updated 21 July 2002
From 26 June to 14 July 2002, the Senior Choir of the Manhattan Beach Community Church was "Touring The Isles With Song", visiting England, Wales, and Scotland in the United Kingdom. Three years earlier, when the choir was touring Italy, Austria, Germany, and Slovakia, I (Mark Looper) maintained an online journal so our friends back home could see what we were up to; it was well enough received that we decided to do it again for this tour, so here we are! Daily illustrated journal pages are linked to the list at the bottom of this page. For an overview of where we went and what we sang there, our itinerary and our repertoire of songs are also on this site; journal pages are also linked to the corresponding dates on the itinerary. (Final itinerary and travel arrangements by Ambassador Tours, 148 East Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI USA, 1-800-247-7035.)
Unless otherwise noted, the text and photos here are my doing, so blame me for any glitches! The first guest-artist credit is for the photo above, which was shot by Doug Carter before the choir's Jubilee Celebration Concert on Saturday, 18 May 2002, in the MBCC sanctuary.
We also had quite a number of non-singing spouses and friends traveling with us; here are most of them in front of Great St. Mary's Church in Cambridge, which we visited on 10 July. They were our porters, our photographers and A/V crew, and always an enthusiastic core of our audiences!
These are the professionals who got us from place to place and made sure we got the most out of this trip. From left to right are David Fox, Peter Swann, Linda Peterson, and Jim Anderton; Linda is a tour escort with Ambassador Tours, Peter is an independent contractor who signed on with Ambassador to escort us as well, and David and Jim were our drivers from Silverdale Coaches. (Though I've referred to our "buses" on the daily journal pages, in Britain that term generally is applied to city buses, while the more comfortable inter-city touring vehicles like ours are called "coaches" here.) Behind them is the west wall of the ruined St. Andrews Cathedral, which we saw on 5 July. Tony Butler and John Edge, also of Silverdale, relieved David and Jim for two days in the middle of our tour.
We hope you, the members and friends of MBCC, enjoy accompanying us (retroactively!) on our tour!
new 18 May 2002, revised 21 July 2002