After our August break, it was good to be back enjoying our sub-group meetings, though the Walking group took its break during September rather than August. The Book Club had a complete change and discussed poetry and individual’s favourite poems. The Scrabble group enjoyed a game and a chat and the Craft group met in Susan’s garage rather than the Village Hall as they were working on their November poppy display, which involved rather a lot of red paint! Ann C showed the Art Group how to use the ‘grid’ method to reproduce a picture. Baking Beauties took a break…

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The speaker at our September meeting was Stephen Shakeshaft – a Blue Badge guide to Chester. He gave us a very informative talk about the city – particularly interesting as Whitley WI had a visit to Chester for our May outing this year. Many of us know about the well published features of our local historic city, but Stephen gave us an insight into some of the lesser known areas. From rare ‘sedan porches’, 700 year old architectural features on the Cathedral grounds, and the hidden half of the largest Roman amphitheatre in Britain, he opened our eyes to the…

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20 members gathered for our summer garden party – many thanks to Ann Cookson for her hospitality. The weather was kind to us and we had a lovely sociable afternoon, with a delicious ‘shared table’ buffet. Thanks to members for donations of raffle prizes, the money raised from this went to cancer charities.

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Following our tradition the August meeting was replaced by an evening outing. Melanie had organised a trip to ‘Meet the llamas’ at Hillview Farm in Bradley. The weather was kind to us in this unpredictable summer and about 20 members wandered across to the fairly dry paddocks where we had a lovely warm welcome from Richard and his assistant Jason. Richard told us about how his ‘hobby’ began and gave us lots of fascinating information about his herd and how he links in to fellow llama breeders in America and enters his best llamas in virtual shows around the world.…

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8 of our members attended the annual Literary Lunch at Hartford Golf club. The whole event, for over 160 ladies, had been masterminded by our own Pat Sharp and it was a great success. Local author Sally-Anne Martyn shared her development as an author and her journey into the world of publishing. With some humour Sally-Anne confessed that she enjoys developing the dark side of any story and her first published novel, ‘The Clinic’, is a dark psychological thriller. One of our members read this book over a couple of days just after the event– she just couldn’t put it…

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The following is a brief summary, you can get detailed information about the different activities by looking on the subgroup pages. Click the coloured link to take you to the page Our Walking group enjoyed a walk around Runcorn Hill, followed by a very social stop at Runcorn Park cafe The Baking Beauties enjoyed delicious ‘Summer Fruit’ bakes The Book Group discussed Fools and Mortals’ by Bernard Cornwell  The Art, Craft and Scrabble groups are taking a break until September

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The topic for our July meeting was’ Living in Styal’ and the speaker was Ed Tarry, Community Engagement officer for Styal Women’s Prison. He has won awards for the work he does in ‘Building Bridges, Changing Lives’. Ed started by talking about the prison, its population, and the activities offered. He explained the challenges presented by significant numbers of women who have multiple problems including mental health and drug issues, abusive backgrounds and low self esteem. Ed’s job is to oversee some of the prisoner’s activities specifically designed to build skills and self confidence. Ed talked about about 2 significant…

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We had planned to encourage more Whitley members to enter classes in the 2023 Show and were certainly not disappointed. We had the most entries for many years in the various WI competitions and also several members volunteered to help in the WI marquee with refreshments and stewarding. Our Craft group had been busy preparing a display in the Combined Craft competition with a ‘Once upon a Time’ theme. Our ‘Dick Whittington’ exhibit, with beautiful quilting, knitting and felting won 2nd prize. Many thanks to Annette, Melanie, Jackie and the team for all their hard work We also had a…

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The following is a brief summary, you can get detailed information about the different activities by looking on the subgroup page. Lots of our walkers joined a walk around Anderton Nature Park on a glorious June day, enjoying a picnic along the way. For more information and pictures have a look on the Walking subgroup page Craft group concentrated on entries for the Cheshire Show – have a look on the Home page to see how we got on! The Baking Beauties topic was ‘Summer Fruit Baking’, lots of mouthwatering bakes were enjoyed. The Book Group had a lively discussion…

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We had a lovely ‘flower festival’ main meeting in June. Our members were asked to bring along a vase of flowers from their garden, displayed in a jam-jar or similar. What a wonderful ‘free’ display of flowers we had, many thanks to everybody for their contributions. They were used as table centres during the evening, and formed the competition which was won by our newest member Ann Toll. Our speaker for the evening was Melanie Farrow who started to develop ‘Smelanie’s Flowers’ during the Covid Lockdown. She entertained us with pictures showing the journey from a barren field to 20…

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