Friday, August 15, 2008

Holiday Travels

It still remains very difficult to imagine, but we have actually moved to England.  To some degree the reality of it has been softened because we have deliberately used this first week for holiday travels.  Work, schedule, and routine will come soon enough...

Our gracious hosts in Newbury have offered us amazing hospitality, as we wait to move into the manse in Thatcham.   And this gift of space and time has provided us the opportunity to explore.  We have enjoyed the market town of Newbury as our first "home base."  It is well-situated in south England, so we have experienced quite a bit in these early days.

We traveled to Oxford for an afternoon and re-visited Christ Church Cathedral.  We drove into the New Forest as far as Lymington (near to the Isle of Wight).  We spent a day in south Wales, visiting the lovely town of Chepstow.  We explored Chepstow Castle and went into the Welsh countryside for a visit to Tinturn Abbey.  We ventured to London for a morning of play at the Princess Diana Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens.

Next we will re-visit Stonehenge and find our way through Salisbury before we are off for a three day Methodist Church Induction Course near Sheffield.  So, we are easing our way into life and ministry in England by enjoying some holiday travels.

1 comments:

Olive Morgan said...

Hello Amy - and Tim, and of course your daughter. Ever since your name appeared as a follower of my blog I've been puzzled about your location in Thatcham but life has been so ultra hectic that until this morning, so I had no time to explore your blog. I was thinking of asking my friend, our circuit administrator, if she knew anything about you when 'the penny dropped' with a loud clang! Of course, you are the wife of our new circuit minister, Tim Moore!

So I've just finished reading your blog posts to catch up on your arrival and settling in over in the next circuit - and it has been good to 'meet' you. Welcome to England, to Thatcham and Reading and to my blog. I hope to meet you in the flesh before too long.

This is the first time ever that i have missed the Circuit Welcome Meeting, which I was disappointed to have to do - not least because I'd hoped to meet up with my husband's niece who lives over there and who had made one of the beautiful kneelers in Douai Abbey (where the service was held) and dedicated it to my mother-in-law.

The service coincided with my trip up to the North-East for my great-niece's wedding (to a Wesley, a descendant of John Wesley!) and then a 3-day visit to Upper Teesdale with a nephew, to explore our ancestry in this strong Methodist area. So on that Sunday, instead of being in Douai Abbey, I was in the oldest Methodist chapel in the world still in continuous use! I am still trying to find time to post about this visit, so I'll refrain from saying more about it here.

So please accept a very warm though belated welcome from me, and may God richly bless both your ministries here in England.