The last post from the GW Tour

Today we collect the last “Golden Wedding” signatures on the Big Card. Sydney family and friends will bring the total to around 125. It’s a very special record of people who are important to us.

We’ve had a marvellous time of renewing friendships and experiencing the changes in the lives of those who have been a part of our adventures during the last half century. We’ve relaxed a lot, read quite a bit and I’ve straightened out some of the more tortuous prose in my life story.

Tomorrow we start the last trip. We should be back in our own bed by late on Friday. It will be good to be home. And, especially, it will be good to rejoin our small church for services over the weekend. That fellowship is what makes our distant life in Paihia so important to us.

The tour is over. Life goes on.

Our warmest love to all who have made this journey with us.

The Great Golden Wedding Road Trip

We’re at Christchurch, at the end of the first stage of celebrating our Golden Wedding with family and friends all over the place.
There were just a few callers here: Timothy Spencer – No 1 grandson, finishing up at Canterbury University School of Engineering; and Victor Paul, almost unknown to us except as a very distant cousin who is also interested in the Stewart family tree. We went to dinner with each of them.
Seton Horrill, our Best Man in 1959, went with us to lunch, and Harold Surtees, our Groomsman, and Barbara came over from Akaroa for a good part of the afternoon. We’ve lived in different parts of the country for fifty years and our lives have only come together when we went out of our way for brief visits. But today we shared a few photos of the big day, had a few laughs at the hairdos and hats and reflected on what the passage of time had done to us all.
Tomorrow we move on to Dunedin where we spent a wonderful decade in the 1970s. That’s going to be another very special time. But already we have been reminded of the abiding strength of family relationships and friendships across great distances of time and space. It’s been a great start.