Saddling up for a good cause pages 32

Pedal powerCyclists take the Chestnut route to raise funds

This autumn, a number of our Chestnut team embarked on an epic 500km cycle ride around all of our properties, in support of the Norfolk Community Foundation and to continue our important fundraising efforts for The Giving Tree.

Currently, more people than ever are struggling with energy bills, rising mortgage rates and the cost of their weekly shop. We wanted to act to help our local communities and, when the opportunity came up to support the Norfolk Community Foundation’s Nourishing Norfolk initiative, we jumped at the chance.

Nourishing Norfolk was established in 2021 and brings together groups both big and small who work at grassroots level to ensure communities have access to affordable, healthy food. Through its food hubs, Nourishing Norfolk helps to feed thousands of locals each week.

After a lot of planning (and training), fast-forward to 11th October when a team of nine cyclists set off from The Carpenters Arms on a route that took them from the wetlands and fields in Cambridgeshire, to the rolling hills of Constable Country, onto the winding country roads of the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts, before finishing four days later at The Weeping Willow on 14th October.

The core team of four, including an assistant manager, two head chefs, and an operations manager gallantly rode the full 500km and were joined along the way by the 10 equally important support cyclists, who completed partial sections of the Safari.

Thanks to the efforts of everyone that took part in the ride and our sponsors, Birketts, Abbeygate Wealth Management and Adnams, we’ve been able to raise over £20,000 for our local communities to be able to access affordable, healthy food.

The money raised is incredibly helpful to the Norfolk Community Foundation, which supports over 2,000 small charitable groups, and will go towards funding additional food hubs across the county as they become increasingly in demand.

We want to say a big thanks to everyone who took part in cycling, organising, donating, and sharing of this great Giving Tree initiative by our team. Well done to everyone involved!

For those who would still like to donate, you can do so online on our Go Fund Me page, just search Chestnut Cycle Safari Go Fund Me on our website.

Helping to keep the coast clear (above and right) . . . members of the Chestnut team and four legged friends on beach cleaning duty

Chestnut’s Big Beach Clean

This year the Great British Beach Clean Week ran from Friday 16th - Sunday 25th September, inviting people up and down the country to get together to clean up their local coastlines

This seemed like the perfect opportunity to start rallying our team members to get involved in their first eco initiative. On the morning of Saturday 24th September team members from The Globe, in WellsNext-The-Sea, volunteered to join ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) executive, Lily, down on the beach, litter pickers in hand. In just two hours we collected over 11.5kg of litter, ranging from beer cans to crisp packets and even a kite caught in a tree. In total nine bags of rubbish were removed from the coastline and stopped any wildlife being harmed.

Keeping our beaches clean is so important. Each year over one million marine organisms die from plastic pollution in our oceans. If we all remember to clean up after ourselves after a day at the beach, we can avoid our