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Dear Friends, I remember the day we first moved to this area, in August 2008. We were unloading our goods from a borrowed horsebox that was packed to the brim in the front drive of our newly rented accommodation, when a tractor drove past the front of the house. I looked up to see it …
River Lyne Catchment Meeting, 30th September River Lyne Catchment Public Meeting – 30th Sept, 6pm, Roadhead Hall Anyone with an interest in the River Lyne and its tributaries is invited to a public meeting at 6pm on Wednesday 30th September at Roadhead Village Hall. The catchment includes the Black and White Lynes, the Bailey Water, the …
Dear Friends, I was talking to a young mother recently and, as usual, I asked about the pleasantries – the weather, the summer, the forthcoming holidays. As the conversation went on, I asked a few more gently probing questions and she started telling me some of the very serious health difficulties they were facing as …
The benefice newsletter for August 2026 can be viewed or downloaded from here.
In 2024 The Rivers Trust published a report ‘The State of Our Rivers‘. The data, collected by the Rivers Trust, shows that none of England’s rivers are achieving “high” overall status, the highest ranking available. And none are achieving “good” overall status either, the second highest ranking available. The report also measures English rivers for …
The benefice newsletter for July 2026 is now available to view or download here.
Dear Friends, I love rivers. I have always found them fascinating. Something about the never-ending movement of water means they are always changing, always new. As a young child, I guess like many, I loved to play in them. I remember my grandmother in Coventry used to take my sister and me to a secret …
The benefice newsletter for June 2026 is now available to view or download here.
Parish newsletter and notices for May 2026 are available to view or download here.
A number of folk have expressed an interest in being baptised or confirmed this year, so I will be running a course of five baptism/confirmation preparation classes at Greenholme, Bewcastle on Fridays (4.30-6pm) commencing on 25th September for five weeks. The course is also open to those who would just like a refresher about the …
Its not for everyone. There are far more important aspects to approaching the mystery of holiness than philosophical questions. There is grace, for instance, the awareness that what we receive is not earned, but gift, given freely without conditions, which is freedom from guilt, from self-condemnation, from pressure, performance, and expectation. It is pure acceptance; …
Dear Friends, The great festival of Easter is here, a festival bursting with light and joy, and dancing and singing, and hope and colour and, well, just LIFE! This is the great turning point around which the world revolves, as TS Eliot put it ‘At the still point of the turning world/Neither flesh nor fleshless/Neither …
The benefice newsletter for April 2026 is now available to view or download here. This week is Holy Week – days of profound mystery in which human hope, fickleness, insecurity, arrogance, and cruelty play out against divine silence, pain, patience, justice, and love. The ancient cross at Bewcastle is one of the earliest Christian monuments …
The benefice newsletter for March 2026 is now available to view or download here.
It’s a question we all ask ourselves at some point. Frightened of the answer, we often accept the glib response encouraged by advertising, or social media, or well-meaning friends, and move quickly on. But pause; stay with it for a while. Let it do its work. It becomes uncomfortable, difficult, unsettling. We’re not sure how …
The benefice newsletter for February 2026 can be read or downloaded here.
Dear Friends, February is one of my favourite months. It’s the last one of meteorological winter, but also usually the driest and coldest, giving those clear crisp days that beckon you outside. White carpets of snowdrops nod gently in the woodlands, crocuses start colouring the garden, and daffodils begin to sunlight the roadsides. On bright …
Happy New Year – 2026. The monthly parish newsletter for January 2026 for the Lyne Valley (Bewcastle) benefice is now available to view or download here.
Dear Friends, A wild and wet wind is howling outside. Branches, stripped of leaves in the fallow time of year, toss and shake, bend, not break, as the dark sky thunders across the bleak fells encircling the Bewcastle bowl. Rooks and ravens, jackdaws and crows play, lifting on the gust, then, folding wings, tumble down, …
The benefice newsletter for December is now available to view or download here.
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