An Eggcellent Easter Weekend
Our Easter egg hunt kicked off on Good Friday, with a trail of Easter Eggs hidden along the canal tow path. Starting at the Trust's landing stage next to Waitrose, we provided activity packs for the happy hunters and sent them off on an adventure. Waitrose had kindly donated some eggs towards our prize stash, so we were able to provide a delicious chocolate treat at the end of the trail. We orignally made up 200 packs for participants anticipating 50 for each day, but after an amazing first day of 90 participants, we had a quick Friday night scramble to put together another 100! Even then we ran out on Sunday, and so between the lack of eggs and awful weather forecast, we sadly had to cancel the Monday hunt.
On Saturday and Sunday, we had a special guest joining us - Bentley the bear! Our thanks to Mascot Ambassadors for letting us have him for a nominal sum, and to Dom, on furlough from Paris Disney, for wearing him!!
The event was planned to be COVID safe - taking place outside and with plenty of space to social distance. Our volunteers wore gloves or regularly santized their hands, and hunting groups were limited to 6 people or 2 households. We'd like to thank everyone for following the rules so we could have such a succesful and safe event. We managed to raise an incredible £800 for the canal trust!
We're very sorry if you turned up on Monday to find no one there as it was cancelled so last minute. We were the victims of our success, running out of eggs at the end of Sunday - we were also exhausted! We did our best to post the news on our social media pages. BUT - this highlights a problem we have, in having not enough volunteers to do what we'd like - up to and including restoring the canal! There's a lot of work to be done & not enough volunteers to do it - starting with refurbishing & reopening the Information Centre in Town, by the library, closed two years ago through lack of volunteers.
It so happens that the Trust's Swindon Branch is holding a virtual meeting at 7pm this coming Wednesday, April 7th. If you're interested in helping out, either directly or behind the scenes, please drop in on the meeting via this link. You don't have to be a member to participate; only to actually vote.