The trip to Weymouth went quite smoothly, and I was amazed at how good the children were. The journey down took near;y 5 hours and yet they were patient and played or chatted and laughed, sometimes the conversations degenerated into schoolboy humour but I’m still sad enough to find that quite funny.

The picture was taken by Beth at around 9 am on Saturday morning when we went for a short walk to the sea before joining Steve and Kim. It’s a special picture as this is th view that I saw most mornings when running before school or walking into town. It’s amazing what memories one image can bring flooding back.

It was great to be able to see how Kim was doing. All I can say is please keep praying. I think she is incredibly courageous and puts on a brave face, but knowing she needs to take 30 tablets a day, 27 of them for pain relief, kind of sums this up. She does, though, look loads better than when I saw her in hospital a few weeks back and there is definite progress. I am praying that this will continue and ask you to join me in that prayer.

Steve pulled a great birthday surprise last week for Kim’s 29th. Kim is a Cher fan and Cher phoned her while she was in hospital an they had a 20 minute conversation. She was still buzzing about it when we saw her, and that was great to see.

We seemed to cram a lot into a visit of just a day and a half. In the morning we visited a little beach I used to call my own, 5 minutes away from the house, for stone skimming. We met Steve and Kim to watch them move Kim’s horse, Bramble, to another stable. We ate chips. We bought Weymouth rock. We walked along the harbour side. We crabbed in the harbour and nearly caught a massive the size of both my hands stretched out!

The journey back was the normal 3 and a bit hours and we arrived back at home at about 11.00 pm.

In all a good trip and a good primer for our holiday which starts on Wednesday.