Last minute preparations

The Committee meets periodically throughout the year to make sure that most things are in place for this week-end. Those few remaining hours are hugely busy.

Today we send over a large truck to the Military Academy to pick up tables, chairs, fence posts and rope - this would be a difficult event to put together without the support of the Academy and we are hugely grateful.

Saturday, not much happens except that we open the field to let the funfair in.

Sunday, we mark out the field and the Car Park

Monday, we start setting up the field at 7:00 and we won't leave it until the rubbish has been cleared away about 12 hours later. Then it is home to get cleaned up and swear that we will never do another one!

Tuesday, the posts, rope, tables and chairs go back to the RMA. The truck goes back to another of our sponsors and then we just have to finalise the accounts to work out how much money we have raised.

The most important meeting takes place in June when we attempt to have a formal wash-up and lessons learnt exercise so that we build on our experience and try not to make the same mistakes twice. Even though the Donkey Derby raises funds for charities, unless it is run as a business then there won't sufficient focus on reducing costs and making the experience as good as possible for visitors and stallholders.