Meetings are held monthly in Ladbroke Village Hall at 7.30pm on the 4th Thursday in the Month. No meetings in August or December.

Annual subscriptions are £31.50 per year. As well as entry to all meetings this fee provides for the magazine ‘W.I. Life’ to be delivered to your home each quarter and for monthly news of the Warwickshire Federation.

We have excellent speakers covering vast subjects. We hold a half-hour meeting prior to the monthly ‘Speaker’. During this meeting, we update our members on any new events that may be of interest to them and generally organise any current items.

Your local WI is a place to meet, make and keep new friends, learn new or different skills and widen your horizons on many issues. Socially, the Ladbroke and Deppers Bridge WI enjoys many events such as dance days, serious science lectures and literary skills. Trips taken by members arranged at local, Warwickshire and National include visits to Hill Close Gardens, a special shopping experience at Hatton Craft Centre, dramatisation of Boudicca, a visit to the Olympic site and Buckingham Palace.

President Susan Moore 07770 786981
Secretary Janet Yeates
Treasurer Rachel Thomson

Speaker’s secretary Kay Constable 813527

The W.I. Committee, 2012. See more photos on the Gallery page

Recent Activities

Jackie West gave a beautifully illustrated talk – as you would expect from the founder of the Ladbroke Photography Club – on ‘Australia, the Land of Contrasts.’

Jackie set the scene by showing the Aborigine settlements, some of which had been influenced by Christian missionaries, giving rise to churches with interior decorations showing the patterns and colours of their culture. She continued through the basic existence of the convict settlers to the opulent houses of the governors and finally the modern sky scrapers.

The talk was then cleverly divided into sections covering the red centre with its varied geology and limited vegetation. The most enduring legacy of Sir Charles Todd who was instrumental in furthering the overland telegraph system was the name Alice Springs after his wife, Alice.

Jackie’s photographer’s eye sees detail and aspect which gave us wonderful effects of light and shade on the many gum trees against myriad skies; she picked out native animals in the wild; colourful plants and finally a whistle stop tour round Australia’s beautiful coast line finishing up in picturesque Sydney. The Australian tourist board should give her a job!

On Thursday, December 8th, the Village Hall was set out with table lights on each of the small covered tables and we were served with hot mulled wine as we shared seasonal cheer prior to the evening’s entertainment. This was provided by the trio, Triple By-pass who began their selection of a capella music with the exciting Gaudete Christus est natus and continued through a selection of serious works and light-hearted ones like ‘Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat…..’ The evening was rounded off with warm mince pies and more mulled wine.

Fay Palmer demonstrated ‘Dowsing for Health’ and she briefly explained that as a member of the British Society of Dowsers as Practitioners for Health, she was involved in cutting edge science as to how dowsing works. She started at the age of 9 when, try to locate water in a drought in Ireland, her dowsing rods acted so forcibly in her hands that they broke.

We all agreed that we only think of dowsing in relation to locating underground sources of water but she explained that ores and coals can likewise be found.

I hope I have sufficient understanding of the way it works to give a feel of what she told us. All matter gives out vibrations of energy and these energies intermingle. Our bodies register these through the pineal gland in the brain. We no longer need to know these things so the brain blocks our consciousness of them. She gave the example that as we all expect water to come out of the tap whenever we turn it on, it is no longer necessary for us to find sources for ourselves.

Thus dowsing is able to be used to help archaeological digs, health and seeking the presence of earth energies (lay lines).

In health it can be used in diagnosis, allergy testing and in the alleviation of many disorders. It is used in conjunction with other therapies and medical interventions.

After hearing some fascinating anecdotes of the help provided in specific cases it was our turn to try to discover each others ‘aura’.

Professor Ronald Speirs enlightened us into the complexities of the system of testing the qualifications of those who tender to our bodily needs! For the initial graduation into medicine, students are only allowed 2 attempts and failure at this stage is the end of that student’s hopes of becoming a doctor. Subsequent post graduate qualifications can be taken as many times as necessary and as the pass rate is between 25% and 34% one can imagine the days and days of theory these young doctors are trying to cram in between their long hours of practice.

We were told of the pros and cons of the old type of written examinations compared to the more modern shorter answers and multiple choice questioning.

Mark Talbot, a volunteer for the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance following the involvement of emergency services in his son’s serious motorcycle accident, gave a presentation showing the interior and exterior of the helicopter and amazing pictures of some of the incidents it had been called to. He also gave many facts which made us all think: the WNAA covers an area of 2000 square miles and 1 million people as well as the transient population on the counties’ many motorways; it has flown 7,000 missions since the start in 2003 (we were aware that 3 of these had helped people in Ladbroke.); it can be airborne in 45 seconds from the call and takes between 6 and 12 minutes to reach the incident.

It costs £1.6 million per year to lease the helicopter and pay the medical, paramedical and administrative staff. This service receives no government support or lottery grant monies and relies solely on donations.

American Line Dancing was led by Nicky Andrews. Nicky was joined by 13 other regular line dancers so Ladbroke W.I. members were well supported as they were invited to join in such routines as the Cowboy Charleston, Elvira and the Texan Stomp. The ‘professionals’ demonstrated a dance showing much more intricate steps before we had a break in proceedings. We had all been commenting on the smell of barbecue coals but all was revealed when members of the committee came round with hot dogs.

Julie Turner from Warwickshire Wildlife Trust gave a talk entitled Wildlife Gardening.

Their aim is to provide a living landscape across Warwickshire which can then extend throughout the country so that there are networks enabling animals, birds and insects to move in ‘green corridors’.

Urban gardens make up 25% of the land surface so they are a huge resource.
In a very well structured and illustrated talk Julie took us through hedges, trees, ponds and plants which maintained and encouraged fauna. We were shown simple, cheap ways of c reating habitat for birds, bats and insects in forms of nesting boxes and even piles of logs. Julie encouraged the planting of nectar rich single bloom flowers.