I am a volunteer with a charity called Mission Assist – it consists of people in their own homes offering support to those on the ‘front line’ of missionary work around the world. My main involvement is sight checking texts which need digitising; these may be old or rare versions of the Bible, versions in languages which are not, at present, available online or other such projects.
It is a really enjoyable task – I have helped sight check Hungarian, old Welsh [the Salesbury* translation of the scriptures], Romanised Urdu [a text crammed full of diacritics, enough to send you screaming to Specsavers!] and Malay. I don’t speak any of these languages, but my role is to cross check the words from the scanned sheets I am sent with the pages which have been typed up ready to digitise.
Anyway, I digress. Each year the organisation has a conference; I have, so far, been to Malvern and Northampton for these, but this year it was almost on my doorstep at Kent’s Bank on Morecambe Bay. It’s a beautiful spot and the old building, Abbot Hall, is gracious, serene and very, very welcoming. The train station at Kent’s Bank is a 2-3 minute walk from the gate of the gardens [in fact I think the walk to the hall through the grounds is longer than the walk from the station].
Spot the butterfly
When I went through the gate into the Hall grounds, I was struck by the seemingly endless spread of wild garlic in full bloom – such a delicate, under-rated plant I always think. It looked magnificent and somehow set the scene for the rest of my weekend. The Hall is surrounded by gardens full of delicate blooms and magnificent trees; and we were blessed with wonderful weather that weekend 🙂
As I had a couple of hours to pass before registration, I started by trying out the swimming pool which is situated in a sort of log cabin style building. It’s not the biggest pool in the world but it was a very welcome facility indeed. I then decided to explore the bulding itself. I was delighted to meet the bear on the landing – he gave it such a homely feel. I was stunned by some of the magnificent architectural elements, too.
It must have been a lovely place to live, but I couldn’t help feeling glad that commoners such as myself can now enjoy the place too! Wandering into one of the lounges downstairs I was tickled to see this sign:
Such a helpful piece of information!!! The lounges themselves were comfortable and inviting, and I loved this particular table:
They also have a wonderful fair-trade coffee shop which sells the most delicious brownies – yes, I succumbed, not once but twice 😦 . The food was also superb, especially the roast beef on Sunday. The weekend was over all too quickly but I didn’t mind too much – I’m going again with my church for a weekend in September 🙂
And what am I doing right now? Waiting to be picked up for my Saga tour of Uzbekistan! See you in a week or 2 with more adventures to relate.
The Travelling Hamster 