Attendance: KMC Bob Anderson, Dave Bone, Sue Brooke, Sabina Cosulich, Andy Croughton, Joe Flynn, Jim Gregson, Sandy Gregson, Mark Garrod, Tony Gask, Michelle Harvie, Duncan Lee, Bridget Mapleson, Roger Mapleson, Lester Payne, Chris Thickett, Peter Walker, Chris Williamson.

KMC Guests: Heather Brooke, Tony Field, Catherine Firth, Dave Garland, Mike Howlett, Iain Lee, Neil Perry, Alan Reuben,

Salford University Mountaineering Club: Martin Howard, Tobjas Lilja, Jim Procter, Pam Westgate + one other.

Firstly, many thanks to the many members and their guests who turned up, despite the weather forecast, to give their support to this initiative, and for the efforts they made to make our guests welcome.

Before this meet, KMC members were queuing up to tell me their favourite student horror stories. "You know what students are like, whatever they said, they will turn up with at least 50 and you will have to throw them out. This is what happened to me once". "The noise - they will all bring ghetto blasters, and play techno music" [what is techno music ?]. "They will be up all night - nobody will get any sleep". However, I am pleased to say that the reality could not have been more different.

Fifteen students had booked to come in their mini-bus. However, to the consternation of the SUMC organiser, who was extremely apologetic, only five actually turned up on Friday night to meet the mini-bus. It's good to know that after all these years students are still unreliable. A combination of exams, coursework deadlines, and a poor weather forecast made them [and some KMC members] make some last minute adjustments to their priorities. The five that turned up were so quiet that many of the KMC members probably didn't even know they were there. And as to partying all night, they had all gone to bed by eleven - it was the KMC members up were up till the early hours drinking whiskey.

We woke on Saturday to find low cloud and drizzle. The SUMC members were up early raring to go, and their mini-bus set off for Tremadoc in search of dry rock, followed quickly by some of the keener KMC members. However the meet organiser adopted a different strategy. He stayed in bed till late - got up and had a leisurely fried breakfast, followed by more leisurely mugs of tea, and for his slothfulness was rewarded with clearing skies, and a really fine mountaineering day. There is a god after all and s/he doesn't like keenies. And I have been asked to point out that it was not the done thing for the meet leader to climb until the early evening and then go straight to the pub. Can I ask that we move a vote of no confidence in him and ban him from organising any more meets!

Unfortunately, the weather forecast was not going to get it wrong two days running and people did what they could to salvage something. The quarries were popular, Little Tryfan was scaled in the rain, while the fair weather KMC members scaled the Beacon. SUSC members went walking which was a better decision than my trip to Tremadoc.

As to whether this sort of idea is worth developing in the future, I think the University students were amazed to discover that people over thirty didn't have walking frames and didn't look and behave as if they were on day release from a care in the community project. And they were very impressed with our hut. This must be the most targeted form of marketing we could possibly engage in. It looks as if we cannot have been too bad because three of them boycotted their own meet and turned up at our Froggatt outing.

Many thanks once again for all your support.

Background One look round the room at the last AGM revealed the KMC had a problem - talk about "last of the summer wine"(with the exception of the present reader of course!). What we needed was new members, but not any new members; we needed lots of young girls for the old men and lots of young men for the old women. Where to find them, that was the question. There was some discussion about turning the KMC into the KWC (K.Wall Club) but we liked our mountains and were not going to give them up. So the Committee were given the job of finding lots of young people (or at least not quite so old anyway). The Committee decided that all we had to do was to flaunt our assets. We just had to find groups of young things who like to go to the mountains but haven't got anyway to stay and then seduce them with our hut. No problem, our wise and wonderful committee instantly found a solution - joint meets with the local university clubs. So our Meets secretary was given the job and the job was duly delegated. Two meets with University Mountaineering Clubs have been included in this years programme, and this is the first.

A joint KMC/Salford University Mountaineering Club meet. The SUMC will turn up with a minibus full of young things. So please put this date in your diary, turn up, be nice to them and show them that "just because you are old, doesn't mean your past it".