LODDON VALLEY RAMBLERS

Transcription

1 LODDON VALLEY RAMBLERS Minutes of Annual General Meeting held on 19th November 2014 at Barkham Village Hall starting at 7.30pm. 1 APOLOGIES The meeting was attended by 45 people. There were no apologies for absence received. 2 MINUTES OF MEETING (i) The minutes of the last AGM held on 20th November 2013 were adopted. Proposed by Karen Durie. Seconded by Silvia Sussmann. The meeting approved the minutes. ii) 3 REPORTS Chairman There were no matters arising. Thanks to all of you for coming and a special thank you to Judith Clark for organising this evening. So what has been happening over the past year? Activities We have continued to provide a full programme of both long and short walks on Sundays, a short walk every Thursday and, twice a month, long walks on Tuesdays. However, due to the recent loss of some of our experienced leaders, there are not enough leaders to offer a short walk every Sunday without having to ask some of our leaders to lead more than one walk in each programme. We are therefore seeking new walk leaders, so if you might be interested in leading short walks, please contact David Moffett. Since the last AGM the Coach Walks have continued to be very successful. We have had full coaches for the trip to Bath last December, the trip to the New Forest and Lymington in July and the trip to Stratford upon Avon with a walk along Shakespeare s Way at the end of August and the forthcoming trip to Winchester on Sunday 7th December with the chance to visit the Christmas Market is also full. The Berkshire Area is continuing to offer a subsidised St John`s Ambulance Essential First Aid Course that will still only cost 10. The next First Aid course for Ramblers will be an evening course (6.30pm to 9.30pm) on Monday 27th April 2015 at the Theale St John`s Ambulance Centre (Deadmans Lane, Theale, RG7 5FB), so if anyone is interested in learning some First Aid, please come and see me after the meeting. Graham Smith and members of his Wokingham Way subcommittee have re-walked the entire Wokingham Way route to check and repair signage. Working parties have cut back over grown vegetation and installed two new metal gates. Holidays This year we have again had two very successful walking weekends. In April, there was the weekend staying in Swanage and in October a weekend staying near Selworthy on Exmoor organised by Pat Perridge. Thanks to Lynda Ledger there has also been a holiday in France walking the Tour de Mont- Blanc in August/September and a trip to Gran Canaria in November. Next year there will be: A walking weekend 24th to 27th April based in Hope Cove, near Salcombe, South Devon. This weekend, organised by Lynda and John Ledger, is now fully booked. Minutes of Loddon Valley Ramblers AGM 19th November 2014 Page 1

2 In September, Derek Smith has arranged a walking weekend on the Isle of Wight. At the end of October Marcus Stroud is putting together a week s walking holiday staying in Montpellier, France with the help of Christiane Eden, who you may remember as a member of our group for many years and recently moved back to Montpellier from Wokingham. Social events The year started with a Walk Leader s dinner at the Great House. Then thanks to Judith Clark we enjoyed Quiz evening on 11th April and if you enjoyed this then you will be pleased to hear that next year there will be a Quiz evening on Friday 10th April. We also enjoyed a Summer Garden party and BBQ on 11th July that like last year was held in John Kingdom s garden. Next year our social calendar starts with the Walk Leader s dinner organised by David Moffett on Friday 23rd January. Other As a reminder, the Area AGM is on Saturday 29th November and is being hosted by Loddon Valley here in the Barkham Village Hall. Before the meeting at 10.30am there will be a morning walk of about 5 miles lead by Janet Readings. There will be two talks at the meeting which starts at 2.00pm. The first by Janine Chamberlain, who is the Ramblers Head of Recruitment and Retention, will be on the Ramblers Vision for the next 10 Years. The Board of Trustees has put together this proposal for a new vision and proposals for a new governance structure. For both these proposals they are seeking feedback from the membership by the end of the year. You can read about these proposals in the next edition of Walk and on the Ramblers website. Janine s talk will be followed by Pete Ellis giving a talk about the final stage of his ascent of Everest in Pete is one of about 350 people who are Seven Summiteers, ie those who have climbed to the highest point of each of the seven continents. His ascent of Everest in 2012 was his final stage of this quest. As you know I am standing down as Chairman after 7 years. I have enjoyed my time as your Chairman and feel privileged to have had a leading role for what I consider the best group in Berkshire. I thank you for your support and I wish my successor the same good fortune that I have enjoyed. Lastly, don t forget my mince pie and mulled wine walk on Sunday 21st December from the recreation ground, Wargrave. Footpaths, Countryside and Access Ray Sharp gave the following report: Following quite a wet winter we were blessed with great weather for walking and this continued well into autumn. There were no changes with our footpath officer colleagues and they continued to report problems. We have met twice this year and this is perhaps a good time to thank them for their continued efforts and whilst I am happy to receive the plaudits that sometimes come my way, we are part of a team and I am very pleased that they are there. Rights of Way: As reported this time last year, taken as a whole the 143 miles of public rights of way in Wokingham Borough Council are quite good, in fact as you will hear later, they have improved as a result of tasks carried out in conjunction with Wokingham Borough Council s Countryside Service. In the year up to the end of October we reported 59 individual path defects to WBC which was up from 46 last year. At the time of preparing this report there were 6 outstanding issues to be resolved by WBC. The reports covered just about all that can go wrong with public rights of way so here is a breakdown of the problems. Minutes of Loddon Valley Ramblers AGM 19th November 2014 Page 2

