Vale of White Horse Local Group formation

1.   At a meeting of members of the Friends of The Ridgeway (FoR) resident in the area, held at the United Reform Church, Stanford in the Vale, at 1400 on Friday 13th February 2009, the Vale of the White Horse Local Group (LG) was founded.

2.   The purpose of the Group will be to:

• Involve supporters in the Vale of White Horse in social activities and events.
• Assess their views and interests and represent these to the FoR Committee.
• Monitor the condition of the Trail locally and liaise with The Ridgeway NTO and its Volunteers.
• Increase the local membership of FoR.
• Raise the level of support for FoR’s activities, both financial and, in future perhaps, practical, through Volunteering.
• Liaise with and present to local organisations, generally to raise/enhance the profile of FoR, but more fundamentally to raise awareness of the quality Ridgeway asset that we have on our doorsteps.
• Monitor local planning applications that could have potential impacts within the LG area of responsibility of The Ridgeway.

3.   The VWH LG will control its own membership, procedures and organisation, all of which will be very flexible.  A Committee will be formed with a “normal” membership of 6-8, with a chair and secretary keeping brief minutes, and meetings every 2-3 months.   Members will undertake responsibilities for events, for recruitment and member liaison, for trail monitoring and for publicity.  Liaison with the main Committee will be assured by cross-membership, with preferably one of the FoR Officers sitting on the LG Committee (not as chair), and the LG chair (or another member) being also a main Committee member.  LG Committee membership should be locally based, with good local contacts and net-working skills being more important than any technical/ecological knowledge. 

4.   The area of interest for the Vale of the White Horse Local Group will initially be that part of the Ridgeway West of the Thames between Streatley and Barbury Castle. 

5.  Eight members present, including the retiring FoR Treasurer and Treasurer elect, and another member of the main Committee volunteered to be members of the VWH LG Committee, and were gladly accepted as such.

6.  A Committee meeting of the new LG was held at Court Hill at 1400 on Friday 6th March 2009, when a number of plans for future events relating to the Ridgeway were discussed, details of which were to be made public at a meeting to be held for all persons on Friday 24th April in the small room of the Methodist Church, Newbury St/Church St in Wantage.

Formation of the Vale of White Horse local group

Letter from Ian Ritchie, Chairman. New Year 2009

Dear Friend and Member,

First and foremost, I’m writing to send you all best wishes for the New Year.  Although it has started with dire economic news, I hope you will successfully weather the storm.    I find that the best medicine for too much dwelling on the financial doom and gloom is to get up on The Ridgeway and blow the glums away!  Recently, I have been enjoying some new (to me!) walks along the southern extension of The Ridgeway, prospecting the route for our planned new project for a path from Avebury to Stonehenge and thence to Old Sarum and Salisbury, The Great Stones Way.  This scheme is shaping up very nicely, and creating a lot of interest, both within the Association and externally.  I am confident that we shall be able to get the path way-marked and recommended to you this year.  It will take a little longer to get it developed to the standards we aspire to! !

There is one problem with our promotion of The Great Stones Way, however, which is that our Constitution, as at present drafted, defines our objects as “the preservation… of The Ridgeway National Trail”, and, as you know, the National Trail ends abruptly at Overton Hill!  I have discussed this issue with my colleagues on your Committee, and we believe that what the great majority of our members in fact value, and wish to support and preserve, is the ancient Ridgeway track-ways along the chalk scarp across Southern England, of which the modern National Trail forms only a part. The Great Stones Way, and indeed some parts of the Wessex Ridgeway, fall within this wider definition.  Looking back at the origins of the Association, the concerns of our founders were for the protection of the ancient Ridgeway as a whole, and indeed of greenways generally, from the damage caused by off-roaders.  The narrower focus on The National Trail, which was suffering particularly severely, was introduced in the context of the campaign launched in 2001.

In this belief, we shall be proposing, at the next AGM, a change to the Objects clause in our Constitution, to define The Ridgeway more widely, enabling the Association to go ahead with promotion of the Great Stones Way, and to concern ourselves with preservation and other activities relating to the ancient Ridgeway system as a whole.  We hope that you will agree to and support this clarification.  We shall of course be circulating the formal Resolution and the Notice of the AGM with your next Newsletter in the spring, and we hope that you will be able to come along. Proxy forms will be available in case you cannot attend but wish to vote.  Please note that the Meeting will now be held, at the Court Hill Ridgeway Centre as usual, but on 15th March, 2009, not 22nd March as shown in the last Newsletter.  We are pleased to announce that Dr Sarah Simmons, the Avebury World Heritage Site officer, will be our speaker this year.  She will give an illustrated talk on the archaeology of the Avebury landscape, with particular reference to that of The Ridgeway, and to a new project to protect its surface and underlying archaeology. In addition,  there will be an accompanied walk to Segsbury Camp before the meeting, and we hope that you will be able to join us on this.

