To reduce the administrative work for the club we are planning to bring all the WhatsApp groups under one Castle Mountaineering Club community group. This has been done by a number of other clubs such as Eagle Ski club , Mynydd and Alpine Club. This means that all club members will automatically become members of the Castle community WhatsApp group. Members will then be able to opt to join sub-groups within this. For example, a climbers group, a walkers group, a chat group, bird watching etc.

ADVANTAGES OF THIS ARE:
Members can be joined onto the big club community group and then opt to join the sub groups of interest.
Members will be made aware of the full range of activities which occur within the club.
It will be much easier for new members to see the range of groups in the club and join the ones they are interested in.
By controlling who is in the community group we can manage who is in the other groups. So if a prospective member does not subsequently join the club, or if a member leaves, we can remove them from the community group and automatically from all the other groups they were in.
As before, we can create groups for away meets. Control of the community group allows us to delete these groups when they are no longer needed.
Everybody is used to using WhatsApp – so we know members will find it easy to use.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
We will move the Walking, cycling and Climbing groups and all its members over to the new Castle Mountaineering Club Community by the 31st January.
Feel free to join any additional groups that interest you.
Once you have done this continue to use WhatsApp as before.

If you are currently not in a WhatsApp group and would like to be, please email me and I will give you further instruction as to how to join. Lornamnicholson@gmail.com

Anyone who is not a castle club member or prospective member will be removed from the WhatsApp community and subsequent sub groups.

ARE YOU ADMIN OF SOME OF THE OTHER EXISTING WHATAPP GROUPS?
eg. gardening, bird watching, wild swimming, art. Would you like your group to be accessible to all castle members?
If, yes, once you have joined the community group, “add group”, then add existing group. You and your members will be transferred over to the community. Please consider if this is appropriate for your group, as non castle members will be removed.

ARE YOU LEADING AN AWAY MEET OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS ?
Consider creating a WhatsApp group for your meet by “add group” button, followed by “create new group”

If anyone has any questions please or needs help, please contact me Lornamnicholson@gmail.com

The committee met on 8th January and this is the latest update to let you know what we have been getting up to:
• Recent club highlights have been the talk by Mick Fowler and the well-attended Christmas Meet at the excellent Coldwell Centre on the East Lancashire Moors. Many thanks to Andrew and Ali for the organisation and to everyone who helped prepare the sumptuous Christmas meal.
• The list of away meets for 2024 is looking healthy. Meets are planned to Coniston (January), Capel Curig (Easter), Yorkshire Dales (May), Northumbria (Spring BH), Cairngorms (May-June), Chapel Stile (June), Dentdale (July), Mid-Wales (August), Galway (September) and the Lakes (November).
• After last years’ successful Alps trip to Ailefroide another trip to Aosta is planned for late June / July. Those lightweights who prefer sunshine rock are catered for by a trip to Sicily in October!
• We are organising some skills sessions run by experienced club members including winter skills and navigation. Future sessions may include self-rescue, sports climbing techniques and abseiling. Let us know if you have any suggestions.
• On the social scene, after last years’ successful ceilidh, another has been organised for Saturday 23rd March. Vanda has organised more slideshows and Helen is organising some “Pub Grub” evenings allowing members to share good food and convivial conversation. We are also hoping to hold another photographic competition.
Information about away meets, skills sessions and social events will be posted on the message board.
The committee are continuing to look for ways to streamline club communications and are considering the following proposals:
• Reactivating the Castle Facebook and Instagram accounts. This will allow us to share information about club activities between club members. It will also help us to promote ourselves as an active club to people outside the club, especially younger folk, who may be interested in joining us. We will be encouraging all club members to contribute photos etc which reflect the wide range of current club activity.
• Setting up a WhatsApp Communities group. This is a way of organising the different WhatsApp activity groups which will be helpful to the membership team. Please note that the existing activity groups will operate in the same way that they do now.
• We are trialling a Microsoft programme which will streamline the membership process and reduce the administrative workload of the membership team.
Geoff is working on proposals for the club to reduce our environmental footprint – watch this space for the results.
As always the committee welcome feedback from club members – especially suggestions for meets and other activities. Volunteers to organise climbing and walking meets are even more welcome!

THE CASTLE CHRONICLE – Special AGM Edition

Many thanks to everyone who made the effort, on a dark and stormy night, to attend the club annual general meeting. This report is to update members who weren’t able to attend.

• Reports were received from the president, the treasurer, the meets secretary and the membership secretary. It was noted that the club membership is currently a very healthy 112 members.
• Two changes to the constitution relating to membership were approved.
• The new committee was approved as follows: Geoff Nichols (President), Steve Leather (Vice-President), Kathy Burgess (Treasurer), Paul Embley (Secretary), Kial Wright (Meets Secretary), Lorna Nicholson (Membership Secretary), Matt Biggins and Rosie Twambley (Communication and Publicity Secretaries), Bill Boley, Vanda Boyd, Julian Brooks, Helen Dunnett, Pete McGlynn, Andrew Milne, Eli Shannon (Committee Members).
• Thanks were given to the retiring members of the committee: Chris, Gemma, Lin and Richard

The main item on the agenda was discussion of the committee’s recommendations for communications and publicity. Matt and Rosie have done a huge amount of work completing a review of club communications which Matt presented to the AGM. Three options considered by the committee were outlined and comments and questions were received from the floor:

• Option 1 – UPDATING OR REPLACING THE WEBSITE: Issues were highlighted with the message board and the need to make the website more smartphone-friendly. The problem with this option would be the expense of commissioning changes from Digital Nomads, who currently maintain our website, or from a different website developer. One quotation received was for £5000. However the discussion indicated that we might have “in-house” expertise which could be used to update the website at reduced cost.
• Option 2 – USE OF MEETUP FOR ALL CLUB COMMUNICATION: MeetUp is a cloud-based subscription service which would meet many of the club’s communication needs and be relatively cheap and easy to administer. It was suggested as an option by Digital Nomads and other website developers. This option was the recommendation of the committee. However the feedback from the MeetUp trial was mixed and concerns were raised at the AGM. These included whether signing up for meets was helpful and problems with instant messaging using MeetUp. The trial had only been for climbing meets so other club groups needed to be involved in trialling it. Many members find WhatsApp useful and it is likely that they would continue to use WhatsApp resulting in splintering the club.
• Option 3 – NO CHANGE: Andy is not planning to retire as webmaster at the moment. He estimates that he spends about 4 minutes per-day managing the website. It uses a popular operating system and it should be fairly straightforward to train people to administer and maintain the website when he retires. Other members already use the website as administrators though it was noted that this could be complicated especially when troubleshooting was required.

The opinion was strongly expressed from the floor that members had not had enough information to make an informed decision if a vote was held at the current AGM. The decision was therefore taken not to vote on the recommendations but to extend the period of consultation to involve a wider range of club members including walkers and cyclists:

• A working group involving a wide range of club members will be formed to plan the way forward.
• All members of the club will be encouraged to put forward their comments and suggestions to the working group.