Chairman’s Jottings Summer 2010

Chairman’s Jottings Summer 2010

Winter problems and the benefits of the internet

This year’s Winter/Spring programme has achieved a notable record with the number of walks which had to be cancelled or rearranged because of the snow – only Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks have disrupted the Group’s walking activities more.  We also lost Lesley Dunlop’s talk on Berkshire Geology – this will be rearranged for 2011.

The usefulness of modern internet technology for communicating late programme changes will not be lost on members with access to it.  The situation prompted many members to let us know their email addresses for the first time – if you’ve got one and haven’t yet advised us of it, it would be well worth doing so in plenty of time for the next onslaught of bad weather.  If you don’t have email yourself, one way to obtain updates is to become a “buddy” of someone who does have it and register their email address. 

Leaders’ privacy

One of the benefits of the internet has been the wider dissemination of programme information and you’ll see that we’ve now decided to limit the information that we include in the walk details so that leaders’ identities are not readily discernable by anyone from outside the Group.  We’re leaving it to individual leaders to decide whether they wish to go further by only providing mobile telephone numbers for contact purposes.

Village parking problems

There has been particular concern expressed recently about occasions when large numbers of walkers have converged on the narrow streets of a small village.  Even if we are careful with our own parking, someone who comes later (not necessarily a member of a Ramblers group) may cause problems that the residents perceive as being down to us.

It’s always best to use a formal parking area where practical.  Rural tourism (of which walking is part) is recognised as benefiting the local economy and parish councils should be considering issues such as parking in developing their parish plans though these can take a long time to bear fruit.

Car sharing

Another solution to parking issues is of course car sharing and we do ask that you maximise this wherever possible, whether by joining forces with other members living nearby or by going to an initial meeting point rather than direct to the walk start.

While on the subject of car sharing, it is perhaps appropriate to clarify the rationale behind the suggested mileage contribution.  This is intended to be a contribution towards more than just the cost of petrol – car owners have overheads like insurance and servicing to consider, not to mention the cost of buying the car in the first place.  It is also intended to average out overall – sometimes a driver will have only one passenger but two or three is more normal and occasionally four will squeeze in.  The Inland Revenue considers that 40p per mile is an acceptable rate to cover the overall cost of using a car on business and we only reach that level when there are five in a car. 

There are some people who, whether because they don’t run a car, because the one they have is too small, or for some other reason, don’t offer lifts and the rate needs to be set at a level that reflects the economics of the situation.  Don’t forget that virtually every car will use more than 8p in petrol per mile, that bus and train fares are at least double this per mile, and that taxis cost around £2 per mile nowadays. 

We hope you’ll find plenty in this programme to tempt you out over the summer!

Graham Smith April 2010