Green Community Travel

YATE'S community transport charity is looking for volunteers to help get people to places they need to go.

Green Community Travel is holding two volunteer events at Chipping Sodbury Town Hall on June 1 and September 19, both from 10am-1pm.

Volunteers enable GCT to help so many people across our local area: our team of voluntary minibus drivers drive for on average 200-300 hours each month and the voluntary car team does over 100 journeys each month.

Our volunteers' generosity and commitment to GCT is astounding - the impact they make to our local community is huge.

Without their help we simply could not help people get to important hospital appointments, nor could we provide affordable group transport for our many local community groups, schools and charities.

Volunteers enjoy being able to see new places, meeting new people and knowing the difference they are making to GCT’s passengers; the social events are always well attended, too!

The idea of the event is to allow people who may be interested in volunteering to come and speak to the team, including some current volunteers.

GCT make sure that volunteering fits around people’s lives: some people offer a particular day of the week, some take ad-hoc requests.

Every mile makes a difference: if you’d like to know more, pop down to the town hall, have a cup of tea and some cake and chat to our friendly team.

Jenny Bright Manager

Friends of Kingsgate Park

WE are delighted to announce that we were successful in being awarded a grant from South

Gloucestershire Council to provide another accessible picnic table in our wonderful park.

Not only is the picnic table accessible to two wheelchair users and those less able to use a normal seating area, beside their friends, the table also meets the ‘dementia friendly’ guidelines, being brightly coloured.

It can be easily identified by those who have issues with locating where they are.

We also applied for and were awarded a South Gloucestershire Area Wide Grant to buy a multi-coloured bench at the Elmore entrance to the park.

We were made aware that there was quite a way to walk into the park before one came to somewhere to be able to sit and rest.

Also, we were successful in our application to Thatcher’s Cider Community Orchard Project 2023, and were given five apple trees.

These have now been planted. We are looking forward to tasting the first apples, even making an apple pie!

Our swans are nesting again and by the time you read this I am sure we will have more cygnets on our lake.

It is always a pleasure to see new life on the lake, with cygnets, ducklings, moorhen and coot chicks.

Our next quarterly meeting is at the Pop Inn Café, West Walk, Yate Shopping Centre, at 7pm on June 12 – all are welcome to come and be involved with Friends of Kingsgate Park.

Sue Swanborough