Home Sweet Home!

Well, we're both back in England, me for the first time in 7 weeks. I went to Worcester yesterday - I couldn't remember which direction the traffic was meant to come from, and found it really strange that most of the people I passed were speaking English!

Various people (you know who you are!) are always telling me that I should use the bus from the village to go into Worcester. Often this is difficult, because the bus times don't fit in with meeting times, or I have half a ton of files with me, but as I was at an all-day event with nothing to carry, I thought that I'd give it a try. The bus was on time and the journey smooth, but I was rather taken aback by the cost. I've used a variety of public transport systems in both Spain and France over the last few weeks - on local buses and metro systems I've never paid more than the equivalent of about £1.50 for a one-way ticket, and mostly under £1. I was suddenly jolted back to the realisation of where I was when the driver asked for £2.65 - was it a coincidence that just about everyone else on the bus was eligible for a bus-pass? I really wonder whether we are serious about wanting to get people out of their cars! Since so few of the passengers were paying for the journey, the cost of a ticket can hardly be related to the cost of running the service. Wouldn't it be better to bring the fares down to continental levels, thus attracting more fare-paying passengers? Or is someone going to tell me, in the words of that building society advert, "It doesn't work like that"?

The event I was attending in Worcester was a day of lectures organised by the Cathedral about the life and times of St Wulstan, whose 1,000th birthday we are celebrating this year. It was a really good day, and the speakers included Dr Katherine Lack who wrote the book "The Cockleshell Pilgrim" - a fascinating read for anyone interested in history, religion or both. Dr Lack mentioned Gareth Thomas who's doing the Santiago pilgrimage properly, walking all the way from Worcester! He's got a great blog http://whizz-kidz-pilgrim.blogspot.com which is very entertaining. The name is because of the charity that he's raising money for, which helps children with mobility problems.

I'm now organising the next stage of my "21st century" journey, initially in the UK then of to Europe again.