Gaydon Parish Magazine July 2025
index of magazines
Gaydon Gazette for July
Parish Council Tues 8th at 7.30pm Village Hall
Coffee Morning Sat 12th at 11am Village Hall
Village Hall C'tee Mon 14th at 6pm Village Hall
Mobile Library Friday 11th at 2.40pm Phone Box
Tai Chi Wednesdays at 7pm Village Hall
Summer Fête
The Gaydon Sundowner Fête will be held on Saturday 30 August. There are still some stalls available for the afternoon in the field so do let us know if you or someone you know may be interested.
Just email gaydoneventscommittee@gmail.com
Tickets for the evening Barbecue and live band (with dancing!) in the Village Hall will be available in the pub and shop from 1st July. Tickets cost £7.50 each which includes your first drink. Numbers are limited so get yours now - and bring your friends!
Coffee Morning
Our July coffee morning will be on Saturday 12th at 11am with the usual attractions of Raffle, Books, Bric-à-brac and Refreshments. Coffee and tea and biscuits still only 50p! Proceeds for Church funds.
Mobile Library
The Mobile Library will call at the Telephone Box at 2.25pm for half an hour on Friday 11th July.
Tai Chi
The Tai Chi group meets every Wednesday evening at 7 o'clock in the Village Hall. Please text 07514 011406 so that we can look out for you. After a month, please donate a coin for the hire of the Hall.
July at the Motor Museum
Saturday 5th Wythall Busfest
Sunday 6th MGF 30th Anniversary
Tuesday 8th Gaydon Gathering
Sunday 13th BMC & Leyland Show
Saturday 19th - 1st September: Summer of Senses
Sunday 20th Rootes Heritage Day
Monday 21st Mini Motorists Monday
Information and tickets at www.britishmotormuseum.co.uk
Carers4Carers
Kineton Village Hall 10:30am to 12 noon on Friday 25th July.
This month, we're excited to offer a short session of gentle, chair-based exercise (to be confirmed). It's a great opportunity to relax, stretch, and boost your well-being in a friendly and supportive setting! As always, there will be refreshments, chat and mutual support. Carers are encouraged to bring loved ones, who can join the Companionship Group while the meeting takes place.
For further details about our carer support group or help with transport arrangements to/from our meetings, contact Gillian on 07947 893504 or send an email to kcarers4carers@gmail.com
or explore our website www.carers4carersonthefosse.org.uk.
Flag Days in June
17th - Official Birthday of HM The King
If you have something to celebrate or commemorate, ring Siobhan on 07780 689582, and she will raise the flag for you, in return for a £5 contribution to Church funds.
Village Hall News
The next meeting of the Village Hall Committee will be at 6pm on Monday 14 July in the Hall. NB new time of 6pm!
Nature Notes for June
Most of this month I have spent in the Stara National Park in
Bulgaria and Serbia. They share a huge area of forested mountains and abandoned farms over 400 square miles in area. There are over 240 Butterfly species found there (we recorded 139 of them).
This is an area you could only dream of in the UK. The farms in this area were abandoned after 1945's collectivisation. They fell apart in the 80s as few people wanted to return after being mere employees of the state and the skills had been forgotten. You can buy a substantial farm here for around £1000 and many are still intact; the villages have few people now, around 7 on average and over over 80 years old. The
Town Hall and shops have closed up.
In winter, Wolves and Bears take over and roads are impassable with ice and snow frequent. It is an environment so spectacular it takes your breath away: the fields full of wildflowers, crickets chirping and the constant calls of Cuckoos, Turtle Doves and Corncrakes. Glow worms and nightjars take over at dusk.
In the day butterflies are incredible, settling on damp areas in large groups to take minerals from the soils. Often there are huge groups of mixed species, so rare as to stop you in your tracks. The flashing purple wings of Purple Emperors, Freyers and lesser P. Emperors, Eastern Festoons, Swallowtails, large Tortoiseshells, Black-veined whites and Apollos - it is more like tropical Africa! I saw Flocks of Red-rumped swallows, and Bee-eaters, as well as the famous Hoopoe and Wall-Creepers.
On my return to Gaydon I was delighted to see up to 20 Swifts circling the village Hall, indulging in courtship flights and checking out nest sites; a few House Martins, too, and numerous scarlet tiger moths flying st dusk. There's been a heat wave here, I note, which should encourage local butterflies after the poor previous season.
Incidentally, I forgot to mention that we have only 50+ butterfly species in the UK and most are scarce or endangered. This whole area of Stara Park is fully protected. The rangers were alerted by our nets, although they were for capture/photo/release i/d only; so laws are being enforced there.
