After the Social Enterprise week, we then had an amazing mediation course through an organisation called Peaceworks. Pickwell Richard actually went on the course himself, and the feedback was outstanding as the 'best course ever been on'. Thank you to Chris Seaton who ran the course and who is responsible for a lot more constructive conversations across the country as a result! Rich may be adding something about this on our Pickwell Manor Facebook Page.
On the same day Chris and the guys left, Surfers against Sewage (SAS) arrived! Or as our good friend Eils has now named them..Smurfs against Sewage...
We knew they had arrived by the wonderful car stickers that appeared in our car park...
I realised it had been years since I'd thought about car stickers
and yet here they were...loads of them!
and this is only a small sample
I think it definitely talks of the passion each car owner has for the surf!
A few guys arrived early to set up, putting news cuttings about the beach and environment and press releases about themselves all over the Ballroom.
Peter came from The Museum of British Surfing, based up the road in Braunton. The board on the right is 100 years old!
The atmosphere was very relaxed as people arrived,
grabbed themselves a glass of Barefoot Wine... (fascinating story behind 'Barefoot' but will save for another occasion).
and ate some extremely dodgy looking pizza! They had to repeat this pizza meal the next day for lunch too, as one of the team who was sent out to buy lunch for the 30ish people there, came back with 8 pasties and wondered why everyone was so aghast! Apparently that's all the shop had left. Ha! The good news is, all prospective Pickwell Brides, these are not our chosen wedding catering team.
This is What SAS had to say in their newsletter following the weekend:
"We’d like to thank Pickwell Manor for their donation to make the event possible Thanks to SAS Directors Ben Hewitt, Richard Gregory and Jim Gorrod for all their help with the event."
Tracey and the girls, all fired up over keeping our beaches clean, went to join the group litter picking on Saunton beach.
The only slight problem was the surf was up so the whole group had all gone to surf at Putsborough beach instead!
The good news is folks, it wasn't all work, work, work! x
"The SAS team has just returned from our annual SAS Regional Reps training weekend. It is always inspiring to bring our regional leaders together to hear about the SAS campaign actions and projects they’ve been active on for their respective stretch of coastline".
"They bring their local knowledge, local connections, motivations and ideas to help create an increasingly strong national SAS movement tackling coastal pollution."
"The weekend included classroom sessions, interactive presentations and activities, and beach-based exercises. We included a beach clean and, using the collected marine litter, implemented lots of Return To Offender (RTO) activity."
"In just an hour of beach cleaning our team removed 78kgs of litter and then sent over 50 items back to manufacturers through the RTO campaign!"
"We’d like to thank LUSH and the Patagonia Tides Foundation who have been hugely supportive of our Regional Reps in 2011 and of our work tackling marine litter this year."