I wanted - no, I needed - a holiday that was exciting and adventurous, as well as something that would refresh and nourish me. My solo trip to Annecy fed this need, this hunger for rest.

The first day or so, I think I was trying so hard to make sure that I was relaxed, that I was not. Whilst I was enjoying myself and having a nice time, I felt like I was doing an activity so that I could check it off my list, just so that I could get to the next day and the next day, and eventually go home with a story to tell. 

By the second full day, this all changed. I had a couple of things that I thought I'd like to do, places I'd like to go, but I had no set agenda. I went where I felt like going. 
I visited a Church that wasn't on my list, but went in because I passed it and I like visiting Churches. I visited four churches in total, and at this, a friend of mine said that I'm on a 'church-crawl'. I liked this. I 'church-crawled'.
I sat in my favourite spot of Jardins de l'Europe for over two hours; reading, writing, eating, doing yoga without caring if people watched.
I visited a part of Annecy without Google Maps! I found a street and followed it, and when it came to an end, I turned back.
I had walked to the top of a hill so that I could visit a castle. When I got there, however, I decided €5 was too much to stand in a long queue outside of the shade, to visit a castle of exhibitions in a language I may not understand. So, after admiring the castle & drinking a bottle of water, I walked back down the hill, and headed for nowhere, for anywhere. This is the joy of a solo-adenture. You can head nowhere and anywhere. You can go to a place without asking if anyone else wants to, you can change your mind, you can stop and start and return again and again. I needed some time to be selfish like that. I needed some time to ask myself, "what would you like?" and to be able to do just that.
Once I stopped planning and actively trying to make myself have a good, peaceful, nourishing time, I found that I had just that. 

Thank you for taking the time to read about my Holiday. I hope that you too are able to find rest, refreshment and nourishment. 

​Coming soon is a blog post about what God told me in a couple of the Churches I visited, as well as a post about achievement. To make sure you don't miss any of these, you can sign up to have my blogs sent right to your inbox.

In the summer of 2016, the youth of St Peter's Baptist Church went to Stafford to spend the week at Soul Survivor. Here's what we got up to...