Summer holidays 2014

It is about two and a half months since we returned from our holidays. The very next day we started back at school so it has taken a while to put our holiday into the blog.  We had a most wonderful break of almost three months. 

For the first month we stayed in Kyiv and literally for me recuperated, from my school year.  I did a lot of 'nothing'.  By that I mean I read and slept and crocheted and did things at a very slow pace.  I found it delightful!  Bill also had a good rest but he also spent many hours organizing our European holiday.  It is going to be our one opportunity for an extended time in Europe so we tried to plan it as well as we could. Not having any family or friends to go to we had to organize everything ourselves and for Bill this meant many hours of work.  We spoke to lots of people here too asking for suggestions and eventually we were as organised as we thought we could be.  We were to fly to an airport just north of London and then travel about thirty kilometres to London and meet Charise who was to spend three weeks with us.  Our plan was to spend nine days with Charise in London and see as much as we could and then we would go to a seaside resort in Western Wales for a week.  Just days before we were to leave Ukraine we had heard from Bill's cousin who lives in the U.S. to say that  she and her husband were to be holidaying in the south of France and asking us if we would like to visit. We very thankfully accepted their offer and so the final week of Charise's stay was to be there.  Again not long before we left for England we became aware there was an evangelical conference in Wales in August in exactly the town we were to be staying in in July.  However there would be a two week gap between when we left France and when the conference began.  We were keen to go to the conference but where would we stay for that interval?  We contacted the conference organizers and they were able to put us in contact with a Christian group who run a coffee shop as an outreach in another small Welsh town about forty kilometres from where the conference would be.  They have student accommodation over the coffee shop (it is a university town) and it was university holiday time so the accommodation was available. So we would go from France, back to Wales, go to the conference and then back to Kyiv and start back to school.

We were able to do all the things we had planned, in a most wonderful seven weeks and four days.  I have never before spent seven weeks as tourist  and the memories we have of the places we saw and the friends we made, especially in Wales, will stay with us for the rest of our lives. 

Part of the planning of our destinations also were guided by wanting to do some parkruns while we were away and we were able to do five.  We did two in London and three in Aberystwyth in Wales.  After not doing any for almost a year it was great to join in again.  The parkrun family is very friendly and the structure is the same all over the world so we felt very much at home each week.  Now for some pictures of our fantastic holiday! Thank you, Lord.

Charise had arrived in London at midnight after a thirty hour trip from Brisbane but felt alert enough to go to church at 11.00 am. We went to Spurgeon's Tabernacle and really enjoyed the very traditional service. We estimate the church could hold about 1500 and it was full. The preaching of the word of God was really good. 

This is a place called Bunhill Fields. It is in central London.  Many non-conformists are buried here such as Isaac Watts, William Blake and Daniel Defoe. Charise and I are standing in front of the tomb of John Bunyan.  You can see Pilgrim with his burden on the side of the monument.  Now we wish we had taken the photo from the other side.

We spent a day at Hampton Court. To walk where Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and Cardinal Wolsey and so many others walked was amazing.  Having taught history for many years it was fascinating to be in the place where so much history took place. The tapestries were so amazing.  I had to keep reminding myself that they weren't done by machine. 

This is mid-summer in a seaside resort in central Wales. We stayed in Aberystwth for about a week. The beaches there were all pebble beaches, so very different for Australians. One of the things that tourists can do there is go on the coastal walking path.  There is a path that actually goes almost 100 km along the Welsh coast, but we only walked a very small portion of it. The headland you can see in the background is part of the walk.  We did climb it.  In the photo it looks rather innocuous but in real life it felt almost vertical and there was no real path.  Charise and I managed to go up but knew we could not go down so after a five km  hike along the cliff top we walked back by the road, further but easier.

Such beautiful, beautiful countryside, well worth the climb up the headland.  There is nothing between Aberystwyth and Ireland except 50 miles of Irish Sea and we were over 400 feet up, so it was very windy.  Wind is something you become very familiar with in Aberystwyth. 

Looking back to Aber as it is usually called there. Aber is Welsh for 'at the mouth of', so along the coast there are lots of Aber towns. Abergiveny, Aberaeron etc.

Charise enjoying Wales!  This is another headland near Aberystwyth, but on this one there is a monument to Wellington.  There is simply a high tower there and no real indication of what it is there for unless you read the tourist information in you accommodation. This was a much easier climb than the previous one because the path wound around the headland instead of going straight up the side.

It is not easy to find a photo that proves that Bill was there too enjoying everything.

On our way with Bill's cousin, Larisa, and her husband, John, for our first sight of the Mediterranean. It was about 29 degrees and the warmest weather we had had in almost a year.  We had one day in London when it was 27.7 and the newspapers were talking of the 'extreme heat'.

We had a week (Charise a little less) in the south of France and the weather was like this most of the time.

The blue Mediterranean looking east toward Italy.  We did travel one day to Italy and also went through Monaco.  You are only in Monaco for a few minutes on the train but almost the whole time you are in a tunnel so you don't see much of the country at all. It was a steep climb to the lookout but the view was well worth it.

For about ten days after Charise had returned home Bill and I returned to Wales and  stayed in a small Welsh town called Lampeter. It is a university town and we were staying directly across the road from the University. The grounds and building you can see are part of the Uni.  It is the third oldest university in the UK.  Only Oxford and Cambridge are older.  Wales is a great place for history.  In the grounds of the Uni are the remains of a mote and bailey castle (a type of fortification).  I remember teaching the children  about these castles and to see the remains of one was very special.  This one was built by order of William the Conqueror in the 1070s.  It was only successful for a few years and then the Welsh men stormed the castle and were victorious.  My grandmother's family was from Wales so it was great to stay there and tour round at least some of Wales and hear Welsh being spoken.    

 We stayed above a coffee shop run by a local church.  The brown building behind me is the coffee shop .  Bill especially, helped out while we were there washing and drying many, many dishes.The coffee shop is run as an outreach and the Christians there are praying and serving with gentleness the community around them.

Before church one Sunday we were there.  The service is in a local hall.  The morning service is in the English but the evening service is in Welsh with translation available.  It is a small congregation but more arrived after this was taken. The singing was so good! Good sermons too!

Wales is very wet as you can see by all the moss growing everywhere. I often felt we were on the set of 'The Lord of the Rings' when we went on walks around Lampeter.

We were taken for a drive to the northern part of Wales.  This is a huge reservoir. The water from here is not actually used in Wales but is piped to Birmingham. I had not realized there were so many sheep in Wales until we went on this drive. The land is mostly too infertile for cropping and it is also very hilly so raising sheep is the main farming activity in Wales.   

Some of the very good friends we made in Wales.  Some of them work in the cafe on a part-time basis.  The view from this hill top church cemetery was spectacular.  Fifty miles to our left behind us is Ireland.

At home in Australia Bill and I had started doing parkruns.  These are 5 km timed runs on Saturday mornings.  These began ten years ago in England and now exist in many parts of the world.  There are no official ones in Ukraine.  Bill and I have done some unofficial ones in the park across the road from our unit.  So when we decided to holiday in the UK we particularly looked to see if there were any parkruns near where we were staying or if we could find accommodation near a parkrun site. We were able to and in  the seven weeks we were away we were able to do five parkruns.  Here I am going in on my last gasp in our last run of the holidays in Aberystwth in Wales.  I had about fifty metres to go and I knew there was someone close behind me.