A final trip of the year with Yim Soon took in a Franciscan Friary, a Carmelite Priory and a Trappist monastery, besides a visit to Holy Island and a return to the city where I was a student.
It was brought about by being invited on successive Saturdays to the 60th birthday parties of two friends from those student days. With the first in Birmingham and the second in Durham, we decided to do a bit of a road trip, which would also take us to the Lake District, where we’d gone on our honeymoon.
The Irish Centre in Birmingham was the venue for Gabs’ 60th and there were lots of people there who had first met in the 80s through the Sheffield University Catholic Society, Cath Soc. We realised, indeed, that there were six successive Cath Soc presidents at the party (and those six had produced two marriages: Gabs to Chris, and Maria to Bob). That was a definite photo op (and see if you can spot in the pic who is married to who!!).
From there we drove North for our two nights at Windermere Youth Hostel with its wonderful views down over the lake and to the hills beyond. It was just about warm enough on the first evening to sit out in the garden with a glass of wine and watch as the sun went down behind those hills. We gave thanks for a very happy thirty-four years of marriage.
The drive from Windermere was a little more eventful than we’d bargained for. Firstly, stopping off at a famous waterfall spot by Ullswater Yim Soon tripped and landed on her face and ended up with a black eye! Then we found ourselves on a lonely road up on the moors and suddenly recognised the Kirkstone Pass Inn, the third highest pub in England. We’d been there on our honeymoon and had done a ‘walk’ on the steep slope opposite. We ended up scrambling up a long and very slippy stretch of scree and Yim Soon was worried that we were going to die (just a few days into our marriage). We didn’t die!
When we finally got out of the Lake District on this occasion there was a slightly hair-raising drive across the Pennines to the Northeast coast, with GoogleMaps once again thinking presumably that it was giving us a shortcut!
We made it in one piece to the Franciscan Friary, and it’s in a most impressive location. The little town of Alnmouth is right by the sea and the Friary is a big old house up on a promontory. We had spectacular views of that sea from the chapel (where we joined the friars for all of their prayer times), from the incredible library upstairs, so too from our room. I could happily have sat for hours just gazing out at the waves. But there was also walking to be done. And that included one day (when it wasn’t raining) walking across the tidal causeway to Holy Island, which is something I’d always dreamed of doing. A highlight of that day was going to the Celtic-style mid-day prayer held in a lovely little retreat centre run by the Community of Aidan and Hilda.
We were made very welcome by the Franciscans, so too by our old friends Jenny and Paul in Durham, the venue for Jenny’s 60th. I enjoyed making a guest appearance on the Sunday morning in their folk group; standing next to Gabs who had also brought her guitar.
Our next night was to be in Sheffield and it was an opportunity to visit Rose on the way. She’s another of the old Sheffield Cath Soc gang and in her 20s she entered the Carmelite Priory near York. I’d called in the morning and spoken to an elderly sounding nun and explained that I was an old friend of Rose from Uni and checking that it was alright to call in later in the day. We arrived and were welcomed by Sr Therese who assured us that we were expected and sat us down in the parlour, where the table was laid for tea. ‘I’ll go and tell sister you’re here,’ she said. A couple of minutes later a sister duly arrived but she didn’t look anything like Rose. She looked equally quizzically at me. ‘Rose?’ I tentatively enquired, just in case there had been some radical change in her appearance since I’d last seen her (which, admittedly, was well over thirty years ago). ‘Rose is away,’ she said, ‘And I’ve been racking my brains all day to figure out how I might know you.’ We had a good laugh about it and Sr Helena went ahead and made a pot of tea and we had a nice chat and also joined the sisters for evening prayer.
And then it was onto Sheffield, to stay with our friends John and Nicky in Crookes (a popular area for both students and ex-students) who were also just back from Jenny’s 60th in Durham. They had a feast of a meal ready for us, and it was wonderful as well to be joined by their eldest son Matt, who we’ve known since he was a young boy thanks to our group getting together every summer in the Jesuit House in Barmouth.
In the morning we took No. 52 bus into the city centre. And I told Yim Soon the joke that had been told to me in my Freshers Week at Uni. ‘Why did the policeman stop the bus in Sheffield? Because it had 52 Crookes on it!’
Walking past the Crucible Theatre brought back a special memory. The Crucible has always hosted the World Snooker Championship and so it was the venue for the famous 1985 final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor. Davis had cruised into a 7-0 lead but Taylor came back from the dead to win on the last ball of the last frame. My friend Paul Devlin had spotted Dennis coming out of Mass at St Marie’s Cathedral which is right next to the Crucible. He went up to him and blurted out, to his later embarrassment, ‘You’re Dennis Taylor; you’re from Coalisland.’ Dennis wasn’t too impressed, until Paul explained that he too was from Coalisland, a small town in Co. Tyrone. Paul relates how he bumped into Dennis Taylor years later at a dinner. Dennis was giving a speech about that 1985 final and mentioned that he’d just met someone from his hometown and had also been heartened to bump into him at the time of the final.
From Sheffield it was a fairly short drive south to near Leicester and to the Trappist monastery of Mount St Bernard, where we spent a pleasant and prayerful three nights. We enjoyed the Autumn colours in the pretty countryside, and I attended nearly all of the services in the church, even 3.30 a.m. vigils on the last morning.
There was a nice moment at breakfast on the first day. Fr Nicholas, the guestmaster was enquiring if we’d had a good night’s sleep and I asked him in return, ‘Did you have a good night’s sleep?’ ‘No, not really,’ he replied, ‘I had to get up at 3!’ He added, ‘I can tell you exactly how many hours sleep I had.’ This monk in his 60s proceeded to pull up the long sleeve of his habit to reveal…a smartwatch! ‘Four and a half hours,’ he declared.
I got back to Canterbury feeling grateful for another special trip with Yim Soon. I was also grateful for the priceless gift of friendship. And grateful too for those men and women who devote themselves to a life of prayer, and of hospitality for those, like me, whose primary commitments are elsewhere. How blessed I have been.
