cloudobservers

The venue is the The Royal Maritime Club (formerly the Home Club) in Portsmouth. Special rates are available for those staying in the club, just mention cloudobservers when booking.

Click here for information, details and location of The Royal Maritime Club.

Friday night will be informal gatherings of old friends in the club.

Saturday - Up Spirits will be held at 1200 on the Saturday. Dinner will be 6.30 for 7.30 in the evening.

Sunday at the last reunion was available to carry on chatting or to visit some of the local sites. For those of you who remember or may have served on her in the past, HMS VIctory is just down the road!!! For the younger members there is HMS Warrior which is moored opposite the Keppels Head.

FULL DETAILS OF THE RE-UNION ---- CLICK HERE & please be patient as this link will take time to load.

Booking forms are being sent out at the moment and spare copies will be available shortly on the DOWNLOAD page

Celebrating the FAA 100th - A Fairey Gannet from 849 B Squadron preapres for luanch on HMS Hermes - circa 1967 - photo by Colin Brenchley

Reunion Down Under May 2009 - Gill Lamprey, who now lives in Rotorua, New Zealand,met up with Liz Deley who was on her travels. Gill and Liz had both worked as Senior Rate instructors at the RNSOMO in the 70's.

Mini-reunion. 25 April 2009 at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas in Staffordshire. From left to right, Peter Squibb, Arthur Charles and Colin Brenchley met up for a chat about old times and to have a look around the Memorial. The site covers some 150 acres with many areas dedicated to various Regiments, Ships, Squadrons and Associations. More pictures are shown in the CONTACTS section

THE FORUM - For those of you that like a discussion in the Guest Book there is a new facility - THE FORUM - TO NAVIGATE TO THE FORUM CLICK ON THE PICTURE OF THE OLDE BUILDING TO THE RIGHT AND IT WILL TAKE YOU STRAIGHT THERE - Please give it a try - there is no fee to register to use the forum, we hope that it will be useful to you in grouping a subject together for mutual comments rather than trying to look through 90 plus guest book pages with over 500 entries! It will also help by not clogging up the Guest Book. Plus you can also upload photographs into the Forum.

There are now 35 members registered in the Forum with over 350 postings and 4000 visitors. All members are checked by the Webmaster and Secretary to ensure that they all have interests associated with cloudobservers.

Get an up to date weather forecast for the UK or Europe from Weather Commerce

UK MET OFFICE - Hourly plotted chart for the United Kingdom (for those who remember the symbols) linked from the UK Met Office Website.

UK MET OFFICE - Latest Observations from around the UK regularly updated by the Met Office

UK MET OFFICE - Weather Radar

Current Satellite images of the UK - click onto this site thanks to the support of the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station. Many of the members of the Met Branch will remember the images received from this site in the 60's when they were at the forefront of monitoring images from Meteorological Satellites. www.sat.dundee.ac.uk

MEMORIES - A selection of photographs of METOC ratings and WRNS at work both ashore and afloat. This picture was sent to us by Michael Massey during his National Service. The picture was taken at HMS Daedalus on 18 May 1957 in Duncan 2 Mess. The occasion was the 20th birthday for Michael and hence his first Tot Time. The picture shows from L to R John Lucas, TB "Toby" O'Shea, Adrian "Bill" Fleetwood, Mike Gifford with Michael recumbent after receiving his first tot with sippers all round!

25 July 2008- Visit to MWS HMTG at Devonport

Left to Right - Jean Brenchley - Doreen Hemming - Colin Brenchley - John Notley - Peter Squibb - Arthur Charles - Monica Malpass - PO (Metoc) Kirk Davidson

HMTG Devonport on the Royal Navy site

More pictures

WISH YOU WERE HERE - Travel was a major aspect of life in the RN and WRNS and so far we have mainly delved into the past. This section aims to look at what ex-METOC's are up to in the way of travel today. So please send in small articles and pictures of where you have been recently. This picture sent in by John & Dorothy Woolgar during a recent visit to Mexico and Guatemala. Send your items to colin@cloudobservers.co.uk

Culdrose in the 60's - We have received a selection of pictures from Tony and Jenny Key that were taken in 1965 when Jenny Stallard served in the Tower at Culdrose leaving to get married in 1965. They have recently celebrated their 43rd Anniversary. Further pictures in the WRNS Section

THE CARRIERS a selection of pictures depicting the largest of the Royal Navy ships that Met Ratings used to serve on. As sea-going Met Offices they had the largest staff usually consisting of 1 x Commander, 1 Lt Cdr, 1x Lt, 1 x CPO/PO then 1 x LA and 4 NA's in the old days or 5 x LA's. Most of the ratings served at some time in their careers on a Carrier and in their hayday there was always at least one carrier permanently on the Far East.

WWII Met Wrens (L to R) Dorothy Rickards (Davies), Edith Beaumont (Touzel) and Jean Atkins shown reminiscing about their wartime Met service during the reunion weekend at Portsmouth in September 2006. For the full story, sent to us by Celia Saywell.

Cloudobservers is a site dedicated to renewing and maintaining friendship amongst ex-serving members of the Meteorological Observer (later METOC) branch who served in the Royal Navy from the 50's up to the Millenium. The idea of a web site for retired Met Observers was thought about after contact was first made through the Servicepals.com website between Arthur Charles and Colin Brenchley in early 2004. Both had served in the Met Branch for 22 years and retired as CPOA(Met) in the late 80's. Details of how CloudObservers evolved and the Team responsible are detailed in the Comms Room.

We know of around 1500 names that served in the branch from the 1940's through to the 1990's - if you know any members please pass on the site address to them.

The LINKS page has numerous links to other associations that are closely aligned to cloudobservers and also to members websites who can provide services to other members/old friends. There is now the additional facility to link through to cloudobservers own AV collections of photographs from this page.