President’s Blog: 14th November 2022
Greetings!
Last Monday we walked the next leg of The Two Saints Way, from Sandon to Stafford. Each leg takes us further away from home, so we needed an earlier start especially as if we were to finish in the daylight. We always needed to travel to the end destination first and then work out what we needed to put in the car we were taking to the beginning of our walk. At the end we need to take the people whose car we went in, back to the start to pick their car. Yes, it is quite complicated! The route took us along the Trent and Mersey Canal to Salt, a village listed in the Doomsday Book and thought to have had a salt pit in Roman times. We then walked through fields and woods to Hopton Heath the home of an MOD property and the site of the Civil War battle 1643.
On the week in which Remembrance Day is held, it seemed particularly appropriate to pause and remember. The battlefield is actually on the MOD property and we were able to read the memorial stone and the interpretation panel, through the chain link fencing.
When we have our Remembrance Services and two minutes silence, we think of the wars during the last hundred years and those that are taking place in the present time but there have been so many in the past that have indirectly affected us and the way we live today. There has hardly been a time that the world has been totally at peace.
From there we walked into the very peaceful village of Hopton and then through fields via Beacon Hill to Stafford. We walked through housing estates, allotments and past Stafford Prison to the multi-storey carpark to retrieve our car. We returned home in the dark. Only another 20 miles to go to Lichfield and the resting place of St Chad.
As I reflect on this part of our pilgrimage, Remembrance Day has had an extra significance for me. The countries of the world have continued to make the same mistakes throughout history. Let us pray for peace, a peace that will last.
Prayer:
Loving God, teach me to remember the lessons of the past, so that I may appreciate the present and work always for a better future, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
