Harrogate April 2013

The RIBI Conference each year is in April, and in 2013 the venue was in the fine town of Harrogate in Yorkshire. In view of my high status in the Rotary world, I felt that I should be seen at such events, so the DGN and I made the trip to Harrogate on the Thursday, leaving early to avoid some of the traffic problems we have experienced in the past when travelling North.  We chose the Holiday Inn  because it was situated next to the Conference centre and boasted a walkway taking you directly from the Hotel into the Conference centre.

Arriving at around lunchtime, I swept up to the Hotel entrance, and was encouraged to see a Hotel employee step forward to greet us as we arrived. This is the way to do things in style, I thought, expecting him to click his fingers and a posse of staff rush out to tend to our needs.  ‘Hello’ I said, in what I thought  was a friendly and non-condescending way, ‘Consort to the DGN.’  His response to this was ‘You can’t park here’.  I don’t blame him, he probably hadn’t been briefed about my arrival. Just imagine it, me having to unload the DGN and all the luggage, before parking the car myself!  Not the most inspiring start to the weekend. Later, we discovered that you had to ascend a staircase to get to the walkway to the Conference venue, so that plan failed as well.

Once inside we met up with chums from our District and our fellow DGNs and their consorts.  Helena Daniels, who is this year’s DGE Consort for 1140, was enjoying a reunion with many of the new friends she had made in San Diego in January.

The conference, attended by RI President Sakuji Tanaka was great fun, and among the highlights was a motivational speech from Simon Weston, whose message was that you can achieve great things if you really put your mind to it. Another highlight for me was a presentation from Helen Lederer, who has always been one of my favourite comediennes.On the Saturday night, we travelled a few hundred yards down the road to the Majestic Hotel Here we attended a rather unusual dinner dance, where many of us were in a different room from the speeches and the entertainment, and couldn’t even see the excellent band, Todd Miller and the Joe Loss Orchestra, playing.  When we arrived at the venue, I adopted my usual policy of checking the top table for my name tag, and then working my way down the table numbers until I found where I was placed. I was on table 46.

We had some free time on Saturday afternoon, and decided to visit the world famous Betty’s tea shop for afternoon tea.  It is a beautiful old building, with a permanent queue outside waiting for tables.  It seemed to be one member of staff’s sole job to organise this queue. We were seated within about 15 minutes and enjoyed our traditional (if rather expensive) tea.  Well it’s not just the food and drink you come to Betty’s for  it’s the atmosphere and the tradition which goes back almost 100 years.

                                                             The DGN at Betty's

Whilst Harrogate is a great venue for a Conference, we did not find it very accessible, in view of the hilly terrain, and old buildings which are understandably difficult to adapt for wheelchairs.