Sunday 6^th May 1 – 4pm

Come along and enjoy the fun of a traditional village fete with lots of entertainment for all the family

- and entry and parking are FREE!

• Teas, bar and barbecue all with local and home-made produce
• Blewbury Brass Band, Morris dancing & Maypole
• Classic cars – a fascinating journey through motoring history
• 6-aside junior football tournament for Downland teams
• Produce, plants and cake stalls; fun games and competitions
• Fun dog show and agility course: bring your dog and enter on the day!
• Raffle, games, races and competitions: lots of great prizes to be won!
• And lots more to enjoy – lots undercover if it rains!

As it’s Jubilee year, we’re looking for the junior King & Queen of the Fete! Enter your children into the Jubilee fancy dress competition.

Do you know why Brightwalton has a Fete? It is the biggest contributor of funds to support the village hall – our only community building – and keep it affordable for local user groups. Past fetes have helped to pay for the improvements we have just made to both the interior and exterior – come and see what we’ve done!

Contact bricnews@gmail.com

Please click on the link above to view January and March editions of the Brickleton News.

MEET YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICE OFFICER

On Saturday 5^th May and Saturday 16^th June 2012 the police station will be in Brightwalton village hall car park between 1.30pm and 2.00pm.

As a few of you know, I have launched some weather balloons into the stratosphere from the village green here in Brightwalton.  The first of those was in July and brought back some stunning images from around 30km (99,000 feet), this one being taken a few seconds before the balloon burst and the payload returned safely to earth by parachute:

My second launch accidentally got to be the fourth highest UK balloon flight, and also accidentally landed in the North Sea, after being sent up with too little gas. Since then my attention turned to gaining that #1 spot. That meant reducing the payload weight to an absolute minimum by removing the cameras and replacing the GPS and computer devices with tiny versions weighing just a few grams. On Saturday I made my second such attempt, using this craft I named “Buzznik” (my altitude attempts are named after Buzz Lightyear, a model of which went into space in my first launch). This payload was designed to mimic the very first satellite Sputnik 1.

With the strong jet stream over southern England, the predicted flight path took Buzz over Kent, across the Channel into Belgium to land between Bruges and Gent. At times it reached speeds of around 200kph, comfortably faster than our chase car! It did however slow down enough for us to be quite close when we reached the Channel Tunnel terminal. By now it was rising quickly and stepped up the UK record charts, finally reaching the #1 spot as we were queued to board the train. It beat the previous record by an impressive 411m, and is also #2 in the world record table for amateur latex flights.

Please click here for Brickleton News

BricNews November 2011

Some intrepid walkers succeeded in covering all sixteen miles around Brightwalton.

Beautiful day for a walk!

September issue is now on line. Click on Brickleton News above.

To alleviate a chronic shortage of storage space, we are intending to build an small extension on the road side of the hall slightly decreasing the parking space. That, and other possible improvements will be discussed at a meeting at the Village Hall on Tuesday 28 June at 7.30 pm. All villagers are welcome to come and express an opinion or suggest possible alternatives.

For all you web-watchers, you may like to know that villagers responded to the call, and we had a most successful fete on 1st May. The sun also responded and everyone agreed it was all worthwhile. Well done Brightwalton!

We can now add photo galleries to the web site.  If you have any pretty and/or interesting local photographs to upload, please contact web admin for details.  I’ve added some from last winter to give an idea of how it works – click here to see a photo gallery.