RESULTS CORACLERS GATHERING MORTIMERS CROSS MILL 16-18 JUNE 2006
Next Years Event 15th-17th June 2007
I decided right at the beginning to award a Winners Medal to the competitor who came first in each event but also decided not to include team events because in a team no one person could be a winner. (One person might score all the goals but only because he or she was passed the ball by someone else. So to avoid confusion I opted not to include the team events in the medals and was busy doing car park duty etc when these events were on so couldn’t see if any one competitor excelled). If any winner feels they should have received a medal or a music cd could they please get in touch.Family groups which were winners only got one cd on the day because I wanted to save some money but also I was having to be in several places at once all weekend and could only hand out prizes as and when I spotted the competitor. Apologies to anyone whose surname I don’t have or spelt incorrectly.

I told the insurers I expected 200 people to turn up, with money on the gate not going to exceed £800.Sadly I was too optimistic. Money on the gate was £187.70 of which half £93.85 will go to The Lugg & Arrow Fisheries Association as promised and half to The Coracle Society. Early posters and leaflets suggested this was an “ in house “ event but the insurance problems which arose just 3 days before the event lead to me changing insurance policies the day before and using The Coracle Society`s corporate event insurance. This latter has the proviso that all monies be put through the society and a balance sheet created. I found out a lot about Insurances. Coracling is regarded as an extreme sport by the insurance industry! NFU Mutual charged me £150 for having the event on my property even though my property is open to the public anyway with my museums and water mill. My original insurers NIG Farmweb wanted £125 just for use of the car park and roads and would not insure the volunteers or anything to do with the river! So on Thursday I left NIG and joined NFU. I tell you. I didn’t need this sort of thing happening the day before the event! I talked on the phone to The Coracle Society insurers twice with permission from our chairman. Our society got into the policy because the coracle is a small hand propelled boat which people might use for work parties. The corporate policy covers coraclers acting or working on behalf of the society at an event only if the insurers have been notified of the event. The policy doesn’t cover individuals taking part in races so they must have their own insurances for themselves,their actions and their boats. So if an individual takes it upon themselves to teach a newcomer coracling and they get injured or bashes someone accidentely in a water polo match or falls out and gets an infection, they need to have their own insurance in place. The Coracle Society Corporate Event Insurance does not cover them. Which is a bit worrying as this policy was “protecting” Leintwardine Coracle Regatta 1999-2005. No one at our event tried to enrol new members and no one volunteered their services to be on hand to officially teach coracling to newcomers. If you teach Coracling professionally and have pl insurance please come forward before the next event on June 15-17th 2007. I`m thinking we could have a Millers Mile one day event on Saturday September 2nd 10am to 3pm. Any thoughts?

Publicity:
We had 2 stories in The Shropshire Star published, one with photo. Two mentions in The Saturday Daily Telegraph. One story in Herefordshire Times and at least 2 mentions on Hereford Radio (BBC).Birmingham's Sunday Mercury were going to do a feature but didn’t turn up. A professional journalist acquaintance was going to do lots of stories but didn’t. So in the 3 months I had to prepare for this event I reckon I did as well as I could!

The first event was as far as I can ascertain a World First in Coracling. A fly fishing from a Coracle competition. The winner of the event would be the angler who caught and returned the most fish in the 2 hours.

Only one fish 12 inches or over could be retained by the anglers which would then be recorded for the annual Mortimers Cross Mill Challenge Trophy.
Ist Quentin Page with 5 fish (Medal Winner)

2nd Louis with 1 fish (which incidentally was the first fish caught in the competition and Louis` first time experience of being in a Coracle)

Only 3 anglers turned up to fish the competition despite coverage in Shropshire & Herefordshire newspapers.Though we did get a number of phone calls from local anglers wanting to fish from the bank!

Model Coracle Races:
Sandra Prosser and Caroline Lowe very kindly put the hours in developing models.

Saturdays Race:
Primary School Age.
1st Antonia Prosser (Age 5)with “Rio Parrot” (Medal Winner)
2nd Johannes Prosser (age 9)
Adults
1st Chris Partington with his model purchased on e bay. (Medal Winner)
2nd Quentin Page
3rd Dave Purvis with Paddington

Sundays Race:
1st Johannes Prosser (Medal Winner)
2nd Antonia Prosser
3rd Paloma Prosser

MILLERS MILE:
The first 4 competitors on Saturday were not timed by myself and it seemed to me they were being timed on wrist watches.I felt awkward actually not being able to verify the timers stopwatch nor discuss with them the start or the finish. Next time we must have official timers or just me timing it or even a machine.A few competitors found themselves being swept past the finish line by the strong current with the only course of action being to leap out and run through the water to touch the stone finishing line or be helped upstream by SARA.I thought touching the bank anywhere downstream of the stone should be allowed to avoid people having to leap out or try propel themselves back upstream against the fierce current. Any thoughts?

