The in House Magazine of the Association of Intervarsity Clubs s1

SEPTEMBER 2015

The In house Magazine of the Association of Intervarsity clubs

Sharing news and best practice from around the regions Providing a forum for discussion of issues affecting aIVC

1 Contents UPDATING YOUR CLUB DETAILS...... 3 CHAIRMANS CHAT...... 3 FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT...... 4 Robin Hood’s Bay August 2015...... 4 London IVC at the Edinburgh Festival...... 6 HALIFAX AND HUDDERSFIELD – WHERE FOUR HALVES MAKE A WHOLE...... 7 EDITORS NOTE...... 8 APPEAL...... 8 AIVC COMMITTEE 2015 -2016...... 9

2 UPDATING YOUR CLUB DETAILS Please help us to keep in touch. Have any details regarding your club changed? Are you no longer the Chair? Please update your clubs details on the AIVC website. www.ivc.org.uk. An article on how to do this can be found under the Club Area menu

CHAIRMANS CHAT Hilary Brown (Birmingham IVC) [email protected]

Welcome to the second edition of Newslines this year.

Firstly please accept my apologies for the delay in sending out the Newslines. It has been a busy summer and we have all been tied up with personal as well as IVC matters.

Regional Gatherings I am looking forward to our first Regional Gathering this year.

This has been set for the weekend of 27 - 29 November 2015. It will be held at The National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes. I hope that many of you will attend to contribute to the discussions about the future of our clubs and to network with other club members.

Details have been posted on Activity Exchange and the AIVC website.

Gatherings are also intended to be a social event so do come along and enjoy a drink and buffet with your fellow IVCers.

Milton Keynes IVC are hosting this event and there are activities planned for the weekend. Accommodation is available at The Centre.

Further details will be added to Activity Exchange as soon as possible.

Many thanks to Milton Keynes IVC for organising the first Gathering for this year.

If your club would like to host a Regional Gathering this year, please get in touch. I have had a couple of offers so far. More volunteers would be gratefully accepted!

Events Please continue to share your events and participate in both your club and national events.

I shared a very enjoyable trip to Bletchley Park with members of Milton Keynes and Leicester IVC in early July. Members from Northants IVC and Swindon IVC also attended. We had a lovely Indian meal afterwards before we all departed.

Thank you to Leicester IVC for organising the event and to Milton Keynes IVC for organising the meal.

3 I have recently had a very enjoyable two weeks in Robin Hood's Bay. It was lovely to meet up with members of Merseyside IVC, York IVC, Milton Keynes IVC, Leeds and Harrogate IVC, North Staffs IVC and London IVC who shared the experience with Birmingham IVC.

It was good to make new acquaintances and meet up with old.

Look out for shared events on Activity Exchange and on the AIVC website.

Facebook Page

We now have an open facebook page accessible to all. This provides a place where you can publicise events that your club has organized and tell the world how great they were. You never know who might see the post and decide they would like to join your club. The URL for the page is https://www.facebook.com/aivc.org.uk or you can link to it from the aivc website at www.ivc.org.uk, just click on the facebook icon on the left hand side.

Look out for IVy Chicken on the facebook page. She started her life on Magdalene Bridge in Cambridge. But where is she now?

Ivy attended the trip to Bletchley but that is the last we heard of her and she seems to have gone awol. We are very concerned for her. IVY where are you now? Please let us know what you are up to.

We also have a closed facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/181221324419/?fref=ts

This is the place to discuss issues affecting IVC, such as Developing Your Club, National Events etc. If you would liked to contribute to the discussion please e-mail Nick Wilkinson at [email protected] so he can add you to the group.

In conclusion just to say I hope to meet lots of members over the year and join you at some of your events & that I am always happy to hear from you.

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

Robin Hood’s Bay August 2015 Jackie Milton Keynes IVC

Attendees – Birmingham IVC, York IVC, North Staffs IVC, Leeds IVC, Milton Keynes IVC, London IVC, Merseyside IVC, Derby Focus, Friends and family of Hilary & Pete.

This is a brief summary of the great time we all had in RHB this summer (I could in fact write for as long as Pete can talk but I won’t put you all through that!!!) There

4 were lots of different comings and goings throughout the two week stay, I don’t know exactly how many different people stayed at The Old School House (TOSH) but I estimate it to be between as little as 17 on one particular night and as many as 30+ on others.

To be honest it took me a bit of time to get to know everybody, but I know others found it easier to remember who was who, I still can’t quite get my head around who was a ‘Stokie’ ‘Staffie’ or ‘Yorkie’ but they definitely ALL had funny accents (The Brummies of course all sounded perfectly normal after my two week immersion)

Well, we all had fantastic weather, the sun shone for us and we spent many hours walking, cycling and on the beach. It did in fact rain only three times, once for ten minutes when I was in a pub and I missed it, once again for 10/15 minutes when I was in bed and once again I missed it, and ALL day on the Friday the day before we left (I didn’t miss that).

Each morning we all got up in our own time and there was a ‘hive of activity’ in the kitchen, breakfasts were cooked, packed lunches were made up and come 10.30/11.00 TOSH was usually deserted. Everybody had their own plans, each day there were walks of various lengths to various places, there were also cycle rides of various descriptions and everyone had their own agenda.

RHB is on the Cleveland Way, to the north we walked into Whitby and to the south Scarborough. We walked to Ravenscar and there was the cinder track which was the old railway line, this was used for cycling and walking too.

Many of us saw the seals at Ravenscar, we visited a few different waterfalls (Foss Falls & Malyon Spout) and had some steep walks accessing them. Some of us went on the ‘Ghost Walk’ and the ‘Fossil Walk’ some of us went on the steam train and on the transport bridge at Middlesborough.

