Nearly at the end...

The final few weeks of the tour have been a whirlwind of activity, involving a huge number of minibus-miles (Salisbury-Kendal-Salisbury-Reading-Hexham-Halifax-Manchester-Salisbury). We haven't yet done the annual mileage count, but we seem to have covered quite a lot of ground in the past three months. Now, with just one more fixture to go, we are beginning the final stages of clearing everything away in readiness for the next tour, checking over the costumes and instruments for damage and doing a stock-take of the shop items to see what we need to re-order. We still leave time for the occasional 'treat' though - and the most successful to date was undoubtedly our visit to Lord's Cricket Ground - the 'Cathedral of cricket' as our guide reminded us - and somewhere as important to those of us who live in India as Tower Bridge itself! We had a wonderful private tour, accompanied by Brian Thompson, a Member of the MCC, who had set things up for our visit. As well as the ground itself, the Ashes, the Pavilion, changing rooms and that extraordinary egg-shaped Media Centre, we also saw a game of Real Tennis being played. In fact Keith, our guide, told us that it was the first time that he had seen a game stop so that the players could peer through the viewing window and take photographs of the people watching! At the end of our official tour, Brian kindly took us around the Indoor School too, so we had a really marvellous day out, and certainly something to tell the rest of the monks about on our return.