THE Chepstow and Usk Singing Clubs, along with their female voice chamber choir The Chepstow Chatelaines, are now in final competition preparations for The National Eisteddfod in Abergavenny.

The Singing Club/ Y Clwb Canu, a choir of over 140 singers, is not usually a competing choir but they have decided to enter in the choral competition on Sunday 31st July in the Main Pavilion.

They will be one of ten choirs from all over Wales, and The Chepstow Chatelaines are competing in the Ladies Choir section on 4th August.

Karl Daymond, the group’s music director and founder said: “We have helped raise a good few thousand pounds toward the Eisteddfod last year and as the event is here in our wonderful county of Monmouthshire we thought we would also support it by entering the competitions too.

“We are not really a competing choir but we couldn’t resist the chance to take part.

“Learning 12 minutes-worth of music in Welsh has been a huge challenge for many singers, but we felt we really wanted to support this amazing festival of language, music and culture - one of the biggest in Europe”.

The Singing Club will be joined on stage by The Old Bangers (their very own Samba Band led by Noel Watson) for one of the numbers and Monmouthshire-based sign language interpreter, Fiona Nicholson has taught the singers to use British Sign Language for one of their songs too.

Karl added: “We’ve set ourselves an enormous challenge but everyone has worked so hard to get to this stage. We just want to be good enough to be able to take part.

“We are up against nine of the best choirs in Wales. Not bad for a local community choir who meet once a week in the pub! Everyone is wishing us Pob Lwc (Good Luck)!”

The fun and sociable sessions will be starting again in September so if you’d like to go along and have a listen and see what it’s all about, just pop along to one of the sessions in Chepstow and Usk. There are no auditions, you don’t have to read music and you don’t have to sing on your own. For more information ave a look at their website www.singingclubber.co.uk