Pontcanna

Today was a ‘people’ day.

Birmingham does not appear in any of the guide books under the title ‘Places of Natural Beauty’ as do some of the locations we have visited.

We were here to see people and that inevitably meant sharing meals as well.

First up we met Kiri Scott (née Mansfield) and little Albert for breakfast at ‘The Two Mugs’. It was lovely seeing Kiri and her growing little boy and we spent just shy of two hours (a) sharing breakfast (b) video linking with her mum, Lisa who was out in the middle of supermarket shopping back home (c) thanking Kiri for her previous Vegemite advice and (d) all heading off with Alby to the local park as he was bored with (a), (b) and (c) after an hour or so.

We bid Kiri and Alby farewell and drove the short distance to 404 Shaftmoor Lane for our prearranged visit to the Christadelphian Office at 11am.

We were warmly greeted by Kate at reception, then an obligatory cup of tea with Bro Andrew Bramhill and Bro Roger Long.
Bro Andrew then gave us an extensive tour of the workings of the office. Of particular interest were some of the historical photographs, Bibles and documents from the days of John Thomas and Robert Roberts which they had especially extracted from the archives to show us.

We met all of the other staff who were working there today, including Bro Jeremy Thomas who is stepping into Bro Roger Long’s Assistant Editor role due to Bro Roger’s imminent retirement in a couple of weeks’ time.

We didn’t quite get through the tour before Bro Andrew looked at his watch and decided that we all needed to leave immediately for our 12.30 lunch booking at a favoured restaurant about 15 minutes drive away. There we enjoyed an excellent meal with their equally enjoyable company with wide ranging conversation and lots of laughs along the way.

After our lengthy lunch, we returned to the Office where Bro Roger took over as ‘tour leader’ showing us some of the items of interest that we hadn’t had time to inspect before lunch.
Back down to the ‘shop’ area where Loriene purchased and ordered some children’s books for the grandkids and a few other items, then it was time to leave, thanking them all for their hospitality and making special arrangements for our visit today.

We left Birmingham at about 3.45pm headed for Cardiff in Wales. We knew we had crossed into Wales when we (a) drove across the very wide River Severn and (b) could no longer understand most of the words on the road signs. We arrived at our accommodation at just after 6pm, again with no sense of feeling like we have any need of dinner!
It’s turned out a beautiful evening so we might go for a bit of an exploratory walk this evening to get our bearings before having a better look at Cardiff tomorrow.Read more