New members of the Three Peaks of Yorkshire Club

Paul, Peter, Phil, Simon and Tricia completed the Three Peaks of Yorkshire challenge in eleven hours.

Porridge in my Platypus

.....you had to be there during the Infusion walking weekend in Ingleton (1-3 May) to truly appreciate what this means! However, we did think it might make a great title for a book.

Five of our group completed the Three Peaks Challenge in around eleven hours (earning them membership of the Three Peaks of Yorkshire Club) and the other five completed the AP Whernside Challenge (twelve and a half miles) in considerably less time. Although the teashop quota was low this weekend, a number of us did make the semi-obligatory stop at the Long Preston Rohan shop. [photos to follow soon]

Second Blogaversary

The Infusion blog clocks up its second birthday today, and will probably reach 500 posts this month.

See also: Blogging Birthday and Welcome to the Infusion blog!

Walking the Charnwood Peaks

On Saturday a reduced group of four tackled the Charnwood Peaks walk. This 15-mile walk takes in the four peaks that define Charnwood Forest. We varied the route by starting at Woodhouse Eaves, so that we reached Bradgate Park at an appropriate time for a tea shop!

The Charnwood Peaks route can be downloaded from the National Forest website; and PDFs of other National Forest walks are also available for download.

Infusion blogs ESTP

A new website, Typealyzer, will analyse a blog and identify the Myers-Briggs type based on the blog content. I submitted this blog and the result was ESTP - The Doers:

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

If we had a wider range of bloggers, would the blog personality change?

Bonfire Night

It is Bonfire Night today - though the traditional Infusion Bonfire party is not until Saturday. The links on last year's blog post about bonfire night are all still current if you want to find out more about Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot Society, the science of fireworks, government safety advice, and Bonfire Night recipes.

What matters to Infusion

The Infusion wordle gives an impression of what we focus on and back in May, when the Infusion blog was a year old, we looked at the most frequent topics on this blog. Here's an update 18 months after Infusion entered the blogosphere:

• Faith (68)
• Environment (41)
• Food (37)
• Internet (36)
• Walks (30)
• Tea (29)
• Christmas Countdown (24)
• Books (24)
• Church (22)
• Fairtrade (21)
• Stewardship (18)

By May we had clocked up 21 posts on tea and 14 on coffee; there are now 29 posts on tea but only 16 on coffee.

A meta-blog post*

Just discovered that our blog post on money-related resources from Christian organisations gets an honourable mention in the Church Times blog. The Church Times blog is written and drawn by Dave Walker and features cartoons, commentary and links. We've included some of Dave's cartoons in this blog, always following his copyright guidelines.

*This is a blog post about a blog post about a blog post from this blog....

Wordling Infusion

This is the result of pasting the first-ever post on this blog into Wordle. Click on the image above to enlarge it.

As time goes by...

Infusion was originally known as Emmanuel & St. Mary's 20s & 30's Group when it started in 1996. We changed our name in 2000 for a number of reasons, including the fact that a number of members had become "30ish+" with the passage of time.

So it was interesting to see (via a friend's link on Facebook) that Twenty Thirty, a Christian organisation in the United Kingdom that organises social events for people in their twenties and thirties (whether single, couples or married), has recently expanded to include a wider age range and renamed itself Twenties Thirties Forties.

This blog has previously noted the Looking at life.. ministry from Care for the Family, aimed at supporting "20 and 30-somethings". At least their name will be able to stay the same even the age range moves on...

More Ingleton photos

Sigrun has posted three "albums" of photos from the Ingleton Weekend on Facebook (note - you don't need to sign up to see these):

• Friday
• Saturday
• Sunday

Blogging Birthday!

The Infusion blog was launched a year ago on Friday 4 May 2008, and this is post number 258. These are the topics that crop up most frequently:

• faith (50)
• environment (26)
• food (25)
• Christmas Countdown (24)
• Internet (23)
• tea (21)
• church (19)
• walks (19)
• Fairtrade (17)
• Lent (17)
• books (17)
• coffee (14)

New Infusion Programme online

The Infusion Summer 2008 programme is now available on the website.

Lincoln Christmas Market

If you are planning to go on the Infusion trip to Lincoln on Saturday 8 December, you may be interested in reading the Christmas Market website with dates and times, facts, and photos. You an also view a web film about the Market.

Should you have the time, inclination and money, here are some more exotic Christmas shopping trips....

Fireworks

[Photos taken on Dec 31st 1999, Mountsorrel]

As we look forward to the annual Infusion Bonfire Party on Saturday 3rd November, here's some links to check out beforehand:

• Guy Fawkes: a Biography
• The Gunpowder Plot Society
  
• Bonfire Night recipes
• More recipes...
  
• Fireworks: the science behind the spectacle
• Government advice to encourage a safe and responsible understanding of fireworks, their sale, and use

Welcome to the Infusion blog!

Infusion comprises a group of Christian friends from a variety of churches in Loughborough and the surrounding area who like to get together from time to time to be sociable, spiritual or both. However, we're always open to new people joining us. More information can be found on the Infusion website: http://www.infusion.fsnet.co.uk/

The blog is to publicise and reflect on Infusion events and topics of interest - the latter includes faith, friendship, fairtrade / environmental concerns, food and hiking.

Please contact Alison if you would like to contribute to the blog.