A SPORTING WEEKEND FOR THE CLUB

This weekend saw the various 'sportsmen' in our club to fore when some members took part in the annual Rotary Gavel competition and others were involved in the Clay Pigeon Shooting Centre at Rothiemurchus.

On Friday evening, 8 of our members travelled to Brora Golf Club to take part in a the very energetic and sportingly challenging Gavel Trophy; taking on participants from the Culloden, Wick and Thurso clubs.

President George McRae was joined by Dave Anderson, Brian Spence, Derek Moffat, James Martin, Jim Cockburn, Mike Halley and Brian Spence in the hope of qualifying in this round of the Gavel.

The event includes a number of very difficult sporting challenges which turned into a local Derby in the first round, when our club took on Culloden. Whilst in the other fixture the two north clubs took each other on.

Loch Ness won the first round against Culloden and ended up playing against Thurso in the final. Unfortunately, after a very long and strenguous night of varying sports and leisure pursuits, the club came second in this round.

Good Luck to Thurso in the next fixture...!

On Sunday, a number of other club members took part in one of our clubs social events at Rothiemurchus Clay Pigeon Shooting Centre.

We had a mixture of novice and experienced shooters, who all had an absolutely fantastic experience at the event. However, Ken Wilson picked up the award for the best 'marksman' of the day; when as a rookie he hit 18 clays out of a possible 25.

We hope to build on the this event with further club social events early in the New Year.

THIS WEEKS MEETING - 24th October 2007

At our meeting this week our 41 members in attendance were joined by two visitors.

This weekend a team of 8 of the members from the club would be travelling to Brora to take part in the annual 'Gavel Tournament'. The other clubs taking part in the same heat would be Culloden, Wick and Thurso.

The club was delighted this week to be presented with a Claret Jug for winning the Northern Counties Cricket Club Golf Day for the second year running. Loch Ness's team this year consisted of Dave Anderson, Ian McPhail, Craig Maclean and Ian Mackenzie. Craig Maclean also won the 'closest to the pin' competition at the tournament too.

The members were reminded that the Club's next social event would be our Clay Pigeon shooting, which would take place this weekend.

Next week's meeting (31/10) will be a Special General Meeting and members were reminded that lunch will take place fifteen minutes earlier, starting at 12.45pm.

THIS WEEKS MEETING - SPEAKER MEETING STEFAN KRAUSE & KATE FAIRCLOUGH (Inverness City Centre Management)

This week we have 36 of our own members present.

They were joined by 3 visiting Rotarians from the Culloden (Mike Phimister) and Inverness Clubs (Bill Jack and David Martin), and 2 non-rotarian guests including Monica Lee Macpherson who is Chair of the Chinese Community in the Highlands and was invited to be the guest of Gerry Grant as part of our Highly successful International Guest programme.

It is hoped that Monica will visit the club again in the future to give a presentation on the work she does with the Chinese Community in the Highlands.

Our speakers for the meeting were Stefan Krause and Kate Fairclough, Business Liaison Manager Inverness City Centre Management (ICCM).

They had both been invited to come back to take questions arising from their previous presentation concerning the steps that ICCM have been taking to improve the city centre shopping experience.

In addition, Kate outlined details on the Winterfest programme which will start on November 3rd with the Continental Market and continue until January 12th, with a series of events, including an ice rink being located in Falcon Square.

Stefan then went on to outline the next phase of the Streetscaping project , which will start in November.

There will be no speaker at next weeks meeting (24/10).

[Caroline Dobson, our Club Secretary informed the members that there will be a special meeting taking place on 31st October 2007. Any visitors should note that this meeting will start 15 minutes earlier than usual.]

THIS WEEK'S MEETING - SPEAKER ALISON STEADMAN

This weeks meeting was attended by 39 of our own members. There were visitors in attendance from the Inverness and Montrose Clubs.

Club Member Hector Douglas informed the members that he had recently visited the Ibiza Rotary Club, where he commended the fellowship offered to him as a visitor.

Today was a speaker meeting, and we were delighted to welcome Alison Steadman, Junior Vice President of the Montrose Club. She had joined the lunch to speak on the work carried out on the Nyumbani Project.

