Feb 2025 – Birthday Afternoon Tea

We welcomed 30 of our members to an Afternoon Tea to celebrate Whitley WI’s 87th birthday. The committee had been busy preparing sandwiches, savoury snacks and nibbles, scones and cakes – probably the best Afternoon Tea in the area!


We always have a really special cake, made by one of our members. This year’s cake, beautifully decorated with sunflowers, was again made by Ann O’B and Helen C cut the cake for us. Helen has made a huge contribution to Whitley WI, not to mention Cheshire and National, over the years. Members had enjoyed completing a table quiz during the afternoon – 20 questions with clues to our favourite sweets and chocolates – great fun and a close finish. We concluded the event by all joining in with singing ‘The Gardener’s Hymn’ organised by Annette.

A very happy 87th Birthday Party

Feb 2025 – subgroups

Book club

We had a lively discussion on The Choice by SJ Ford. Was Jane Bell a murderer or a heroine when she deliberately ran over a man who she strongly suspected was going to kill many children in the local school her children attended.

Walking Group – Our first walk of this year was along the Whitegate Way – 8 of us walked towards Cuddington. The weather was cold but dry which we were very pleased about.

The Way was very busy with walkers, dog walkers, cyclists and one lady on a horse – it seems very popular for horses when you see what they have left on the pathway. We walked up to the Bridge with the A49 and then retraced our steps. It looks as if a considerable amount had been done to tidy the bushes and trees along the way and a water course was alongside the path. We walked for about 1hr 45min and finished with a well earned bite to eat at the Station Cafe which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Craft Group

The craft group had a busy stitching and gluing afternoon adorning our tree with green hearts to show the love. This is the usual annual February celebration of everything we care about and want to protect from the worst impacts of the climate crisis. We shall be showing our green heart tree at the main meeting in March with everyone’s hearts attached. If you have a heart saved from earlier years, why not bring it along and add it to our tree.

Art Group

Art Group’s theme this month was ‘Mixing colours’, led by Joan. She gave us a great overview of colours for different seasons and preparing the background of our pictures. She also brought along lots of pictures as ideas for our paintings. We then spent the session on our own piece of work, some lovely landscapes. Thanks to Joan for all the preparation work, an enjoyable and informative session. Click here to see more of our work

Baking Beauties

With St David’s Day approaching a
taste of Wales was the theme for bakers this month. A mix of traditional and experimental recipes were produced for tasting and discussion. There were savoury and sweet Welsh cakes, Bara brith and Welsh cheese inspired quiche and biscuits. A Teisen lap cake – known as ‘cake on a plate’ finished off the selection We were also treated to a cup of Welsh tea.

Feb 2025 – Main Meeting

It was good to see everyone again after having to meet on Zoom in January due to the extreme weather. We had the best turnout in a long time – 40 members attended and Susan opened the meeting for the first time as our President.
Our speaker was Dominga Devitt who reminded us of lots of vintage adverts, some going back to the 1950s. Lots of memories for many of us, including some jingles from adverts that we hadn’t heard for many years. Janet gave the vote of thanks.
We had a busy meeting, with lots of information for members about the many activities planned by Whitley and Cheshire. After the refreshment break we had a vote on the resolutions. We had 39 votes cast, and the results were
1 Let’s talk about incontinence – 15 2 Bystanders can be lifesavers – 12
3 Join the repair revolution – 1 4 Eliminate landfill of medication packaging – 11

The results of our vote will be reported to Cheshire.

Pat outlined our financial position and advised members that the subs for 2025 would be £51, payable by end of March 2025.
The competition was for ‘A Vintage Branded Food Tin’, won by Jean. Our winner for 2024 was Anne Toll.
Our next meeting will be on 6th March when our speaker will be Kim Smith from Radio Northwich with a theme of ‘Music is my first love’. The competition is ‘A favourite line from a song’ – just write your favourite on a piece of card/paper and put on the Competition table..

Jan 2025 Subgroup meetings

Book Club and Walking Group didn’t plan January meetings, just as well given the weather at the beginning of the month!.

Craft Group met to plan activities for the coming year – thanks to Annette for all the thought that she had put into this. Art Group painted landscapes and Baking Beauties made Gypsy Creams

Click on the blue links for more information and pictures of any of these groups

Our Darts group are through to the final of the Cheshire Darts competion – well done to them.

Jan 2025 – Main meeting by Zoom

Our meeting in the Village Hall had to be cancelled because of the extreme weather conditions but we did hold a Zoom meeting, arranged at short notice, to give members the opportunity for a catch up. Many had not been able to safely venture out for the last week.

Susan welcomed us to her first meeting as President and members were reminded of various events planned for the coming month or so, including a Whitley discussion of the 2025 resolutions on 16th Jan and Afternoon Tea on 18th Feb to celebrate our 87th birthday as a WI.

Jean give us a brief tour of the website, showing how to find the events planned for the next month or so, pictures of all our recent activities, and details of what the subgroups have been up to. She then shared pictures of the many Christmas activities that members had enjoyed during December.

We look forward to meeting up in person at our February 6th Main meeting to be reminded about Vintage Adverts