The Sixth International Symposium for making bamboo pipes was held in Wilhelminaoord in NE Netherlands for a week from 26th February. Mary Argent and Dorothy Senior were our representatives and were joined by Corry de Klepper (who organised the week) and Dorine Maalke from the Dutch Guild, Annie Ducloux and Jean Fournier from the French Guild, Mike Stedman and Ulrich Koehn from the German Guild and Rosmarie Wyss and Anna Idone from the Swiss Guild. Everyone was very sorry that Charlotte Poletti from the American Guild had broken her foot and was not able to attend.

Anna's husband, Antonio, came as a non piper and proved to be a near professional photographer. These photos are his apart from about five from Ted.

The Symposium had a valuable exchange of ideas and experimented with ways of making keys for big pipes.

You will hear more about this later.

At the same time the Dutch had a making course with Truus Siddre and Iris Hos as tutors and Colin Senior, and Shirley and Ted Drake took part in that.

There was playing in the evening, lovely food prepared by Geerte and Katrine and lots of laughter and singing.

The snow was amazing and we were able to ebjoy a real Winter Wonderland holiday as well.

There are more photos on the forum.