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Youth Development at Wallingford Sports Park
The Wallingford Sports Park is a miracle of co-operation! Seven independent clubs working together as a registered charity to provide high quality sport for the people of Wallingford and the surrounding area and all run by volunteers!
The clubs include Hockey, Football, Squash, Cricket, Rugby, Tennis and Skittles. The philosophy is simple opportunity for all ages and abilities with a special focus on our youth sections. There is room for the social player and the serious player with many of our sportsmen and women achieving regional, county and even national honours.
We now have over 60 qualified coaches working mainly with our younger players to identify, nurture and develop the individual’s talent, bringing the best out of everyone and instilling the values and virtues of healthy competitive sport.
The Sports Park has just begun to develop a coordinated sports policy for the area with Wallingford School a specialist sports college and SODC, a policy which will impact on every child in the area. This exciting development is already attracting national interest from Sport England and Sports Coach UK as a model of local excellence in sports provision.
The future looks bright, but a lot of work needs to be done. We have long enjoyed the support of our local community through donations from events such as the BunkFest and in return we always try to help by offering our facilities for camping and even ceilidhs!
So, if you are camping or perhaps dancing at the Sports Trust remember that you are helping the young people of the town and are part of something special and even unique!
Cholsey & Wallingford Railway
BunkFest is named after the local railway "The Wallingford Bunk". Some say the engine went off without its carriages, doing a bunk. Others have less salubrious explanations for the name!
The preserved Great Western branch line is operated by volunteers from the Cholsey & Wallingford Railway Preservation Society. We were formed in 1981 and have fought hard over the last 24 years to reopen the branch for Heritage trains. The line runs for 2.5 miles through the South Oxfordshire countryside from Cholsey mainline station to our own station site on Hithercroft Road in Wallingford.
This station used to have a maltings adjacent, but this has now been demolished and houses are in place. The housing development is now complete, and work is now in hand to redesign our site and plan for a new station building with better visitor facilities.
In the meantime, we are working in rather a cramped area! Despite this restriction, our Wallingford site offers a museum, café, shop and toilets.
Hopefully, our resident steam locomotive GWR No. 701 - will be hauling trains over the BunkFest weekend. This loco is a Barclay 0-4-0 saddle tank No 1964 of 1929.
No. 701 returned to steam following overhaul last year.
During the BunkFest the railway is hosting the Bunk Beer Festival (featuring Bunk Ale and many more) with dance displays and live music, and of course the Singing Train - please see elsewhere in this programme for details.
The C&W Railway operates on selected weekends throughout the year, ring 01491 835067 for details (24 hour answerphone) or visit our web site at:
www.cholsey-wallingford-railway.com
Forthcoming events include:
We are always looking for new members and need more volunteers to help make our new station a reality - ring Denis Strange on 01491 826303 for details.
Mayor's Charity - Fir Tree School
My planned Charity for this year was the Town Council Defibrillator Appeal. This Appeal has been so successful, however, that it is now closed and I have selected Fir Tree School as my Charity instead. Fir Tree is a Junior School, with pupils from years 3 to 6 (that’s 7 to 11 year-olds in old money). I am a Governor at the School nominated by the Town Council - and I have seen at first hand what good work the school does, and also what good it can do with a bit more funding. The school started providing better school meals a year or so before Jamie Oliver made it fashionable, and the results have been very encouraging. Money raised through the Mayor’s Charities will to towards improving both the meals and the number of pupils who eat them still further.
Cllr. Lynda Atkins, Mayor of Wallingford