SubscribeThanks to everyone who came along to join in our 20th anniversary celebrations: a pie n pea extravaganza with a side serving of magic, morris dancing, a drum clinic and a live band. Here’s some of our photos from the evening, we’d love to see your photos too – you can upload them to our Facebook fan page where you’ll find a very special video.
Category → Fund raising events
Wild things: bat chat
Bat
Monday 2nd August was bat night at Otley Chevin and we had the pleasure of a presentation lead by Maggie Brown from the West Yorkshire Bat Hospital. The fascinating talk gave us an insight into the life cycle of British bats, their habitat and feeding patterns.
Maggie also showed us a live Pipistrelle bat and Noctule bat for us to take a look at which was a great experience especially for our visually impaired members who could touch the animals.
Otley Chevin also have a bat roost above their café with a motion sensitive camera, so we had a look at some Brown long-eared bats in situ, right above us where we were sat.
To finish off, later that evening we took a walk down to the River Wharf with a bat detector which can pick up the high-pitch calls emitted by wild bats.
Do you want to have fun volunteering with us?
If you want to join us as a volunteer or find out more about Open Country and how we help people with disabilities to access the countryside, you should contact us or write a message on our Facebook wall.
Virgin Money Giving
We’ve just switched over our online donations from Just Giving to Virgin Money Giving.
We think that Virgin give a fairer deal to charities, especially small ones like us: their one-off charge is better than a monthly subscription fee and they take a smaller percentage per donation.
That means more of your donation will go to helping people with disabilities to access the countryside. That’ll help us keep our minibuses on the road for access events and keep our tandems maintained for the Ripon and Harrogate tandem clubs. Take a look at our Virgin Money Giving donation page.
Sam (Open Country) and Jackie Heptinstall will be one of our first campaigns to use Virgin Money Giving when they do the Great North Swim in September at Windermere. You can pledge a donation towards our mission helping people with disabilities to access the countryside, as well as encouraging both of them not to sink.
A big thank you to Church Avenue house!
We’re enormously grateful to our friends at Church Avenue house in Harrogate for raising over £600 to support Open Country’s mission to help people with disabilities to access the countryside. Church Avenue is a care home that offers supported living, helping people with disabilities live as independently as possible.
The Church Avenue team braved the full fifteen miles of the annual Nidderdale walk, hiking for over seven hours as a team of nine, which included: Alasdair, Mark, Paul, Dan Vincent, Ian, Emma and Sue. Their donation was made up of contributions from individuals, friends, families, companies and supporters like the Harrow Pub on Knaresborough Road.
The Church Avenue House Nidderdale walk team
Roughly seven miles into the walk, the team was doing well but some members had begun to lag a little, suffering from aching feet and the prospect of over half the full distance still to go. Sue had a trick up her sleeve though to squeeze a few more miles out:
“We just pretended there wasn’t long left, telling ourselves ‘we’re nearly there’ even though we knew we weren’t.”
And some extremely high stiles didn’t help things, especially for members of Church Avenue house who are visually impaired: one member had to overcome a mountain of a stile, almost falling off had Ian not been on hand to help catch him.
Why did Church Avenue house choose to donate to Open Country?
“Our boys love going out on the tandem rides Open Country run and we knew how hard it was to maintain the bikes … punctures and things.”
Said Sue at Church Avenue:
“Giving money to a bigger charity means the help would go elsewhere, it wouldn’t stay locally where it’s needed. You tend to work harder if you know where it’s going, you know … you see it.”
Are you raising money for charity?
If you’re taking sponsorship for a fund-raising event this year: whether it’s an extraordinary feat, a fun run, a race like the Great North Run, a 10K or a marathon think of Open Country. Your money won’t go into a black hole to be spent in a different part of the country.
We’re a small local charity so you can see your donations working directly in the local community of North Yorkshire: helping people with disabilities to access the countryside. We’ll even take you out with us so you can see how your fund raising has helped, by coming along as a volunteer.
We need your help to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. You should contact us or leave a comment below.
Music, Mayhem and Mushy Peas
Serving suggestion: pie 'n'peas
Can you believe it? Open Country is 20 years old this year and what better way to celebrate our youth than by combining two of our favourite pastimes: music and pies.
The event takes place on Saturday 18th September at Christ Church Parish Centre, Harrogate (HG1 4SW). There’ll also be music from local bands to eat your pie by.
Your investment of £7.50 gets you:
- Entry to the event
- A free drink of your choice
- A delicious pie and pea supper
Proceeds go towards our ongoing mission to help people with disabilities to access the countryside, hopefully for another 20 years.
This event promotes the ‘Stay Up Late’ campaign which fights for the rights of people with disabilities to stay up partying at social events. We’ve also got a few other ’stay up late’ events including the upcoming ‘Brock Around the Clock’ badger watch and ‘Count Bats’ which ran on 14th May.
Join our Facebook fan page to find out more about us and all the events we run.
Are you a local band who can provide music for this event?
We’re looking for local bands in the Harrogate and North Yorkshire area to play at our Music, Mayhem and Mushy Peas event. If you play popular classic songs that everyone can join in with, then please contact us or leave a message in the comments section of this blog post.
