Great North Air Ambulance Charity Day - September 8
Tynedale Rotary have made a significant contribution to keeping the air ambulance helicopters in the air having raised over £100,000 during the last 15 years. Prudhoe Golf Club is proud to have been part of that as the Charity Golf Day has been at the Club for the last 11 years.

Many congratulations to Rotary President, Raymond Dance, and to Ray Scott and his team for their superb organisation of the event. In addition, much thanks is due to Dickinson Dees and Price Waterhouse who sponsor the event and to the many organisations who enter teams.

This year, 43 teams took part on a day which was blessed with excellent weather and I was fortunate to be part of the Club team comprising of Chairman, John Perry, immediate past Captain, Mike Newton and Ken Robson who is a past Captain and current Committee member.

The format is stableford with the best three out of four cards counting for the team score and there are individual prizes too.

Thanks to John's excellent 41 points, Mike Newton's 37 and Ken Robson's 35, we held the lead for most of the day with 113 points. Knowing that my team mates were playing so well, I had a quiet practice round and came in with 31 points.

Late in the day, Dodds of Hexham came in with 114 points to win the event thankfully. After all, it doesn't look good if the hosts win! Third was Slaley Premier with 111 although, sadly, they were not present to collect their prizes as were some of the individual winners. Some of the players also forgot to tell the organisers that they wouldn't be able to attend either - a very sad trend these days.

In the individual prizes, John was joint first with his 41 points but was beaten on a countback by C. Watson with P. Shrimpton in third on the same score. In 4th place was David Strangeways from Prudhoe. Our own Margaret Griffin won the ladies prize with 36 points, J. Robinson was 2nd with 35 and Prudhoe's Cath Jenkins (30 points) and Elaine Wilson (27 points) were 3rd and 4th respectively. Well done to the Prudhoe ladies - they're making a habit of winning this year!

Nearest the pin prizes went to:
R. Boaden at the 7th - 2' 3"
D. Lishman at the 11th - 7' 6"
A. Smart at the 13th - 2' 6"
David Strangeways at the 15th - 6' 8"

I was slightly embarrassed to get a trophy for our team finishing 2nd in the team when I had contributed basically nothing at all. However, I did genuinely win a raffle prize which contained a message for me as there were two golf instruction videos (anyone tell me what a video is please) and three DVD's (I know what they are). The DVD's were, South Pacific, The King & I and West Side Story. So I'm old and in need of golf instruction it seems!

But, forgetting all of the above, how much did Tynedale Rotary raise for the Great North Air Ambulance this time? Brian Cave, who heads up fundraising for GNAA, was handed a cheque for £6800 - another magnificent achievement. Brian also confirmed that, as a result of fundraising throughout the North East, the air ambulance for Northumberland will be flying again later this year. The details will be announced at a press launch soon.

I'm also pleased to say that Brian has accepted my invitation to attend our AGM in December to accept my cheque resulting for my own fundraising for GNAA during my Captaincy. The figure currently stands at over £1000 and I hope to add to that over the next few weeks.

Finally, we all very much look forward to staging this important event again in 2007