Agincourt W.I. entered various classes in the Monmouthshire Show and were rewarded with second place for the Co-Operative themed display category – “A walk along the Wye”, and all ladies who entered other classes gained a place, what a great success.

Agincourt welcomed Ceri Joyner to the July meeting who is an avid beekeeper having 16 colonies, there are 45k – 75k in a typical colony in summer reducing to 10k in winter – hence an enormous number of bees. There are decision makers, and they work as one, decisions are unanimous. Worker bees are all female and without them the colony would not survive as they undertake many tasks. Drones are all male.

Ceri’s talk was extremely interesting, and we began to realise just how important bees are to life itself.

There was no meeting in August and Agincourt’s September meeting was a social evening, a great get together after the summer break, topped off by a quiz.

The 28th September was the day of Agincourt’s Grand Day Out. 41 ladies met at the Cattle Market car park ready to board our coach. By popular request our outing this year was to Ludlow where we would meet with “Lady Caroline of Ludlow” who would be giving us a tour and history of the ruined Ludlow Castle.

The tour of the ruins was fascinating, Roger Mortimer, owner in the 14th Century helped his mistress, Queen Isabella in the overthrow of her husband,

King Edward ll. The Prince of Wales and his brother were held at Ludlow Castle before their mysterious death in the Tower of London, and Henry Vll’s son, Arthur, heir to the throne, died at Ludlow his brother, Henry, then marrying Arthur’s window, Katharine of Aragon, and we all know how that ended!

Thursday was market day in Ludlow and wonderful food and drink was on display which the members took great advantage of and most of the ladies came home with bulging shopping bags. Everyone enjoyed the day very much, so much in fact that request have been made to make another trip to Ludlow, perhaps just before Christmas.

Their next meeting is on the 16th October, which is Agincourt’s 10th birthday, we will be celebrating with cake and fizz. Our speaker is a forensic scientist which we are very much looking forward to.