NORDELPH COMMUNITY WEBSITE: Raft Race, August 2010

It has become customary for your Raft Race correspondent to adopt a faintly dyspeptic 'grumpy old man' tone when chronicling the Nordelph Raft Races of years gone by. Frankly, that approach will no longer do -- the 2010 event was responsible for at least three moments when the scale, the effort, the fun -- and above all the effect -- were close to breathtaking!

Stroll along to the staithe to see if any interesting competitors had turned up -- what's this? No less than 11 entries, ranging from the ultra-basic flat wooden panel (which managed to finish) to a pair of water-cannon equipped military vehicles and a dragon boat of sorts (which didn't).

Pop into the Village Hall to see if anyone had managed to knock together an entertainment or two -- good heavens! The place is full of people enjoying themselves, sampling a wider range of activities than ever before, competing for prizes from a jar of jellies up to a 25-year old bottle of malt whisky, and helping to make the day a great success.

Look outside to see if there's anything going on -- and are those pony rides being offered back there beyond the scrambling net and the bouncy castle? Not to mention an inventive collection of apple-bobbing and 'splat the rat' type amusements.

And while enjoying themselves, how did our visitors fare for sustenance? Not badly, with a bar and refreshment counter inside and a cholesterol-packing barbecue wafting beneath the noses of those outside.

All in all, it was a stunningly successful day and the thanks of every visitor should go out to the organisers, those who thought of and manned stalls, slaved at the refreshments -- and those who got wet in Well Creek, either because they were on a raft or because one of the two craft equipped for water fights caught them in the cross-fire. Yes, we heard the calls from outraged opponents to ban the offenders for foul play, and perhaps we ought to rethink the rules -- but in the moment it all seemed such fun!

Because of the large entry it was necessary to run some five heats against the clock (for those who don't know it, Well Creek hardly permits a steeplechase-style start) and declare the winners against their times. If we'd had the forethought to purchase some second-place medals, we'd have given out more, but you can find the full results (with times and photos of the teams as well as the winners of various competitions in the Village Hall) on a separate page. There's also a page or two of photographs of the day -- start with the first one and browse on! And because not everyone is on our mailing list, and won't have been alerted to the posting of the pictures of the Village Picnic, there's a link to those.

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You don't need to return to this page every time you've viewed one of those referred to above -- there are two buttons at the top of the page. Clicking repeatedly on the 'THIS MONTH' button will take you through the pages mentioned above; using 'QUICK TOUR' will do what it says on the label and introduce newcomers to the website to a selection of what we have to offer.

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Finally this was the month when we really felt that we had to do something about the lack of structure in the website's graphics. As we began posting the pictures of the raft race, we did a quick count and discovered that there were just over 1000 separate image files in the website -- all of them at that stage living in a single folder called 'Graphics'! Spend a second or two thinking of how much fun it is to scroll through that lot, looking for the one you want.

We've moved the graphics files into a better-structured arrangement, but that means moving them in the local copy on our own computer and on the copy that sits on our server and which you're accessing now. And it's not just the graphics -- there are currently 437 pages in this website and, since almost all of them have pictures, almost all of those have to be changed as well!

What we're trying to say is that it wouldn't surprise us in the slightest if you encountered a link that doesn't work any longer, or an image that doesn't appear. Two comments on that -- first, 'sorry'! And second, please let us know so that we can correct it -- a quick e-mail to info@nordelph.org, the same e-mail address where you can request to be added to our mailing list!

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