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BEST LAID PLANS DURING COVID!
One of the many delights of living in and visiting South Devon, and indeed the South West, is the enjoyment of the many wonderful festivals and regattas that this region boasts. In
Dartmouth, we are especially lucky to have two of the best events taking place in the town – the Port of Dartmouth Royal Regatta and the Dartmouth Food Festival.
Organising these events by a team of mostly volunteers is a tough ask in the best of times. During Covid, it’s probably best to call it a nightmare! Ginny Farrell spoke to the Chairs of these two big events, respectively Ed Botterill and Sheila Shribman, to share some of the trials, tribulations, uncertainties and triumphs.
Boterill A
Ed
s the Port of Dartmouth Royal Regatta drew to a close this year its chairman, Ed Botterill, admitted
to being “absolutely knackered” after working round the clock to ensure the town’s biggest event was a success in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ed and his dedicated committee pulled out all
the stops to make the 2021 regatta a fun-packed experience, after taking the ‘calculated risk’ to press ahead with the event on 19th July – giving the team just five weeks to pull it all together. Speaking on the late August Bank Holiday Monday,
just two days after the fireworks finale, Ed said: “The leads in the individual areas probably would have liked to have gone firm a little earlier but we couldn’t because it was too much of a risk to commit to anything before the 19th of July. “Before that date we had lots of fingers crossed and lots of things ready and in place. “The big facilitators that allow us to put on the
event in the way that we do – the road closures, waste management, public address system, security company and Dartmouth Town Council – were comfortable with that decision. Normally, we would have liked to have had the agreements in place by Easter. “However, this year we had to wait until Boris said
effectively ‘summer is go’. “It absolutely did make for longer days, longer hours and more emails. “But, hopefully, I and the key players – the officers,
vice chairs and deputies – can deflect a lot of that. “With great power comes great responsibility, somebody said. I’m the chairman, that’s it, the buck
stops with me. Whatever it takes, you just get it done, that’s how it is. “I’ve got a great team and it’s not as though we
didn’t know it was coming. We knew there were going to be extra hoops in place to jump through. “The hard yards came from lower manpower and the
shortness of time to get it all in place. “Tied in with the usual organisation was the difficulty of the Government removing all legal restrictions which meant essentially there were no Covid restrictions, but there were lots of guidelines from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. “We absolutely stuck to those guidelines and once
we knew what they were we were able to put them in place. So, we had hand sanitisation, extra space,
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