Caroline called around this afternoon - the first time we have met for over 50 years! - and she only lives about 10 miles along the Ochils from me! She moved to Scotland seven years ago with her husband after they both retired from teaching in Kent.
Caroline was at Craig-y-Nos for 20 months, at the same time as myself. After leaving the hospital she went to Brecon Grammar School for Girls, and then trained as an Occupational Therapist. She married, had two children and retrained as a teacher in the seventies, and combined both disciplines by teaching children with cerebral palsy and, latterly, autism.
She has many memories of her time at Craig-y-Nos - the high excitement of the monthly visiting weekend and receiving parcels and letters from home, reading an endless succession of books, boredom, the companionship of other children, the rigid hospital routine, and the longed-for walks in the lovely hospital grounds once she was allowed to be out of bed and dressed in day clothes. One abiding memory is of Sybil, a child from a travellers' family, being admitted into the ward and her frantic fear and misery as her weeping parents departed.
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