Etchingham

This year’s theme was World Cup / Rio Carnival & Fuleco the Mascot proved a huge hit with the children, almost as much as the fire engine that they had the opportunity to travel on to the fete!

The Queens Gardens, next to the Church, was as usual full of all the traditional stalls, including Hoopla, Bouncy Castle, Bowling for the Pork & a newly netted Coconut Shy. The BBQ was busy & as the sun began to shine the tea tent & Beer/Pimms tent served up refreshments to the many people that attended.

The Church had a fantastic display of old photo’s from Etchingham through the ages, by Colin Boylett, some of the items remain on show for those who missed the display. All the local committees had stalls to raise money from bric a brac to book sales & a tombola.

This year’s attendance was one of the highest with over 50 cars in the newly cut field / car park (many thanks to Sid Barrow for cutting the field) , added to which over 450 raffle tickets were sold, which would have helped boost profits tremendously. At the time of this report organisers are still adding up the numbers, but estimate around £1000 will have been made towards the firework event at the end of the year.

One new resident commented “I had no idea these sort of idyllic traditional village fete’s still occurred” well until he moved to Etchingham that was!!

Many thanks to all the helpers & we hope to see you all at the next event, the Flower, Produce & Dog Show on Saturday September 12.

During the Fete we again had a display of old photographs, postcards, documents and memorabilia in the Church, depicting much of the village history, and a lot of interesting items from neighbouring villages. There were a lot of visitors to the display, but because of rehearsals for the evening concert, the Church had to be closed by 3.30pm, a number of people have said they did not get a chance to look at the items on display, or did not have enough time to see everything they wanted to. So a lot of the items remain on display and will still be there for at least another two or three weeks. The Church is open daily 11am to 4pm, so you can go in and take a look at any time.

We will be putting the display on again during the Flower and Dog Show, as it is the centenary of the start of World War One we want to try a and add some items from the 1914-18 period, if you have items we can borrow. We are looking for any interesting photos, documents and interesting items from the period, not just military items, but items that show what life was like during the war years. If you have items to loan please contact me as soon as possible so that I know what is available to help with planning, contact details at the bottom of this column.

The new PCSO for the village has now taken up his post and is gradually finding his way around the area, his name is Iain Tomsett [email protected] Mobile; 07810813409, or call 101 and ask to be put in touch with PCSO Tomsett. Iain will be holding regular “Meet me in person” sessions at the Bistro. Unfortunately Iain has had to cancel the session planned for today (July 18) but he will be at the Bistro at 9.30am on the following dates; August 5 & 14: September 1 & 16. Your chance to pop in and meet Iain, make him aware of any problems, ask him questions or just introduce yourself. Iain’s mobile number is the same one that was used by Tom, so if you have it in your phone just change the name.

You may or may not be aware that there is a calendar for village events on the village website www.etchinghamvillage.co.uk for village residents and organisations to add details of events. This gives the village an online calendar of events without the need for the website admin to spend time updating. The calendar is included on the website but is NOT updated as part of the site update programme, it is up to village residents and event organisers to add details to the calendar. To add events to the calendar go to the website Home Page and scroll down until you reach the ‘Events Calendar’ section, click on ‘ACCESS THE CALENDAR HERE’ and follow the instructions on the page. If your event has a fixed start time it is probably best to add it as an ‘Appointment’. Please do not send the details to the website admin to add, the idea of the calendar is for village residents and organisations to use the calendar to find out what events are on and add their own, this may then help to avoid clashes of dates. You will need a Password to add entries, I emailed the password to most of the people that I knew would need it, if you do not have the password or have forgotten it, send an email to the address below. However, if you find you have entered some details incorrectly or need to alter some details later, you will not be able to edit the entry once added, only the Admin can do that, if you need to alter something in an entry send an email to [email protected]

The Flower and Dog Show this year will be on Saturday September 13, so start nurturing your plants to get the best exhibits for the show. Get busy making your handicraft items, and photographers get snapping the photography classes this year are ‘Frozen in time’, ‘Yellow’, ‘Portrait of Etchingham’ and ‘Victory’. More details nearer the date.

Community Speedwatch; The Speedwatch group continues to operate sessions in most weeks, but in the summer months demand on the equipment from other groups in the area increases, so we do have a couple of weeks when we cannot operate because the equipment was already booked by another group. You can keep up to date with the weekly activity of the Etchingham Community Speedwatch group on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/etchinghamspeedwatch ‘Like’ the page and get news as it is added to the page.

We are currently looking into the possibility of the Etchingham Speedwatch Group purchasing a speed device just for the use of the Etchingham group, this would make the group session much more flexible. Sessions could be run at times that best suit our volunteers rather than being dictated by the equipment availability calendar, it would also enable us to target the times that have been highlighted by the survey equipment as the times with the highest number of speeding vehicles. The equipment we require would cost around £900 if you have any thoughts or ideas for obtaining the funding get in touch.

As well as the roadside sessions, every month we are deploying a Survey SID which records vehicle movements 24 hours a day over several days, the data collected by the device helps us to pinpoint the regular times with high levels of speeding, the group can then target those times and monitor the speeds.

Between June 24 and July 1 we had the SID deployed, near the social club, recording traffic heading west. The device was set up late on the first day and removed in the morning of the last day, and there was a period with no records while the battery was charged, so approx. 146 hours of vehicle movements were recorded during that period.

Over the week it recorded 14,250 vehicles, 10.3% of the vehicles were speeding, with three travelling at over 60mph in a 30mph area.

A bit more detail from the results; Vehicles travelling between 35-40mph = 1295 vehicles: 40-45mph = 336: 45-50mph = 96: 50-55mph = 17: 55-60mph = 6: 60mph and over = 3.

A further 4,012 were recorded at 30-35mph, which is still over the limit, but would not be reportable during manned sessions. The fastest speed recorded was 64mph {at midday}.

Because some westbound vehicles would not have been picked up because of eastbound traffic blocking the signal for some vehicles, all of the above figures are actually a bit higher. We have the device set up again for the next couple of weeks monitoring eastbound traffic.

If you have given me details of your event to put in this column, please remember to send me some details after the event so I can let your supporters know how successful the event was, how much you raised, interesting facts etc. Your supporters will be interested to know how you did.

Get information for this column to me as soon as possible, if you have a diary of events planned for the year let me have the dates and I will put in a list of village events for the year so that people can put the dates in their diaries. There are several ways to get your info to me, but email is preferred because there is less chance of errors during copying. I need information by 10pm on Monday to be sure it will be in time for inclusion, I can sometimes add extra items on Tuesday morning, but this cannot be guaranteed. Just a little reminder, I get plenty of information about events that are taking place, but I get very little follow up information, after your event try and remember to send me brief account of how successful your event was, it can be as simple as a thank you to those that attended and how much money was raised etc. You can deliver to 2 Park Farm Close, telephone 01580 819532 or 07941 786244 or email [email protected] .

Colin Boylett

2 Park Farm Close