The summer meeting was held in the lovely seaside town of Clevedon on the Bristol Channel. The sun shone, the puzzles were varied and plentiful and a good time was had by all.
The theme for the meeting was “Maps” and in the words of our chairman “it brought out from the membership one of the finest displays I can recall seeing for several years”. Included in the Show & Tell session after lunch were a cardboard reproduction of John Spilsbury’s very first puzzle of Europe dissected , a 1760 road map of England and Wales produced by Thomas Jefferys and 19th Century puzzles cut by two of the most prominent producers of the time, William Darton and John Wallis. The former, dating from around 1850, featured many of the routes travelled by a variety of sea-faring explorers including “Captain Cook, going south in search of a Continent 1773”; the latter published in 1812, highlighting the “Southern Icy Ocean”!
More recent puzzles discussed included a 1920’s map of the 32 counties of Ireland, each cut into one or more separate pieces, a 500 piece Chad Valley 1953 official souvenir puzzle of the Queen’s coronation route and a Waddington’s 1966 World Cup map.
The day was enhanced by by hosts Gillian and John Kernon’s family who looked after us in the kitchen all day and some of us were also lucky enough to enjoy further Kernon hospitality with a Sunday morning visit to their house to see their extensive puzzle and toy collection over coffee and biscuits. Thanks so much to all the Kernon family.