In the Loop – 2 Aug 2024

Finally, SUNSHINE!! Hope everyone is enjoying the sunny weather and the warm days.

Most of our Summer Schools are fully booked there are still places available on…

Watercolour Summer School from 27 August, Tues-Fri 9.30am to 1.30pm at Stoke Lodge with Ellie D79G

Or for a mixture of Watercolour and Acrylics why not join Laurel for Space for Creativity Summer School from 12 August, Mon to Friday 10am to 4pm at Stoke Lodge. D78K

2024/25 – Courses open for booking.

As you will know our 2024/25 courses are now open for booking.

All the courses are available to view and book online at our website and we have paper copies of the listings here at Stoke Lodge.

You can also book with us over the phone on 0117 903 8844.

We do have lots being posted out to homes in Bristol so you may get a copy through your letterbox.

We have already taken over 750 enrolments and around 20 courses are now fully booked so if you have a particular course in mind, and don’t want to miss out on a place, do consider booking well in advance.

New Tutors

We have two new tutors joining the team this term:

Neil Harrison, who will be offering History courses here at Stoke Lodge.
Neil’s first offering will be on Major World Powers from Napoleon to Kaiser Wilhelm II and starts on 26 September.

You can find out more about Neil here and find all his courses listed under History on our website here.

Also joining us this year is the wonderful cookery tutor Sarah Scott, Sarah will be offering lots of one-off sessions where you can explore a particular culinary area and make (and more importantly, taste) lots of lovely delicacies.

Starting this term with ‘Inspired by the Mediterranean’, ‘Japanese Sushi’, ‘Middle Eastern Mezze’ and ‘Vegetarian Christmas’.

Each workshop is just £65 with all the ingredients included, a perfect one-off activity. You can see all our cookery courses here.

Olympic Games

I am sure the Olympic games in Paris won’t have passed you by we have another week of exciting activity before the closing ceremony on the 11 August.

For the number lovers among you here are some Paris 2024 figures.

There will be 32 sports at the games and 329 medal events.  Around 10,500 athletes will be present at the games which take place over 35 venues in Paris as well as other venues. The furthest from Paris being the French Polynesian island of Tahiti (9,758 miles away) which is hosting the surfing.

Around 45,000 volunteers will be working at the games. Approximately 10 million tickets have gone on sale for events with ticket prices starting at €24 Euros. Workers on the Paris metro system have been given over 3000 handheld translation devices that can translate 16 languages to help assist visitors from across the world.

And the biggest number so far France is predicted to spend around €10 billion Euros on the games and although this sounds a lot it is cheaper than the budgets for Tokyo 2020 at €12 billion and Rio 2016 at €11.8 billion.

Medal winners get a medal (obviously) containing a small piece of iron from the Eiffel tower, a gold box containing a copy of the poster for the Paris games and a cuddly toy!  The cuddly toy mascot has a medal emblem in either gold, silver, or bronze (depending on their win) and the word ‘Bravo’ sewn into the back.

The mascot is Phryge a nod to the red Phrygian cap worn as a symbol of freedom at the time of the French Revolution. (Which you can see in the painting below Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.)

We hope you have a wonderful summer and look forward to welcoming you back to our Stoke Lodge family in September.

Kindest regards

Jenny