3 Defective stiles 7 Failure to reinstate after ploughing 1 Crop intrusion 2 Pasture intrusion 2 Ground foliage 8 Obstructions, trees 10 Obstructions, gates 3 Hedge encroachment 1 Way marking 2 Surface water 4 Poor surface condition other than SW 9 Badger activity 1 Trip hazard 1 Saplings in the wrong place 1 Fly tipping on ROW 2 Unable to enter footpath 1 Riverbank erosion 1 Fencing issues 3 During the rectification of some of these defects I am pleased to say that numerous LVRA members joined me as did some members of the Shinfield Volunteer group. We gained some good results, notably: Foliage cutting on Finchampstead, Shinfield, Wargrave and Wokingham Without footpaths. Carried out a replacement of both stile steps on Shinfield footpath 6. Carried out surface repairs on Wokingham Without footpaths 9 & 10 with road shavings and renewed an upright and step on a stile. In addition to the above we carried out stile step and post replacement near Stonor in time for our group walk. We cut and removed most of the trees we reported. David Moffett ably assisted by Deputy Graham Croucher led small working parties to install 3 kissing gates in place of stiles along the Wokingham Way. You will not see better installations anywhere in the country. Planning Applications: I received a number of applications most of which had no affect on adjacent rights of way or could not be used as a lever to gain new ones so I did not oppose them. I received planning applications VAR/2013/2551 and 2552 for the Cemex sites at Finchampstead. I was asked to comment for the Ramblers and did so to highlight the poor conditions of footpaths 33 and 52 which in my view had been made worse by the gravel extraction operation. Legal Issues in Progress: The footpath claim over Henley Regatta land is still ongoing. The claim was submitted to a barrister and he advised the council not to progress the 2008 claim but that it should consider the 2012 claim. The delay is with Rebecca Walkley at the moment. Path Orders: There was an on and off saga with an order for Earley footpath 15 at Loddon Bridge. After the council had publicised the order to realign and widen the footpath to allow cycles the landowner reneged on the amount of land he would cede. After some wrangling the landowner agreed to give the land needed for Minutes of Loddon Valley Ramblers AGM 19th November 2014 Page 3

4 the change. Since then the agreement has been withdrawn again so I am not sure where we are with the issue. Following the Public Inquiry on the 28th & 29th January 2014, I received notification from the Planning Inspectorate that he has approved the path order to create Finchampstead bridleway 55. This is great news for us because it means that when footpath 15 is too muddy to use we will be able to go along bridleway 55 and re-join bridleway 26 further along the route. Local Access Forum: I continue to be a member of the Mid and West Berks Local Access Forum. Part of my duty is to be an observer at the Maidenhead and Windsor LAF and the convener of meetings for the Wokingham ROWIP working group. The working group has been busy preparing advice to go from the LAF to WBC on matters regarding the Arborfield Relief road and the likely impact on rights of way. The Future: As mentioned earlier in this report we met many of the aspirations that I spoke about this time last year. Non reinstatement of cross field paths appeared to be less of an issue during this year but I confess to not doing much checking on that front. We must continue to be vigilant. There is nothing worse than slogging across a wet ploughed out cross field path that could have been reinstated by the very tractor that did the ploughing. I will be most grateful if you could advise me as soon as you encounter such conditions. If we don t report them, the councils and the landowners will think we are happy. We will soon be doing some repairs on Hurst byway 11 and David Moffett is waiting to install a single flap gate to replace a stile on Finchampstead footpath 29. Treasurer Kath Parker gave the following report: The report is for the financial year starting 1st October 2013 and finishing 30th September 2014 and has been signed off by an independent auditor. The balance sheet and a breakdown of the receipts and payments are given as appendices to these minutes. Adoption of accounts was: Proposed by Janet Readings. Seconded by Vlad Peksa. The meeting approved the accounts for the year ending 30th September ELECTION OF COMMITTEE David Turner was standing down as Chairman but was willing to stay on the committee as LVR representative at the Berkshire Area Committee Meetings. Nick Price was standing down from the committee and was thanked by David Turner for his support. Graham Smith had agreed to stand for the position of Chairman. Proposed by David Turner. Seconded by Derek Smith. The meeting approved Graham`s appointment. All other members of the committee had expressed their willingness to stand for re-election and, there being no other nominations, the committee was duly re-elected en bloc. Proposed by Mary Walker. Seconded by Stephen Smith. Minutes of Loddon Valley Ramblers AGM 19th November 2014 Page 4

5 The meeting approved the reappointment of the remainder of the committee. Following Nick Price standing down, there remains one vacant place on the committee and David Turner called for any member who would be interested to come forward. 5 ANY OTHER BUSINESS Janet Readings informed those present of the Wokingham Methodist Church Festival of Christmas Trees wherein Loddon Valley Ramblers would be sponsoring and decorating a tree. Graham Smith stood up to assure the audience that he would endeavour to carry on the good work of David Turner as Chairman of the group. He also announced that he would be undertaking the role for a maximum of three years and invited anyone else to stand for the position within that timeframe. Graham concluded by thanking David Turner for his seven year tenure as Chairman saying David had been a very popular and effective chairman, praising his leadership. Graham presented David with an inscribed tankard. There being no further business the formal meeting closed at approximately 8.15pm. 6 GUEST SPEAKER Following refreshments, LVR member Stephen Smith gave a highly informative and amusing talk on his work as a holiday guide specialising mainly in railway tours. This was very well received by the audience. Minutes of Loddon Valley Ramblers AGM 19th November 2014 Page 5