Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

We’re a little more than half way through the trip, and this weekend we are up at Hebden Bridge for the usual talk and sit, greeted by rain and a warm welcome from Rebecca.

As always, looking back, it’s amazing what we have already done: less than a week after seeing an eclipse, we were standing amid the stones at Stonehenge – thanks to my sister who had organised VIP tickets for us after I had mentioned that it was on Ruth’s bucket list of places to go in England.

It was another incredible experience; that afternoon, at Derrick’s recommendation, we had gone to the ruins of Old Sarum, so we were already steeped in history, and the exhibition space at the visitor centre gave a lot of context, but getting to stand in and around the stones was something else altogether.

We had four days in the country with my sister, and visited my mother in the nearby nursing home each day. Her capacity is diminished from my visit a year ago, but we got to chat, and reminisce about years gone by.

After that it was down to my friends on the south coast, for much chatting and eating. I had hoped to get a good walk in; Tuesday was forecast for showers, so we just walked up and around Brighton; on Wednesday we went over to the cliffs at Beachy Head. When we stopped at a village for a pub lunch, I reckoned that it was the same place that a group of us from the BBC had eaten at when we came to walk the cliffs on a winter afternoon thirty years ago.

We also had a good long walk to dinner at a highly rated Indian restaurant, so we were very tired at the end of the day, and glad of a day of sitting on trains afterwards, even as the weather changed from sunny and bright to rainy and chilly as we made our way north.