Author’s Note: I stopped blogging regularly in 2020, but now in 2023, I am using Google Photos and Google Maps timeline to recreate a post about what we were up to each month!
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The 2nd of April was Good Friday, which is a holiday in the UK. It’s not a holiday for me, of course, but since we were still not meeting in person due to Covid, we were only going to have one circuit-wide worship service in Zoom in the evening. So the day was free and we decided to meet up with Steve for a hike to a waterfall!
It. Was. GORGEOUS. The hike to get there was a bit rough and we learned later there was an easier route we could have taken, but it was so worth it in the end. The really cool thing is this one of those waterfalls that you can fully walk behind! I could have stayed behind it for hours, but since it was a gorgeous spring day that everyone had off work…it was a bit crowded.
I’m pretty sure I could turn this monthly review post into just a “waterfall appreciation” post with all of the pictures I have, but I’ll settle for sharing just one more in which I also managed to capture a small rainbow.
The next day we recovered from our exertion by spending most of the day watching movies in the movie room. At about 9:00 in the evening we were ready to go to bed but when we went to open the door…it was stuck! Something had broken inside the door handle mechanism and we could not get that door open. I let Joel try for about 20 minutes and then I broke down and called our manse steward, who, thankfully, only lives a 5-minute walk away. Mike came over and when he couldn’t figure out how to open the door either, he ended up kicking it in! It was a fun story to tell around (Zoom) church the next morning!
And then it was Easter Sunday! This was my second year in a row celebrating Easter online, though last year we pre-recorded and this year we were live on Zoom. (And now I was in Wales instead of England!) After worship, we went down to the church as it was a beautiful sunny day. Someone had turned the three plain crosses into a beautiful flowering cross, and the gates to the courtyard were open so people could stop by to visit.
On the gate was a basket of things were giving away to the community. Do you know what an “egg cosy” is? I didn’t before this! It is something you can put on a fresh boiled egg to keep it warm before you eat it. These ones were made to look like cute little animals and we also gave them away with chocolate eggs.
After Easter my photo reel went a bit blank for a while, and I was a bit confused until I remembered that we spent the full week after Easter re-watching the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe! I usually take the week after Easter off for vacation and this year was no exception. Since we were still under lockdown with nowhere to go and not much to do, we decided to watch the whole MCU and put it in our own best viewing order. Thus this blog post was born!
On the 20th, we put our bikes in the car and drove out to the Forest of Dean Family Cycle trail - a 9-mile circular route through the forest. It was absolutely gorgeous and the whole time we kept saying, “We need to come back and do this regularly!” Spoiler alert: we never went there again. (Though now I’m hoping to fix that next spring/summer!)
On Friday the 23rd, we met up with Steve in, uh, Newport, for some reason. We still wanted to keep our visits socially distanced and outside, so we decided to wander around Newport. It is not the most picturesque place to wander around, even on a beautiful sunny day. This shopping cart graveyard is about the best photo I have from that day!
On Saturday Joel and I found a much more picturesque walk courtesy of a community group I’m in on Facebook. Someone suggested a walk to “the bridge at Biblins” and included a postcode for where to park and start the walk. So I took Joel there as a surprise and it was so fun! This hanging bridge of the River Wye was fun to cross, although we had to dodge some people as the nice day predictably brought the crowds.
[Side note: Writing these monthly blog posts is making me realize just how much walking we did during lockdown (and how little we do now!) We really need to get back to exploring our area!]
Anywho, here are photos from another walk! This time I went out with some ladies from my church in Trellech. We passed this stunning field of yellow flowers…
I caught this incredible photo of a wild pony up on a hill…
But the real reason we went out was to find the bluebells! The forest is carpeted with them around this time of year.
Near the end of the month, I had a meeting with a family in the church to have a very difficult conversation. The Methodist Church was about to pass some legislation around “God in Love Unites Us” - a report that would allow individual churches and ministers to make their own choices about whether to support same-sex marriage. Not everyone was happy about this, and as I walked to a meeting with some people I was feeling very anxious. On my way, this orange cat joined me for most of the walk. I remember thinking it felt like the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit accompanying me!
And that’s it for April of 2021!
XOXO, Bethany