This month has been a month of weather extremes with some of our members exercising their legs and brains.
Only four of us opted to brave the wet weather earlier in the month, as we gathered in Ludgershall to do a ramble around this settlement. Our walk included visiting the castle ruins now managed by English Heritage. We were lucky to see a deer racing across one field, many butterflies, and various wildflowers etc. As we finished our walk, with the sun now shining, we passed a bride and groom and their guests outside the Church. We then adjourned for lunch to Rosebourne Garden Centre.
A heatwave followed and on a very hot afternoon 25 of us gathered at Esseborne Manor Hotel for afternoon tea. This was a welcome back event for our members and had been subsidised by part of the grant we were fortunate to receive from the Parish Council. Those attending did contribute as well and we all agreed it was a lovely reward for the months we couldn’t meet up and see each other in person. The tea itself was plentiful and delicious.
Then it was time to gather in the Village Hall for our first meeting since February 2020 and our President’s husband Alan had kindly offered to organise a quiz for us all. We were split into four teams. In addition to the questions read out by our quizmaster, on our tables were a picture round (all the answers were towns or cities located in the UK) and some brain teasers downloaded from the MENSA website no less. Alan obviously believes our members to be very intelligent as some of the questions were quite difficult, but we rose to the challenge and at first, we had a tie for first place. Then one of the teams realised there had been a marking error and they were victorious by one point. The team coming in second place were just relieved they didn’t have to take part in a tie-break question and graciously conceded.
We have no meeting in August, but hopefully some of us will be visiting the Weald & Downland Museum early in the month.
