Days in Devon 04/5

On Thursday (our last full day) we did Barnstaple and Bideford, two small towns without so very much going for them. Bideford looked like it had the edge to me being a little smaller. I liked the statue of Kingsley. We enjoyed the market and shops. I bought a Watership Down DVD for Owain, which he’ll love. We went to Pizza Hut in Barnstaple for lunch and enjoyed stuffing ourselves. We also had a proper Devon tea with clotted cream, strawberry jam and scones, back here. To compensate for all that stuffing we played rounders and soccer again in the fading sunshine. There was a brief shower but as the day wore on it had got warmer and warmer.

Before that we had our regular Bible study. Ian led that one on David and Goliath. We trooped out into the hall to get an idea of Goliath's height at one point. Vivid.

A lot of videoing went on through the day and we watched the playback later. We also enjoyed watching a documentary on C S Lewis's Narnia The Narnia Code. A scholar called Michael Ward has written a thesis claiming that the Narnia stories are all based round a Medieval 7 planet scheme (Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, Mars, Venus). They tried to sensationalise it a bit but it was well presented with the talking heads integrated well with the acted parts, etc. It was particularly good to hear so much about God on the BBC and to actually hear a reference to Romans 8 (from John Polkinghorne). More here. I'd missed that the director was Norman Stone, which now all makes sense.
It was another late night after a very pleasant few days in the country. On Friday we all headed off before 10. We went home via South Wales where we went to see my dad in hospital. He is recovering well from the op but there are concerns for him. He is due to turn 80 next month.