30th May 2021

 

Dear All,

The headline this weekend has been monitoring Ben’s progress in the 100km London to Brighton walk challenge. He started at 7.40am Saturday morning and at the time of writing he has covered 97km in 25 hours so is in sight of the finish. The start was in Richmond Park and being Ben, he ran the 15 miles from Streatham to the start! Mind you Andy has previously completed the course in 17 hours in first position.

 

 

The Route

 

Kate and I met up with walking colleague Lawrie and wife Maureen at Willingham Auctions café in Tuesday for coffee and catch up. Willingham Auctions site has gone upmarket considerably from the days when we purchased things when setting up home.

We had another outing on Friday to Emmaus at Waterbeach to drop off 9 boxes of books. They also has improved considerably in recent years with workshops, a raised bed vegetable garden and a vast array of products on sale. We arrived after lunch and the guys told us that they had received 100 donations in the morning.

 

Book Donation

 

 

 

 

Emmaus raised beds

The warmer weather has meant a busy week in the garden and allotment planting Squash, courgettes, marrows, pumpkins, Brussels sprouts, kale, Purple sprouting broccoli, cabbage and more Sweet Corn. Both allotment and garden are fairly full now.

Plant of the week is this Gazenia which we were given for our 50^th anniversary.

 

 

Gazenia

 

Our Thursday walk started at Guilden Morden and circled Steeple Morden via Ashwell and Litlington. It was not the most scenic route but the weather was good and the crops fantastic.

 

 

The Three Tuns, Guilden Morden

 

 

 

 

Near Ashwell

 

 

 

Interesting Wall Art

 

 

Winter Barley

 

In the afternoon Kate dropped me off at Addenbrookes for a chest X-ray, which was very quick and efficient and, in the evening, we had a CEEM Zoom session. This year we managed to send £10,500 to support the children’s Meal Deal operations in Burlacu and Hirtop, as well as major repairs to the church building and conked-out cars at Leova. Next step is to collect money for 5 pastor’s salaries from two churches in St Neots and send that over.

Preparing cricket pitches has been tricky this spring with the constant rain but we prepared 3 youth and one adult strip this week and they actually managed to play yesterday after 3 rained off weeks. The 2^nd team were at home and were bowled out for 35 – so of course, are blaming the wicket! The opposition managed to pass their total without losing a wicket so it could not have been too bad!

Thursday ended a run of 23 days collecting rain in the gauge. Stand by for the drought!

Ben has reached Brighton while I have been writing in 25 hours and 20 minutes!

 

Made it!

 

With love

Mike & Kate