An opportunity to publicise our club…Sunday 12 September

The Woodcote Millennium Green Trust is holding a Ten Year celebration event on Sunday 12th September from 12.30 - 4.00pm. Note that this is the day of the club's hilly 12 which is being held in the morning.

The event will be a traditional Fete with Morris dancers, Face painting, Coconut Shy, Tug of War, Treasure hunt, BBQ run by a local butcher, Punch and Judy, Beer tent, Steel Band, Wandering Magician (now you see him now you don’t !), Coffees & Teas etc. The event organiser is hoping to attract 500 local people.

The Woodcote Millennium Green is a local area of woodland running along Woodcote Green Road which is at the rear of the Epsom General Hospital. Each quarter I volunteer a couple of hours with 20 locals in clearing up and maintaining this wood and pond. A few weeks ago you may have seen me wading in the pond pulling out pondweed. Believe me that pond smells!

At the recent KPRC publicity sub-committee meeting I mentioned that I could have a word with the organiser to see if they would be interested in our club participating with our own stand/display. The purpose being to let the local community know that we exist, to show a friendly face and to encourage any like minded to join our rides. We all thought this would be a good idea and now I have spoken to the fete organiser and he agreed that it would be good to have a local cycling club at the event. The Chairman of the Trust is Chris Frost, a county councillor who represents Epsom & Ewell, is also very pleased to have us in attendance. Finally, our own committee members have been contacted and everyone is in favour of giving it a go.

I have obtained agreement that we would be provided with space for a gazebo to give us a base and display our photos. Our attendance would not be solely for our own publicity purposes so I proposed that we would create another attraction, a "guess the weight of the bike" competition for which we will charge 50p a go with half the takings going to the winner and the balance going to the trust. This fundraising works well for both the trust and our club in that we will not be charged for attending the fete.

I would like a range of bikes at the event to show people that we are not an elitist lightweight racing club. Until a week before the event I will not know how large our allocated space will be but I have already given them a mention that a bike park area would be appreciated.

We are open to other ideas to either raise money for the trust or to promote our club so please feel free to mention them to me and I will take them to the next committee meeting next Friday.

We would need at least 6 to 10 members (in club tops – or wearing our club hats - just £6 each from Simon) to be in attendance, with 2 or 3 at a time taking shifts of say 30 mins to man the stand. But this is not a limit and indeed the more club members who turn up in club tops will only make the event more successful. Indeed if there any like minded members I am sure we could form a tug of war team...or perhps at our delicate age an alternative morris men dance troupe....I will let Mike arrange that!

The publicity committee will prepare some cards or leaflets to hand out which would include a brief summary of our club’s activities with a list of the Saturday social rides and Sunday training rides. I have produced some signs re the competition and the club rides which I will print off on A3 paper and attach to plywood boards.

So, please let me know

- if you are willing to help (I have confirmations from Jake, Paul, Nick and Brian) and whether you can be there for duration or just an hour or so.

- if you have any other fun ideas?

- if you have any bunting, flags or balloons

- Brian has a yellow and white gazebo which picks out two of our club colours, but does anyone have one in all three club colours?

Finally, I will be receiving sample club polo shirts from the supplier this Friday which I will bring along to the start of the Saturday ride, so if they meet with our approval I would hope to have these available for the day. It is not too late to add to the order if you have not done so already.

Steve

ps the trust's website can be found at http://www.woodcotemillenniumgreen.org.uk/


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