It's a strange sensation sitting in Rachel Roger's cottage - a few feet from bustling Garstang High Street.
I'd expected to be able to hear the town's commercial hustle and bustle - but no noise permeates the thick walls of Barnacre View ... there's a perfect peace...
Similarly the cottage's garden, a stone's throw from the High Street car park could be in the middle of the countryside rather than the town centre.
The calm and quiet of Rachel's home is reflected in her own gentle and thoughtful manner.
The retired social worker jokes about the setting of her home, thought to be around 200-years-old, still on the main highway and close to the almost disappeared old drover road network which connected Garstang to the foothills and farmland of Bowland via the fords on the River Wyre.
She quips: "There's an old drover road just outside - so anytime you want you can take your bull down there!"
Rachel has lived in Garstang for 17 years, and loves her adopted home town, but she began life in Shrewsbury in 1934, in the years leading up the war.
Her father was a busy dentist, being the only dental surgeon practising in the area during the war.
Rachel remembers the difficulties of the war years, with rationing, and other issues from that time, though it was sometime later she developed strong views on the topic of war itself.
She was educated in Shrewsbury until the age of 11 when she was sent to a private school, Lowther College, in North Wales where she says: "I was head girl and all that kind of stuff!"
She was gifted both academically and musically and had entertained a career as a professional violinist, but a finger injury dashed that hope.
Instead she took a course in economics and social administration at Manchester University which led to a career in social work, hospital-teaching social work and counselling.
After postgraduate studies at Birmingham she stayed on in the city at Queen Elizabeth hospital as a teaching social worker, working with medics, medical students and patients, helping to determine the patients' various needs.
It was while in the Midlands she met the man who was to become her husband, Tony Rogers, then working as a junior psychiatrist.
The couple were married in 1959 and worked in various parts of the Midlands before a move north in 1962.
They lived at Poulton-le-Fylde with Tony working for local authority child guidance clinics in Preston, Blackpool and Lancaster.
Asked what she was doing around this time Rachel replies: "Having babies!"
The Rogers moved to Lancaster in 1965 when Tony obtained a post at Lancaster Moor hospital.
Rachel joined her husband professionally, working as a locum social worker in Tony's clinics.
Sadly Tony died in 1974, leaving Rachel widowed and with a family of three.
In 1975 Rachel was appointed senior counsellor at Lancaster University, counselling students and staff.
"It was a lovely job. During the 60s there had been a lot of student troubles; when I got there there was an energy about the place - it was a very caring place. Tutors knew all their students individually."
Rachel's own family comprises daughter Rosemary, now running an internet business in St Albans and her adopted son Christopher a manager with Moto organisation, the UKs largest motorway services provider. Her older daughter, Helen, from Forton sadly died last year after breast cancer.
Rachel has seven grandchildren and loves visits to and from the family.
It was a knee injury, shortly after a fall at a London tube station in the late 1980s which brought Rachel into contact for the first time with the Quaker movement.
"I was staying with a cousin who was a Quaker. We went to a Meeting and picked up an old lady en route. The Meeting was peaceful and quiet and the old lady stood up and 'ministered' about how helpless you feel when people need you and yet you have not got the physical resources."
She said: "It was just how I felt after my injury. I wept quietly into the only hanky I had for three-quarters of an hour."
Then she carefully explains that "to minister" is a Quaker expression for someone speaking at a meeting, particularly when it "speaks to my condition."
Rachel sought out her local Quaker Meeting - the historic Calder Bridge Meeting House at Bowgreave (more recently rebranded Garstang Quaker Meeting).
"It was the right place for me," she said.
Rachel was brought up an Anglican and was familiar with clergy structure, ornate architecture and liturgy and what she describes, though not in a disparaging way, as "conformity."
"When I discovered Quakers, where there are no clergy or creeds, I realised it was up to me, not what I was told by other people."
She says, reflecting on how she perceives other approaches to religion: "It is much easier to be told what to do and when to do it.
"Discovering Quakerism opened the way to thinking and being open to God. At the quiet Meetings you get inside thoughts you would never otherwise get."
The Victorian Meeting House at Bowgreave had at that time a small group of adherents, though that began to change with open days for the people of Garstang to see for themselves the peaceful building and surroundings tucked away to the south of the town.
Rachel was appointed "clerk" to the Garstang Meeting, a Quaker term for the person who chairs and administers the particular Meeting place.
Later she acted in the same capacity for the regional Quaker body, the Westmorland General Meeting (which covers an area stretching from Ambleside to Chorley).
In July 2000 at one of the regional Meetings she heard a talk by Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat, the Polish-born scientist who left Poland two days before the Nazi invasion.
Rotblat, who had been a pioneer in developing the nuclear bomb had later changed his views and become a CND supporter. His peace talks to his Quaker audience proved so inspiring Rachel and others North West Quakers formed a "Preparing for Peace" group.
What resulted was an enquiry "into whether war works as an instrument of policy in the 21st century."
The enquiry, known as a "concern" in Quaker parlance, led to a three-year programme of public lectures and additional papers with eminent contributors from around the world - mainly non-Quakers and non-pacificists.
The lectures and papers were published in 'Preparing for Peace'. A young people's study guide 'The Anatomy of War' was also produced and a website launched - www.preparingforpeace.org
Along with her Quaker colleague Daphne Sanders, Rachel played a leading role in the project and was pleased to become involved in invitations and workshops from politicians in Westminster, Brussells, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Since then the project has been taken to many parts of the world.
Rachel came to Garstang as a widow and clearly feels at home in her adopted town.
Much of her life revolves around her Quaker work, while she also takes an interest in the work of Garstang Arts Centre close to her home.
She is a strong supporter of the town's Fairtrade movement - and points out that Fairtraders are just as concerned that local farmers get a fair deal for their products as producers in developing countries.
She also feels strongly about the need for more activities for young people in the town - many of whom congregate close to her home at nights.
She says: "I was delighted when the skatepark opened but they need a shelter to keep them out of the elements as a minimum, and things for them to do. The only quiet place under cover for them is the telephone box."
"How about a mobile cinema on the car park instead of them hanging around getting bored?"
She adds: "I am in my 70s and think Garstang is such a beautiful town, but I don't think I would have liked it when I was 15. Somehow only part of the population seems to be looked after."
For several years Rachel was a trustee of the Quaker Tapestry, a nationally-known tapestry at Kendal. The tapestry comprises 77 separate panels made on specially woven cloth and traces the story of the Quaker movement around the world.
The tapestry is regularly (and carefully) taken to different parts of the country, with venues such as cathedrals.
She is currently busy preparing for Garstang Quaker's next big event - a "Green Festival" at its Bowgreave meeting house, on Saturday April 19. The draft programme for the eco-event, which will dovetail nicely into Garstang's entry in the 2008 Entente Florale, includes keynote address, lunch, a question and answer panel, and a presentation on economic implications of climate change. There will also be an art exhibition, books, leaflets, and information about Quakers.