KOG meeting Thurs 4th 8pm Malt Shovel Pop-up Coffee Tues 9th 11am Village Hall Parish Council Tues 9th 7.30pm Village Hall Coffee Morning & Table Sale Sat 13th 11am Village Hall Children's Treasure Hunt Sat 13th 3pm Village Hall Friendship Club Tues 16th 2.30pm Trevose Children's Easter Fun Weds 17th 2.30pm Village Hall Pub Quiz Weds 17th 8pm Malt Shovel Church APCM Weds 24th 7.30pm St Giles' Church Library Mon 1st Telephone Box Pilates Tuesdays 6.15pm Village Hall Tai Chi Weds 7.30pm & Suns 1.30pm Village Hall Cake & Crafting Circle 2nd & 4th Suns 5pm St Giles' ChurchGaydon Calendar
Parish Council APM Tues 7th May Village Hall Plant Sale & Coffee Sat 11th May Village Hall Village Fete Sat 15th June Church Field Big Lunch Sun 14th July Village Hall Harvest Supper Sat 5th October Village Hall Christmas Fair Sat 23rd November Village Hall O'65s Lunch Sun 8th December Village Hall
Parish Council News
Play area
After much negotiation with Orbit, GPC have been offered a very short- term lease with a variety of clauses and terms which could, in the long run, mean that GPC incur ongoing costs at the expense of the whole parish. Unless a better deal is forthcoming, we are unanimously voting for a No Deal.
That unfortunately means that the existing play area will be closed for the foreseeable future which is really regrettable, especially with the school holidays coming up. Again, it does mean that this is the main focus as we have the funding and an obligation to provide a recreation area. We hope to make some headway before the elections in May.
Traffic calming
The proposal from the Road Safety team has now been approved and GPC have also accepted a generous donation towards our share of the cost. This will include 3 entry gates; 30mph signs painted on the road; the vehicle-activated sign repair; new dragons' teeth road markings; and new signage.
We are yet to learn timescales but hopefully residents will soon see the improvements. This is only a small element of what we hope we can achieve in future with regard to a more holistic traffic-calming solution.
Speed
Residents may have noticed the police speed enforcement team checking vehicle speeds (and pulling the majority over) recently. They have enforced limits on a number of occasions and regularly receive Gaydon Community Speedwatch data. In March, the police installed speed cameras to conduct a traffic survey on the Kineton and Banbury Road (at their cost). Depending on the data recorded, there will be a mobile speed camera sited in the village.
Elections
The deadline for nominations is 3rd April. There will need to be 8 candidates in order for there to be an election. In the past twelve months, it feels as though parish politics have become more relevant to all residents. If you want to help shape Gaydon, volunteer. It can be fun!
Next Meeting
The date of the next meeting is Tuesday 9 April at 7.30pm.
Church Services in April
Sunday 7th 9.00 Holy Communion BCP Northend 10.30 Morning Prayer Farnborough 10.30 Holy Communion Gaydon 5.00pm Songs of Praise Fenny Compton Sunday 14th Palm Sunday 9.00 Holy Communion BCP Farnborough 10.30 Holy Communion Fenny Compton 10.30 Morning prayer Gaydon 10.30 Morning Prayer Northend 6.00pm Evening Prayer Northend Holy Week Monday 7.30pm Compline Gaydon Tuesday 7.30pm Compline Fenny Compton Wednesday 7.30pm Compline Farnborough Maundy Thursday 7.30pm Passover Meal Northend Good Friday 6.00pm Service Northend Saturday 7.00pm Vigil Burton Dassett Sunday 21st Easter Day 8.30 Holy Communion Farnborough 9.30 Holy Communion Fenny Compton 10.30 Family Service Northend 11.00 Holy Communion Gaydon Sunday 28th 9.00 Holy Communion BCP Fenny Compton 10.30 Holy Communion Farnborough 10.30 Prayer and Praise Gaydon 10.30 Morning Prayer Northend
Village Hall Wednesday 17 April 2.30pm. All children are invited to come to the Village Hall at 2.30pm on Wednesday 17 April and join in some Easter-themed activities. Free Refreshments including Hot Cross Buns and Easter Cordial.
Wednesday 24 April at 7.30pm in St Giles' Church. Everyone on the Church Electoral Roll is invited to attend. The APCM is an important meeting at which Church Officers are appointed.
Gaydon Village Store
Great news! Julia Thomas has won the first membership draw prize this year. She has won a Family Ticket for The British Motor Museum. Thank you to the museum for their kind donation and we hope that you and your family will enjoy a visit, Julia. It's not too late to be in the next prize draw.
