The 200th Rotary Walk, Celebration Lunch

200th Walk Celebration

The 20th November saw the occurrence at the George, Great Oxenden of the celebratory lunch in honour of the 200th Rotary Walk, when over 30 Rotarians, spouses and other friends who had ploughed the furrow and participated in these auspicious ambulatory adventures gathered to celebrate that they had survived their ordeals.  This distinguished gathering of the Great and the Good of Rotary Walking was presided over by our own Sir Edmund Hillary of Rotary perambulation, Rotarian Gethin, Peregrinator-in-Chief par excellence, the expeditionary Doyen and arranger of our repast, who welcomed all present to a pre-prandial mulled wine, which set the occasion off to an appropriate start.

During the course of a good lunch, reminiscences of times past, both primordial and in more modern times, flowed freely, after which Gethin animadverted to the initial adventures starting in 1986, the celebration of the 100th walk, followed by Rotarian Chris, who, as a similar relict from like times medieval, recalled other expeditions into the wilds of the County.

A typically pessimistic note was then struck by the present Organiser, yours truly, in relation to declining numbers of both Walks Leaders and participants, albeit with the hope that the walks would continue into the future, even if their length were to be reduced and more emphasis given to the matter of the subsequent less-than-healthy lunches, to which all walkers, past and present and their camp followers would always be very welcome!

Peter Newham