On Saturday 28th June a group of 19 Linkers, pre-linkers and adults met up at the Kindertransport statue outside Liverpool Street station, and boarded an early train for Southend.

Three of our number, over in London for June/July, are normally based at Albuquerque Quaker meeting in New Mexico, USA and we enjoyed talking to them about their life there.

We arrived at Adventure Island just as it opened for the day, Southend Pier and the Thames estuary illuminated by glorious sunshine. 

We enjoyed the thrills of various rides and attractions, regrouped for a picnic lunch in the Cliff Gardens, supplemented with chips from the many fish and chip outlets, and cooled off in the shade of the amusement arcades. 

Towards the end of the afternoon, we met to head back to the station (via the sweet shop!), with one person picking up an electric guitar in a charity shop.

We returned to London on the train, some catching up on naps.

Everyone is looking forward to seeing each other at FSSE Junior Gathering and Senior Conference in August, and then at the next LLG residential to be held on 27-28 September in Brighton!

On 26 January 2025, 20 young people and 4 adult volunteers met for the afternoon at Westminster Quaker Meeting for Winterval 2025.

Proceedings began with silent worship. We then had fun doing a Quaker Quiz, and (in Winterval tradition) made our own pizzas. The best quiz round was “Quaker or Quacker” in which we had to figure out if the person shown on the screen was a Quaker, a birdwatcher, or both (turns out Damon Albarn from Blur and Gorillaz is kind of both).

We finished the afternoon and said our goodbyes, and went home feeling ready to start the week (well, after some of us had got over our eventful journeys on the Underground).

It was really good fun meeting up with Quaker friends and we had been looking forward to seeing each other and catching up. We are looking forward to the residential weekend in Welwyn Garden City in March. 

14 Linkers from the very new, to the sadly soon to leave us, along with 6 brilliant volunteers, descended on Forest Hill for a weekend of fun.

We started with culture in the Horniman Museum – where a few of us caused chaos by letting cats into the cafe, and others by trying to get pigeons out of the cafe! People were particularly impressed by the spinning globe (more of later), instruments and aquarium.

We ate a picnic looking at the fabulous views over London then, after some tree hugging in the beautiful gardens, headed to the funky Forest Hill Meeting House. Here we played some games to get to know each other (before killing each other – Mafia style – always a popular choice).

Linkers were then set a challenge – in small groups they had to recreate something they were inspired by in the museum.

An exhibition was then set up where the creations were judged against strict criteria including vibes, likeness and resources used.

This took us to a dinner of tasty vege chilli and some down time before Epilogue and hot chocolate.

On Sunday we joined Forest Hill Children’s Meeting where we learnt about Joan Baez,  and sang one of her songs, led by Suzy in some very funky dungarees that she had designed for her brother when she was the equivalent of a Linker! The children then considered what helped them feel safe, while the young people explored the power and role of protest music and culture – name checking artists including: Declan Benedict McKenna; The Halluci Nation, especially the track “Sisters”; Billy Bragg; and the Singapore punk scene!

Several families then joined us for another great lunch featuring baked potatoes and a very welcome homemade chocolate cake before we all headed home.

Huge thank you to Forest Hill for hosting us, the volunteers who made it happen, and the Linkers themselves whose ingenuity and contributions never fail to amaze. We look forward to seeing you in January for our annual Winterval (date to be decided soon).