THE latest community news from Aberystwyth

Horticultural Society

THE Autumn edition of Spadework, the Journal of the Cardiganshire Horticultural Society is now out and has been distributed to members.

As ever it is full of reports of the Societies recent activities and gives a preview of the 2017/18 winter lectures.

The first of these took place on Tuesday, 12 September, and attracted a turnout of around 60 to the meeting.

Attendees enjoyed a fascinating talk on Lethal Lovelies, poison plants and the poison garden.

The excellent speaker was John Robertson who first became interested in the subject as a volunteer in the Alnwick Garden in Northumberland where a poison garden is one of the highlights.

The next meeting of the Society is on Tuesday, 10 October, at 7.30pm in the Waunfawr Community Hall when David Howard who has had a wide and interesting career in horticulture, will be talking on His Gardening Life.

Further information on the society’s winter programme is available from the secretary, David Hughes on 01970 623125.

Ramblers

A FIERCE wind was blowing causing horizontal rain when, on Saturday, 23 September, eight Aberystwyth Ramblers parked their cars at the National Trust Carpark below 213 metre high Garn Fawr, just south of Pen Caer, Strumble Head.

Though quite impressive looking, of the many Garns in Wales this must surely be the tiniest.

Fortunately when the Strumble Head shuttle arrived, another one of these very useful little coastal buses, the rain began to ease a little and had ceased altogether by the time the group got off at the start of the footpath to Llanwnda, from where they headed for Carregwastad Point, the landing-place of a French force in February 1797, in an attempted invasion of Britain.

After a delay due to bad weather, the invading soldiers may have had a little too much to drink, taking local Welsh women – who had only come to witness the fighting – dressed in their traditional scarlet tunics and tall black felt hats for British army Redcoats.

And there was Jemima Nicholas, wife of a Fishguard cobbler, who, pitchfork in hand, managed to round up and lock up 12, and possibly more, Frenchmen.

From Carregwastad Point the coast path was followed to Strumble Head, passing many attractive little bays where a number of seal pups could be seen.

But the most interesting part of the walk was the stretch from Strumble Head Lighthouse along the western coast, back towards Garn Fawr.

In fact the reason why walk leader Wyck had put on this walk was to pass the very steep cliffs of Porth Maenmelyn. Many years ago, when taking this same walk in early October he had spotted well over a hundred seal pups there and the sound of their wailing was truly magnificent.

However, perhaps due to the rough seas and high winds of late there were now far fewer pups, possibly about 30, and because of the strong wind it was now hard to hear any wailing.

There was the bonus though of spotting a male and female seal enjoying each others company.

The last part of the walk was the semi-circle below Garn Fawr, back to the Car Park.

Wildlife Trust

SEPTEMBER has seen the autumn Newsletter of the North Ceredigion Section of the Wildlife Trust, South and West Wales going out to members either electronically or in hard format.

The newsletter gives information on the Nature of Our Village Project in Penparcau; a Ceredigion bird report for the Spring and Summer, and an update on the Trust’s Ceredigion reserves.

Most importantly it contains full details of the section’s monthly winter meetings.

The first of these will see Sue Parker of First Nature giving a talk on the fascinating Wild Orchids of West Wales.

All are welcome to the meeting which gets underway at 7pm in Lecture Theatre C22 in the Huw Owen Building on the Penglais Campus.

More information is available on the section’s activities, is from the section secretary, David Purdon on 01970 871012.

Pay as you feel

YOU are invited to join for the official opening of our pay-as-you-feel lunchtime café at St Paul’s Methodist Centre, on Thursday, 28 September.

Hot food will be served from 12pm. There will be some live music, and a short talk by the organisers at 12.30pm.

Food will be served until 1.30pm.

This is a collaboration between St Paul’s Methodist Centre and Aber Food Surplus.

They started up three weeks ago and have enjoyed cooking and serving up a variety of vegetarian soups, stews and cakes/deserts on a pay-as-you-feel basis on Thursday lunchtimes.

Between 20 and 30 people have been joining each week so far.

The purpose is to redirect the perfectly good surplus food from supermarkets which goes to waste, and instead it use it to provide nutritious and tasty food for the local community, whether people can afford a good meal or not.

Hope you can join on Thursday.

Stroke Club

THE club’s outing on 20 September, was to Barmouth, when 40 members boarded a coach for the lovely drive there.

They started in bright sunshine but alas the rain as forecast came, but as the coach stopped right by the door of the Min-y-Môr Hotel, we didn’t get wet.

Judith and Jean did the rounds with raffle tickets.

The chairman, Ann Evans greeted all and spoke of the sad loss of two members, Megan and Glenys, both strong supporters of the club.

On a more cheerful note, she welcomed a new member, Barbara for her first lunch.

After grace was said and everyone seated, lunch was served by the very helpful staff and all enjoyed a splendid meal.

While tea and coffee were served, the 765 draw took place and the cheques handed out to the lucky number winners.

