Coventry & Warwickshire Red Rope Agm Minutes 4 July 2008

Present: Janet, Alan, Bronwen, Bonny, Alastair, Adrian, Viv, Bruce

Last Year's Minutes

Some actions from last year's AGM have not been carried out - in future Bronwen is to chase people if necessary. (Some of these un-actionned actions were for me - not sure how I chase myself)

Action: Bronwen to put minutes on the website

Membership

We have two new members (Terry & Jackie) and some more occasional attendees.

After last year's AGM, Janet contacted the Labour Party and Bonny contacted the local council. As a result we had more people on our mailing list, but no new people on walks.

Action: Janet is to contact British Nature and Action 21

Action: Bronwen is to contact the local LETS trading group.

Action: Janet to find phone number for national membership secretary

Treasuring & Accounts

Alastair presented a financial report of the club account.

We have a balance of 706 pounds, including petty cash. (Accounts for the year included full payment for accommodation for our Devon trip, which hasn't taken place yet.)

Alastair's accounts have been praised as the best accounts of all the Redrope groups and the "most perfect example" of dealing with transport costs.

There was some discussion of our planned trip to Devon, which is taking place in August 2008. This will be expensive. Before the trip was announced, the costs were discussed with the treasurer, and as our bank balance was over one thousand pounds at the time, it was agreed that we could afford a loss. It was pointed out that about three 'bad' trips could wipe out the club bank balance entirely.

We have found that some other groups do not follow Redrope procedure in dealing with transport costs (charge for mileage according to income band) because it's just too complicated, but simply ask people who share transport to split costs between themselves.

This year we have started charging non-members 2 pounds for a day walk. Group agreed that this was a good idea and we should carry on doing so.

We have donated 50 pounds back to the national group (action from last year)

Group Officials

Alan would like someone else to take over the post of hut booker. Some discussion of what was involved, and part of the job consists of leaving lots of messages for people who don't reply for weeks, if at all. This becomes dispiriting after a while.

Bruce is willing to take up the job when he comes back to England permanently (Christmas) but wants the post renamed (possibilities of obscenities if you say "hut booker" fast enough) Agreed that Bruce would be our new accommodation officer.

Everyone else is happy to continue in their current positions.

Treasurer - Alastair
Publicity officer - Janet
Secretary/website - Bronwen
Accommodation Officer (from Xmas) - Bruce

Walks

This year some of our more pro-active members have been busy elsewhere (Bruce & Viv moved to Sweden, Janet working in London, Alastair new responsibilities at work) As a result Bronwen has been organising and leading a large number of the club's walks, and is running out of both enthusiasm and energy.

Some discussion of how the club used to organise walks; apparently there used to less perfectionism, less emphasis on leaders and followers, and people who were organising a walk certainly didn't "pre-walk" the route. People would regard the walks as a group activity or "an adventure in map reading" and the occasional lengthy detour was part of the day out, with no apologies needed.

Suggestions: less formal attitude, people pairing up to share responsibility, people phone/email around if it looked like a nice day or evening and they fancied an outing.

Several people volunteered to organise walks for later in the year.

Social

We're all rather fed-up with the Virgin and Castle which has continually bad service, new emphasis on food while refusing to serve food "unless in a designated eating area", and is inconvenient for everyone. Also noisy.

So, we have some new arrangements which will hopefully be more sociable and also make it easier to organise walks and trips away. Every other month we'll have a (social able and friendly) meeting in someone's house; alternative months we'll have a purely social get-together in a pub. And we'll vary the pub so not everyone has to drive. After a few months, we'll see what people's thoughts are, and if these arrangements can be improved.

Bronwen, Alan & Janet, Bonny have all volunteered their homes as a meeting place.

Action: All to suggest suitable pubs.

Other

Some details in Redrope MIS need changing.

People would like to see more photographs on the website.

Action: Bronwen to contact the Redrope MIS and (i) change reference to our social arrangements (ii) add note about "contact Alan if interested in mountain biking"

Action: All to send photographs to Bronwen. Bronwen doesn't care what size the images are, but would like to know where and when they were taken.

And thanks to Janet & Alan for hosting and for a wonderful meal.