It’s over 220 miles from Welwyn to Lancaster. Yesterday I caught an early train from Welwyn North station to Sandy (in Bedfordshire), where I met up with Moojan and Wendi Momen to travel in their car to Lancaster University. We were all, together with Nazila Ghanea, going to give presentations at a seminar organized by the Lancaster University Baha’i Society on the denial of access to higher education that the Baha’is in Iran are currently suffering.

About 28 people (not including the speakers) gathered in a very cold Roman Catholic chapel in the Lancaster University Chaplaincy Centre, where the very first Baha’i Studies seminar had been held in the early 1970s, to listen to and discuss the presentations:

• Barney Leith - Unity, Justice and Human Rights: A Baha’i Discourse
• Dr Moojan Momen - A Historical Review of the Baha’i Persecutions in Iran
• Dr Nazila Ghanea - Human Rights, the UN and the Bahá’ís in Iran
• Dr Wendi Momen - The Denial of Higher Education to the Baha’is in Iran

Dr Dominic Brookshaw, who is a lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester and co-editor with Seena Fazel of The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies, recently published by Routledge, chaired the seminar.

After a lively discussion, some of us repaired to the home of one of the Lancaster Baha’is for a vegetable curry before Wendi, Moojan and I set out for the long drive back. I arrived home at about half-past midnight. A long day!

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Lancaster, travel, Iran, persecution, seminar

“What about going out for a walk and having lunch at that pub?” Erica said. I was sitting at my desk listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme online.

“Why not?” I said. “Great idea”.

It’s been a glorious day today. The sun actually had some warmth in it and the sky was cloudless as we walked along Robbery Bottom Lane and along the field path to the White Horse at Burnham Green.

When we got there, it seemed just right to sit outside in the beer garden, next to the pub’s duckpond.

Outdoors, warm sun, food, and it’s early February. What’s to complain about?

Lunch finished and paid for, we completed our circuit through Harmergreen Woods, Robbery Bottom Lane and back home.

Harmergreen Woods

Technorati Tags: Hertfordshire, February, sun, Burnham Green, pub lunch