Hey everyone. How are you all? I wish you all good mental health. Today, I’m going to talk about the last day of our two year project Burgh Castle Almanac, what we got up to and what our plans are for the future.

As we drove up to Burgh Castle in the minibus, I thought the session was going to be a washout. It was very wet and dull and some members couldn’t make it, which was sad as it was the final day.

When we got to Burgh Castle, I walked into the village hall and there were Ferrero Rocher chocolates on the table. Bearing in mind I started a diet the Saturday before, I shouldn’t have had one, but – whoops! – one just fell in my hand, out of the wrapper and into my mouth – oh dear! There was a quick introduction, apologies from people who couldn’t make it, and I offered round some homemade chocolate crunch. Before we set off on our last walk, we were given small wooden sticks by Ian Brownlie, our resident artist, to write messages on and plant around the site as a ‘thank you’.

We left the village hall and started walking to the Roman Fort. Some of us where chatting and having a catch up – all socially distanced, of course. We got to our first place where we always take a fixed-point photograph and I took a few, as I didn’t know when I would get the chance to come back again.

We then walked up to the fort, and it was really nice to see loads of families walking around the site having their lunch by the wall. It made me think of how the Romans would have eaten way back when, and I wondered if there would have been a hierarchy in the soldiers’ ranks – ‘You eat here and you eat over there.’ Hopefully one day there will be a way of finding out.

One of our members went off to see if he could find any archaeology round the site, then Ian gave us some clay to make something to take home. I didn’t – I used the wall of the fort to make a clay bowl, or something similar looking, and I left it in a hole in the wall with a small stick reading ‘BCA on tour’.

Once that was done, we took a slow walk back to the village hall where Laura Drysdale forced me to cheat on my diet again with another Ferrero Rocher and a slice of chocolate cake! That was very nice and I didn’t regret it one bit. We also talked about what the plans are for the future, and we decided to stay in touch with each other, as well as look into making the BCA a community interest group. That would mean we can apply for funding to do things, and get more professionals in to help educate us. Thanks to several speakers being invited to the BCA over the last two years, we’ve all been lucky enough to have some enlightening new experiences.

Thank you for reading. I look forward to sharing our new blog with you soon I wish you all good mental health.

Our film, ‘The Return of Happy Times’, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+return+of+happy+times