The project is creating a purpose-built village near Nairobi in Kenya to give a new life to orphaned children from the more deprived areas of Nairobi.

We were informed that the village would have 18 clusters of 4 houses each; a communal area with a well; a community centre and a medical centre, as well as areas for crop growing and commercial cattle farming. Only the steel and glass were brought in for the buildings, whilst all other items (bricks, furniture etc) were manufactured on site.

President George commented that the project fitted well with the motto ‘Humanity in Motion’. On behalf of the Club. Gerry Grant, Chair of our International Committee gave a vote of thanks and presented Alison with a further cheque for £200 towards the Nyumbani Project, now taking the total donated by Loch Ness to £700.

Members were reminded that the Riverside Club would be holding their Charity fundraising Race Night at Fairways, Inverness on 2nd November at 7.30pm (Tickets £8 per person).

It was also noted that the next District Council meeting would take place on Sunday 18th November in Aberdeen. Members interested should contact the Secretary by the week prior.

Next week's meeting (17/10) will be a Speaker Meeting with Kate Fairclough, Stefan Kraus and Marie MacKintosh, who will take questions on the work of Inverness City Centre Management and its associated schemes for improvements, Christmas celebrations and the city's BIDS Project.

CLUB FORMALLY LAUNCHES BLOG

The members of our Club believe themselves to be the first Rotary Club in the Country to have brought itself into the e-communication world of “Blogging”.

Following a recent review into the way the club communicated its activities, it was felt that a club Blog would be an ideal opportunity to get their message out quickly and easily.

Like many rotary clubs around the UK and Ireland, Loch Ness undertakes a great deal of charitable work on both a local, regional and international basis. However, of late it has become clear that these clubs could have been doing a better job in getting their message out around their local communities. This was a key message given by the RIBI President during his visit to Inverness earlier in the year.

And whilst our club has always had an active website; it was decided to look at a fresher way to communicate, not only locally but also globally. And a Blog was going to be the ideal solution.

Vice President of the Club, Jim Cockburn was extremely supportive of the new club blog initiative. Speaking on behalf of the club he commented, “It is clear that we communicate very well internally with our members both traditionally and electronically. But the club decided that we needed to do more to let the ‘non-rotarian’ with a general interest in our club know what we were doing in.

He continued, “Blogging is obviously completely new to many of our members, but the idea was extremely well received and we are delighted that we will now be getting our message out on a much more regular basis.

“The great advantage of our new Blog page is that it can now be read the world over taking the name of Loch Ness Rotary Club and the City of Inverness well beyond our own shores. And whilst this will be good for Loch Ness it must also have a beneficial effect for the other Inverness Clubs too.

“This is going to be absolutely fantastic for our overseas friends and relatives, who will now be able to read about us at the click of a mouse.

Jim Cockburn concluded, “Loch Ness rotary receives a high number of international visitors throughout the year; so this is going to be a great way for these people to read about our club before they come to Inverness. In addition they will actually be able to show their friends the club they visited when they return home.

The club is therefore pleased to annonce that the blog is up and running; has been 'test-driven' and checks have been made on all the links leading to it. Information about the blog has been circlated to the local press and organisations as well as internally within the rotary fraternity.

The new Loch Ness Rotary blog can be accessed through their website on http://www.lochnessrotary.org/.

This week's meeting - fellowship

Today's meeting was attended by 40 of our own members.

President George welcomed our guest Doug Westland from Ellon (RI Membership Coordinator and Past District Governor). The members also gave a warm round of applause and welcomed Stuart Edmond back to the club after a lengthy absence.

Dave Anderson announced that the Club had been drawn in a 4-way match against Culloden, Thurso and Wick in the annual Rotary Gavel Challenge. In addition, it was agreed that the club would support an outdoor event, such as clay-pigeon shooting, prior to Christmas. More details to follow.

The Malt of the Month draw, sponsored by Ian MacKenzie, was won by Neil Chisholm.

Next weeks meeting (10th October) will be a Speaker Meeting where the club will be entertained by Alison Steadman, guest of President George McRae.