GRENADIER DAY (2022)
(Date posted 04 September 2021)
The Regimental Adjutant and others at RHQ are considering plans on where to hold Grenadier Day in July 2022.
In recent years and when Covid-19 restrictions permitted, this event has been held in Lille Barracks, Aldershot but the 1st Battalion is expected to be deployed during 2022, so manpower to set up the event, etc will be in short supply.
The alternative venue is Littlecote. Many Grenadiers will recall the excellent weekends that John Southern (Reading Branch) and Colin Knight (Gloucestershire Branch) ran at Littlecote and are considering doing again for 2022.
If it is approved and provided sufficient interest is shown to fill all the rooms at Littlecote, they would organise a weekend break at Littlecote House Hotel (Gloucestershire) and include a Grenadier Day within the weekend.
They would run it along the lines of the seven previous events they have organised for a Grenadier get-together at Littlecote.
Dates for Littlecote are Friday 15 to Monday 18 July 2022.
As the East Kent Branch understand it, the rough plan is:
- Friday hotel guests assemble at Littlecote
- Saturday would be Grenadier Day (open to all, not just hotel guests),
- Sunday hotel guests re-group for activities at the hotel
- Monday depart
More details are to be sent to Association Secretaries next week. The East Kent Branch hopes to be able to then pass detail onto our Branch members and others, to see what interest there might be from them.
Branch Secretaries have been asked to feedback interest to RHQ before the end of September 2021. RHQ will then make a decision, at the end of September, on whether to hold a Grenadier Day at Littlecote or struggle with trying to lay it on elsewhere.
The East Kent Branch believes the price for a couple in a room at Littlecote House Hotel, for this Grenadier weekend, will be £660. However, the Grenadier Guards will need to have the hotel for all those dates and fill all 208 rooms. You can see that this could run into a big loss for the Association if the Association Branches and other interested persons can’t fill it. Colin Knight felt that we could as he had people on waiting lists for the previous Littlecote weekends that he and John organised.
It’s also not restricted to just Grenadiers. Anyone can book a room (Association members, Associate members, Friends of a Branch, other friends, people who affiliate with no Association Branch etc), but the weekend will obviously have a Grenadier bias to the activities.
Given that the £660 is for a couple, breakfast, evening meals and all the hotel amenities and activities, it’s not that expensive; in our humble opinion. It’s also an excellent opportunity to get away and spoil your other half whilst enjoying the company of like-minded people.
If you’re interested in attending that weekend, please let the Hon. Secretary know and say whether it would be for the whole weekend, or just Grenadier Day on the Saturday. Any other comments will make good feedback, so please send them too – but keep them clean!
