19^th April 2015.

Dear All,

John Law and I are off to Moldova again on Thursday so this week there has been some preparation of talks and present buying. The seed parcel arrived at its destination on Tuesday but still no resolution of the Moldova/Europe issue. I spent a good part of one day trying to pre book and prepay for some luggage on Air Moldova using our 6 digit reference number to access the relevant web site – only for the message “this site only takes 5 digit numbers” and helpfully listing a Moldovan phone number if there were difficulties. After an afternoon of unsuccessful ringing I eventually got through next morning. A young lady gave me an alternative 5 digit number - which did not work and then explained that you cannot book luggage on line anyway – even though the web site indicates that you can! In addition the £3000 we receive from NIAB had not arrived in our account despite a few reminders. Things seldom work smoothly where Moldova is concerned.

The walk this Thursday started at Shillington, Bedfordshire on the edge of the Chilterns, an involved a little unusual climbing peaking in Deacon Hill at 172 m!

Deacon Hill

Chilterns

Shillington

Kate started Pilates this week to help strengthen her groin muscle together with regular exercising.

We had some fun covering the fruit cage on our allotment with a new net and I have now dug it as well.

Cricket pitch preparation began in earnest this week: rolling, cutting etc and briefly both mowers and the roller are working!

We had a private briefing with Philip at his home in Foxton for the U3A trip to Betws-y-coed. We missed the group briefing as we were down at Hove. The Snowdonia map was laid out on the table with small flags for each days walk. The only thing missing were the model soldiers and tanks!

Yesterday we had a long session training for Street Pastors: 9.15 to 15.15 and that is just the first 2 modules of 6! Kate left at lunch time for Messy Church – so it was a long day.

Love

Mike & Kate