Committee meeting synopsis

Meeting date: 7 July, 2018

Another month, another committee meeting (although we are skipping August).

Review

Last month, we had our Annual Public Meeting, following on from the walk to Etling Green. Some 15 people joined us as we reviewed last year’s activity and discussed plans for 2018 and onward. The minutes (pdf) of this meeting are available. The meeting saw no need to change the Constitution, which the committee has now confirmed. More importantly, Jenny Atterwell offered to join the committee, an offer we were delighted to accept; Jenny has now attended her first meeting with us.

Discussion

The work of Catherine and Sue in getting walks packs stocked, and WaW logos displayed, throughout the town, continues. We have 27 businesses displaying a logo, and 29 with walks packs: some 400 packs had been distributed (not including the library, which has had several hundred). We have now run out of logos, so are purchasing another batch. Happily, our funds have had a couple of boosts, allowing us to afford this.

First, Wymondham U3A visited the town in June for a walk round some of our main sites of interest. We were able to use Dorothy’s work in preparation for our own town walk (see below) to show our visitors around - for which they made us a £32 donation. On top of this, Sue had prepared another quiz (the first one was in 2016) and had already sold quite a quantity, so was able to bank a further £50.

In a different venture for us, we will run a 'Town History walk' which we hope might ultimately result in joint work with Dereham Antiquarian Society and/or the production of some self guided town walk booklets on different subjects. The committee reviewed the current booklet entitled "A Glimpse of Dereham's History".

Future walks

All is in place for the town history walk on 29 July. For now, bookings are still open for this walk: we are limiting numbers to ensure this is manageable, but if more want to come than we can accommodate, we will keep a reserve list with the possibility of a repeat event if there is demand.

After this, the next walk will be 27 August (Bank Holiday Monday), and will use the routes to the east of the town which are currently being claimed as Restricted Byways. The claims were put in by Dereham Town Council, supported by The Ramblers and ourselves. They have gone through the necessary legal processes, the final stage of which will start after 13 July, which is the closing date for anyone to object to the proposals to amend the original order to increase the widths of some of the routes. Once the Inspector has resolved any representations, the order will be confirmed and it will be for Norfolk County Council to take the routes into its public rights of way network with associated signage and maintenance. We don’t need to wait for this, as the routes have been used regularly for many years without challenge. Keep an eye on the Current Events section at the end of July. We are hoping that this walk will start and end at Dereham Windmill, with the usual refreshments.

Looking further ahead, we are also planning a repeat for our ‘garden party’ walk on 30 September and an additional walk on 22 October (timed to fit into the Norfolk County Council Cycling and Walking Festival period); this latter will have longer and shorter options, but both will start and end at Gressenhall Museum (and also with the usual refreshments, of course).

As things stand, that will be the last until 2019, which we will start as usual on New Year’s Day, 1 January.