Walkers Association AGM & Launch of Evening Meets.

After the launch in April last year this was the first public meeting of the WAI.

From the Modern Navigation course (next course Oct 4th - but possibly sold out) to our support for Challenge Walks the WAI has made modest but continuous progress. Walkers Association AGM Sept 2008A major innovation launched at this meeting was the Winter Meets which will feature holiday information exchange. The first of these is the report of holidays in the Tatras and West Crete (see http://www.walkersassociation.ie/node/290)

We also had subgroups bringing together those interested in photography, the WAI website and access-environment-national parks.

Holiday Information - Swedish Delights
As a foretaste of what we intend to do we had a talk by Donal O'Brollachain on a walking trip he and his wife did in Sweden - the
Fjällräven Classic (http://www2.fjallraven.com/classic/). No-one in the audience, and no doubt few of our readers, have been there so this was a fascinating new place, north of the Arctic Circle for an interesting and well supported walk (or race if you want it to be). We will have a fuller report on this in a while.

Organisational Matters
The WAI committee reported on its progress in getting itself properly constituted (bank account, treasurer, website etc) and proposed a constitution - see elsewhere on the site. This was duly accepted unanimously (with one small amendment) and will come into force on 1st Jan 2009.
On a call for executive committee members some seven participants put their names forward, which will strengthen the committee considerably for next year.

Ulster Federation of Rambling Clubs
The UFRC sent an official representative to the meeting who participated in a number of the discussions.

Points raised
There was some discussion regarding the attitude of WAI towards organising out of Dublin. The committee is keen to do this and will consider proposals from country clubs or individuals for meetings, courses etc.

There was some discussion in a subgroup about the WAI position on Access. The WAI recognise this as an important area and also a highly contentious one, dividing even current members of the WAI. When the organisation is in a position to develop a full policy it will. This will be done on the basis of a consensus of the membership not the opinions of a few committee members. In the meanwhile the WAI would be happy to provide a neutral newsservice about access as it affects walkers through its website should someone wish to organise this. The WAI website maintains links with MountainViews.ie whose members do quite often describe access difficulties and walkarounds. This WAI website has web links to at least three organisations with developed access policies: the MCI, KIO and UFRC.

One person said that he believed that the WAI was appealing to the same constituency as the MCI. The response to this was that the WAI sees itself as being different from the MCI in that WAI believe there needs to be a national structure dedicated to walkers/ hillwalkers, an organisational situation common in other countries and in Northern Ireland. The WAI unlike the MCI or UFRC has not set out to be a "representative body".