Chairman’s report from the Chalgrave Sports Club Annual General Meeting, held on 24 April 2024:

The past year has had its ‘Ups and Downs’. The ‘down’ was the cancellation of our fantastic Quiz Night back in October because of electrical problems at the Memorial Hall. Not only did we lose money, but we also lost some people who could not attend the rearranged Quiz in April.

However, we have had many ‘ups’ which include the rearranged Quiz Night which was a fantastic success. We had many positive comments after the event and some enquiries about joining the Club.

Another ‘up’ was so many of our members completing the Mile a Day (MAD) Challenge last year. We had a presentation and celebration of this achievement at the Fancott – followed by our Christmas Dinner which turned into another ‘down’ although we did eventually see the funny side – and we got our money back.

Our Yoga classes have been very successful the number of members and non-members joining has been increasing. Unfortunately, the classes are interrupted by other Hall bookings and the month-long closure of the Hall in October – the disruption caused us to lose some participants. We will continue with the classes – but not two a week – we will keep running the Monday night sessions.

We support and promote our local Parkrun at Houghton Hall. We attend once a month and have a number of members who do the 5K and some have surpassed their personal best – including our secretary.

We organise successful golf days – the last one was our Christmas Golf Day at Caddington Golf Club with Paul Younger being the winner. Our next is on May 18th at Chalgrave Manor Golf Club.

We are always looking to expand our activities and we had a great Go-kart session in April which we hope to repeat – thank you Millie Parker. We are considering Ten Pin Bowling for later in the year.

Individual Club members have achieved great success – Christina Lawrence and Mike Jackson completed the 62mile Race to the Stones finishing in 14 hours. Libby Gatward completed 46 mile cycling sportive in the Peak District – and Phil Parry completed 12 laps of the Go Kart circuit!

We continue to support sporting activities and charities in our area. We made a donation to St Georges Lower School which went towards the cost of Bikeability – cycling proficiency for Year 4 children. The Club helped organise Quiz Nights at The Plough Inn. These Quizzes raised money for charity we donated £210 to the Trussell Trust Foodbank in Houghton Regis.

I am extremely grateful for the work that the Committee members put into the Club to make all this happen – particularly our Head of IT Simon Gatward and our Treasurer Paul Levy – but real thanks go to all those non committee members that are always are willing to help – Vicky, Flo and Gabe Hydes, Su Parker, Mandy Gatward, Fiona Parker, Lesley Smith, and I apologise for any names I have left out.

I look forward to another great year.