Climbers’ Club AGM – Bristol

This past weekend was The Climbers’ Club‘s 117th AGM in Bristol… I’ve never climbed in the Avon Gorge, so to make sure I plugged this gap in my climbing CV we made the long journey south from the Lakes on Friday night to make sure we could get out for a quick rock climbing adventure in the gorge before the meeting started at 4pm.

Luckily Moira had offered me a place to doss, and as a super special bonus she had also prepared a feast of many different homemade curries! :yum: All of us (Ian, Viv, Keith, Fiona, Steve, Sandra, me, and of course Moira and Dave) had a great night! A little too good perhaps – the large portions of whisky we enjoyed to round off the evening ensured I had a sore head on Saturday morning!

Sure enough though we ventured forward on Saturday morning to quickly do some climbing before the meeting. However, it was cold! Very cold with a sharp easterly wind. Our ambitions rapidly reduced, and then reduced some more, and finally dropped to a modest VS, Gronk. Still, we were climbing, and that is always good! 😛

I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures from the AGM itself. Although I only have myself to blame for that as I had the unenviable task of chairing the meeting. However, I did make the best of that challenge by whistling through the agenda in a record challenging time of just 45 minutes. I have some way to go to break the record, just 7 minutes I understand even if that was over a hundred years ago, but at least it was a massive improvement on last year’s two plus hour marathon.

After the meeting around 100 people enjoyed a UK premiere showing of the film Gasherbrum I.

Then finally at 7.30 it was time for the dinner.

Our after-dinner speaker had been planned to be Pat Littlejohn. Unfortunately Pat had to pull out. Next Chris Bonington stepped up. Then Chris fell ill. It’s unfortunate to loose one speaker, but surely it’s just plain careless to loose two. 👿 Anyhow, John Cleare was ushered in to the breach and provided first choice entertainment for all. 😀

And as the final entertainment for the night Moira had arranged for a ceilidh band. What fun. Greatly enhanced of course by my incredible good luck to end up dancing, twirling, and “do-si-doing” with Daisy Peters. (Laetitia is away in Peru. 😉 )

And then back to work…

Sunday morning – somewhat tired and with sore heads – it was time for the first committee meeting with our new President, Steve Scott, in the chair. As we gathered waiting for the meeting to start I noticed the colourful array of jumpers etc. in the room. Then I thought perhaps a rainbow image would be fun…

So all that remains to be said is another big “thank-you” to Moira (and Dave) for all their hard work setting up and delivering another brilliant CC AGM!