We have created a trail of flags around the Boldmere area.  This incorporates 59 small hard-wearing flags of the Commonwealth on lampposts together with a full-sized flagpole in the heart of Boldmere and a commemorative plaque at Boldmere Gate in Sutton Park.

There is a suggested route that can be followed to find all 59 flags, starting at the commemorative plaque at Boldmere Gate (point A) and finishing at the flagpole (point B) in the heart of Boldmere but you can of course find them in any order.  Please note that the Commemorative Plaque won’t be available until after the Triathlon has finished due to necessary Commonwealth Games logistics, but this does not stop anybody from completing the trail.

We are delighted that nearly 40 residents ‘adopted’ a flag by committing to look after it by cleaning it twice a year and reporting any problems to us.

Each flag includes a QR code which will take participants to a web page about each Commonwealth country.  Some members of our community have also contributed personal stories and photos.  We still want to fill more of the web pages with contributions from the community related to each Commonwealth country.  Contributions could include:

• a personal story related to the country (e.g. being born there, raised up there, stationed there with the forces, working there etc)
• artwork related to the country
• performing art related to the country (e.g. video of spoken word, dance etc)
• poetry related to the country
• your special recipes related to food from the county

You can find a list of the 54 Commonwealth flags (now 56 since Gabon and Togo joined in June 2022) at https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries but we have also included the 4 home nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) plus the Commonwealth flag as part f the trail.

If you would like to contribute to this project then please contact Hannah at commonwealthflagproject@outlook.com

How we chose the flags

There are 56 countries that make up the Commonwealth?  When we created this trail, there were 54 countries, but in June 2022 Gabon and Togo also joined the Commonwealth.

There are 72 teams that compete in the Commonwealth Games?  Some of these teams are the same as the countries, but there are some additional countries.

The United Kingdom is part of the Commonwealth, but the four nations compete separately:

• England
• Northern Ireland
• Scotland
• Wales

We therefore decided to include the UK flag as well as the 4 home nations flags on the trail.

We chose not include the flags for the teams outlined below in order to keep the number of flags manageable:

Several British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies also compete as separate teams.  You can find out more about these when you find the United Kingdom flag.

The inhabitants of Cook Islands and Niue are citizens of New Zealand, but they also compete as separate teams.

Northolk Island is an external territory of Australia and competes as its own team.