Saturdays Race:
1st Dave Nicholl 6.22 (Medal Winner)
2nd Wendy Gee 6.43 which beat her previous time of 7.04.
3rd Nick Coppin 7.21.24
4th Peter Faulkner 7.55.71
5th Sandra Prosser 8.06.40
6th John Underhill 8.09


Sundays Race:
1st Peter Faulkner 6.17.60 (Medal Winner)
2nd Simon Cooper 9.28.59 (Court of the Salmon King Exhibition)
3rd Ian Buzzard 10.41.15
4th Alex Harrison 14.42.05
5th Bob Briggs 21.54.05 (First time in a Coracle and fell out a few times)
6th Johannes Prosser 21.55
7th Paloma Prosser 23.25

Grand Parade of frivolously dressed Coraclers - Saturday`s Competition:
Joint 1st (3 children in one Coracle ) with “Pirates” Antonia,Johannes & Paloma Prosser. J`net our worthy Judge chose them because they had incorporated their Coracle into their design as well as dressing up.(All 3 were Medal Winners)
2nd Peter Faulkner as a Jester.
3rd Bruce Watson as Batman.
4th Conway Richards as A Medieval Archer.
5th Chris with a P not an F as Ye Olde Miller. (Obviously no favoritsm came into play)

First Race:
Adults 60 metres. Saturday`s Competition.
1st Wendy Gee (Medal Winner)
2nd Dave Nicholl
3rd Nick Coppin
4th John Underhill
5th Bruce Watson
6th Quentin Page
7th Martin Baines
8th Sandra Prosser
9th Dave Purvis
10th Chris Partington (Someone has to be last. I was last in every race I did at Leintwardine)

Sunday`s Competition:
1st Simon Cooper (Medal Winner)
2nd Mike Smylie aka Kipperman
3rd Chris Partington (blimey not last)
4th Sandra Prosser
5th Ian Buzzard

Second Race:
Ladies 60 metres. Saturday only.
1st Wendy Gee (Medal Winner)
2nd Sandra Prosser

Third Race:
18 yrs and Under.
Saturday`s Competition.
1st Alice Keating (Medal Winner)
2nd Jeremy Haggart
3rd Paloma Prosser
4th Johannes Prosser

Sundays Competition replaced by a Novices Race of 60 metres:
Made possible by the presence of SARA.
1st Seb (Medal Winner)
2nd Tucha
3rd Ann Cooper
4th Mandy
5th & 6th Tom & Lucy who didn’t finish .

Fourth Race:
One Handed. More people entered this traditional race than ever at Leintwardine which is very encouraging
Saturday`s Competition.
1st Dave Nicholl (Medal Winner)
2nd Quentin Page
3rd Wendy Gee
4th Nick Coppin
5th Bruce Watson
6th John Underhill
7th Martin Baines
8th Sandra Prosser
9th Chris Partington (oh dear last again)

Sundays Competition:
1st Simon Cooper
2nd Conway Richards
3rd Sandra Prosser
4th Peter Faulkner
5th Seb

Fifth Race:
Hide Coracle Owners. Saturday Only
1st Quentin Page (Medal Winner)
2nd Martin Baines

Sixth Race:
Non Winners.
Saturdays Competition
1st Bruce (Medal Winner)
2nd Louis

Sundays Competition:
1st Paloma Prosser(Medal winner)
2nd Conway Richards
3rd Johannes Prosser

Special Thanks To:
Louis for MC-ing the Event and paying for his camping! What a generous guy!
To J`net for helping organise the event and being the impromptu umpire.
To Jeremy Schreker (Who made all that green fencing around the sluices)for turning up from shrewsbury and spending many hours on the gate.
To Colin (Pud) who came all the way from Shrewsbury just to man the gate for us for hours.
To Mel & Kate for also coming all the way from shrewsbury to spend time manning the gate
To Tony Norman & Rod Simonson for giving up their Sunday morning and manning the Gate on behalf of The Lugg & Arrow Fisheries Association.
To Alex Harrison for giving up an opportunity or two to race in the Coracles on Sunday afternoon by manning the gate.
To Alan Stoyel and Critchley to fulfilling my obligation for me to open the Mill on Sunday.
To SARA. We owe a lot to SARA. SARA stands for Severn Area Rescue Association and is a charity. They were set up to do the job of HM Coastguard on the Severn Estuary and local rivers. Manned by volunteers,they had a full weekend already lined up at Bewdley Regatta and other places before I rung up a few days before our event.I had been hoping to get the Red Cross or St Johns Ambulance or a Cadet Force but all were too busy. SARA turned up with two boats and 4 to 6 personnel who swum or stood in the freezing water all day. Amazing dedication! No swear words because its cold. Just got on with the job. Fantastic group. Please support their endeavours www.sara-rescue.org.uk Thank you.

To Peter Faulkner Coracles for lending the Society the PA System and Peter himself for being such a good sport and providing the members with much merriment particularly as he fell out rather spectactularly.
To Conway Richards for lots of excellent photos.
To Dick Mundy for being the only Coracler to buy the cd and support us.
To Wendy Gee and Dick Mundy for their donations for the event.
To the Exhibitors Mike the Kipper and Simon & Ann the Salmon and Tucha Sustainable Fish all of whom enlivened our event considerably, free of charge!
To Carmarthen, professional Coracle men, Mike and Peter, for showing us their nets.
Thanks To Bruce and Alice for clearing the Mill Stream of debris as a result of recent floods and gales enabling the Millers Mile to take place.
To Joe the webmaster for doing such a good job putting us on the events page and immediately adding bits as they got produced.

The Special Prize:
Was to have been awarded to the competitor with the most medals at the end of the competition.Well, I had a bag and a half left. Several Competitors had two medals each Quentin,Antonia,Johannes,Dave,Wendy,Simon and Paloma. No one had 3 medals. If you did sing out! Certainly I think Coracle Society Member Sandra Prosser deserves the special prize for being behind her 3 children encouraging their endeavours and showing True Grit and determination throughout the weekend with her home made willow Coracle. She personifies everything the society is about, volunteered to help with manning the gate, helped develop the model coracles & came all the way from London to take part! If you don’t have 3 medals, may I award her the prize?

And of course a special thanks from the Members of the Coracle Society and the vistors who attended the event to Chris Partington for organising the event and making it such a success.