Summer Garden Party

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.

August Outing 2023 – Meet the Llamas

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. Richard clearly loves every single llama, and they love him too! Richard and Jason tune in to the different personalities, likes and dislikes of each individual llama.

We had the opportunity to feed them with long branches of their favourite leaves in the main paddocks, although some had more interest in the wing mirrors on the farm tractor! We all had the opportunity to take a llama on a short walk around the area before leaving for our evening meal. Some more members joined us at the Hanging Gate in Weaverham where we enjoyed a lovely sociable evening.

CFWI Literary Lunch

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 down! After an enjoyable lunch it was good to socialise with WI members from local groups and others from across the county.

July subgroup meetings

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

July 2023 Main Meeting – Living in Styal

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 initiatives at Styal – the ‘fine dining’ restaurant Clink and the Recycling Lives project. Both of these provided real work experience and responsibilities and have extremely good outcomes in helping prisoners into work as they leave the prison. He was also clearly very proud of the entries from the prison gardening team which have won medals at the Cheshire Show on a regular basis.

After refreshments Melanie and Susan updated us on the many events and competitions planned over the next month or so.