Rotary Club of St Neots St Marys


Rotary (RGBI) Club Number 1576 – District 1070

Meetings are held on Tuesday evenings (except following a Bank Holiday) – 7.00pm for dinner at 7.30pm at:

St Neots Golf Club
Crosshall Road
St.Neots,
Cambridgeshire
PE19 7GE

Tel No: (01480) 472363

Donate to our causes and help us help local Charities

 

If you are interested in attending a meeting, please contact the Club Secretary:

Glynn Osborne -Tel No: 01480 472183 E-mail: glynn.osborne@btconnect.com

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CLUB SUPPORTS ST NEOTS TENNIS CLUB WITH NEW VIEWING AND ACCESS RAMP

Vice President Mike Truswell, Richard and Sue Shaw and Peter Hodge attended St Neots Tennis Club on Saturday to witness the official opening of the new access ramp recently built to accommodate disabled people who wish to visit the club and to play tennis as well as acting as a viewing deck for spectators who were able to enjoy some excellent tennis on the Club’s finals day.

Our Club was part of a group of sponsors including long standing Tennis Club members Ivan Twigden, Don Brace, Tony Ekins and Peter Hodge, as well as St Neots Mayor Richard Slade on behalf of St Neots Town Council and Bruce Elam on behalf of the Rotary Club of St Neots.

The Club is pleased to be able to support the club which is flourishing and has a full and active membership

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LIFE EDUCATION QUIZ RAISES JUST OVER £1600

FLEC (Friends of Life Education Cambridgeshire) organised a quiz night in conjunction with our club on Friday evening at St Neots Golf Club to raise funds to support the mobile classrooms which are in so much demand by primary schools in the county. Fourteen tables of 6 quizzers keenly contested the evening with the winners in doubt until the very last round.

Thanks to the generosity of those present supporting the raffle, all prizes were donated to the event by individuals and local businesses and organised by members of the FLEC committee, plus some other generous donations the profit made on the evening amounted to £1615.

The Rotary Clubs of St Neots St Marys, St Ives and Huntingdon have supported Life Education for many years and each club was represented at the quiz.

The committee members worked very hard to make the evening a success and thanks go to them, the golf club staff, Louise and Richard the question masters and to everyone who supported the event.

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MAYOR’S GOLF DAY 2024

This year’s St Neots Mayor’s Charity Golf Day was held at St Neots Golf Club on Tuesday 12th September, for the first time and a good entry of 21 teams of four enjoyed good weather, a course in excellent condition and the result was keenly contested.

The winning team from Brampton Park Golf Club scored 119 points closely followed by the Black Cat Radio team and a team led by local jeweller Paul Goldstraw who both scored 118 points with Black Cat narrowly taking second place on count back.

Thanks go to the six local businesses for their sponsorship and to all the competitors for their generous contributions to the raffle which enabled the day to generate almost £4000 to the charity funds of the Mayor and our Rotary Club. Thanks also go to St Neots Golf Club staff for their hard work on the day providing excellent catering and manning the ’19th hole’ so efficiently.

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ANOTHER HUGELY SUCCESSFUL DRAGON BOAT EVENT

Our club were once again proud to be the co-organisers with St Neots Town Council and St Neots Dragon Boat Team of the 10th Annual Charity Dragon Boat Event. Once again huge crowds turned out to watch the 22 participating crews including one from our club, one of only two teams that have featured in all 10 events, the other being Pool Sharks.

Our valiant crew, a mixture of ageing Rotarians, sons, daughters and grandchildren put up an amazing show winning one race and finishing with two second places to finish 11th out of the 22 crews, just over one second behind the nine semi-finalists.

Once again the main winners will be the local charities nominated by our club and the Mayor of St Neots Richard Slade who will share the charitable proceeds raised from crew sponsors, programme advertisers and the public whose car park fees are generously donated to the charities by the Council together with the proceeds of the programme sales. Thanks to MAST, President Ian’s chosen charity for selling so many programmes and to the members of the club for overseeing the car parking so efficiently.

 

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OUR PRESIDENT FOR ROTARY YEAR 2024/25 IS IAN PAYNE

Our new President is Ian Payne, retiring president Sue Shaw presented Ian with his chain of office at a recent meeting.

In accepting the position Ian said that his main objective is to continue the good work and standing that the club has in our town and the wider Rotary family and to work alongside all members in their endeavours to spread ‘The Magic of Rotary’.

Also to encourage new members to join our amazing club and worldwide organization

Ian’s charity for this coming Rotary year is ‘Money Advice St Neots (MAST)’, who recently gave a presentation to the club about the amazing work their volunteers do for those in St Neots that are struggling to manage finances & debt.

One of Ian’s passions is Mental Health, financial troubles and mental health are very interlinked, the work MAST does improves the lives of many that they encounter. With the support my Rotary Club can give them over the coming year, this will help improve the services they provide.

