As much as we love the sun, sometimes it does not always suit the situation! This was a case when it was not altogether helpful.  Those of you who have slides at your meetings, or those who actually show them, find that colours do not always show to their best, for however one tries to 'blackout' halls etc, the sun always finds a chink to shine through.  It was just that, when Jeffrey Wheatley entertained us with some of his beautiful slides and talk on Brown Bears to the Black Sea.  However, one cannot change the weather, and would not wish to either, and it did not deter him or us.

I think if I remember rightly, when I went to school, the region was known as Rumania, now Romania We heard a little bit of its history, and Jeffrey then read to us one of his poems, after which we travelled with him through some beautiful countryside, and followed the Danube out to its estuary and delta, to The Black Sea.

He is a great wild life person, with a great knowledge of birds and their habitat.  There were some wonderful tranquil scenes, streams running through the countryside, and close ups of many different flowers in their natural surroundings,

The delta shown to us was a vast place, unimaginable until being shown it, there are many tributaries, very long and wide, and as we all know has its musical associations 'The Blue Danube Waltz'.  A really interesting and knowledge gaining afternoon, as it appeared no one in the group had travelled in that part of the world.

There was then a few minutes for question time.  There was a lack of Brown Bears, but we gave him a 'fun' box of chocolates in the shape of bears !

The table of interest was "Wild Life" and Jeffrey chose his interesting piece to be a Rhino ornament.   A nice tea was served, we had a good raffle, and went away with diaries marked up for the full days outing in August there being no meeting in the month.

September: A  Talk on Milford Day Centre and their activities.

Freda Sheppard

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