Next, you may recall that, in this year’s Spring Newsletter, we set out the proposal which I mentioned at the AGM, to encourage the formation of Local Groups of members, with a view to strengthening our links to the communities along The Ridgeway, fostering their sense of ownership of the path, and to take the lead in local activities, recruitment, monitoring of the Trail, and, if necessary, fundraising.  I’m very pleased to tell you that proposals have now been received from a group of members in the Vale of White Horse, led by Dr Roger Griffin from Stanford-in-the-Vale, for the formation of such a group for that area, which your Committee is delighted to endorse.  I enclose, to all members living in The Vale of White Horse, which we define as all the Ridgeway corridor west of the Thames as far as Barbury Castle, a letter from Roger proposing a meeting to set up the group. All of our members living within that area are eligible for membership of the group, and I do hope that you will want to attend that and subsequent meetings and events, and to take an active part in the group’s activities.  We hope that this will be the first of several such initiatives, and we encourage members living in other areas to take the lead in forming similar local groups.

With all best wishes for the New Year.                                                                             

Ian Ritchie
Chairman
January, 2009

Letter From Roger Griffin TD PhD CEng MIEE. January 2009

Dear Friend of The Ridgeway, and neighbour in the Vale of White Horse,

Launch of the Vale of White Horse Local Group – Friday 13th March 2009

In the 2008 Spring Newsletter, a proposal was set out, subsequently mentioned by Ian Ritchie at the AGM, aimed at encouraging the formation of Local Groups of members for mutual enjoyment of The Ridgeway and to work within our communities to help preserve and promote it.  It is intended that these Local Groups can strengthen our links with the communities along The Ridgeway by fostering their sense of ownership of the path.  They could lead local activities, recruitment, monitoring of the Trail, and possibly fundraising. 
I am writing to you to introduce myself and to say that I have offered to lead the Vale of White Horse Local Group with support from David Axford and Anna Hanslip.  I understand that the formation of our Local Group has been kindly endorsed by your Committee.
Many of you will be wondering who is this person and what credentials does he have to be able to make a contribution to the “Friends of the Ridgeway?

I lived in Wantage for several years from 1970 and I have lived in Stanford in the Vale since December 1988.   I was a Professional Engineer in the Civil Service for 40 years, and served in the Territorial Army for 34 years.  I was mobilised twice, serving as a Lieutenant Colonel, for 6 months in Bosnia in 1999 and subsequently for four and a half years from 2002 mainly with the Iraq Survey Group.  From 1986 to 2002, I directed the Information Security training at the National School of Government, formerly the Civil Service College.  Currently I run a small Limited Company providing consultancy services in this subject. 

I have always been a keen conservationist, spending many holidays walking with my family in the Lake District.  Over the last few years I have taken this a stage further by completing training to become a Lake District National Park Volunteer Ranger.  The duties as a Volunteer Ranger are various but are all focussed on using whatever talents the individual has to support the National Park.

Similarly, I expect our local group to bring together like-minded people, with interests in all the various aspects of The Ridgeway, and of our Vale and Down-land area, whether it be as walkers or riders, in conservation, local history or ecology.  I hope that the group will serve as a nucleus to facilitate activities catering for all these interests, for our community as a whole, with The Ridgeway as the common thread.  We have to stress that The Ridgeway must be used and appreciated by local residents if it is to be preserved for future generations, and we must recruit others in our community, particularly young people, to join the Friends. 

The group should also keep track of local development proposals, and warn the Committee of local concerns.  Members will be asked to report on the condition of the Ridgeway when they use it, and some with time and energy to spare might be able to volunteer if necessary to regularly monitor and report on abuse of the path by the off-roaders and assist in tasks such as litter picking, to supplement the maintenance efforts of our National Trails Volunteers.  The Group would also encourage members with relevant skills or experience as volunteers to promote the benefits of the Ridgeway, to talk about it to schools and other organisations, and perhaps to accompany organised walks.

We are holding an initial meeting to gauge your support for this idea.  The meeting will be held at the Stanford in the Vale United Reform Church on Friday 13th February, starting at 2pm.  The Church is in Chapel Road, off High Street.  There is adequate parking at the church hall and refreshments will be served.

I do hope that as many as possible of you will want to come along to this first meeting to support us and attend our events and activities where possible.

Best wishes

Roger Griffin