ThamesMog
Secretary's Report May 2008

This month I would like to say bon voyage to all those of you venturing forth to France with Geoff and Sue Giles, over the late May Bank Holiday weekend. I hope you will all have a wonderful time: enjoy the wine, cheese and chocolate. I hope I haven’t ruined any surprises for anyone. I shall be in Toulouse that week, so I will be thinking about you all. Take care.

Off and on I have spent quite a lot of time in Toulouse in recent years. The research projects I have worked on with the likes of Airbus, have contributed to the culmination of the world’s biggest civilian aircraft, the Airbus A380, that has now entered service finally with Singapore Airlines – I believe they have three in service currently, with another sixteen on order. You know it’s the one with two decks. With this in mind, I was very pleased to receive an invitation to the Centre, from Trudie Jacobs, of the Brighton Centre, to the Dunsfold Aerodrome for the “Wings and Wheels” event, held over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Trudie is organizing a static display of Morgans on Sunday 24th August. If you are prepared to display your Morgan, you will be rewarded with half price tickets, for entry to the show. The air show is over three hours long and includes large commercial aircraft as well as a wide variety of military planes. The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and the Red Arrows will be there. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if the A380 did a fly by or something. There will be a large collection of classic cars to look at on the day, so there will be a lot to do. Places are limited so please contact Trudie for details as soon as you can if you want to go along. Please see Trudie’s contact details below. It should be a great day out – thank you Trudie for your kind invitation.

Don’t forget we have now started the Charity Challenge for the Richard Thorne Charity Trophy for 2008. To make it more convivial we are planning some Thames Valley outings to other Centre noggins. For the first of these we will be visiting Oxmog’s June noggin, en masse. This will take place on Tuesday evening, 3rd June, at The Star in Stanton St John. It is about two miles from the Headington roundabout. The pub is located in a pretty village; it is a nice inn, with good food and a big car park. Please contact Glenn and Jane Davies for further details, please see below.

As promised, we have managed to fit in a walk in the beautiful Berkshire countryside from material furnished by Gill Smith – thank you Gill. Nevertheless, because May is such a busy month we have changed the day to a Saturday – so it will be a good excuse to have a day off from all that shopping. For our first walk I have chosen somewhere close to home for a change – Wokingham. We shall be going to the Crooked Billet pub: to get there take the Easthampstead Road out of Wokingham, turn right into Heathlands Road and then left into Honey Hill. The pub is on the left.