A collage of buildings in the Great Shelford area

Welcome to the site of Shelford Twinning Association. The Association exists to foster friendship and understanding and to promote cultural links between the people of Great and Little Shelford in Cambridgeshire and Verneuil-en-Halatte which lies in the Oise département in the beautiful Picardy region to the north of Paris. Find out more about Verneuil.

Great and Little Shelford were officially twinned with Verneuil-en-Halatte in September 1988. This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of our twinning with Verneuil-en-Halatte! The official Twinning Charters were signed in France in September 1988 and in Shelford in 1989.

The Association leads a busy life with a number of regular activities during the year. The exchange visits are the highlight of the year, but we also arrange social events for the members here, participate in the Great Shelford Feast and Little Shelford Fun Day, and hold regular fundraising events including jumble and cake sales. As well as the exchange visits we are also invited every year by the French to take part in other events in Verneuil, for example their annual food fair, or Salon de la Gastronomie. See the Forthcoming Events page for details.

The French and English committees meet in the autumn every year to discuss dates and arrangements for the following year’s exchange visits. We take it in turns to meet in France or England, in a suitably convivial pub or restaurant near Calais or Folkestone, as twinning above all is about enjoying meeting our French counterparts and getting to know them better, catching up on the local news, exchanging views, discussing our similarities and differences.