Alfie Bear’s Picnic 2018

The Friends were extremely fortunate to be invited to put up a stall at this increasingly popular charity event. Many thanks to Zoe for giving us the opportunity to publicise our activities, especially in this Heritage Lottery year.

We did put up a display but it was rather overshadowed by our Treasure Hunt! Luisa, our events manager, had the rather good idea of burying treasure in a sand pit and our thanks to her for all the hard work that went into setting that up. It was a magnet for the youngsters and for Phil our treasurer and project leader who spent much of the day on his knees with the children. Over 100 prizes were hidden in the sand and only 10 were left at the end of the day. This did give us a chance to talk to many families and distribute leaflets about future activities taking place in the Park as part of the Lottery project.

The Wildlife Trust, who are involved in many of the activities that are part of this Lottery project also helped us with a display of their own which proved popular with visitors to the event. Our thanks also to Andy Chapman, the archaeologist who is part of our Lottery Steering Group. He brought along some replica pottery and a quernstone. By the end of the day he had ground enough grain to make a small loaf!

It was a very successful day for the Friends but the main aim of the event is to raise money for the Brain Tumour Charity and we hope that at the end of the day the total raised reflects the hard work put in by Zoe and Val to make the day a success.