Buckland Newton Personalities

Buckland Newton is proving to be a village with some surprising talent.  To add something more personal to the website pages, we thought that the addition of a 'local personalities' page would be of interest.

Did you know that the village has a highly-qualified sportsman in the person of Chris Mason?  A chance conversation in the Gaggle of Geese produced this information about Chris's successes:

Air Pistol Shooting Champion
Chris entered the Police Sports UK (PSUK) 10-metre Air Pistol individual and team competitions (Winter 2006-7); the team event was representing Dorset Police.  The preliminaries were a postal league for the team event and a single postal decider to determine the regional champions who would then be entered into the PSUK Championships held in Bournemouth on 31st March 2007.
 
Chris won the South West Region individual postal competition to become the South West Regional Champion and then went on to become the individual National Champion on 31st March. There were 6 regions represented at the finals.Chris is now the 2007 PSUK National Air Pistol Champion, winning the Brighton Cup.  In September 2007, Chris was reaffirmed as Champion, winning yet again, with a score of 552 out of 600 - see photo to the right.
 
He is now working towards a place on the Olympic team for 2012 and has joined the English Smallbore Shooting Union; he's entered in their Open competition to be held at Bisley on the weekend of 5th May. This will provide Chris with experience of high level competition in preparation for entering the four Team England qualifying shoots that commence in Autumn 2007 (English, Welsh, Scottish and Surrey Open Competitions). 
 
Chris has been an Air Pistol competitor for about 30-years and was last a national champion in 1982/3 when he won the Top Under 21 Competition at the NARPA finals at RAF Cosford; following postal qualifying rounds.

Latest news (April 2008): Chris has successfully retained his PSUK National Air Pistol Champion title at their Short Range Championships in Wakefield...now in training for the Commonwealth and Olympic Games...

Marathon Man!
Michael Motteram completed the London Marathon 2007 in 4:09:34. He was placed 9,113 overall (out of 36,000 runners) and 46th in his age group.  Michael was running for MACS (Micro & Anophthalmic Children's Society), which specialises in uniting families whose children suffer with partially developed, or no eyes, from birth. It arranges picnics and days out for them, creating relationships and friendships from suffering children. It is a small charity, and each volunteer working for the cause has a child suffering from the disease. More information can be found at www.macs.org.uk.   Many thanks for your sponsorship!!

Marathon Success for Adam and Fiona!  Adam (his parents live in the village) and Fiona Collins have successfully completed the Gold Coast Marathon (in Australia) on 1st July, raising money for Cancer Research UK. Times were 3:43 for Adam and 4:51 for Fiona. They have raised over £2,500.

Walking the Inca Trail with Annie Freak
Click here for information on this terrific challenge and how Annie's walk went, in support of Breast Cancer charities.

There's an aeroplane in my Living Room
Jeremy Collins has just had published in a national model aircraft magazine an article and plans for a radio-controlled model aircraft.  Designed and built over a two year period, the 2.4 metre span model placed 4th in its class at last year's National Championships.  The model is a one-third full size rendition of an experimental German research 'plane called the Zaunkönig (Wren) designed in 1942-3.  Fully radio-controlled the model is capable of all the manouevres performed by the full-size aircraft.  This year's project, the De Havilland 53 "Humming Bird", has successfully flown and already picked up the Shuttleworth Trophy for models of aircraft at this famous aircraft museum.  Several years ago, Jeremy also built a model of the Spitfire flown in 1944 by local resident Peter Graham.

If any other villagers have hidden talents, we'd like to know about them and celebrate them on this page.  If they're too shy to let us know, why not write and tell us? E-mail contact on the Home page.