Hereford City Council

Twinned with Dillenburg, Germany & Vierzon, France

Newsletter

AUTUMN 2006

Les Berriauds’ visit to the Three Choirs Festival

T

 he Three Choirs Festival Committee invited Les Berriauds folk grouponce again to take part in this year’s Festival in August. We were asked by the Twinning Committee to co-ordinate the visit. 

Before the group of 30 members arrived with their president, Nicole Augendre, accommodation was found at the last minute for the French coach driver with Cllr John Newman, ‘ancien maire d’Hereford’ and HTA member. Cllr Marie Françoise Courveaulle, representing the mayor of Vierzon, and her husband Claude, were welcomed by their hosts Ethel and Clive White. On arrival Les Berriauds were welcomed at the reception in  St. Martin’s Church Hall by the Mayor, Cllr Bob Preece. The next day the group were shown round the Mappa Mundi by Ken Tomkins, with translation provided by Alison, and then gave a performance of music, singing and dancing at the Bishop’s Palace Garden Party, followed by afternoon tea and cakes. The success of the following three informal performances outside the West End of the Cathedral surely led to an increase in ticket sales for the Friday concert. In the evening Stuart and Jenny Powell invited the guests and their hosts to their house and garden in Lugwardine! Sarah and Emily Powell and Catherine White provided some impromptu music. We enjoyed a very good meal (with some contributions from able HTA cooks) and everyone present had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

On Thursday guests and hosts visited the St Fagans Welsh Folk Museum where exhibits of Welsh life through the centuries, the farm implements, cooking methods and animals were fully appreciated. For those with extra stamina there was the visit to the main house, as well as a tour of the costume and farm machinery exhibitions.  

The next morning the Mayor of Hereford and the Mayoress, Mr and Mrs Preece, received Les Berriauds in the Mayor’s Parlour and, after an exchange of gifts, joined them in the dancing. 

The evening performance in the Baptist Church  was, as always, a resounding success.  If you didn’t see the concert this year, watch this space for the next event, or  come to Vierzon next year. On Saturday  there followed a musical evening and meal at Bartestree Village Hall arranged by Gail White and Stuart Powell. Music was provided by ‘Tuneright’ and ‘From the Cradle to the Grave’ and Gail performed magnificently as caller for the Ceilidh dances. During the evening gifts were exchanged and Chairman Geoff Rawcliffe gave a thank-you address to Les Berriauds. It was a truly enjoyable evening to end what has been  – once again –  a very successful visit.

Paul & Alison Bainbridge

AUTUMN 2005

 The visit from Dillenburg 

On the last weekend in May the Hereford Twinning Association entertained a party of 40 visitors from Dillenburg on what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable if short visit. Below Christine Cook and Geoff Rawcliffe recapture some of the enjoyable moments, illustrated by a selection of Uli Mai’s and Stuart Powell’s excellent and atmospheric pictures. 

O

n this occasion our friends were accompanied by Herr Lotz, the Mayor of Dillenburg, and one of his councillor colleagues, Herr Schenk, who had been invited by our Mayor, Councillor Marcelle Lloyd-Hayes, to pay a formal visit to the city.  

They arrived on the Thursday evening having stopped over in Worcester on the way to Hereford to see the Cathedral and the Porcelain factory. That evening was spent with hosts. 

During the planning of the visit Uli Mai, Chairman of Dillenburg’s German-English Society, had mentioned that they had never been to Cardiff on previous visits –  so we arranged for them a trip to Cardiff on Friday on which they were accompanied by a few members of our Association. In Cardiff the party was met by a guide who gave them a most interesting tour of this capital city which included visits to the Waterfront and the new Millenium Centre.  

By popular demand some ‘free time’ had been planned into the visit for an opportunity to wander round the shops before returning to Hereford in the late afternoon. Again the evening was spent with hosts, some of who had got together to form small parties to entertain our visitors. 

The outgoing Mayor, Councillor Polly Andrews, had arranged to let the Hereford Twinning Association have one of her uses of the Town Hall in the evening to host our visitors and we arranged for a sit down meal in the Assembly room. In the course of the evening the Mayors of Hereford and Dillenburg presented and exchanged various gifts.

The meal, provided by Christine’s Catering, was delicious – notwithstanding that the Town Hall cookers had been declared inoperable on the Friday.

  During the evening we were entertained by Esther Kay and the Bishop’s School Ceilidh Band for an hour, followed by a very wizzy PowerPoint presentation from Herr Lotz with music and fabulous photos which split up into little bits and flew across the screen.

Towards the end of the evening we were entertained by Martyn Harrison, a tenor from the English National Opera. Martyn, who was in Hereford rehearsing the Gilbert and Sullivan Society for their forthcoming visit to Dillenburg (page 5), proved to be the absolute highlight of the visit. He sang several songs from Gilbert and Sullivan, Les Miserables and the Phantom – some in German and others in English. But the song which had everybody in stitches was his rendition of ‘Where do the flies go?’  Everybody agreed that the evening had been a resounding success – and there were several comments along the lines of ‘How do we follow that?’ 

As usual we were all very sad to see our visitors leave the next morning but it had been a good visit which cemented old friendships and forged new ones

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