The online presence of the North Millers Dale Community Association
After the excesses of Christmas why not join us for a walk on 7th January to burn off some of those calories and enjoy some pleasant company. We will have a three mile walk at a leisurely pace starting from the Farmhouse at 10:30. Hope you can join us.
Despite the forecast of rainy weather from the BBC earlier in the week, Saturday in Bath turned out to be much better than we could have hoped for. 51 shoppers arrived promptly before 9 o’clock to board the very modern looking coach to take the journey of just under two hours to Bath. On arrival at the Riverside coach park the passengers excitedly dispersed to visit the award winning Christmas Market in the city’s picturesque Georgian streets. After dark the stalls became even more magical as the Christmas lights were turned on. Thanks to Jamie, our Angela coach driver for getting us safely there and home again although the less said about his corny Christmas cracker jokes the better. Thanks also to everybody for supporting this trip and we hope to do more of these in the future.
10 teams contested the quiz night with the room full, and no space for any more teams.
It was particularly pleasing for me as the quizmaster and for the NMDCA committee as we attracted some regular players, some participants who for various reasons have not been able to come for a while, and some new teams which is always welcome.
Thanks also to all of the participants who came, a couple of whom donated to the raffle, which was very generous, but for buying so many raffle tickets. We actually ran out of tickets. That reflected the general atmosphere of the night, which was good humoured throughout, and a entertaining time appeared to be had by all. It was a pleasure hosting the event.
There was some good humoured banter throughout the quiz, One gentleman from the Quidditch team clearly did not know the power of his own voice, and said rather louder than he expected two answers, which were both correct, including one which he clearly did not expect to be right. On another team there was clearly some internal disagreement about an answer, and a gentleman was told quite clearly that he could expect a slap when he got home.
The quiz itself started with a round where the answers all had UK place names in them. I thought that was quite a gentle opening but it proved more difficult than I thought. Not as difficult as the music round, which featured singer’s backing groups or bands. We had scores ranging from 1 to 16 out of 20 for that round, so as you can imagine there was a variety of reactions to that.
We for the first time introduced a spot prize. In this round teams had to guess how old the author John le Carre was, as it was his birthday on that day ( 88). There was a tie for that with two teams both guessing 87 . One day earlier and they would have been exactly right.
Question of the night which flummoxed the teams was the name of the railway bridge that separates South Millers Dale to Valley Park. The walking group which were represented there had walked over that bridge on a recent walk but had not realised it had a name. It is actually for those who do not know is the Reverend W.H Awdry bridge (of Thomas the Tank Engine fame)
In terms of the scoring of the quiz, it was remarkably close, and was not affected by the wide discrepancy of the music round. At the beginning of the last round, only four points (two correct answers) separated the top 5 teams, which was very gratifying as it shows the balance of the quiz is roughly right. The Quidditch team and the Quiz Packham team both scored 137 points on the night (out of a possible 180) but the Girls Allowed Out team stole it on the line with 139 points, which meant that they won by one correct answer. I was rather pleased that there was a clear winner, as I would have struggled at the last moment to have sorted out a tie break question!
As promised in the October Miller’s Tale here is a link to the full stories that Andy and Heather sent to us.