For just £12 a year, not only will you be supporting your local community shop, but you have the chance to win one of our draw prizes (drawn a minimum of 3 times a year). To join, please either pop into the shop and fill in your name and address on one of our forms or, alternatively, you can pay by bacs to:
Gaydon Village Store Sort: 40-43-19 Account: 21898515 SR
Warwickshire Police urge rural communities to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity after a number if incidents of sheep being stolen and illegally butchered in the county. It was reported that nineteen ewes were killed in Gaydon after being chased on 9 March. Similar incidents have taken place in neighbouring counties.
Flag
The flag on the village green was raised on 10 March for the Birthday of the Earl of Wessex.
Compton Verney Reminder
The new exhibition is Painting Childhood from Holbein to Freud. There is also an intriguing installation in the park, called Green Dwelling.
The Library will visit the Telephone Box at Gaydon from 1.35-2.05pm on Monday 1st April.
Friendship Club
The next meeting will be on Tuesday 16 April at 2.30pm at the home of Pauline Layton, Trevose, Kineton Road.
Saturday 13 April at the Village Hall 10am to 12.30pm Coffee and Homemade Cakes Prize Draw Raffle and Table Top Sale £5 per table to go to fund raiser and keep your proceeds. Sell anything you like, bric a brac, cakes, plants, crafts etc There are Still Tables Available To Book a Table Contact Kate Sutton 07753 900050
Open to Everyone & All are Welcome ~ In aid of Christmas Lunch
Tuesday 9 April 11am-12.30pm Gaydon Village Hall Future Pop-up Cafés: Tuesdays 14 May, 11 June and 9 July
Gaydon runners, Penny Powell and Dave Lewis, will both be competing in next month's London Marathon to raise money for charity. To help them along, The Malt Shovel will be hosting a charity pub quiz on Wednesday 17 April. The quiz will start at 8pm with prizes for the winning team as well as a raffle and sweepstake.
All proceeds from the event will be split between Penny and Dave's chosen charities. Penny is fundraising for Action on Hearing Loss and Dave is supporting SADS UK (Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome). You can find out more about their charities on their justgiving pages - www.justgiving.com/fundraising/pitstopdoesntstop and www.virginmoneygiving.com/DavidLewis116.
People walking by the allotments in the past month may have seen what at first sight seems to be the construction of two funeral pyres for Viking warriors! In fact they are Hugel beds - mounds which use decaying wood and other compostable materials to produce a fertile and moist medium for growing plants. They are particularly effective in promoting and sustaining plant growth and health in dry or even drought conditions (allegedly!). As we are new to this technique, we hasten to add that this is an experimental project and we will be planting the mounds in tandem with more conventional no-dig or minimal-dig methods of cultivation.
We were particularly fortunate to get our plot up and running during that welcome - but bizarre - summer weather in late February. It's a bonus to get a spell of dry, pleasant conditions in winter - as long as it's not a portent of climatic shift that might bring sustained hot, dry conditions during spring and summer... Ei & Tony Hughes
at the British Motor Museum 6 - 28 April. Join us for some 'Mini Madness' this Easter holiday. You can follow the Mini Trail, join a family tour with our very own Mini factory costumed characters, and even design your own Mini in our air drying clay workshops! Visit over the Easter Weekend 19 - 22 April and you can enjoy a Traditional Easter Egghunt with a bit of a Mini twist! Collect eggs around the Museum to claim your Mini Egg reward.
Visit www.britishmotormuseum.co.uk/events/family-activities
KOG (Kids of Gaydon) are hoping to run an Easter Treasure Hunt on Saturday 13 April (the first weekend of the Easter holidays) at 3pm, for school aged kids (parents will be responsible for their children). We will meet outside the Village Hall to pick up instructions and get into teams, before heading out over the fields in search of the clues!
Prizes to be won - £1 entry! We will confirm details and advertise the event on Facebook so be sure to let us know if you are interested so that we can cater for numbers.
Sunflower Competition
After the Treasure Hunt on 13 April, children can pot up a sunflower seed for our Sunflower Growing Competition, to be judged in early September. The tallest flower wins! For those not able to come to the Treasure Hunt, you will be able to pick up a kit at the village shop.
It was most pleasant to walk from my house for a drink at the nearby pub last week and all the better for the absence of the street light
(now defunct), enabling one to glimpse the Moon and stars without light pollution - and the M40 was quiet too!
