Committee meeting synopsis

Meeting date: 8 May, 2017

Another month and more activity.

Our Committee meeting in May reviewed our two April events. The 'Simnel Cake Walk' on Saturday 15 April had gone well, and generated a small, but much needed surplus for our funds.

Aside: We need to find at least £200 every year just to stay in business - £100 for our membership of Walkers are Welcome and £80 for insurance for walks and any other events. That’s before we consider any other running costs.

The arrangements for crossing the A47 were well received, with a number of comments from people who said they had felt ‘taken care of’; and we were pleased to have had a Plan B for those who did not want to make the crossing and were led back by an alternative route. One point which did emerge was that we needed to take longer at those times when allowing our slower walkers to catch up, so that they too had the benefit of a breather before setting off again. We confirmed very clearly that we wanted to give a welcome to all walkers, regardless of the pace at which they walked.

We were also delighted that our Easter Monday Walk in Wonderland event had also been well received and ran smoothly. We have been very aware of wanting to provide a Welcome to Walkers of all ages, and so to do something which we hoped would engage young people and their families. We are agreed that we should arrange another event in the future, aimed at the same group.

Arrangements for our next walk - 29 May - were finalised.

As all 3000 sets of the Dereham Walks guides - produced before Dereham Walkers are Welcome was formed, but whose promotion we had taken over - had now been distributed, we took forward our plans to reprint and considerably extend the pack. We intend to have a total of 15 walks, all starting and/or ending in Dereham, and including a small number using either the Mid-Norfolk Railway or a Konect bus service to travel out of town, for a walk back. The work still to be done is in the checking of the walks, preparing the text and maps, and securing grant funding for printing and packing (some £2000 in all).

There were more issues discussed - but these will be reported on when they are a bit further developed - come to our Annual General Meeting to hear more! Plans for this were also finalised, including having to change the date to 15 June as the initial date of 8 June was no longer possible since the chosen venue was needed as a polling station on that day.