First day at Champney's

Up at 7 a.m. today after being woken by Sara's alarm clock. I spent the morning dealing with some last minute work and post and after a light lunch of tomato soup left home to drive the hour or so to Champney's Health Spa near Liphook in Hampshire. I arrived at around 2.30 p.m., booked into my room and then went for a swim. I also enjoyed a few minutes in the steam room and dipped myself, up to the the point where it would really matter(!) in the plunge pool - plunge I certainly wouldn't do! I spent a very pleasant hour or so in the Piano Lounge overlooking the lake reading Adrian Plass's "The Sacred Diary of a Christian Speaker...etc." until it was time for dinner. A quick change out of my sporting garb and I was in the Spa Dining Room for 7 p.m. I had a table to myself but chatted to a young couple who were visiting for the first time and were very pleasantly surprised at the high standard of the accommodation and food following the reading of a not so complimentary report in a national newspaper. I had a delightful dinner of seared scallops in a creme fraiche sauce, sea bass on a bed of spinach with seasonal vegetables and strawberry yoghurt ice cream on a slice of watermelon with some fruits of the forest. After dinner I returned to the piano lounge for coffee and some further reading of Adrian Plass's book. I returned to my room at around 8.30 p.m. and held a rather jerky video conference with Sara through Skype - a great advance although the wireless signal here is a bit weak hence the poor reception at Sara's end. Spent the rest of the evening in the room writing up the blog and dealing with some emails before retiring to read some more of Adrian's book.