This summer Christine, John, Peter and Deborah went for a month to England and Scotland, and Michael went for a visit a few weeks later. John had not been back to England for six years, although Christine and Deborah have had a trip in the interim. If you were chatting to us about this, you would likely ask, “So what’s changed, and how are things different?” We spent four distinct weeks: one week with family on the South Coast and in Tewkesbury, one week touring Scotland just the four of us, the third week Peter flew to visit friends in Eire while the rest of us went to visit friends and London, and the last week we went to camp at New Wine, a Christian camp in Somerset. We had a hire car and drove. Traffic is considerably slower than it was and the yellow box speed cams seem to us to be a generally good thing (remember we have teenage children and I see the victims of car accidents as part of my job). Driving up the A9 from Perth to Inverness we turned off onto the old road for about fifteen miles and I was amazed how narrow it was; we drove from Doncaster to Clacton in three hours without speeding, amazing ourselves and surprising our friends..

We didn’t plan on visiting so many abbeys, but they seemed to be all over the place, both ancient and chunky. The one at Tewkesbury and the priory church in Christchurch live on as if things have not changed in a thousand years, while others are ruins like the one at Melrose, or just a footprint on the ground like St. Bartholomew’s in the centre of London. The impression of permanence is only an illusion and all have scaffolding around the tower. Iona in the Hebrides is gaunt and rugged, as though coming out of the rock itself, yet has been an abandoned ruin twice in its life. Somewhere on that island there were hundreds of visitors, yet everywhere was peaceful and incredible serene. The nearest ocean to our home is the Arctic Ocean 900 miles away, so we head for the shore whenever we can. We went to the sands of Hengistbury Head on a glorious day when you could see the whole bay from the Isle of Wight to Swanage, and on other days we swam at Southbourne and Sandbanks where heroic measures are in hand to stop it turning into an island. We walked the Victorian seaside proms at Clacton and Oban, and the rocky pools of North Berwick and Iona. I am certain that the shore is better cared for and cleaner than it was twenty or thirty years ago..

There are many more ponies in the New Forest and the roads really are narrower than they were. On previous holidays, we have looked for puffins without success but yippee this time we found them at Bass Rock. The sixties really were a swinging time when John was learning to ski on the Cairngorm but now the rickety chairlift has been replaced with a nice, new funicular. When we arrived the view was fantastic but thick fog rolled in over five minutes. Although we did research in advance and turned off the main roads, we didn’t see much wildlife and perhaps that’s just a matter of not knowing when and where to look..

This was the summer of the world cup of soccer when houses and pubs were decorated for the competition- we have a picture of an Indian take away festooned with St. George’s flags. Half an hour before the England Portugal quarter final, the beach just emptied as the male members seemed to stand as one, looked pointedly to their watches and showed their wives and daughters the red card. There were many fantastic moments-Owen Hargreaves from Calgary scoring a goal on Canada Day was one-but both for England and for the competition in general the experience was better than the outcome. We were in Edinburgh for the Final, with both France and Italy supporters in the hostel- Italy won..

We saw two Shakespeare plays while in the UK. On our first night our nieces took part in a musical version of Romeo and Juliet written for children. This was really fun. At Stratford on Avon, we saw Julius Caesar, which was quite stark, with no scenery, yet amazing. We showed Deborah the outside of the Globe theatre on the South bank as we walked past..

Christine and John first met in Hackney, where dog tracks, totters yards and canals put it outside the tourist routes of even “The Rough Guide.” Now all that has changed and construction for the Olympics is well under way. St. Paul’s Cathedral is well on its way to being cleaned and repaired; we would recommend visiting at service times as fees to get in are higher than its dome. We wondered why they had drawn the outline on the scaffolding until we walked across the Millennium Bridge and saw that was the building directly ahead of us. On the other side of the cathedral, Paternoster square looks as though it has been there for centuries with the new London Stock Exchange, but it is not so. A rather undistinguished shopping plaza built on a bomb site has gone and the old Temple Bar restored together with what looks like a smaller version of the Monument to commemorate something or other, but no one seems to know quite what..

London buses are all new, bar ten of the old ones on routes from Trafalgar Square to Harrods and the Tower. Most buses are double-decker, and at most stops in the centre tickets must be bought in advance from machines too wimpy to be reliable. Buy a pass. The hydrogen/electric buses run from Covent Garden to the Tower, John saw them but did not ride them; we did ride the bendibuses, but they seem to be stark with little to hold on to, they pretend to encourage handicapped riding but an old bus with a conductor would in practice be more helpful..

We had a full day out on the West Somerset Railway, where full size steam trains run through the fields and alongside the sea. The coaches are identical to those in Harry Potter movies, we rode in a compartment and John went round the depot where further coaches are being restored, one still had the scoreboard from its life as a cricket pavilion. The transport museums at Glasgow and York are free and well worth the price. .

Christine once spent a week on a narrow boat, and we had a short trip this holiday on the Falkirk Wheel which was a Millennium project to replace a flight of eleven locks on the canal that links Edinburgh to Glasgow. It is a concrete and steel structure with two chambers which contain water. The boat sails into the one at the bottom which is then lifted up to the top by the weight of water in the other, ‘taking nae moor than three kettles of power’. We spent our last week at New Wine camp in Shepton Mallet. We enjoyed the luxury of my brother’s large tent (three times the size of the one we use), he says his new one is twice the size. The fellowship and teaching times were wonderful and it was great to have a further week visiting with family. Cooking inside the tent is something we cannot do in Canada because of bears, raccoons and other wild beasties..

One thing we really love is the way God paints the Saskatchewan skies. Day and night these are something to behold. We have joined the local astronomy group so we can learn a little more. Sometimes on our way back from Saskatoon on a clear night we get out of the car so we can see the millions of stars lighting the night sky. Occasionally we feel privileged to watch the aurora borealis (northern lights). It is nights such as this that we can imagine the angels visiting the shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem to give them the news that Jesus was born. We pray that you and your family may enjoy some of this Good News this Christmas season..

John, Christine, Michael, Peter and Deborah Rye.