News

12-14 July 2025: Visit to France

Photo © Val Pearce

4-7July 2025: Visit to Poland

In early July Debbie Pickford and Nick Mawer travelled to Czernichów to represent Bicester at their Festival of the Sea. Read more here.

Photo © Nicholas Mawer

28 June 2025: Armed Forces Day

The BDTA had a stall at Armed Forces Day on Pingle Field. As well as giving out publicity brochures for the Twinning Association, we held a raffle with prizes consisting of four hampers filled with food and drink – one for each of UK, France, Germany and Poland. There was also a “Guess the Weight of the Cake” competition. In this photo you can see two visitors writing down their guesses for the weight of the cake.

Photo © Krys

It was a lovely sunny day and there was a constant stream of visitors to our stand in the afternoon, including a couple of unusually long-legged ones as seen here. Overall the day was judged to be a huge success raising a very useful amount to help support twinning activities.

Photo by Krys

One of the highlights of the day was a fly-past by a WWII Lancaster bomber, which gave a wonderful display as it circled round three times.

Photo by Krys

Huge thanks to everyone who made the day such a success, in particular Val for putting together most of the hampers as well as baking the cake, Teresa for providing the UK hamper, Debbie for providing most of the Polish hamper. Val, Sandra, Lynne and Brian worked hard in manning the stall pretty much the whole time, while Teresa, Eileen, Krys and Richard also helped out. Of course we also owe a debt of gratitude to all of those who generously supported us by buying the raffle tickets and guesses.

Photo of UK Hamper by Teresa

4 June 2025: St. Edburg’s school children in Neunkirchen-Seelscheid

In early June a party of schoolchildren from St. Edburg’s School in Bicester visited their counterparts at Wolperath-Schönau primary school in Neunkirchen-Seelscheid. Here is how one of their hosts described the visit: “On June 4th we were visited by four teachers and eight children from our Twin town in England. The English students gave us a presentation about their school. Afterwards, we explained to them how we learn English. Our visitors from England thought that was really funny!

We then showed our guests around our school. After that our visitors read to us from children’s English books. Everyone had a great time!

Unfortunately, the visit was far too short!

1 June 2025: Summer Barbecue

Our Summer Social Barbecue was really lovely. Held in the garden at the home of Amanda and Damien Maguire, we were really lucky with the weather, managing to avoid any rain. A good number of people turned out to enjoy the grilled meats and salads, and the fine sum of £290 was raised to support our twinning activities. Especial thanks to our hosts Amanda and Damien for being so welcoming to all and providing most of the food. Thanks also to Val and Brian Pearce, Marta Dziedzicka, Sandra Nicholson and Krys Kazmierczak for their contributions to the catering.

26 Feb 2025: Twinning Quiz

The BDTA quiz held at The Shakespeare Pub in Shakespeare Drive was a great success raising the princely sum of £273 to support our twinning projects. Huge thanks to Debbie Pickford, Val Pearce and Teresa Elrington from the Committee for organising the evening and prizes, and especial thanks to Paul Combes, the landlord of the pub, for supporting and hosting the event as well as providing the main prize. A good time was had by all. We look forward to another quiz in the Autumn.

Feb 2025: Andrew Hulbert’s charity road trip to our twin towns

In February, 38-year old Andrew Hulbert , an entrepreneur from Bicester, completed a 3000Km solo journey round Europe visiting all three of Bicester’s twin towns to raise funds for Nai’s House, a charity in Bicester providing mental health support to young people. Read more here…

8-11 November 2024: Remembrance Weekend

This year we were joined by delegations from our twin towns in France and Germany. Sadly, our friends from Czernichów were unable to join us due to having to deal with the aftermath of the disastrous Autumn flooding in southwestern Poland. Read more here…