Sabbatical Diary – Day 42

View down to the sea from Lee Abbey.

Interesting day weather wise. Massive storms overnight and into this morning. Storm warnings over the whole of Devon and Cornwall overnight and continuing through today for Exmoor (which includes Lee Abbey). Decided to cut back on some of my coastal route to get to Lee Abbey more directly. Checked with Met Office, who said things should get better during the day. Decided to leave later, so stayed on in B&B lounge until afternoon. Still rained most of the way here, but not particularly heavily, and winds had died down considerably.

Interesting day roads wise. Massive storms overnight had deposited loads of leaves and twigs (and some bigger stuff) on roads lined by trees. Cars, lorries, buses, etc. had gradually mulched this up into a slippery, slimy mess and pushed it out from underneath tyres leaving a nice pile of junk down the middle of single track roads, and down the middle of each lane on ordinary roads. Thankfully, this was not a problem for me on the trike at all. Unless I wanted to steer, or brake. So, super fun. All was well once I got onto A39, especially when out into the open and onto a stretch of dual carriageway. However, not to long before exit from roundabout back onto A39 was blocked by a lorry and bollards and a ‘road closed’ sign. If you know the roads in North Devon at all, you will know that there aren’t too many alternative decent roads. There were no diversion signs, presumably because the closure was unplanned. So, there were literally hundreds of vehicles, headings both East and West, trying to navigate around narrow country lanes, often single track, with high hedges, and only occasional signposts to local villages. As soon as two decent sized vehicles met each other on one of these lanes, traffic ground to a halt. People were trying to turn round and getting stuck and generally causing more problems. Horrendous.

And it was still raining.

After waiting at B&B, because I was taking a shorter route I ended up getting here late. But, I am here. Two day leadership retreat, led by (retired) Bishop Bob Evens, who now lives in Cheltenham. Good reputation. Good first session. Looking at Acts 9 (Conversion of Saul), but really concentrating on Ananias.

Pretty tired, but glad to be here and looking forward to some structured input.

(Not a lot of photo choices from today! See notes above on weather and roads!)

God bless.

Mike