What makes Great Britain Great, #1

We are finally here, after an absence of 9 long years! It's been a wonderful 24 hours since we got to sleep in after a late night arrival. Wednesday morning was spent very enjoyably over breakfast, coffee, and chatting for a couple hours with our hosts, Roy & Ruth Kunar, with whom we are staying. Roy & Ruth were our ministry partners who asked us to join them back in 2002 to plant an evangelical church in NW England. Many happy memories for us, and for our girls the first scenes yesterday of familiar places. The older three kept saying things on our flight like, "It doesn't seem real yet." I think it did today, as we drove into Warrington down narrow roads (on the left side of course) and the family prayed for Dad to not hit anything! :-)

Tonight after tea (meaning an early dinner about 6 pm) we went over to dear old friends Stuart & Jenny Boydell in Cinnamon Brow. It was fantastic to see them. They are letting us borrow their static caravan (vacation modular) for a week free of charge in Wales. More about that later this week.

Last night after we returned "home" to put Patience to bed, I went for a walk in Culcheth Linear Park. This is an old railway track that was dug through a cutting, and about 40 years ago the tracks were removed and it was converted into a nature walk.

What makes Britain great is the ubiquitous trails and footpaths that criss-cross the island. Most of them are centuries old. I never tire of these leafy corridors that are havens for wildlife and help to clear one's thinking. British people like to walk, and that's a great trait to imitate for this car-loving, out-of-shape American.

You can't imagine how many shades of green there are here.

Taken at dusk at about 9 pm

An idyllic sunset over Lancashire fields

An old bridge dating from about 1878 when the railway was built

Now the bridge leads nowhere... perhaps it was a farmer's access bridge to fields on the other side. Now it's an oasis for foxgloves.