Newquay RNLI’s Janet Kearton, 20 years and a legendary cake

Some volunteers you count in shifts. Janet Kearton you count in decades.

On Saturday, during Newquay lifeboat day, the crew stopped what they were doing to hand Janet a medal. It was the RNLI Long Service Medal, and it marks 20 years of her giving time to the lifesaving charity.

Twenty years on the Newquay team

Janet is the shop manager and fundraising treasurer at Newquay RNLI, two jobs that keep the tills ringing and the accounts straight. Over two decades she has put a lot of time and energy into supporting a service that exists to pull people out of trouble at sea.

The station describes her as a hardworking and dedicated member of the team, and the medal is the formal recognition of that. It is not handed out lightly. Twenty years is twenty years.

The coffee and walnut cake that became legend

There is one detail the crew will not let pass. No RNLI event in Newquay is quite the same without Janet’s baking, and her coffee and walnut cake has reached a status among the team that a person only earns slowly.

So the medal is new. The cake, by all accounts, is not up for debate.

📷Credit: Newquay RNLI Lifeboats