At the end of the meal after last week’s walk on 27th
June, I announced my intention to retire as organiser of the walking
group. When I started the group 12 years ago it comprised about 12
friends and almost as many dogs. With no promotion or advertisement
whatever, the group grew and grew until there were over 60 walking on a
regular basis. The group was multinational almost from the beginning
when a third of our number were French. Other regular walkers hailed
from Belgium, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland, and in
recent years we were joined by walkers from Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, and the USA. This wonderful mix of people from very
diverse backgrounds produced a very stimulating and useful social
network and provided a great many acquaintances, good friends and
memorable social occasions. All of which results in some ambivalence on
my part about retiring. However, for the past couple of years I have
been unable to participate fully in either walks or meals and have felt
increasingly peripheral to the group therefore it seems to me to be the
right time to call a halt.
I
would like to thank David for his constant support over the years,
especially the last few, where he has led most of the walks regardless
of the weather and the state of his knees when I have been unable to do
so. Thanks must also go to Karen Sweeting who since the beginning has
provided essential IT support, collating lists of walkers and their
contact details and sending out information about forthcoming walks. The
blog she produced for many years which chronicled walks and social
events was greatly appreciated by everyone and has been much missed in
recent years. I would like to thank also all those people who have led
walks over the years and enabled us to discover and enjoy a wide variety
of different landscapes over a very wide area. I also wish to thank the
many people who generously opened their homes and gardens and offered
hospitality to walkers en masse providing many wonderful memories along
with food and drink. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who walked
with us over the past 12 years for your support, company and
friendship.
I
will be more than happy to provide whatever help I can to anyone
wishing to take on the task of organising walks and I hope to arrange
regular ‘reunion’ lunches so that people can keep in touch, and also the
annual Christmas dinner.
Helen 1st July 2018
Well done Helen for all your hard work.
If anyone wishes to take over the BLOG as it stands, please get in touch with myself, karensweeting82@gmail.com or James@rysuk.com
We can add your name as ADMIN.
We will no longer run the BLOG.
Thank you all for your help over the years, and we miss you all now we live back in UK
Karen
