Today I shall start by telling you about the West Side Story production I mentioned at the end of my last update.

Queen Katherine pupils rose to the challenge and displayed a wealth of talented young people. Eleanor McIntosh and Ben Robinson played the main characters, set a fine example to the rest of the cast. They obviously worked very hard in their preparation of the show, which paid off and gave those of us lucky enough to see a night to remember. All the young people involved should be congratulated and very proud of themselves, the school‘s arts department is obviously doing an ‘outstanding’ job.

Last Sunday I was invited along to see the Kendal Gymnastics annual display ‘Estrella’.

I was quite taken aback by the talent of these young girls; the standard the set is very high. They are situated next to Romney’s on Mintsfeet Industrial estate. They have around 50 girls aged between 6 and 16 in their main club. The demand was so high for new places their waiting list meant girls would have to wait many years to get in so the club started a recreational class on Sundays to take those waiting, they now have an extra 40 girls aged between 5 and 12 and any with potential can be chosen to go into the main club.

All the trainers and helpers are volunteers giving their time and expertise to enable the girls to participate and compete for Kendal in a variety of regional competitions.

These are seriously talented young ladies, training an average of 9 hours a week for the senior members and 5 hours for the general members. Due to the size of their facilities the girls are restricted with their training; clubs such as Newcastle would have over 15 hours a week training for even the youngest talented gymnast.

Despite this, the girls take home a large number of medals; so far this year 5Gold; 7 Silver; 6 Bronze not to forget grades competitions at grades 6, 5, 4 & 3. They also boast the Cumbria 13 and under intermediate champion.

As you can see they are a facility to be proud of, they need bigger premises to enable them to grow and advance their skills which would offer these young girls a serious opportunity to compete not only at regional levels but possibly national.

The club has a bright future ahead, if you can help with finding bigger suitable premises please contact them directly at their site next to Romney’s.

I also visited both Queen Katherine School and Kirkbie Kendal this week, attending their Design and technical display and art exhibition respectively. The quality of work in both schools yet again did not disappoint, the level of workmanship these young people produce is quite amazing, the skills they are learning fill me with confidence they will have bright futures.

You may have seen me bag packing in ASDA last Thursday evening, I had lots of fun helping the Kendal Sea Cadets. They are an energetic group of young people and I am sure we entertained quite a few shoppers as well as packing their bags!