We ran the course at Drumoig in Fife again, 10 participants this time from across the UK. There was a strong spiritual dimension to this course, it was a powerful week, with people developing & changing & recovering. As usual the staff at Drumoig were friendly and helpful, helping to make the week successful.
I had been over ambitious with our travel plans though, I was meant to drive up to Ullapool Friday afternoon catch the ferry, get every thing ready for our trip to Cornwall then catch the Saturday lunchtime ferry back to Ullapool then drive to Dundee stay the night pick up Ron & his mum & drive down to Gloucester on the Sunday, then on down to Cornwall on the Monday.
Unfortunately a gale got in the way, the ferry was cancelled & I was stranded in Ullapool, spending the night in the van, luckily I found a great pub with live music so the evening was fine. I travelled over on Saturday morning ferry a very rough crossing which then meant we couldn’t get back to mainland that day, so had to book only crossing out of Harris on a Sunday which involves driving 2 hours down the island catching ferry to Berneara then ferry from North Uist to Skye.
Spent Saturday sorting out all the admin, clothing , etc & decided to get the kids fish & chips which are now sold at Borve garage 14 miles away, drove over , picked up food then managed to reverse van into parked car, things are not going well. Finally managed to finish all the business admin by midnight, tumbled into bed setting the alarm to 6.15 am giving us an hour to get ready before driving to ferry, forgot one thing though the clocks going forward to British summer time, so ended up in mad panic, waking kids & Alex up and getting us all out of house in 15 minutes , unfortunately 5 minutes down the road I realized the ferry tickets & my purse were still in the house , so had to turn around & go back for them,
This led to a fast drive down to Harris but we made it in record time!
Ales had to get back to Gloucester by 11am Monday, so I ended up driving down to Glasgow rendezvousing with Ron & his mum, then driving as far as the M5 other side of Birmingham, arriving 11.30pm Sunday night.
Arrived in St Austells Cornwall where our accommodation was, I felt like I never wanted to drive again, of course this was short lived as I am the only driver and we needed to get around.
The weather was great all week and had a relaxing time meeting up with John Jenkins, 2 Palestinians & Italians from Trieste & Brescia, Friday was a Whole Life conference hosted by Cornwall NHS trust at the Eden project. Whole Life is an interested international project set up by John Jenkins, trying to connect systems so that consumers get all their needs met to be able to recovery and be active citizens.
Travel back was a much more relaxed affair, stopping off for a couple of nights with my family in Gloucestershire, driving up to Dundee on the Monday, meeting up with Mike Smith in a car -park, then detouring to pick up 6 new chickens near Preston, they are at point of lay and beautiful old breeds.
We dropped my mother in law off in Dundee, Ron met up with our DVD maker and did the final edit on the hearing voices DVD & I took the kids to the cinema. We then stayed over night in Perth, Tuesday drove up to Ullapool for the ferry in the afternoon.
So we are home again, Pigs & cats to greet us, new chickens introduced to old, old chickens not impressed but I think the cockerel is impressed with his 6 new wives. Its cold , windy and guess what I have 10 days of admin to catch up with but its good to be home!
Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.
