Mid-December is traditionally the time of year when the West & East Kent Chapters of the Widow’s Sons’ Masonic Bikers Association take part in their respective and important Christmas toys runs.
Closely conneceted to Hundred of Hoo Lodge of Mark Master Masons, the East Kent Chapter completed their extensive toy run for 2023, on Sunday 10th December. Following an early start, coupled with a little bit of rain, the group set off on what was to be a 130 miles trip around the various beneficiaries.
Reporting the day’s adventures for us is Andy Pilbeam, President of the East Kent Widows Sons:
“We started for breakfast nice and early – a good meeting point with a petrol station right next door – at which point we had our first misadventure of the day – when Jamie Stenhouse, our Charity Steward who had put so much effort into the day had a puncture and couldn’t carry on…. He was greatly missed!
We headed to The Gillingham Street Angels , above, here we delivered our first set of presents that will be distributed to children across the Medway area.
A dry run down the M2 to Strode Park Foundation where we delivered 15 filled shoeboxes for the residents for Christmas – we then headed to their sister site Footprints to see the junior residents who had already had a delivery from us earlier in the week containing many different sensory toys!!
From there we battled the Canterbury traffic and headed onto Rising Sun Domestic Violence & Abuse Service where we were greeted with tea, coffee and mince pies!!
We had a slight detour on the way to our last drop to do a ‘ride by’ which had been requested by Phil, the almoner from Trinity Lodge, then onto Millmead Children’s Centre for our last stop!
We would all like to thank all of the Freemasons, escpecially Kent Mark Master Masons & Royal Ark Mariners for their very generous donations – we managed to distribute approximately £5,000 worth of toys to needy children at this special time of year. YOU have all made a difference for them – thank you!”
If you are interested in joining either the East Kent Widows Sons, or the Mark Province of Kent, please get in touch, we would all love to hear from you.