The Deepings Group is in South Lincolnshire, and when it was announced that Conference 2017 would be in Lincoln, two of our members immediately offered to be on the organising committee.
Many thanks to Ann and Faith for the hard work involved in making this year’s Conference a huge success.
There were eleven of us in all…..nine staying Friday night to enjoy the wrap-around events and dinner (with an excellent table quiz produced by Faith) plus the interesting, funny after-dinner speaker.
Some of us went on a boat ride, some to the Art Gallery, some to the Lincolnshire Archives.
Two more drove up early for the Main Conference on Saturday morning.
The University of Lincoln has a wonderful site on the bank of the Marina, looking up at the much-painted view to the castle and cathedral on top of the hill.
All three speakers were great – Sophie Wells lost fingers and nearly lost both legs (from amniotic band syndrome) – but that has not stopped her winning shed-loads of medals (including three golds and three silvers between the London and Rio Para-Olympics) in horse dancing (as she called it). She has also won able-bodied international dressage events.
Mary Powell has been in charge of the wonderful reconstruction at The Castle with heart-stopping times like winching the huge spiral staircase over the wall, pushing the new lift shaft through the gateway which only just fitted it, finding a Saxon sarcophagus when they dug down to make the vault for the Magna Carta.
Sophie Hannah, a poet (her work is used in GCSE, A level and degrees) and crime writer (the famously guarded Agatha Christie family chose her to write two new Poirot novels) was very entertaining. We enjoyed our workshops on Chasumba, Drumming, the painted knights sculptures which are all round the city, the Woodland Trust and discussion groups.
No one was nominated for the Mary Stott Award this year, so we remembered back to when our own Rita won it for setting up her Mustard Seed Project in the slums of Mombasa, providing a Primary School and many other resources for the local community in Kenya (which she and her husband Geoff continue to do – check out their website…)
We are looking forward to next year’s Conference at Chester.
Thanks to Kathy Ward [LO] for this report.