Rotherham

We are a small friendly group with just 13 members at present and have been established for over 30 years. We join the local Aston Group for our meetings, which are fortnightly on weekday evenings. The meetings are a mix of serious and light-hearted topics with a speaker about once a year. We also have a weekly walking group on Mondays, a reading group with six meetings a year as well as occasional visits to the theatre or other events.
On our 30th Anniversary we decided to have a weekend away. This city break proved so successful it became an annual event including cities from Cardiff to Dundee via Cambridge and Bath. In 2020 we had planned on spending our May weekend in Oxford.
The lockdowns and social distancing have not deterred us as a group! Being lively minded women our meetings have continued all be it in very different ways as the regulations have changed. We have used WhatsApp as a daily point of contact, encouragement and entertainment, as well as for planning and commenting on particular topics. We have learned to use Zoom for Book Group discussions, for some of our research based meetings as well as our 2020 Christmas social and Quiz of the Year. We even started to play Mah-jong on Zoom though this is now usually in person now. We had a few meetings in local parks and also enjoyed some local treasure trails prepared by members.
At our most recent planning meeting it was decided, (following a survey which showed that a few members were still very hesitant about being in a large group indoors) to continue holding meetings in a variety of different formats so that everyone could be included. We planned a treasure trail devised by two members, the TTT and a couple of other meetings that will be split between 2 houses, a private Black Diamonds  tour of Wentworth Woodhouse, some meetings including our Book Group on Zoom but our Christmas social is to be almost as normal, a ‘bring and share’ in a member’s house which can be well ventilated.