In the evenings we either ate out or cooked in the kitchen. On a couple of occasions food was prepared for all of us, we had a lovely chilli & curry on one evening and a bbq on another. The evenings usually ended with us going to one of the many pubs in RHB for a quiz night or a folk evening. There was so much going on that we always had a choice of things to do. We also did a bit of ‘in house entertainment’ with some quizzes etc.

Boggle Hole was a particular favourite for most of us. It was a short walk away along the beach, once there we could have coffee, cake, lunch, beer etc and several of us visited several times.

Some of us saw Morris Dancers in the village, some of us did some drawings/paintings, a jigsaw was completed, a slideshow was shown of the narrowboat holiday and we even did some star gazing.

Thanks very much for arranging it Hilary & Pete and please do it again.

5 London IVC at the Edinburgh Festival Ann Jones LIVC ALO

It must be nearly twenty years since I was last in Edinburgh. I had forgotten what a wonderful city it is and how stunning its architecture. Edinburgh has more architectural gems and sites of interest than the cobbles that line the Royal Mile. With almost 5,000 listed buildings, it’s little wonder the centre of Edinburgh won UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1995.

In August, however, it’s not the architecture that takes centre stage but the festival. There is an overwhelming choice of events to attend, indeed so overwhelming is the choice that there is the danger of not being able to make a decision.

The events ranged from the spiritual – a performance of Sacred Music & Masked Dance by the Tibetan Monks of Tashi Lhunpo Monastry, to the esoteric -..violin variations with laptop and interactive audio cube by Scottish violinist Ian Peaston, to the witty – Matt Forde’s satire Get the Political Party started, to the bawdy & less than tasteful – a late night show with FFFN, but not a lot of mainstream!! LIVC’s very own stand-up comedienne Lisi Corfield gave several ad hoc performances which were well received.

The atmosphere in the city is exuberant and relaxed. On almost every street corner

you will find people touting for your presence at the event they are promoting.

You can spend as much or as little as you want on entertaining yourself. There are many free events as well as street performances and the half price ticket booth or being a friend of the fringe(2 for 1) provides the opportunity to save the pounds for other indulgences.

Apart from maybe the Tattoo or if you want to be certain of seeing a very popular act it’s probably not necessary to book in advance.

Dave Lawrence our chair and facilitator of this trip had almost every day filled to capacity with pre-booked events but most of us weren’t that organised and arrived with nothing planned. No matter we soon found others with whom to attend events.

6 Dave was also the one that proved to us that the deep fried mars bar is not just a Scottish urban myth. Here he is road testing one, you can tell from his face what he thought of it – disgusting!!

The Ed fest is clearly the place to see and be seen. Not only did I bump into a friend from my bridge club but also friends from Oxford IVC – Carol & Ora (alo).

Our student accommodation, though not 4*, couldn’t have been better situated, only a short walk from many venues and the pub were we would meet at the end of the day to share experiences and plan the next day. I can report that the pub serves an eclectic range of malt whiskies mostly around £3.60 a shot but ranging up to a £9 for a 12 year old Speyside.

I think I can safely say that all participants had a great week and are looking forward to next year’s trip.

If your club would like to book some student accommodation for the festival next year contact Dave Lawrence at [email protected] for details.

HALIFAX AND HUDDERSFIELD – WHERE FOUR HALVES MAKE A WHOLE Sylvia Revell, Chair,Halifax & Huddersfield IVC

You could say that Halifax and Huddersfield IVC has always been a club of two halves geographically – but with only seven miles between the two town centres this has never been a major issue. But what happens when you add to that two groups from a separate organisation, Northern Link – one from Halifax, the other from Huddersfield? This is where we found ourselves at the end of last year when Northern Link members – from the now defunct singles group Nexus – were looking for a new home. Some ex-Nexus members from Harrogate had already joined Leeds IVC, giving it a new identity ‘Leeds and Harrogate’. Now those who had tried briefly flirted with Northern Link were looking elsewhere, including those from the established Huddersfield and Halifax groups.

We were pleased to welcome them into IVC. We visited them at their respective regular pub nights in Huddersfield and Halifax, and later held a ‘Getting to Know You’ evening – which included a presentation on how to use Activity Exchange (adopted twelve months earlier, with support from Peter Norris). We had been told ‘around 35’, but as the months rolled by, our membership has almost doubled from 60 plus to 120 full members. The number and range of events on our monthly programme reflects our wider membership, and attendance at most events has benefited too.

With benefits come challenges – and the main one has been that of integrating members from the two organisations. From the outset we have aimed to become a

7 single, cohesive group – not easy when there are established friendship networks within each group, and forging new friendships takes a little more effort. Some find it easier than others to step outside of their comfort zone, cross the boundary and say ‘hello’ to somebody new, or to go on an event where they may not know everyone.

But, six months on from our first combined programme, we have a group which is thriving in terms of ideas and activities, and we look forward to some of our new members taking a role on the committee at our next AGM, taking us a step further along the way from two (or four?) halves, to a whole. Thanks to all those who have helped to make it happen.

EDITORS NOTE Club Spotlight will return next issue when we will be looking at Milton Keynes IVC, who by the way are hosting the regional gathering in Novemeber. If you would like your club to feature in newslines send me your article. I will be putting all the club spotlight articles on the aIVC website so this may help to promote your club.

Blast from the past will also return next issue with some tit bits from historical LIVC bulletins.

APPEAL Without News, there would be no Newslines for your enjoyment and information. Apart from committee news I am dependant on you the reader for articles. Do please help to make Newslines lively and interesting by sending me your articles.