February 2022 meeting

[QuentinDeakin]

On the 21st February 2022 the society held their first face-to-face meeting since the start of the pandemic. Covid safety measures were observed and the meeting was well attended. It was good to see so many who had been unable to access the society’s Zoom meetings.

The evening’s programme was the members and local residents follow-up to last month’s talk by Dr Deakin on the history of Tonfanau with an emphasis on the Cold War period. Members Gill Ray and Richard Stoner presented excellent and stimulating accounts of their experiences in the forces at different times in the Cold War. During the latter half of the 1970’s Gill had spent four years from the age of nineteen as a WREN working as a radio operative. This took her to Faslane in Scotland, a prime location of British naval nuclear capability. Her insightful talk was enlivened with fascinating details of training and personal anecdotes and was illustrated by her personal photographic archive. She displayed her uniform, which still fits! Richard’s experience was in 1957 when he served, at the age of seventeen, in the RAF. During his training he participated in a challenging exercise in the Harz mountains at a crucial point of the border between East and West post-war occupied Germany – a stirring story evoking the atmosphere not only of the Cold War but also of the era of the Second World War. Both accounts exemplified the value of personal experience to the exploration and study of history and were much appreciated. A discussion followed. The next meeting will again be a physical meeting and will take place on Monday 21st March at 7PM at Tywyn Baptist Church. The topic will be slate mining at Friog and the speaker Gordon Coates. All welcome.

[HarveyHD]

Hi. Any news after the March 21 meeting?