Well, what a fantastic weekend!

Our 24 hour relay event on Saturday, given the fact that it was its first year was an amazing success: over 120 people took part, with one runner, Darren Hancock running over 100 miles and raising nearly £1500 on his JustGiving page for Macmillan. To say that is an achievement is very much an understatement!

There were several other ‘multiple runners’ including Ryan Wolf who ran 20 miles in one go, Erica van Manen who ran over 30 miles in total and 7 year old Henry Reeve who ran twice and raised nearly £250 in sponsorship for Macmillan. Amazing effort from everyone.

To make it such a success took a lot of work & planning by a lot of people, who gave their time and effort for nothing other than to be part of this event for such a great charity that Macmillan Cancer Support is.

The list of volunteers is far too long to mention.

However, I feel I must name Jess Smiles & Joe Gilbert of the Godmanchester Running Club and Phillip Malley of Gatehouse Estates for making it all happen & of course our very own golf society… they put in a ‘good shift’ as always.

Next comes our traditional fun run…….at 11.10am the weather was not good & we only had around 50 runners signed up………not looking so good.

By the time of the race started we had 160 runners… looking very good, in fact beating our previous best of 158

All went well with times of 20ish minutes to an hour plus, everyone had a great time….fantastic.

I think I speak for everyone who took part in the weekend in saying that it was an extremely positive experience: someone said they would make some cakes for the runners; several people ended up making cakes….we had them coming out of our ears!

People were ‘queuing up’ to volunteer  to help in any way that they could, & peoples generosity, I’m very pleased to say ceases to amaze me (thank you to the lady who put two £50 notes in the charity tin on the bar)

Here’s the really good news… we were hoping to raise £2000-3000 when, so far we have raised £1270 in cash and £3944.73 online, giving a total of £5214.73

Well done everybody!!!!!

Paul.

 

PS If you have any interesting fundraising ideas please let us know.

 

 

The ExPedition | The Exhibition to Everest

Paul & Phillip’s trek to Everest base camp in March is all confirmed. They have set up a travel blog so you can follow the adventure. Have a look at www.TheExPedition.co.uk

Paul & Phillip have financed this trip themselves, they are not taking part in a charity organised event where they have to raise a certain amount to partake. They would however like to support The Exhibition & Golf Societies annual fundraising efforts for Macmillan Cancer Support. To read more about the work done for Macmillan by The Exhibition click here

To support their efforts you can make a donation in person at The Exhibition Pub, online on their JustGiving page by clicking here or by texting THEX99 £5 to 70070

JustGiving - Sponsor me now!

History of The Exhibition, Godmanchester.

 

Here is a snippet about the history of The Exhibition taken from the new book ‘Thirsty Godmanchester’ by Pam & Ken Sneath” available from Cliffords Chemist or Ethnic Origins at a  price of £7.99.

There are two pub walks planned lead by Ken Sneath on the 3rd & 4th July this year.

The 3rd July walk includes a meal at the White Hart afterwards

The 4th July walk includes a BBQ here at The Exhibition afterwards.

Both walks start at 6:30pm from The Black Bull and places can be booked in advance from Alan Hooker of the Godmanchester Community Association.

 

The Exhibition was first licensed in the early 1850s and the name refers to the Great Exhibition held in 1851. It became a tied house of Jenkins and Jones brewery.

When we arrived in Godmanchester in 1982 the Exhibition was in a sorry state. This was the year before the arrival of Richard and Macha Pumphrey who totally transformed it. Richard explained that the idea for installation of shop fronts in the bar was inspired by a visit to the Castle Museum in York. The shop fronts in York captured the atmosphere of Victorian Britain and were perfect for a pub which celebrated the Great Exhibition. Richard, a keen steam railway enthusiast, also adopted a railway theme for the Public Bar. It was highly appropriate for a Victorian pub. Railway lamps hung from the beams in the ceiling, loco shed and wagon plates adorned the walls and customers sat on buffers, resting their feet on a single rail at the foot of the bar. An imperial ‘blue brick’ was embedded in the middle of the bar, built of metric bricks as a token to a railway platform. This one brick had come from the platform at Woodford Halse on the old Great Central Railway and had originally been laid in the Victorian period. The garden where pétanque was played was also a feature of the pub and it is perhaps no surprise that it won the Best Pub Garden of the Year competition of any Grand Metropolitan tied estate. The prize was a holiday for two in Florida. Our memory of those years was the wonderful and inexpensive food that was provided, the highlight of which was the salad bar. Not surprisingly, the pub was regularly buzzing with people. Macha remembers, ‘most weeks we did around 700 meals and the pub did 400 brewers barrels of beer per year. One barrel is 288 pints, that’s 115,200 pints a year, or an average of 315 pints a day’. Sadly the Exhibition declined rapidly when Richard and Macha departed after five years as landlords. Fortunately, when Willem and Maggie Middlemiss took over the Exhibition, it experienced something of a renaissance.