I also set up the Merlin App and recorded many songs at sunrise; Nightingales singing all day but mostly common birds in full territory mode! Black Redstart and the rarer Sardinian Warbler, a lovely red- eyed species the size of a small Tit. We even saw harmless salamanders and snakes near the streams.
Water for birds now: forget feeding - just clean up your old feeders for next year to avoid avian disease.
Bernard Price
Gaydon Development Update - July
Tweaking and Polishing …
You can tweak and polish some things and situations, but in some cases - whatever the final sheen and gloss - the substance of whatever it is can remain stubbornly and obnoxiously real…
This is the case with CEG (Malta) Ltd’s second attempt to land their behemoth on prime agricultural land. It’s an amended plan with one less building and the site slightly more biased to the M.40. It doesn’t answer the fundamental questions and concerns posed by the huge number of residents and institutions who responded in 2023. Ultimately, it is a distraction to ‘prove’ that they are being responsive in the hope that they can turn a few heads and opinions of people who might become bogged down focussing on specific, amended features rather than the general inappropriate and awful nature of it.
If you look at their revised plan, at SDC Planning (23/01054/OUT), and its pictured elevations showing the blue skies, candyfloss clouds, and token trees … It’s an idyll. A totally fictional idyll with none of the living reality of such a site when operational.
For example, it does not reveal various pollutants such as the visual pollution: The development site now depicted in the new plan, two-dimensionally, resembles an ambitious amoeba spreading itself over an even wider part of the landscape. Check out the current real view from the road descending from the Heritage Centre which reveals a rural landscape in the middle and far distance curving away to the Oxfordshire border - one of the most pleasing views in South Warwickshire. Irreplaceable.
Also absent is the reality of prospective noise pollution produced by 24/7 lorry movements (55 per peak hour) which will now join the immediately adjacent chorus of M.40 motorway traffic that turns into a cacophony descending on the village, especially when the wind is from the East. To those who would make great claims about Electric HGVs possibly replacing noisy, polluting diesels, I would refer them to this authoritative report produced very recently by ITN Business https://business.itn.co.uk/electric-lorries-are-on-the-move-but-can-infrastructure-keep-up/ . The gist of it is that we are many decades away from having viable electric HGV technology and as for a planned, supporting charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles, there is a pathetic lack of current and future provision in the UK.
The potential air and water pollution has been much referenced by residents and organisations and numerous ‘Updates’, so there’s little need for reiteration.
Suffice it to say that diesel oil, carcinogenic ‘carbon black’ and other similar, obnoxious, by-products of intensive transport movements will join the traces of aviation fuel (the legacy of the wartime and V-bomber airfield) in the Gaydon water table and atmosphere.
One Gaydon resident, David Whiteley, has produced a very detailed forensic examination, showing typical quantities of rainfall and run-off and how they interact with the actual square meterage of the amended site, provided in the new plan.
His conclusion paints an alarming picture of the area ‘sealed off’ with concrete, buildings and roadways relating to the development which will destroy the ‘sponge’ effect of the existing land. …And we all know what will happen to the run-off…
With a future context of severe weather events forecast by NASA https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/17/nasa-data-reveals-dramatic-rise-in-intensity-of-weather-events and the inadequacy of our water companies to cope with existing drainage issues, the planned development combined with climate change will create ‘perfect storm’ situations for Gaydon and the potentiality for another flood.
Are we ever going to get ‘joined-up thinking’ in relation to the abundance of vacant warehousing and commercial space across South Warwickshire - North Oxfordshire area?
With the announcement (17th June) of the closure of the JDE Coffee Plant in Banbury, yet another huge ‘brownfield’ site will become available for development in our region.
How much more does our area need? Why does our precious countryside have to be ritually sacrificed when Gaydon residents have stoically endured some of the most intense surrounding commercial, housing and road development in the UK in the past 40 years?
I urge all residents of Gaydon, concerned institutions and readers of this ‘Update’, if you didn’t submit comments and concerns when the original plan (2023) was presented or you can see more flaws in the latest plans (SDC e-planning 23/01054/OUT), do take time out to comment: it will make a difference!
The blunt truth is that whatever tweaking and polishing has been applied to CEG (Malta) Ltd’s revised plan, this development has never been a requirement for any local need or South Warwickshire plan.
Ultimately, what is it for?
We lose one of our ‘green lungs’ so that a small number of people will make a great deal of money (probably at Maltese corporate tax rates of five percent). Tony Hughes
Report given at Gaydon Parish Council Meeting 3rd June
The Annual SOA District Council's cabinet for the new municipal year was agreed at the meeting on 14 May.
