The run up to Christmas 2015 saw Anstruther Rotary in action once again sorting and delivering another 14,000 or so Christmas cards around East Neuk coastal towns and villages. £3,400 was raised for charitable and good causes and grateful thanks as always must go to customers and to everyone who helped make it possible.

With the start of the New Year, planning work is now in hand for the club’s next major project – the Coastal Path Charity Walk, which over the past six years has raised the wonderful total of £78,140 and has benefited many, many charities. The date is set for Sunday 15th May and Colin Campbell, who is once again leading the team, is hoping to nudge the grand total up towards the magic of £100,000. Perhaps with kind weather and a following wind it can even be achieved this year! The walk will be arranged much as before – something of a tradition now - and more information is on our club website which will be added to as work progresses.

It is not all about fundraising though and the club meeting of 25th January celebrated the life of Robert Burns and on 1st February we were delighted to welcome Douglas Clement, who gave a fascinating illustrated talk about the creation of Kingsbarns distillery.

Douglas is founding director of the distillery and also manager of the visitor centre there. His enthusiasm was infectious and his talk provided a real insight to the challenges of planning a new small distillery from scratch. We heard of the planning, site selection, design work, debates about the selection of the still - and not least the sheer tenacity and determination needed to raise funds to achieve the dream. By its very nature a new malt whisky takes many years to come to full maturity, but the distillery is in production and many people will already be familiar with what is an increasingly popular visitor centre just off the Kingsbarns to Crail road  

Following many questions, a warm vote of thanks was proposed by George Hunter.