Then the raffle tickets were dealt with and as usual, lots of good and imaginative prizes were handed out.

The rain had stopped and they saw the sea and sands before leaving for home.

A good steady drive back, dropping off members near to their homes as they went.

The rain had started but it didn’t dampen the days outing.

The social secretary, Audrey, said that the next venue is the Golf Club at Capel Bangor on 18 October.

Coffee Morning

CEREDIGION politicians will be holding a special coffee morning to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support on Friday, 29 September, at the Morlan Centre in.

The event between 11am and 1pm will be supported by Ceredigion MP Ben Lake, mid and west AM Simon Thomas and Ceredigion AM Elin Jones.

Parkinson Group

ON Monday 18 September the Aberystwyth Parkinson Group held an anniversary dinner at the Llety Parc Hotel to celebrate 25 years of existence.

More than 60 members attended with friends from Newcastle Emlyn, Montgomery and Machynlleth welcomed.

Hefin Jones, the chairman, gave a brief history of the formation of the branch and he welcomed Margaret Gibbins, Shirley Stewag and Ethel Jones, who were present as the original members. He proposed a toast for the three ladies.

Bethan Lewis Pryse, their Parkinson nurse of over 20 years, gave her thoughts of the group and proposed a toast for the Aberystwyth group.

The guest speaker was Dr John Hindle, a Parkinson specialist from Bangor University.

Dr John Hindle whose mother had Parkinsons for 23 years gave a very interesting talk on the different types of PPS.

After his speech he answered many questions from members.

Liz Morgan, area development officer from Oswestry, thanked John Hindle for coming from north Wales to give such an interesting speech.

The chairman announced that they were holding a free starter day at the football club on Tuesday, 3 October, 10.30am to 3.30pm and would include Bocia exercise, massage, aromatherapy, singing, yoga chair, art and singing lessons, food arranged.

Cambrian Floral Society

THE programme for the coming year commenced on Wednesday, 6 September.

The chairman, John James welcomed existing and the new members amongst them.

Before the demonstration, John informed them of the imminent fund raising events for local charities which we have arranged.

After the short meeting, they enjoyed refreshments prepared by Marian Weston and David Birchall, after which they sat back to enjoy John’s demonstration which had an autumn theme.

In her vote of thanks, Marian expressed appreciation of the chairman’s hard work over the summer organising the forthcoming events to the benefit of local charities.

As was explained during the summer, the society was invited to set up a Floral Festival at St Mary’s Church, to celebrate it’s centenary.

The Floral Festival will take place from 7 to 9 October and as a consequence we will not be meeting at Bethel Vestry on Wednesday, 5 October.

They shall, instead, be meeting at 7pm at St Mary’s Church, Gray’s Inn Road, in preparation for the festival.

The first charity event is a Cymanfa Ganu/Songs of Praise with items by Côr y Gen (NLW choir), organist Bryan Jones, conductor Vernon Maher, takes place on Sunday, 1 October, at 7.30pm at Bethel Baptist Chapel, Baker Street.

The president for the evening is Rev Kevin Davies and there will be a representation from the Aberystwyth Branch of Blood Bikes Wales to which a donation will be made from the proceeds of the evening.

Entry by ticket or at the door is £5.

Rotary Club

CLUB members and their guests were delighted to welcome Prof Neil Glasser of the University’s Department of Geography and Earth Science as a guest speaker at a recent evening meeting.

Neil is renowned across the world as a specialist in glaciology and has been honoured to have glacier named after him in Antarctica,

Neil’s talk focused on a recent field trip to Antarctica designed to gain a better understanding of past changes to the ice sheet with a view to extrapolating into the future as conditions change as a result of global warming.

Besides the hard science, Neil provided wonderful insights into the practicalities of living in such a dangerous wilderness over an extended period and the dangers of transport from the camp itself to the peaks chosen for their research effort.

Hidden crevasses were an ever-present concern, so the team rigged up a ground radar system extended in front of their specially prepared Toyota Hi-Lux vehicles as they moved carefully over the ice.

The visit was timed to coincide with Antarctic summer, with 24-hour daylight providing excellent opportunities for fieldwork.

Even so the temperature at the camp rarely got above -30 degrees Celsius throughout their stay.

At the end of the trip, the team flew back to South Africa, so they moved from -30 to +30 after a six hour flight.

MacMillan Cancer Support

ON Saturday, 30 September in the vestry of Seion Chapel, Baker Street, there will be a coffee morning on behalf of MacMillan Cancer.

It will be between 10am and noon and various fund raising opportunities will be there including a cake stall and tombola.

This is part of the Biggest Coffee Morning event held all over the UK at this time of year.

Last year the Aberystwyth Group raised over £13,250 and all of this money – and a lot more – was spent in Ceredigion to help support the patients and their families when Cancer is diagnosed.

