The 2022-23 Yearbook is published, please click on this link to read it.
Lynne Cooper, Paul Blunden, and Alice Judd, with support from friends, are trekking from Dover to Farnham to raise money for Woodlarks’ new pantry.
Their trek leaves Dover on March 19th arriving at Woodlarks on March 28th, 2023.
Please support them via their Just Giving page.
The dates for the 2023 open camps have been published, you can find them here.
We are sad to announce the death of Alexine Crawford, Trustee, on 9th December 2021.
Alexine and Woodlarks Camp Site were born in the same year: 1930 and as the daughter of its founders, she practically had Woodlarks in her blood. In her twenties, she was secretary to her father Col. Strover for Woodlarks (camp and workshop), and on her return to Farnham in the 1980s she renewed her involvement. Pathfinders, Explorers and Odyssians open camps all owe their existence to her initiative. She was a Trustee for many years and chaired the Trustees and Management Committee for twenty years, only stepping down in 2020. She seemed always to have her finger on the pulse, remembering and recording activities and projects accomplished. Her ability to visualise ideas meant her input to building projects was invaluable, and together with this she put immense effort into raising funds and inspiring people with the vision of Woodlarks. However, her love of people is perhaps her most memorable legacy: she would visit every group that came to camp, as well as working parties, and would often do jobs around the site. Even in the last months of her life, she was thinking about development and funding. She will be very much missed.
A memorial service will be held in the near future and we will make details of the live-stream and recording available on the Woodlarks web site.
We now use JustGiving as a donation site. Please see our donation page for details.
We’re pleased to announce that the provisional 2022 calendar has been published. We look forward to seeing you!
Virgin Money Giving is closing at the end of November 2021.
We will announced our choice of replacement in the next few weeks.
Regrettably we have had to cancel the 2021 camping season. This is Sarah’s message to Camp Leaders,
Hi all
At our last committee meeting on 22nd January, we decided to set up a working group to consider whether we could safely open for camps this summer.
Based on present knowledge, and with very heavy hearts, we have come to the decision that Woodlarks must remain shut for this season.
We know many of you and your campers will be disappointed, as indeed we are, so we would like to invite Camp Leaders to a Zoom meeting on the 19th February. During this discussion, we can answer questions and collaborate our ideas so that when we do decide to open again we do so safely and with your thoughts in mind.
Please let me know if you want to be included and what time you are available. If we get too many requests to attend we may have to do it over more than one meeting.
Our brief report is appended below. This will explain the thinking behind our decision.
We hope you are all well and staying safe.
Sarah and Nick
———————————————————————————————————————————————————–
Woodlarks Season 2021
- Background
The working group (Nick, Sarah, Adam, Amy, Lynne and Malcolm) appointed to consider the possibility of opening the site met by Zoom on Friday 5th February.
- Decision
Given the uncertainty about the future and the vulnerability of our campers we think it would be unwise to open this year. We do not take this decision lightly, we are very aware of the hopes, but also the implications to many of our users.
If the situation eases we will consider having small working parties as we did in Autumn 2020.
We feel that the Trust should hold meetings with Camp Leaders to explain our decision.
Nick and Malcolm will review the maintenance of the site, ensuring that safety critical work is done as usual.
- Reasoning
We think it will take about 8 weeks to get the site ready for camps, and there is no sign of it being safe to start this work until March at the earliest.
Some of the preparatory work such as PAT testing would be hard to do with social distancing. Social distancing is more difficult in the early part of the year when cold weather forces us indoors.
Although the vaccination programme is proceeding very quickly it’s unlikely that many of our younger helpers will be protected before the end of the season.
We don’t know how effective the vaccination programme will be and how it will cope with mutations of the virus.
We must consider how we might handle an outbreak at camp. We couldn’t send vulnerable people back to their care homes, we might have to care for them on site for some weeks. How would we do this without endangering volunteers? Who would fund the care?
If we had an outbreak we would probably have to cancel subsequent camps.
We have a duty of care to Nick and Sarah, we should not expose them to hundreds of visitors.
We don’t want to raise false hopes and put Camp Leaders to the trouble of organising camps which might well be cancelled.
We think we must show that we’re working hard on the site. We should use all means possible (Zoom, Facebook, year book, website) to show off our enhancements such as the bathrooms in Bradbury Croft.
The Trustees are personally liable for any negligence on the Trust’s behalf. They might be exposed to considerable claims for any consequences of opening too soon.
If we were to open there could be considerable costs for deep cleaning between camps, both in cash terms and time.
Update on the pandemic and Woodlarks
At this time (late January 2021) Woodlarks is unfortunately still closed due to the pandemic.
It has been good to hear from members of some camps, and we know many are longing to come back to camp this year.
We have published a provisional calendar for this year’s camping season, but owing to the current changing situation we are uncertain if and when we might open.
We have set up a working group to consider the feasibility of working parties. They will also consider how and under what circumstances we might be able to open for camps.
We obviously need to follow Government guidelines, and decide when it is safe to open. It will also take us a number of weeks to prepare the site for safe use.
We will post further updates when the situation changes. In the meantime we hope you are all managing to stay well and safe. We look forward to welcoming many of you back, but only when it is safe to do so.