taken care of’; and we were pleased
to have had a Plan B for those who did not want to make the crossing and were
led back by an alternative route. One point which did emerge was that we needed
to take longer at those times when allowing our slower walkers to catch up, so
that they too had the benefit of a breather before setting off again. We
confirmed very clearly that we wanted to give a welcome to all walkers,
regardless of the pace at which they walked.
We were also delighted that our Easter Monday
Walk in Wonderland event had also been
well received and ran smoothly. We have been very aware of wanting to provide a
Welcome to Walkers of all ages, and so to do something which we hoped would
engage young people and their families. We are agreed that we should arrange
another event in the future, aimed at the same group.
Arrangements for our next walk - 29 May - were finalised.
As all 3000 sets of the Dereham Walks guides - produced before Dereham Walkers
are Welcome was formed, but whose promotion we had taken over - had now been
distributed, we took forward our plans to reprint and considerably extend the
pack. We intend to have a total of 15 walks, all starting and/or ending in
Dereham, and including a small number using either the Mid-Norfolk Railway or a
Konect bus service to travel out of town, for a walk back. The work still to be
done is in the checking of the walks, preparing the text and maps, and securing
grant funding for printing and packing (some £2000 in all).
There were more issues discussed - but these will be reported on when they are a
bit further developed - come to our Annual General Meeting to hear more! Plans
for this were also finalised, including having to change the date to 15 June as
the initial date of 8 June was no longer possible since the chosen venue was
needed as a polling station on that day.