Saints Alive: Stanhoe and Barwick Newsletter

January 2009

Dates for your diary or calendar

21st December:

Carol Service at All Saints, 3.30 pm – all are welcome.

25th December:

Christmas family communion 9.30 am at All Saints Church.
Christmas Day service 10 am at Methodist Chapel.
All parishioners are welcome.

Women’s Institute

first monthly meeting of 2009 on Thursday 8th January. The speaker will be Judith Key on “Painting landscapes”, and the competition is to bring a landscape painting (which must be your own work).

Book Club

it is proposed to start a book club in Stanhoe, to meet monthly and discuss the book which members have read in the past month. Books will be obtained from the library. This will be open to all, and if you would be interested, please phone Nadine Casey on 518206.

Cycle Group

the Women’s Institute has been cycling on Tuesday afternoons during the Autumn/Winter, and has decided that after New Year these rides will be open to friends of the WI, as are the summer walks. If you would be interested in participating, please phone Pamela Austin on 518033 or turn up at the village hall at 2pm on Tuesdays, unless the weather conditions are extreme. At this time of year, you should have functioning cycle lights, and preferably an item of high visibility clothing.

“An introduction to watercolour”

Norfolk County Council Adult Education will continue to run art classes next term, commencing on Tuesday 13th January and continue until 10th February: please note the new time of 7pm at the reading room. The tutor will be Helen Breach. Please come along if you are interested, regardless of whether you attended last term – all are welcome. There will be a free taster sessions during the academic year, so payment will be collected (presumably) at the start of the course.

Parish council

the next meeting of the Parish Council will take place in the Reading Room at 7pm on Thursday 22nd January.

Fancy a trip to Norwich?

As noted in last month’s Saints Alive, the WI is hiring a coach on Saturday 31st January, leaving the Reading Room, Cross Lane at 1.00pm, and some seats are available. If you would like to travel to Norwich at the cost of £7 for the return journey, or require more information, please phone Frances Ulyatt on 518366.

Muddy roads

you may have noticed that some of the roads around the village are very muddy and slippery where farm vehicles exit from fields. This doesn’t only make our cars dirty, but there is a significant safety issue, so The County Highways department takes this matter very seriously. If you encounter dangerously muddy road surfaces, please phone the Norfolk County Council General Enquiries number 0844 800 8020 to report this and action will be taken.

Community Speedwatch

Teams of volunteers have been checking vehicle speeds through the village since receiving training from the Norfolk Constabulary in early August. The initiative is believed to be having an effect on drivers, and it is hoped that regular users of our roads will realise that we are serious about reducing vehicle speeds here. The highest speed recorded so far is 53mph, on Burnham Road adjacent to junction with Bircham Road at the pond. A very large number of motorists still exceed the posted speed limits, but only a small proportion of these are driving at high speeds. Drivers whose details are taken are reported to the police, who write to them; if they are logged driving at speed again, then their details are entered into the police national computer and they can expect a rather differently worded communication from the constabulary. Some 60 Community Speedwatch schemes are now operating across Norfolk.

Stanhoe has also recently been visited by “SAM”, the mobile unit which records and displays the vehicle’s speed. If the vehicle speed is in accordance with the limit, a smiley face appears on the unit, but if the vehicle is speeding, the driver sees a frowning face. SAM is understood to have paid us three visits, and in due course some statistics on the speeds recorded should be available to us. Apparently ‘he’, too, does make a difference!

Litter bins

although Stanhoe was awarded a “best kept village” accolade some years ago, the roads and verges in places now seem to be almost permanently decorated with wheely bins. Householders are reminded that it is a County Council requirement that bins are put out no earlier than 7pm on the day before collection (ie Wednesday), and should be recovered from the roadside after emptying. During recent high winds, many bins had blown into the road, creating a driving hazard. Many of us object to having to do the bin moving ourselves, but it is now a fact of life, so if you can’t recover your own bins, please make arrangements for assistance with this.