July Newsletter
There are around 8000 magazines in circulation in the UK. Assuming each one has 30 pages and it takes you 2 minutes to read each page that means 60 minutes to read a magazine. You could therefore consume around 360 magazines each month if you did little else than read, eat and sleep. Which of course means you may miss some of the interesting and informative articles in such periodicals as Sheep Farmer, The Railway Magazine, British Dental Journal, Pumps and Systems and many more.
The good news is we can dispense with all of that and focus on the important things. Which is our cars and what we do with them. Like this:
Not the Cream Tea Run
A day out in the sunshine for everyone then lunch at the Star in Bentley. The added surprise was Michelle baking scones for everyone (as seen on the table in front of Steve). The shop next door sold out of clotted cream soon after.
See the Not the Cream Tea gallery
Llanerchindda!
A return to Wales and the excellent Llanerchindda Farm
See the Gallery of images taken by our Hosts
CLICK HERE to view our photographs
2025 Canal Cruise
A return to the Basingstoke Canal, all ably organised by Trish.
Pictures to follow
Coming soon!
Clubnight – 1 July
Come and hear the story of steam. One man’s struggle with leaks, drips, bendy pipes and anthracite!
7.30 at the Foresters Arms, Bagshot.
Adventure Golf & Lunch – 4 July
Off to the Golfplex in Bracknell to test our skills in putting, driving and eating pizza.
Registration is closed but if you really want to go talk to Barry.
Hellfire Caves 2025 – 13 July
A return trip to the excellent caverns in High Wycombe followed by a stroll around the nearby West Wycombe Park and then lunch.
Register for the Hellfire Caves
Thames Valley Tour – 20 July
After many years of avoiding the river we finally make to the Thames! A great day out and the chance to see bits of Buckinghamshire not normally visited.
Register for the Thames Valley Tour
Donald Campbell’s Bluebird – Clubnight 5th August
Many people will be aware of the successful location and salvage of Donald Campbell’s Bluebird from the depths of Lake Coniston in 2000. Many may also be aware that, over the next 18 years, a team of volunteers restored the jet-powered boat to running condition and actually ran it at speed on a loch on the Isle of Bute. The man who led and masterminded both these endeavours was an engineer and amateur diver called Bill Smith, based in North Shields. Unfortunately, some agreements with a museum at Coniston and the Campbell family with whom Bill thought he had reached concerning Bluebird’s future were reneged on, and he was forced to relinquish the boat to the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, hitting the headlines yet again. In a rare trip to our area, Bill has agreed to give WFTR a talk about Bluebird and his current passion for restoring rare and high-end rally cars, to coincide with our monthly meeting at The Forresters on 5th August. A rare opportunity to hear the story from the horse’s mouth and meet a remarkably gifted engineer.
CLICK HERE – to see his latest take on the complicated story
CLICK HERE – to see the Bluebird website
Committee Meetings
Each month the committee discusses all matters WFTR. So you don’t feel left out we have always made the minutes of these momentous meetings and the AGM available to read as follows:
WFTR Committee Meeting Minutes
Website and Committee Posts
We are planning to have the WFTR AGM for 2025 at the on 02 December at club night. From the date of that meeting we will have vacant committee positions as follows: group leader, events secretary and membership secretary. Possibly also a treasurer. In addition we will need a website manager and host if we want to maintain our much loved and extensively used WFTR website. It was hoped that we could have volunteers to shadow the current incumbents of these posts before the AGM. Otherwise there will be no smooth handover/takeover of responsibilities. Notice of the departing committee positions was made at the last AGM. For the sake of the continuity of our group please consider if you can give just a very small amount of time to support one of these posts from December.
We were grateful to those who logged in to our last committee meeting to observe how it was conducted.
Some concern has been expressed that there are non committee members who are using WhatsApp as a means to seek support/attendance to potential WFTR sponsored activities. The problem is that WhatsApp is not the WFTR primary method of communication to ALL members and also not all members have the App. As such if a limited attendance poll or call for attendance is launched on WhatsApp only it means that non WhatsApp users will be excluded from an event or activity attendance. Unless any communication which is launched on WhatsApp is at the same time sent by the primary e-mail/website method it should not be used in respect of a poll or for garnering attendance where there is a limit on numbers.