Alongside the MacMillan nurses, who provide a wonderful and comprehensive service to patients, there are many other services that MacMillan offer from specialised treatment to financial help and family counselling.

The generosity of the people in and around Aberystwyth is shown time and time again as in the £250 raised in a recent collection at Morrisons.

Bibliographical Group

THE Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group held a symposium at Gregynog Hall, the University of Wales conference centre near Newtown, over the weekend of 15-17 September.

Twenty of them stayed at Gregynog for the weekend, including visitors from Cheshire, Devon, Norfolk and Rutland, and others joined us for part of the weekend.

After dinner in the Blayney Room on Friday, the first lecture was given in the Weaver Room by Prof Ian Gadd, Professor of English Literature at Bath Spa University.

His talk on The Stationers’ Company: from incorporation to copyright traced the history of the London livery company which controlled publishing in England and Wales from 1557 to 1695, and continued to exert an important influence thereafter.

Saturday morning’s lecture by Dr Paul Bryant-Quinn of the University of Exeter on Welsh scholarship in Renaissance Italy reported some of his findings from a recent extended research trip.

A number of Welsh Catholics went to live in Italy at a time when their religion made it unsafe for them to remain at home, and pursued their scholarly activities there, leading to the publication of books such as Gruffydd Robert’s Dosparth Byrr, a Welsh grammar printed in Milan in several parts between 1567 and 1600.

Dr Susan Davies’s paper on When palaeography is much more than the ability to read … focused on the 16th to 18th centuries, and included an “astronomical” research project based in Warsaw with which she has been helping.

In the afternoon David Vickers, Controller of Gwasg Gregynog, gave us a tour of the internationally renowned private press, and spoke about its history from the time it was re-established in the 1970s as well as showing us some of the beautiful books he had printed.

Before dinner Dr Diana Dixon, a former lecturer at the College of Librarianship Wales, gave a richly illustrated talk on To instruct and entertain: Victorian magazines for children.

On Sunday morning Dr Elizabeth Savage of the Institute of English Studies at the University of London spoke on Early colour-printed book illustrations: making, meaning and experimenting.

The final lecture was given by Professor Sarah Hutton, formerly a lecturer in the English Department at Aberystwyth and now a visiting professor at the University of York.

She spoke about The challenges of editing Thomas Traherne, a seventeenth-century Herefordshire clergyman and poet. The symposium concluded with lunch in the dining room.

The Group’s programme for 2017-18 will begin on Tuesday, 24 October, when Dr David Pearson, former Director of Culture, Heritage and Libraries at the City of London Corporation, will speak on Provenance revisited.

Bridge Club results

FRIDAY, 25 August: 1, Magda Corser and Martin Page; 2, Andrew Loat and Stephen Loat; 3, Keith Bellamy and Dai Hayes.

Friday, 1 September: 1, Jeff Thomas and Alan Stein; 2, Yuan Shen and Tianhua Chen; 3, John Holmes and Gabor Gelleri.

Friday, 8 September: 1, Magda Corser and Martin Page; 2, Doreen Anthony and Dai Hayes; 3, Alan Stein and Yuan Shen.

Sunday, 10 September: 1, Gabor Gelleri and John Holmes; 2, Elenid Thomas and Pam Woodhouse; joint 3, Pat Roe and Margaret James/Jeff Thomas and Margaret Roberts.

Friday, 15 September: 1, Margaret James and Pat Roe; 2, Ken Thomas and Andrew Loat; 3, Martin Page and Magda Corser.

Merched y Wawr

CROESAWYD yr aelodau i gyfarfod cyntaf y tymor gan ein llywydd newydd, Megan Jones ac wedi ein cyfarfod busnes, croesawodd Olive ac Yvonne a oedd wedi teithio i fyny o Drelech ac Ystradgynlais i siarad yn ein cangen.

Mewn ffordd ddifyr ac ysgafn cyflwynwyd ni i’w busnes ‘Pethau Olyv ’a sut y cafodd y busnes ei sefydlu ar ôl i’r ddwy ymddeol o’u gwaith fel nyrsys.

Cawsom gyfle wedyn i weld eu harddangosfa wych o emwaith, bagiau ac eitemau ffasiwn - a phrynu wrth gwrs.

Diolchwyd i’r ddwy am noson agoriadol gofiadwy gan Luned Richards a chafwyd paned wedi ei pharatoi gan ferched Waun Fawr.

Plascrug Bridge Club

RESULTS from 5 September: 1, Mike Yeo and Ian Finlay; 2, John Holmes and Alan Stein; 3, Pamela Woodhouse and Margaret James.

12 September: 1, Pamela Woodhouse and Margaret James; 2, Margaret Ellis and Vicky Edwards; 3, Doreen Anthony and Dylan Raw-Rees.

National Library

ON 7 October they celebrate 450 years since publishing the first translation of the New Testament into Welsh.

To note this special day The National Library of Wales will release a digital version of this edition.

If you’re a member of a club, society or group, send your news to [email protected]