Many thanks to Glenthorne in the Lake District for hosting asylum seeker families for 3 days, 21-23 October.
We took the train to Windermere, where Terry picked us up in a minibus. After settling into Glenthorne with a bed room for each family and for our volunteers we had a fantastic dinner. Each evening we start with a choice of starters, a choice of 3 different main courses (meat, fish and vegetarian) and a choice of 5-6 different puddings.
Next day we took a boat from Ambleside to Bowness, visited the Beatrix Potter exhibition, where we had drinks in the cafe. Then off to the best place for ice creams and lunch by the lake before taking the boat back to Ambleside.
Plenty of indoor and outdoor games and places to socialise and chatting before another massive dinner.
After breakfast we walked to the Allan Bank house and garden owned by the National Trust before we did a steep walk up the mountain full of trees. When we got back we had an evaluation meeting.
Laura is a professional musician playing the flute and she played for us. It did not matter what requests she got she could play them all.
Glenthorne provided us with a packed lunch to take on the train back to Halifax. What a lovely weekend we all had and what a lovely place to stay. We all felt so welcomed.
One of the asylum seekers is learning from a professional photographer how to make videos. We hope to be able to post her first video of the trip to the Lake District very soon.