Getting Closer

Good Morning Everybody!

All have a good Easter? I did. Went to the South Lakes, and do you know what, we had the best weather ever. All the forecasters foretold of wet, wind, snow, you name it and what did we find when we got there? Well granted it was a little cold, but wrapped up warm we were fine. It was dry, it was sunny and above all it was full of fantastic fresh air and lots of room to put it in.

Ravenglass, it's on the South West Coast of the Cumbrian Peninsular. They have a steam train there that runs from the town up into the hills to Eskdale, at the foot of ScaFell Pike, highest mountain in England I'm told. It's a miniature narrow gauge line and takes about 40 minutes each way (at a top speed of about 20mph mind you). Of course being hardy creatures we sat outside; two tea shirts, a thick coat, scarf and hat ... but what fantastic views. Who cares about the cold!

Went for a walk up the fell side so we could get a better view of the valley (I like a challenge). Seriously though, my left foot was giving me problems (sure there's a film title in there somewhere?), so I sat on a rock, took my boots and socks off, and I'm telling you it was positively warm in the sunshine, surrounded as we were by snow covered mountains. Bloomin great! I'd recommend anyone to visit the place. And quiet too, not flooded with tourists as yet, like it is further over to the West, Windermere, Ambleside and the rest.

On the way back on Sunday we wanted to go over Hardknott Pass, one of the steepest in the Lakes, then Wrynose, which if I'm not mistaken is even steeper but one of the local mystics (well actually the girl working in the ticket office) told us that there was "snow in them there hills!". So we decided to give that route a miss not wanting to upset the Gods an'all.

Well enough of my mini-holiday stories and back to the real reason for this posting...

I mentioned a little while back the subject of alumni e-Mail, and I said that we were busy beavering away in the background trying to come up with a solution that offered more than just email forwarding, what we currently have inside friends@hope. Well we are making steady progress I believe. First we have now approval in principal to proceed with a pilot (it will cost us a small amount to set the service up you see, and we need to be careful that we are spending our money wisely). Second I'll be meeting with our experts in the IT Department over the next week or so to discuss all the technical complexities and stuff involved with getting this thing off the ground.

We now have a mock-up from which to assess the system and how it will work in practice and finally, we are looking at how we can better integrate the service into the existing community site.

So keep watching and checking back, and I will let you know progress as and when I can ...

Bye for now

Ray