Congenital Heart Awareness Day - Oxford

Saturday 16th February dawned bright, cold and sunny over Oxford. This beautiful city was the setting for the 2008 Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Day walk – the second of these walks, following on from last year's event in Birmingham.

The turnout was excellent: over 40 GUCHs, friends, relatives and cardiologists joined together to explore the city, chat, eat lunch and raise awareness of GUCH PA.  We were joined by John, Paula and Ann (attending her first GUCH PA event), as well as the GUCH PA stand which had been safely couriered from Ipswich... and Karen Sandwell came up trumps with GUCH balloons filled with helium from Clinton's Cards for us to carry – just in case people didn't notice us!

We all met at 10am outside the front of beautiful St John's College, on St Giles in central Oxford.  There had been a hard frost overnight and everyone was warmly wrapped up in hats, gloves, coats and scarves.  But the sun was shining, the city was beautiful and we set off in our two groups to take in the sights.

One group, led by Paul Willgoss and Beth Greenaway took the shorter walk around central Oxford, seeing the Bodleian Library, Bridge of Sighs, the Radcliffe Camera... and the shops!  After a good chat in Starbucks and a side-trip to see Christ Church – the site of the cathedral (and Hogwarts dining hall!) - this group went to the Friends Meeting House in Oxford for an excellent lunch of sandwiches & cakes... and a hot cup of tea.

The other group, which had the dubious pleasure of my “tourist guide” act, and was ably shepherded from the back by Mike Hocking, covered a slightly longer distance.  We walked around the lovely city centre, the suburb of Jericho, a canal-side towpath, some little-frequented back streets behind the castle, a different coffee shop, the gorgeous Christ Church meadows and back through the city past the original Morris garage.  Even locals found some hidden corners and people who'd never seen the city before were heard later making plans to return.  We joined the others back at the Friends Meeting House and enjoyed hot drinks and sandwiches.

If we hadn't done enough talking during the walks, we carried on talking over lunch, getting to know new people and catching up with old friends.  GUCH merchandise was sold, leaflets were read & taken away, speeches were made and finally we all left, tired but delighted with the success of the event.  The effort that we put into organising it certainly paid off!  So thanks very much to everyone who helped with the million and one things that needed doing to make the day what it was (you know who you are), and particularly to Paul Willgoss – it wouldn't have happened without you.

Elizabeth Connolly