Woodfalls Inn. Monday 5th October.
This year’s club dinner took place at the same venue and immediately following the AGM. It was a consensus of opinion that having the AGM and dinner together had been a good idea and we should try to do the same again next year. The minutes of the AGM can be found here.
The Woodfalls Inn was a great venue with plenty of parking and great food. A well organised event.
After the dinner, Ian Peirce, as Chairman, presented the following awards:
The Pam Errington Award is for the junior showing best progress during the year. This was presented to Christian Corkery who had progressed from Yellow standard to Light Green.
The Martin Cockrane Award is for steady work in the background or for exceptional effort. This year it went to Marc Balston for his exceptional work as Secretary, upgrading communications and also for taking mapping to a new level.
The Ron Ley Trophy for the Club Galoppen was won by Kerry Corkery. It was good to see a new name winning this trophy. Many thanks to Joan Hambleton for continuing to compile the results for the Galoppen, the full list of results for the 2025-26 season can be found here.
Other Junior awards were presented by Liz Yeadon, organizer of junior activities:
Medals were awarded for excellent performances to Rhodes Dickinson and Thomas Ablitt. Unfortunately neither were able to attend the dinner, so they will be receiving their medals in due course.
Liz also announced that she and Marc Balston had been working to identify which of our juniors had achieved SWOA/SCOA colour badges (for achieving the standard 3 times on a given colour course. The following juniors were awarded SWOA badges: Lizzie Balston (Green and Blue), Isla Ablitt (Green). The other juniors present – James and Christian Corkery – had also achieved a number of badges, but Liz was still waiting to receive a stock of badges from SCOA and so was unable to award them on the night.
Well done to those for showing obvious progress through the year. Many of our other juniors have already achieved badge standards or are very close to achieving them and we look forward to presenting them with their badges at the next opportunity.
Fun trophies were then awarded to the following:
| Freda Peirce | For doing 9 ‘O’ events in 2 weeks, each taking her over 2 hours (i.e. 9 marathons in 2 weeks) |
| Marc Balston | For his extraordinary mapping techniques. |
| Rhodes Dickinson & Christian Corkery | For producing such great trophies for the Club Champs. |
| Richard Thornton | Rattling run award for completing his 1st full course in some time since his health stopped him competing. |
| Benji Jacobs | Amazing mistake: Only came 2nd because he competed in Crocs instead of O shoes. |
| Dave Mullins | Amazing mistake: Missed a control out on 4 consecutive events. Dave, try a different type of mistake each time, like everyone else. |
| Joan Hambleton | For her great work in compiling the SARUM Club Galoppen results yet again. |
| Liz Yeadon | For being a great event organizer but not being so successful in getting others to agree to organize. |
| Halsey family | For being such good pro-active helpers. |
Everyone was asked to write down their silliest mistake for the Chairman’s Bloopers awards.
The Chairman’s own was for mixing up control 6 and 9 then proceeding around the course backwards.
It is always good to read other’s mistakes as a pre-warning to help us not to do the same. It sometimes, but not always, helps.
A selection of some of the best are shown below:
For the person who thinks they don’t make mistakes and declined to enter their name, does anyone recognise their handwriting so I can name and shame!!!
A thoroughly enjoyable evening. Hope to see you all again next year.