What a year this has been!
We had put down a lot of our responsibilities towards the end of 2013, with the intention of taking a “gap year”. There were two significant birthdays, Graham November 2013 and Judith August 2014, as we both turned 60. During the summer of 2013, for many reasons, we decided to take a break between these two dates and have a break from as many things as we reasonably could. Towards this end, we ordered a caravan in October 2013, despite all that Graham has ever said about them, with the intention of doing some travelling in the spring and summer of 2014. This we did.

We began our “gap year” with a celebration of Grahams birthday at the beginning of November. All the family joined us for a weekend at Langdale, which has always been a special place for us. We had a wonderful weekend, including a mammoth game of Ombudsman, which is a Sutton family version of Pictionary, a Liquorice Allsort cake and a walk in the rain (what else!) among many other things.
However, it was harder to finish things off and leave things behind than we thought at first, not least because we started having a new kitchen fitted in November.  Graham was involved in removing the old kitchen and then doing the lighting and electrics and the kitchen fitters mostly finished about two days before Christmas. In the New Year we then had quite a bit to do in terms of decorating. Judith unpacked many treasures that had moved house with us 5 years before, but we had not had room in the old kitchen for them.
With the New Year our new caravan arrived and we started to prepare and equip it ready for our travels. Unfortunately, there were many problems, interruptions and unexpected requests that got in the way of us setting off, including Grahams first year end accounts of him being Church Treasurer at St Marys. One good interruption was the childrens present to Graham for his birthday, which was a green woodworking day in January, where Graham came home the proud owner of a bench, made without any screws or nails.

However, finally in March we did get away in the caravan, although we had another false start where the caravan mover wouldn’t work, which held us up for a couple of days. Anyone who knows where we live will realise that the only way to get a caravan down our lane is with a mover which actually turns a caravan into a massive remote control toy, great fun!

Our first trip out was for three nights to Haltwhistle and Hadrians Wall country, where we tried out all the systems on the caravan and Graham got used to towing, we did manage a couple of windy and wet walks, which Ellie the dog was grateful for, even though we endured rather than enjoyed.  We returned home for a few days and then set off again to Seahouses and the North East. We gradually began to relax with long, cold, breezy walks on the beaches, a freezing trip out to the Farne Islands and a beautiful sunny day on Lindisfarne or Holy Island. Our dog, Ellie, thought she was in heaven, especially as on returning to our little home, there was a cosy rug in the caravan with a hot air heater. We were toasty. We moved on down the coast to Alnwick and then on to Durham and went exploring. We found many things of interest including a trip into Newcastle and to see the Angel of the North, which I thought was magnificient.
We have seen and heard so much about the world around us on television but there is nothing to beat the first hand experience of being there in body, mind and spirit.
Further travels to follow, to Dorset/Devon and Ireland over the next few months.

Moving on to the school summer holidays, we had Joe and Austin to stay as usual for three days a week. At the beginning of August, we took them away for a weekend in the caravan to Hadrians Wall, which was a great success. We went to watch a Roman re-enactment at the Vindolanda fort which included the “Roman” soldiers starting their display of military manoevres and battle formation just as the heavens opened. They carried on for about 20 minutes as brave soldiers do under a torrential downpour until the commander called quits as he said that their armour would go rusty if they didn’t get dried off soon.

In August, we celebrated Judiths birthday during a week with all 10 of the family in a chalet in Chamonix, France.  The chalet had a large deck outside the living room and we sat out there in the sun and the rain looking out at Mont Blanc or the cloud depending on the day. This was a really great week in a beautiful place and it was so good to have everyone together, which doesn’t happen very often these days. The “children” planned and delivered a party on the Wednesday including silly games, decorations, old pictures, music and dancing followed by a fantastic meal including butter pies and parched peas and fish and chips, then macaroons and Ice cream.

September saw the end of the “gap” and a re-assessment of what we were to be involved in and a re-engagement into life in Ambleside.  Some things had not gone away such as the Treasurers job for Graham and running Cedar Counselling Cumbria for myself but for a while we had both managed to step back from a lot of day to day things, thanks to help and support from others. We returned to counselling, took on a new church study group and generally restarted a lot of our involvements with life in this community. My birthday present from the children was a day’s painting course in October and a set of watercolour paints, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

So Graham is pursuing woodwork and Judith painting as new interests. We have kept reminding each other how good life is, despite all the difficult and hard things that happen and there have been some of those for sure. We do realise how fortunate we are to live in this place and at this time and we are grateful for what we have and the opportunities we have not only to enjoy this good earth and our time here but also to share what we can with others in our own unique way.

And finally a phrase that has stuck with me over the last year.

“God is good, all the time, God is good”.