Graham and Dylys' news in 2001

All Change

Until late 1998, Graham was working in Stone, close to our home in Stoke on Trent. Then he started work in Manchester. He never intended to commute: and at that point we stepped up our efforts to sell the house which had already been on the market since 1996. But whilst many parts of the country were enjoying a housing boom, our area of Stoke on Trent was very depressed. Graham ended up commuting for best part of three years, during which he changed his job for one in Macclesfield.

After five years of trying to sell our house, we finally moved in August. Do the mortgage lenders tell us that house prices are rising at the rate of 10 or 11% per year? Sadly, we had to accept much less than Graham paid for the house nine years previously. We have moved from Stoke on Trent to rented accommodation in Macclesfield (near where Graham is working), and intend to buy again once we are sure the job is stable. It is a one bedroom flat, with much of our stuff in storage, and we are learning how to exploit the space to the full, because there is not very much of it! We are about three miles from Graham's place of work, and he has been experiencing the joys of cycling to work again.

Apart from our move, this is a year in which Graham's Dad has moved from one side of Wadebridge to the other; his brother has moved from Scarborough to Bude, one sister and her family have moved from Leicester to Saltash, and the other sister and her family are in the process of selling their house in Solihull.

Church

We started the year as members of Park Evangelical Church in Stoke on Trent. As in recent years, Graham was the morning "door man" at the church, and led one of the Prayer and Bible Study home groups. Dylys looked after the communion.

Since moving to Macclesfield we have been attending Bethel Baptist Church in the town, and expect to become members there in 2002. Graham has had opportunity to lead Bible studies at our new home group, and Dylys has joined one of the music groups in the church. The home group meets in a sheltered housing complex where two of the group members are resident, and in December we were able to organise and conduct a carol service in the communal lounge, attended by a good number of the residents.

Work

Graham has been working with Critical Path in Macclesfield since August last year. Dylys was working for Longton Cottage Hospital near our home in Stoke on Trent until we moved, when she had to resign. In Macclesfield she did a bit of temping, and a bit of voluntary work in a "Scope" shop, before being offered a job with the Office of the Information Commissioner in Wilmslow. She has started the new job on a temporary basis, and the job is due to become permanent in the new year.

Walking

Last year we made a determined effort to get out walking more regularly, as you will be aware if you have viewed our year 2000 page of the journal. This year, along with many other people, we have been restricted by the Foot and Mouth epidemic.

Our first proper walk of the year was on the late May bank holiday. We walked the Frogatt and Curbar Edges, as this was a walk which had been broadcast as being re-opened. The day started cloudy with a hint of drizzle, and brightened up nicely: very comfortable walking weather. This was also the first walk that we did in 2000.

Most of our proper walking this year has been whilst we were away on holiday. On Christmas eve we climbed Shutlingsloe hill, as we did at Christmas-time last year. Low cloud, wind and drizzle meant that it was unpleasant and completely without any views at the top of the hill. Boxing Day was a much brighter day and we climbed Shutlingsloe again: it could have been a totally different walk with beautiful views instead of seeing nothing in the cloud. We went down the other side of Shutlingsloe and did a longer circuit. Finally, on New Year's Eve, we climbed White Nancy and Kerridge Hill: a really local walk from Bollington, the next town to Macclesfield.

Holidays

We spent a few days with Graham's father in Cornwall at the end of March. We love to do the coast walks in Cornwall, but that was not an option this year. We did visit the "Eden Project" near St Austell, where Mediterranean and tropical environments are simulated in two huge "biomes". Graham's father had bought a new computer recently (as opposed to the second hand one he bought last year), and we gave him some help with his email and word processing problems.

We returned to Cornwall for a week at the end of October and enjoyed some most terrific weather: Dylys found it too warm on one of the walks that we did, and Graham wished that he had taken more tee-shirts. This time around, Graham's father bought a scanner for the computer, and Graham set it up for him.

Around new year, we booked a holiday in Arran for a week in May. We were looking forward to climbing Goat Fell and the other peaks. However, we cancelled the holiday due to the Foot and Mouth restrictions. There were no cases of Foot and Mouth on the island. Goat Fell itself is in a National Trust for Scotland area which was open, but the peaks outside the NTS area were all closed. We hope to visit Arran another year.

Once we knew that our house sale was going through, we booked up a caravan in Snowdonia for the first week in September. It was mixed weather, but good enough for us to climb Snowdon and a couple of other peaks.

Over the hill

No, not a walk. Graham celebrated his 40th birthday in May. We had some of Graham's family around the weekend after his birthday for a family get-together and a birthday tea. The following weekend we took Dylys' Mum, Dad and Aunt with us to a restaurant we like in Newcastle-under-Lyme for a meal out together. We did not make it one big get-together because Dylys' Mum and Dad were away on holiday that first weekend.

Family News

Graham's brother Phil and his wife Angela moved down from Scarborough to Bude early in the year. We were able to see them on our trip to Cornwall in March. They were expecting their first child in the autumn and we deliberately planned our second trip relatively late in the year in the hope that we would see the new baby. Sadly, Elisabeth arrived a few days after we returned home. We were able to see Graham's sister Wendy and her family in their temporary home in Saltash.

We did quite a lot of travelling over Christmas, due to our having rather scattered family. Just before Christmas it was a pleasure to attend the Golden Wedding Anniversary party of Uncle David and Auntie Jean (on Dylys' side of the family) in Loughborough. We travelled to Solihull on Christmas day to meet up with Graham's sisters and mother. Later in the week, we picked up Dylys' parents and took a trip to the Fens the other side of Peterborough to see Dylys' half-sister and family.