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PRESIDENT PRESENTS DONATION TO PROPERTY ANGELS

At the last meeting President Sue Shaw was delighted to present Caroline Deeprose, CEO of Property Angels with a cheque for £4433 being her contribution from the President’s fund for her presidential year. Caroline said that she was delighted to receive the donation and thanked Sue and all club members for the tremendous support given during the last 12 months

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PRESIDENT SUE PRESENTS THREE PAUL HARRIS FELLOWSHIPS

President Sue was delighted to present three club members with a Paul Harris Fellowship at a recent meeting. The recipients were William Waters who has been a member for many years and is a past President, Secretary and committee chair on a number of occasions, David March, past President and chairman of various committees and Glynn Osborne, past President and our current hard working Secretary for the past three years having been brilliantly mentored by his predecessor. All have worked tirelessly for the club in recent years.

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THREE MORE NEW CLUB MEMBERS

President Sue Shaw welcomed three new members at last night’s weekly meeting, Janet Beveridge who was inducted as a new Rotarian, and Rotarians Elaine Sefton and Maggie Bailey who have transferred from the Rotary Club of Huntingdon Cromwell. The new members are the first of a satellite group within the club and hope to be joined by other members in the near future, all three have been attending club meetings over the past two months.

The club extends a warm welcome to them and hope they enjoy being part of our thriving club.

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WE WON THE TREEKLY CHALLENGE

President Sue, William , Richard Paul and Sandra (not pictured) took part in a walking steps competition with Treekly, the organisation that turns footsteps into forests. With over 20 teams taking part St Neots St Marys won with 3,747,550 steps during March. This resulted in 205 trees being planted and a £250 prize. The prize money is being invested through the Environment team in more trees. 1,000 trees will be added to the 205 and will be helping to offset our carbon footprint. The team and other members of St Neots St Marys have planted a further 946 trees and will continue to plant around the world. https://www.treekly.org

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CLUB WELCOMES ANOTHER NEW MEMBER

President Sue had the pleasure of inducting another new member Emma Davies recently. Emma is a history and careers teacher at Ernulf Academy and recently visited the club as a speaker at a weekly meeting and discovered how active the Club is in St Neots and was invited to join by Sue.

Emma will serve on the Youth committee and we hope she enjoys the friendship and fellowship within the club.

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34th SPORTSMAN’S EVENING – ANOTHER SUCCESS

The Club welcomed the first lady sports personality to speak at the event, Amy Williams MBE who won a Gold Medal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics kept an audience of over 200 enraptured with the story of how she became a very unlikely winner of a winter sports gold medal in the skeleton event, having started training at the University of Bath with not a drop of snow in sight. It was a fascinating insight into the determination and drive needed to achieve success in a sport in which GB has not historically had any competitors and very inspiring.

Comedian Mick Miller provided some ‘old school’ humour with a stream of one line jokes to keep everyone amused.

Another enjoyable evening which has raised over £6000 for the Club’s Charity Account

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ANOTHER ENJOYABLE BURNS SUPPER

The club held its annual Burns Supper this week and were entertained by the Wintringham Pipers led by Phil who addressed the haggis in the traditional manner reciting the Rabbie Burns poem ‘Tae a haggis’ and starting the meal with the Selkirk grace.
Thirty members and guests were served an excellent Burns supper interspersed with poems and readings from the Bard, plus whisky tasting of four differing malt whiskies from smaller distilleries with tasting notes delivered by Rotarian Mike Andrews.
The Wintringham Pipers also entertained members with several songs on their smaller pipes before everyone joined in with renditions of ‘Flower of Scotland’ and the Skye Boat Song.
An excellent evening enjoyed by all superbly organised by Rotarian Bob Silverthorne

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FURTHER SUPPORT FOR LIFE EDUCATION

President Sue Shaw and Nigel Appleton recently attended Spaldwick Primary School to present a cheque for £392 to the Head Teacher which paid for a full day’s visit by the Life Education mobile classroom. Sue and Nigel then sat in on a lesson delivered by Louise Augarde L E’s educator and as always both were greatly impressed by the connection and enthusiasm generated with the pupils. The school were extremely grateful for the club’s donation.

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Members of the club had a really lovely visit to Riverside Meadows Academy today.  The Academy provides educational and therapeutic packages to young people from around Cambridgeshire.  President Sue was accompanied by Rotarians Mike Andrews and Richard Shaw who were shown around the facilities by one of the young learners.  The work done is clearly something that they benefit from and enjoy.  The specialist staff have a wonderful relationship with them and it was our pleasure to be able to donate some therapeutic sensory equipment.

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PRESIDENT SUE WELCOMES ANOTHER NEW MEMBER

 

President Sue and 30 members welcomed James Gough into the club as she inducted him as the latest new member at the Club’s November business meeting. James is a director of Annafield Estates the local estate agency with branches in St Neots, Buckden and Huntingdon.

James said he was looking forward to being a member of the club which has done so much to support local and international charities since 1985.

His induction brings the current membership number up to 35.

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