Events > 2010

Seventh Annual General Meeting of The Wainwright Society
Saturday 20th March 2010 at Staveley Village Hall, Cumbria

The Seventh Annual General Meeting of the Society was held on Saturday 20th March 2010. Prior to the meeting, fourteen members of the Society had braved the elements and ascended High Knott.

Some Society members at the summit of High Knott - photo Lesley Ritchie

Before the business part of the meeting commenced the fifty or so members present were treated to an extremely interesting and informative audio visual presentation by Richard Warren, Chairman of Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association (LDSAMRA). He talked about the ten groups in the Lakes; Cockermouth, Coniston, Duddon & Furness, Kendal, Keswick, Kirkby Stephen, Langdale/Ambleside, Patterdale, Penrith and Wasdale plus also SARDA Lakes and COMRU who all work together, particularly in times of crisis such as the floods that hit Cumbria in November 2009. There were some graphic images of what had occurred over the 24 hour period when the floods struck the county and how teams from areas that were less affected had made their way to Cockermouth and other badly affected areas to assist.

At the end of his presentation, Richard was presented with honorary membership of the Society and a cheque was presented to the Mountain Rescue teams from the Society for £6500 which will be used to replace equipment used for the flood rescues.

Richard Warren (centre) receives the Societys cheque from Lyndsay Shaw (left) & Eric Robson (right) - photo by Andrew Stainthorpe

During the business part of the meeting there were several new appointments to the committee that were approved. Dik Stoddart replaced Robert Jackson as the Society’s webmaster. Thanks were given to Robert for his seven years of service since the Society was founded. Derek Cockell replaced Peter Hardy as Global Moderator for the Society Forum, and John Bewick was appointed as Society Development Officer, Caroline Nichol added events to her role as walks co-ordinator having taken on this role following the resignation of Peter Hardy who had served the committee faithfully for the last five years.

Chairman Eric Robson advised the membership that the committee had met at the end of January to look at the way the Society would be moving forward over the next few years and there were many ideas in the pipeline including the alteration to the format of the Society magazine Footsteps which would be moving to an A5 sized edition from June onwards.

Peter Linney, Secretary of the Society reported that membership has again increased over the last twelve months and currently stands at 854 families, approximately 1,700 members in total. Honorary memberships over the last year has been given to Heather Pitt, Ron Scholes and Colin Bywater for their work on the Pennine Journey Guidebook, Ian Tyler who gave the 2009 Memorial Lecture and Doug Scott who with Chris Bonington (already a Society member) presented their climbing evening to raise funds for the Society’s Flood Appeal.

John Pulford, the Society Treasurer, reported a surplus for the last year and advised that on the fundraising side, £6500 had been given to SARDA as a result of the 2009 challenge event and that so far £8,000 has been raised for the flood appeal from donations, events and calendar sales at the Scott/Bonington lecture.

Eric Robson concluded that we had achieved much in the last year and there were several innovations for 2010 that would continue to raise the Society’s profile, particularly the 80th anniversary of AW’s first visit to Lakeland and the vintage bus trip from Blackburn to Windermere on 7th June following in AW’s footsteps.

John Burland - Wainwright Society Press & Publicity Officer.