There is a continuation of the milder weather and many trees are now showing green buds. The blackthorn bushes are already in flower as are clumps of Primroses and violets beneath the hedgerows. Speaking of these, it was a relief to see an end to the destruction of this great habitat for nesting birds in the 1970s; but sadly there is a new threat and it appears that no field near a village round here is safe from housebuilding.
This 'boom' in housing is everywhere and many of these developments are intent on levelling all the existing hedgerows, tearing them up once again. Some very devastated areas are on the approaches to Banbury and Leamington. The edge of the Stratford Race course, a wonderful habitat, has been torn up earlier this month, possibly breaking the protection laws for nesting birds; but a greedy local council rubber-stamps them through.
The local wildlife has a hard time these days because the farming 'industry' sprays everything, like the large dead area opposite Itchington Holt, so that the flocks of Green Plovers no longer nest there as they did a few years ago; and you will no longer see 'boxing' March Hares.
Watery Lane suffered a similar fate a while back. It is no use planting rows of saplings to replace a hedge that is hundreds of years old: the species are gone. The latest disgraceful action is the netting of hedges and trees; to stop birds nesting prior to tearing their habitats down. I'll be reaching for my penknife if I see one of these - I might save a few hibernating hedgehogs or release a trapped bird!
I shall put some Newt signs up soon to slow down traffic as last year many never made it to the spawning ponds. In Church Road there are a lot of bees and even a few butterflies on the wing this week. The large Queen bumblebees are very important insects and they will be seeking new nesting sites in your gardens; while the Mason bees will soon be occupying the Bee Hotel in the back wall of the shop.
Many nesting birds are flying around the village in pairs, with beaksful of nesting materials. The wood pigeons in my garden started weeks ago and Rooks are now seen carrying branches, with a large colony in the appropriately-named Birdhaven Close, near the Landrover works. The sound of Rooks 'cawing' is lovely to hear in the evenings. Bernard Price
I live in Gaydon and am looking for a garage to rent in Gaydon or surrounding area to store a motorcycle. Please call or text Gary on 07971 477602. Thank you.
Youth Club
We are very aware that the children in the village currently don't have a play area to use. Whilst this is being worked on (and for longer if it's a success), we would like to start up a weekly Youth Club to be held in the Village Hall on Fridays after school for an hour or two (depending on Village Hall availability etc.). The exact dates and times will be confirmed on our Facebook page and posters/leaflets nearer the time.
We will set up a pool table and table tennis and maybe have some badminton matches; with crafts, music, board games and some kind of refreshments! It will be a freely structured event for children of school age to come along and hang out, play some games, see their friends and relax after a hard week at school!
We are open to lots of suggestions of what we can do with the club, but needless to say we need as many adults as possible to volunteer to help, even if it's just once a month on a rota basis. To finalise our plans we will be holding a meeting in the pub on Thursday 4 April at 8pm - please come along if you are interested in helping out in any way.
Please do get involved: it will be fun, and something our children will remember when they are grown and have flown the nest! JM
Congratulations to Maria Mainwaring and her team who have won a prestigious award from the Aviva Community Fund for their pop-up café which develops the employability skills of their students. Apparently, their bid stood out from all the other applicants and it will fund a more professional barista machine, new crockery, ICT equipment and training in customer service.
Please support this exciting venture on the following dates in Gaydon: Tuesdays 9 April, 14 May, 11 June and 9 July.
A huge thanks to all those who attended the litter pick last month! There were around 25 volunteers, and a trailer's-worth of rubbish was collected on an extremely windy Saturday. We were rewarded afterwards by the new owners at The Malt Shovel with pots of tea, coffee and homemade cakes! Many thanks to all the volunteers and especially to Paul and Jo for being so hospitable. I think we can all recommend their cake!
Gaydon Cake and Crafting Circle
We meet every 2nd and 4th Sunday 5.00-6.30pm (ish) in the church. Do you knit, crochet, sew or wish to learn how? Find us on Facebook. Jo Hotchkiss 642248
On Tuesday 7 May, Gaydon Parish Council will host the Public Annual Meeting where all Village Groups are invited to come along and introduce themselves to residents. It's a great opportunity to find out about what's available in Gaydon, what's planned and how to get involved. More info next month! ML
The Wind Band and String Orchestra of Stowe School. Tickets £8 per person; £5 children under 15 from Norma King on 01295 770292 or normakinghollies@btinternet.com
Please bring your spare plants to sell and come and see what other gardeners have to offer. We often have some interesting specimens as well as the usual vegetables and bedding plants. There will be a Book stall, Raffle and Coffee and biscuits (50p). Profits in aid of St Giles.