What do you do in your spare time ?
For nearly 7 years now i have been a volunteer at Rowan Park club site & now i have just signed on as a volunteer on my nearest preserved steam railway The Mid Hants Railway & love doing both 
So what do you do? Sailing ,walking ,exploring, etc thats assuming you are not away in your vans /motorhomes most of the time. So come on what do you get up to?
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Eleven years later…… 😃
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It’s never too late to volunteer and offer your services to charity or another organisation. A friend of ours volunteered at the London Olympics and said it really was a life time experience, they also volunteer regularly for their local National Trust property as a ‘gardener’.
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The NationalTrust is well provided for but I have a couple of steep, rocky, well wooded acres - volunteers are always welcome, but scarce.
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I did 13 years as a House Steward (occasionally) but mainly a gardener for English Heritage at Brodsworth Hall. Combined my love of history and gardening, absolutely loved it. Staff and other volunteers were great, we were taken on lots of free trips to other properties, got lots of free plants, shared a lot of fun. EH looked after us very well, with a nice uniform, safety equipment, lots of tea and coffee, a lovely Christmas Dinner, and free entry into any EH property for me and OH. I learned such a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed helping public enjoy the wonderful gardens at Brodsworth. Only finished because I had to care for my parents.
Volunteering isn’t like work as far as I am concerned. I always felt I got far more back than I could often give. It might be something I go back to once I get the chance, but rather fancy helping on a heritage railway second time around.
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Years ago I volunteered to be special constable looking back I'm amazed at what I was expected to do but loved it ie taking part in high speed car chases I take my hat of to those pursuit drivers, creeping through a cemetery in the early hours trying to catch a peeping tom, jostling with photographers when Princess Diana arrived to open our local hospital and chatting to Michael Parkinson when he came to watch his team Barnsley play our local team. Things area bit more sedate I now I show new members of our ham radio club how to operate the equipment
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We sometime do a stint of litter picking along our coast. I’m often amazed and frequently disgusted at what folk just chuck! Took our grandson along recently, he now point to any litter he sees and proclaims, ‘that annoys me!’ He will, when safe and able pick it up and place it in a near bye bin of his own volition.👍
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I’d forgotten about being on Committee for our British Horse Society area! We met up once a month to set up local events, help with Bridleways, keep an eye out regarding Equine Welfare. I helped set up some great events, we had Michael Lassiter come and do dressage, Ian Stark brought Sir Wattie and Murphy Himself, and all his medals. David Broome was really good, and I helped on the BHS stand at numerous events. Bramham Horse Trials, Chatsworth Game Fair, etc….. free entry to these events.
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We collect antique English china and have used the caravan to visit fares near sites.
My wife is also researching her family and likes visiting sites where they have lived. We did find they had built a cremetoriam over one of her ancestors though. She has quite a family with millionaires and paupers. Afraid I got the latter.
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I don't know if its volunteering in the true sense of the word but I help our local ex works retirement group. Years ago this was all run in house with a paid Retirement Secretary but over the years this has been stripped back to a situation now us pensioners have to be self supporting with no financial help. The lady that run the group I have known for years and back in 2015 I was discussing the group with her and how they communicate their meeting details and trips. The person concerned is not very tech savvy so it was with baited breath that I suggested we set up an email group so that we could save a lot of money on postage. This was agreed to and set about setting up a GMail account which is fairly easy to administer. Some pensioners were reluctant to embrace the idea but we persisted and now have well over 100 group members who get all their communications from the group by email. This in tern has saved a massive amount of postage over the past nine years. From my point of view is fairly low maintenance as I only send out monthly emails plus details of the occasional day trip or holiday. The real issue now is that we don't get so many new retirees joining the group and as a result not enough new blood to keep it going?
David
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Oh yes. And plants to jog my memory.🤣
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That’s a good idea, and probably helped a lot of folks become more tech savvy. My OH gets regular news from FBU/SYFRS about goings on in local Fire Service. Sadly of course, many are about colleagues passing away. There are still the occasional valedictions that are for firefighters who actually retired before he joined!
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