Tewkesbury and Bredon Hill Probus Club - August 2024

Our main objective at Probus Club is to help retired professionals and businessmen stimulate their retirement and with our weekly talks from a huge selection of speakers, members find that even at their mature age, they are learning something new every week. Occasionally we organise visits to places of interest and recently we went to the Bigwell Fishery near Monmouth for the Fly-fishing experience, where several members who had never tried fly fishing (including myself) it was an opportunity to try something new that we had never considered doing before. The location at Bigwell is in a beautiful setting with three lakes full of fish and we were blessed with a lovely sunny day to try out a new skill. The day began with instruction on how to cast the hook with the fly attached to reach further and further out into the lake, following which we established a number of positions on the banks of the lakes and tried our luck.

It has to be said that a number of members who went on this visit were already adept at fly-fishing and began to land some excellent examples of rainbow trout, but as a complete novice, I was not so successful and just as I was beginning to think that my patience would run out, I had a bite on my line. Seconds later, the fish escaped. Yes - it was the “one that got away!”

A couple of weeks later back at Bredon Village Hall, we had a very interesting talk by Robert Arley, one of the producers of BBC’s Antiques Roadshow who worked on the programme for many years. Robert described in detail what goes on behind the scenes of this very popular TV programme and he spoke eloquently about the organisational efforts required to manage the logistics of up to 1500 visitors who have to queue sometimes for hours to present their treasured antique objects d’art to be assessed by the show’s experts, sometimes being rather disappointed to learn that they were not as valuable as they expected!

Forthcoming Events in August:

6 Aug – Tewkesbury Nature Reserve (with Beth Andrews)

13 Aug – Aviation after WW2 (with Sally Ferrers)

20 Aug – Albania: the land that time forgot (with John Butterworth)

27 Aug – No meeting (Bank holiday)

TEWKESBURY AND BREDON HILL PROBUS CLUB

The Club for retired and semi-retired Professionals and Businessmen

Chris Brown - Speakers Secretary

Take a look at Tewkesbury & Bredon Hill Probus Club website - click here Take a look at Tewkesbury Probus website - click here