Big trip to York yesterday, with my mother along too ~ yippee, I just LOVE York!

Sedbergh to York is almost 100 miles each way over the A66 via Scotch Corner which means driving high up over the Pennines directly east into the rising sun, and back in the dark with gale-force winds ha ha!

What a fun day ~ first to check out York University campus and its beautiful lake….

Then off to a church on the east side of York for the autumn meeting of the CMS York Association – very delicious home-made soup and rolls and puddings and tea and coffee, followed by me giving a talk about Taiwan…

So many lovely people, including my good friends, Pam Cooper and Evelyn Wroe who’ve retired to York after many many years with CMS in Osaka, Japan.  The Dioceses of Taiwan and Osaka are companion dioceses, so we have lots of mutual friends, and as Pam has also been to Taiwan and met half the people in the powerpoint photos, well the connections are many and run deep!

Oh yes and more good friends who turned up on the day, Shelagh from CMS and Louise from well, long ago in Tanzania – altogether a total of almost 40 delightful people….

But as you know – a delicious lunch followed by a talk in a darkened hall to look at pictures of a far-away country on a warm Saturday afternoon, and well, just how to keep everyone awake?  Fortunately enough left from my visit to CMS HQ for everyone to have their own little jar of bubbles to blow every time the picture changed….

End result: bubbles everywhere and only one or two drifted off (people that is, not bubbles), but promptly woke up every few minutes to take another deep breath and BLOW!

And then off to the city centre down by York Minster for meet-up with family over cup of tea and scones – oh so very English!

By which time the sun was almost set and it was time to wind our windy way back over those Pennines to Sedbergh…

A great day, lovely people and yes, so much fun!