Here's to the First Link-Up Fortnight!

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Congratulations - September's Link-Up fortnight was a great success!

With two flagship events held over consecutive weekends, much of the attention here on Community Link-Up was glued to the Paris to Swindon Bike Ride and then the Futsal tournament. Both events ensured we had the best day, week and month ever in terms of readers turning to this blog for news.

The sporting theme continued with Slough devising an event not mentioned before on the blog - a Wii tennis tournament! Newport and Instore/Worcester MSC also got into the 'swim' of things by taking part in the Swim Britain events in Cardiff and Bristol respectively.

Food was also a popular theme, with Bertrams, Peterborough, Rowan House, Stockport, and The Consortium all choosing to take part in the World's Biggest Coffee Morning (see here and here). NAC and BLS tooks things a whole stage further by having their very own Great Yorkshire Bake-Off competition! Borehamwood held a Food Day, with a variety of sweet and savoury treats on offer. Finally, Rowan House rounded off their quiz evening with a fish and chip supper.

Cross business Link-Ups also came to the fore, with new colleagues from Houtschild and Erasmus meeting up for our first Community Link-Up event held in the Netherlands. Members of the Graduate Scheme also ensured a corner of Swindon is a much better place to be with their gardening activities at the Swindon Therapy Centre for Multiple Sclerosis.

We didn't have an official Community Week this year, so it was good to see the opportunity was taken for many Link-Up Fortnight events to have an additional fundraising or volunteering element. Over £2,000 was raised, as well as the money raised through the Paris to Swindon Bike Ride. Donations for the latter are still coming in, so we're not quite ready to reveal the final total yet.

With hundreds of you taking part and having lots of fun in the process, we can declare Link-Up Fortnight a huge success!

Thanks to everyone who organised an event or took part, and to all of you who tuned into the blog along the way :)