Public Space Protection Order
This order seeks to address anti-social behaviour linked to alcohol consumption in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Health Screening Events
The Council has joined with the Graham Fulford Charitable Trust (GFCT) to offer a series of health screening events for both men and women across the District. These will enable men and women to have a number of health tests from a simple blood test, allowing them to, where necessary, seek further advice or action via their GP.
The tests on offer cost £14 each, subsidised by the District Council and are for men over 40 - PSA (Prostate Screening); for men and women aged 18 and over - diabetes and cholesterol.
Spaces are limited and need to be booked in advanced at: https://sdc.mypsatests.org.uk/
South Warwickshire Local Climate Engagement
The programme is jointly run by SOA and Warwick DCs and a variety of community-led initiatives are already taking place across South Warwickshire.
From drainage guardians to bicycle buses, from solar panels to tree planting, local communities are already making an impact. The programme is crucial in evaluating past projects and identifying what can be done better in the future.
A recent survey of local councils and community groups revealed that most organisations wanted funding advice for a broad range of climate-based projects, and that many were planning flood prevention and tree-planting schemes.
The findings from the survey are now guiding the South Warwickshire Local Climate Engagement Steering Group, which brings together district councillors, council officers, Town & Parish Councils, local climate action groups, and WALC (Warwickshire and West Midlands Association of Local Councils). Together, the group is mapping out opportunities for greater engagement and support for rural community projects across both districts.
District Cllr Alan Scorer
For more information see www.stratford.gov.uk
Next Meeting of Gaydon Parish Council
Tuesday 1st July at 7.30pm in the Village Hall.
July Church Services
6th 9.30am Morning Prayer Gaydon
10.00am Holy Communion Burton Dassett
13th 9.00am Holy Communion Gaydon
10.30am Baptism Service Burton Dassett
6.00pm Evening Worship Farnborough
20th 9.30am Morning Service Gaydon
10.00am Morning Prayer Northend
27th 9.30am Morning Service Gaydon
10.00am Morning Worship Northend
Roman Catholic Church of St Francis, Kineton
Sunday Mass 11am every week
July Memorial Book
1985 12th Osmond Hill
2020 12th Lesley James Welch
2008 18th Betty Davies
2016 21st Ronald Richards
1958 29th Mark Lush
If there is a special entry that you would like to see, let me know and I will try to make sure that the Book is open on that day. Julie Rickman
Thanks
A very big Thank You to all the villagers who, despite the very dry weather, have made their gardens so colourful. It has been a pleasure walking round the village and looking at the gardens. Thank you from a very happy dog-walker! JF
Something to Think About
Who are you?
How we perceive ourselves is shaped by factors such as our memories, experiences, relationships, roles, beliefs, values, and self-esteem. Together, these things create our unique sense of being, our sense of self. A strong and coherent sense of identity is linked to positive mental health, self-esteem, and overall well-being.
Our identity is not static but changes and evolves over our lifetime.
It is affected by things like changing roles or jobs, becoming a parent, or losing someone we love through a breakup or death. It is also significantly affected as we progress through adolescence, a time when children are developing a sense of self, distinct from their parents, as they become independent adults.
We all have (or have had) times when we’ve been faced with a challenge to our sense of self; times of upheaval when we lose confidence, or a sense of purpose in life. When this happens, we can find ourselves suffering from things like self-doubt, mood swings, anxiety, and even physical ill health. We can feel the need to constantly wear masks, and can feel that we can’t show our true selves to anyone.
When we face a time like this, a few things that might help are:
Remember that our identity development is a lifelong process, and it’s OK to feel uncertain during periods of change.
Volunteer. Do something as part of a group to help make a difference. Taking the focus off ourselves can often help.
Open up to someone we trust; someone we know will listen and not judge. Someone who will ‘see’ us in the sense of the Zulu greeting, ‘Sawubona.’
The literal translation of Sawubona is, ‘I see you.’ However, within Zulu culture, there is a vast depth of meaning behind that word. Sawubona means:
All my attention is with you, and I see your worth and dignity.
I see your hopes and fears, your scars and wounds, and your healing.
You are important to me, and I value you.
I allow myself to discover your needs, to see your fears, to identify your mistakes and accept them. I accept you for what you are, and you are part of me.
Knowing that we are ‘seen’ like that is healing and helpful as we navigate inner turbulence. And it can be a great help to know that sawubona is the sense in which God sees us.
In the well-known story about the Prodigal Son, when the son returns home broken and hungry, Jesus said, “while he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20).
With God, regardless of our beliefs, we are all fully known and completely, unconditionally loved. Bringing our hurt, uncertainty and confusion to God is the sort of heartfelt honesty that prayer is really about, and it can be hugely helpful when we need to rediscover our identity.
Sawubona!
Rev Barry Jackson