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Published: August 19th 2016
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Today is the day of the Benvie Reunion party luncheon and the second cousins from Montrose and Brechin are coming down to catch up. Also ,Amber who came to Tauranga late last year for a short period as she was completing her training as a doctor and her parents Ian and Carol who had visited us earlier in 2015.Ian is the son of John, who was Aileen’s late husband. So it really is time of great reunion!
Carolyn and Trevor have gone to great lengths to make the day enjoyable and we can’t thank them enough and makes us feel very privileged to be part of the clan. Somehow they have put together a huge square table so all 16 of us can sit around together making it easier for conversation.
We did offer to help them in their final preparations but they preferred to complete things themselves and that is understandable when they know where everything is in their home.
So after breakfast and a check of the emails etc and Gretchen even managing to wash the ‘smalls ‘to keep up to date we set off for a walk that would take us on a circuit around
the village and farmland and past Kellie Castle.
The day has started out pleasantly mild and prospects are of the temperature getting into the low 20’s.
The village of Arncroach is so small it was only a few metres and we were in the countryside and watching a group of alpacas watching us.
A switch from the road to a country lane bought us to Kellie Castle whose history goes back to 1150 although what you see today has had many parts added to it over the years making it a very grand building that is open to the public. The estate was owned by the Lorimer family until they sold it to The National Trust in 1970.
With the circuit of the village and farmland complete we were back home and readied ourselves for the arrival of the relatives.
Everyone arrived with a short time of each other including Niall and Charlotte who had travelled overnight from the home they are renovating in France.
It was great catching up with Dawn and Vivienne again and Aileen with her new partner Gordon as well of course Niall and Chalotte.Ian and Carol had picked up
Amber from the local train station as she is now a qualified doctor living in Edinburgh.
Trevor worked very hard to look after everyone’s welcoming drinks and it soon time to sit down to a sumptuous lunch. Carolyn and Trevor had gone to so much effort in arranging a wide variety of dishes and it was tempting to try a little bit of everything.
Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time catching up with each other that before we knew it four hours plus had passed and people started to think about heading home.
Trevor and Carolyn had been such wonderful hosts and on their feet for long periods of time that after the last car had left they looked for a settee to collapse into.
We kept them up for a few more hours afterwards getting back to talking about early family times and relatives and looking at photos and letters and papers Carolyn had ‘inherited’ when her father Albert had passed away. She had only recently started to look at these photos and papers and together we were able to confirm some of my family who appeared in some of the photos.
With
a big day ahead of us tomorrow checking out more ancestral history in nearby Angus and then facing a drive of 400 plus kilometres to Blackpool we didn’t want to be as late as we were last night and headed to bed before 11pm after enjoying a wonderful day of reunion with family.
PS:enjoy that great family tune from 1979 that emcompasses all that family is about.On Youtube as usual.
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