ASKED by her husband of nearly 60 years how she’d like to celebrate the couple’s forthcoming diamond wedding, Beryl Wood didn’t need long to think about it.
“Beryl said straight away that she’d like to come back to Jersey and go to the Maison Gorey Hotel, where we spent our honeymoon, and so we got it booked up,” said Roy Wood.
Having celebrated their anniversary back at home in Crewe, Cheshire with a party for family and friends, Mr and Mrs Wood travelled to the Island in time for their big day.
The childhood sweethearts met in 1961, getting to know each other when the annual funfair was staged in the town of Sandbach and then subsequently getting married on 4 September 1965, when Mr Wood was 22 and his bride a year younger.
“We chose to come to Jersey after the wedding – it was the in-place to come on honeymoon then,” said Mr Wood. “We booked a tour from Manchester and travelled down to Bournemouth by coach before flying over from Hurn Airport.”
The couple, who have two daughters, four grandchildren and a newly-arrived great-grandson, had only returned to Jersey twice since getting married, once for a trip in the 1990s that also included a few days in Guernsey, and subsequently for the 2012 marriage of Mrs Wood’s nephew Neil Sproston and his wife Sue.
“We’ve always talked about Jersey and Maison Gorey, but hadn’t made it back to the hotel until now,” Mr Wood said. “Jersey’s still a very tranquil place and the hotel is beautiful, so it was a sentimental choice and it’s been great to be back.”
