When I was an Anglican, I used to make an annual personal retreat of a few days to the House of the Resurrection. As many will know, this is the mother house of the Anglican monastic Community of the Resurrection. I would go each year for four or five days surrounding the feast of the Conception of the Mother of God.
For a suburb-dweller from South Manchester, accustomed to 20-hours-a-day public transportation, meals available at all hours of the day or night, and the hustle and bustle of city life, a Yorkshire village in December was an entirely different world. It was a very easy journey. I lived near to Manchester Airport at the time so only needed to walk to the airport to get the train to Huddersfield. From there, it was a short walk to Huddersfield bus station, and this is where there was the first sign that I was about to enter something entirely alien to my experience:
