Yesterday we headed down to the coast for the annual Dorset Coast Path Relay. We arrived at Lulworth Cove a couple of hours early so that the kids could expend a bit of energy before being bundled in and out of the car for the rest of the day. We didn’t have a particularly peaceful lunch on the beach as Emma was scared by the crashing waves and Duncan just wanted to crawl in to them!

We watched the Wessex, Kerno and Bristol teams come through which meant that, although we were pretty much on the same schedule as last year (when we came second), only Berkshire were behind the Southampton team. Thankfully Ian, Nick and Jamie arrived just in time to do the steep hill out of Lulworth so that I had about a minute to catch my breath before heading off in the direction of Kimmeridge. As the profile below shows, the leg has two steep climbs and I’m afraid I can’t claim to have run all the way up either of them. Even when on the top it was hard going with a stiff headwind. I was therefore thankful to reach Kimmeridge where another mini-relay resulted in a handover to Christine.

20100904 Lulworth Cove to Kimmeridge GPX

It’s a long way round by car to Chapman’s Pool and, with the added overhead of getting the kids in to the car, we didn’t get there in time to see Christine finish. We then went straight from there to Studland Bay so that Emma and Duncan could enjoy a sandy beach for a change! As the other teams came through, we started to hear that BKO had now overtaken Southampton. At the scheduled time there was still on Martin and myself waiting at the changeover point. Thankfully we were joined by Roderick at the last minute as three runners need to complete the last leg along the beach to Sandbanks. The BKO team were less than a 100 metres ahead and with one of their team hanging off the back I though we had them. Unfortunately Martin just didn’t have anything left in his legs for a race and, despite a heroic attempt to catch up by cutting the corner through the sand, we were destined to finish in fifth (and last) place.

20100904 Studland Bay GPX

It was a shame we then had to wait quite so long for the ferry but we managed to keep Duncan awake until we stopped for fish and chips in Ringwood and then he perked up for the rest of the journey back home. A fun but tiring day.

20100824 Wilverley GPX

I’m just coming to the end of two weeks of vacation of which we spent the first 10 days on a family holiday to Wales. We originally had had various plans for an overseas trip but, apart from anything else, we’d failed to get Duncan a passport! In the end, we spent a week in a ‘lodge’ at a place called Timber Hill near Broad Haven in Pembrokeshire and then, because the original plan had been to find some mountains, up to a cottage in Llanberis for 4 nights.

We couldn’t have picked a better period weather-wise. We had blue skies for almost the entire week in Pembrokeshire. As a consequence we spent 4 out of the 6 days just on the local beach at Broad Haven which was reached via a pleasant 20 minute stroll through a wooded valley. Emma had a whale of a time playing in the sea and sand. Duncan, sadly, still needs to learn that sand is not for eating! Our two trips out were to nearby Picton Castle and to the headland adjacent to Skomer Island.

We were slightly concerned to be only the third car in the car park at Picton Castle despite arriving at around 11 o’clock. The castle itself is certainly nothing to write home about (it’s in need of a paint job if nothing else) but we whiled away a pleasant few hours in the grounds. Emma enjoyed the adventure playground although there was a worrying moment where she decided that the tree house was a changing room and removed the lower half of her clothing! There was also a maze and we spent quite a while in the walled garden, replete with lily pond. The food in the restaurant was also better than your average tourist attraction (with a Spanish theme for some strange reason).

We hadn’t planned to take the boat over to Skomer Island (famous for its puffins) which was just as well as the island had reached its 250 person limit when we arrived. We watched the departing boats whilst we had lunch though and then pottered around the headland.

From Emma’s point of view, our stay at Timber Hill was probably most memorable for the selection of games in the lodge (the fact that Cluedo had half the pieces missing didn’t matter a jot to her enjoyment of playing with it!) and for the fact that they completed the new play area towards the end of the week and she was the first down the slide.

The trek north to Snowdonia was most notable for the first possible incidence of car sickness for Emma. It’s hard to beat that part of Wales for winding roads mind and apparently Christine had also been car sick in much the same spot when she was a child. Our accommodation for this part of the holiday was certainly spacious (we didn’t use the room on the third floor). It didn’t take Emma long to alight on the vast array of toys that were on offer. Duncan, meanwhile, made a beeline for the large collection of candles and other nick-nacks which had to be rapidly moved up out of his reach.

It was too much to expect the weather to be quite so great in Snowdonia but there was still plenty of sunshine to be had and the only real rainfall took place in a massive thunderstorm one night. Duncan is in a carrier but Emma has been too heavy (at least for me) for a while now and can’t/won’t walk more than a mile or so. Much to my amazement the cottage had a copy of “All Terrain Pushchair Walks – Snowdonia” which I had previously spotted online. With this as our guide, we embarked on the 5 mile loop round Llyn Padarn. By lunchtime we’d only just made it past the National Slate Museuem and the Llanberis Lake Railway. The section after that was pretty steep and fortunately Emma walked it all as I wouldn’t have fancied manouvering the buggy with her in it. It was a quiet road and then cycle track for the return along the lake.

The next day the forecast was for rain so we just went to the nearby waterfalls and to the start of the Llanberis Path up Snowdon. Christine then amused the kids in the centre of town whilst I ran the previous two walks looking for hats that Duncan had dropped (I had a 50% success rate in finding them again!).  In the end, the rain didn’t really come to anything.

Christine was determined that we should get up something so on the last we took the bus up to Pen-y-Pass and then walked along the Miner’s Track to Llyn Llydaw. Splashing in the puddles from the overnight rain was enough to keep Emma walking nearly the entire way. Indeed, we had to ask her to get in the buggy so we could get to the lake for lunch. Christine then headed up Snowdon and back whilst I amused the kids. It was then my turn to head to the summit whilst Christine walked the children back down. Sadly, although we had walked in sunshine, the cloud was stuck on the Llanberis side of the mountain and mostly engulfed the summit so not much to see. Still, I couldn’t hang around and had to run much of the descent via the Pyg track to get back in time for the same bus as the others. Emma’s ice cream in the cafe and then dinner at Pete’s Eats concluded a successful day out.

All in all, we had a fantastic 10 days away and have also had a chance to catch up at home in the past couple of days before returning to the normal fray on Monday. That time’s also allowed me to put lots of photos of our time in Pembrokeshire and Snowdonia on Flickr.

We had a fun weekend of orienteering blessed by some good weather. On Saturday it was the Winchester Urban Race. This started and finished at the Rugby Club and the 1:5000 map stretched south to the Cathedral and Wolsey Castle. If you think city racing is all about tricky route choices influence by narrow cut-throughs, dead-ends, and control sites where the side of the feature is all important, then the event wouldn’t have disappointed you.Although my GPS seemed to suffer a bit in amongst all of the buildings, you can see an approximation to my route on RouteGadget. I found it hard to read the detail on the run and consequently all of my route choices were made standing still. This probably accounts for the fact that, although I could potentially have saved a bit of time on some legs (e.g. heading south 11 to 12), in general I wasn’t far off the best route. Where I really wasted time though was on the second loop which I proceeded to try and execute backwards, heading from 18 to 21. On realising my error at 21 I failed to spot the route through the Great Hall and took the long route round to 19. At least, on realising where I was, I then took the short route back to 20. A couple of minutes wasted which probably moved me down from 2nd place to 4th.

On Sunday we went over to Gosport for the British Sprint Champs at HMS Sultan – a Navy base looking much like an academic campus but with a few hangers, helicoptors and two massive Palmerston Forts scattered around! Here the route choices were much simpler (typically left or right of the building) with the focus more on clean execution. Things were going reasonably well for me in the first round until 17 where I attempted to cut through the green. I came out in the wrong place and then when turning, slipped on mud covered concrete and came down hard on my right knee putting a hole through my tights and in to my knee. In the break before the second round I made a trip to the first aiders to get some of the mud cleaned out of the holes!

Start times for the second round had the slowest finishers on round one off first. Sadly the way this worked out meant Christine and I couldn’t both get to our allocated start times. I went off two minutes in front of Ed Catmur. Things started well enough but, as my route shows, something went wrong at number 8. I think I just failed to take in the first row of building but that still doesn’t account for why I then turned left. I then wasted more time at 11 when we disappeared in to the dark tunnels of the fort. I’d failed to appreciate that all of the relevant junctions weren’t going to be lit and had to backtrack to the dark side-turning I wanted. Ed was then on his way in to the fort as I went from 12 to 13.

I managed to hold off Ed until 16 and then attempted to cling on to the finish, bloodying myself again on the thorny hedge at 18. Ed’s superior speed undoubtedly accounts for some of the 5 minutes he beat me by in the overall results. Just a shame I couldn’t pull another 10 seconds out of the bag in the second round to move up to second place.

Christine decided not to go out for a late run round the course. Emma seemed to have enjoyed the day immensely though. Probably the combination of ice lollies being on sale and lots of time spent playing in a patch of gravel with the other children. Even better was the fact that we managed to keep her awake on the way home so she went out like a light at bedtime! All in all, a good weekend of orienteering.

Emma’s birthday itself was a fairly quiet afair. Emma was up early but more due to sunlight than anything birthday related. Presents were opened over breakfast and then I went in to work.  The family then joined me there for lunch at the clubhouse where Emma’s early start was starting to show. Apparently she enjoyed visiting the fish after I’d gone back to my desk though. Then it was the first of many cakes in the evening. Emma’s attempts at blowing anything (and not just Rice Krispies out of her nose) are still pretty feeble so I was suitably impressed that she managed to extinguish the candles.

Emma then went to nursery on Thursday as usual where she got to celebrate her birthday again. This time, she was dispatched with iced fairy cakes for each of the children. I then took Friday off work and, although we spent most of the day preparing for Saturday, we did have a trip out to the paddling pool and sandpit at Flemming Park. It’s the first time Emma’s ever wanted to go in the paddling pool so, not having brought a swimming costume, she had to make do with wading around in the water with Christine.

Saturday was party day: 10 kids (including siblings) and their parents. Emma’s excitement rocketed even just at the sight of balloons scattered around the lounge. Thankfully though she was pretty well behaved for the whole of the event (as were the other guests!). The balloons proved to be a bit of a sore point mind: one girl couldn’t bare to go anywhere near them lest they burst whilst the twins were busy popping them with cocktail sticks. Christine compered the party games (of which hunt the teddy seemed to go down the best). I was responsible for decorating cake number 3 which, for some reason lost in the mists of time, had to look like a lion. I thought it looked pretty good but Emma’s first guess was that it was a mouse!

Three hours later and the children departed with their party bags and we sighed a huge sigh of relief. I think Duncan’s birthday will be a much quieter affair!

More photos on Flickr.

Emma’s birthday week started well. SOC had one of it’s summer series events at Telegraph Woods (by the Rose Bowl) on Saturday. Christine had a run whilst the rest of us went round the yellow with Neil and his girls. About half way round we’d had to resort to bribes to keep the girls walking and eventually cut back without finishing the course. We were then joined by my brother for a picnic in a shady spot overlooking the construction work on the cricket ground (which was a plus point by the way).

We returned home to pack the car for a night’s camping which seemed to entail an inordinate amount of baggage but then we did have to squeeze my brother in as well. Thankfully it was only a short drive to the campsite at Roundhill in the New Forest. After some confusion booking in over just how many people and tents we had, we eventually found a pitch (all the shady spots seemed to be out of bounds) and put up the tent. Everyone else went for a quick explore whilst I cooked up that culinary delight: beans with sausages in!

Bedtime was a protracted affair. Duncan just wanted to roam about the tent and had to be taken away to be fed to sleep. Then Emma just wasn’t in the mood for sleeping and it was 9 o’clock by the time she finally went off. If my brother hadn’t been around then we would have probably all just gone to bed at the same time which might have helped. Emma, however, did make up for it by having a lie-in in the morning. In fact, I’d packed up pretty much everything else in the tent before she finally woke.

We went for a short walk in the morning and had to drag Emma away from the hide (den to her) and stream so that we’d get back in time to grab some lunch from the shops in Brockenhurst and then find somewhere for another picnic on the way home.

All in all, Emma seemed to enjoy the experience so we should be able to get her camping again in future without too much trouble. There are a few photos on Flickr.

Last Wednesday Christine phoned me at work to say that Emma had put a Rice Krispie up her nose. Apparently Christine had come downstairs and Emma had said that this was what she had done. When asked to remove it, she’d pushed it up further with her finger. When asked to blow her nose, she’d then sniffed instead. Given the cold she had at the time I assumed it would just find its own way back out in the general flow of things! However, when Emma took 4 hours to go to sleep that night and was complaining of earache we decided to phone the surgery the following morning. They said they didn’t go poking around up noses but that we should go to casualty and so the saga began…

After a couple of hours in casaulty we were finally seen by a heavily accented doctor who shined a bright light up Emma’s nose and declared that he couldn’t see anything and that we’d need to come back the following day for the ENT clinic. Emma was quite disappointed to leave having enjoyed playing with their toys and gained a good selection of stickers from the doctor.

I took Emma back to the hospital at the appointed time on Friday. This time we just had to wait for them to find a room in which we could see the consultant and three junior doctors. Once again, they shone a light up Emma’s nose and declared that they couldn’t see it. If Emma had been a bit older they would have explored further there and then but they didn’t think (and were probably right) that she’d be happy with them poking round. The consultant seemed to think that, although the offending Krispie would either go over the top and down her throat or simply disintegrate, in the latter case, the remains might cause infections for a while to come. The only option was therefore for them to put Emma under a general anaesthetic and for that, we would have to wait for the next children’s list on Tuesday.

A letter duly arrived saying Emma had to be at the hospital for 7:30am for the ‘morning list’ having had nothing to eat since the previous evening. Thankfully when we phoned to confirm we were told that the operations were ordered by increasing age so Emma would get to go first. Once again, it was my job to escort Emma whilst Christine stayed at home with Duncan. Emma was very obliging during check-in, stopping her playing with yet another new set of toys whilst there was more looking up noses, measurement taking and application of creams. At one point I thought we were going to be sent away again as they normally delay operations if the child has a cold but the consultant decided we would go ahead.

We didn’t have long to wait after Emma was gowned up before it was time to carry her to theatre. This was the first point at which Emma got upset – whilst the anaesthetist attempted to peel the sticky covers off the cream on the back of Emma’s hand! The cannular was inserted without much fuss and I returned to the ward leaving behind a limp Emma.

By half nine I was called back to theatre as Emma was coming round. They had given her nose a good cleanout but hadn’t found anything that you wouldn’t expect to find up there. So, we’ll never know what had happend to that Rice Krispie. Emma recovered very quickly and was soon tucking in to a couple of rounds of toast (what else would come after cereal?!). Another moment of anguish whilst they removed more sticky plasters and then more when it was time to go and we hadn’t finished playing with the stickle bricks! Emma wanted to know whether we could come back tomorrow so I think it’s safe to say she hasn’t been greatly traumatised by the experience. Let’s just hope it is enough of a lesson to prevent her putting anything else smaller than her finger up her nose!

After a bit of indecision, Christine finally decided that she wouldn’t run on the Saturday of the British Orienteering Champs due to a calf injury but we would all go up to Cannock Chase for the weekend and she would still run in the relay. This meant I could move my individual start to a late time and we could drive up to Rugeley on the Saturday morning rather than having to stay up on the Friday night. This probably meant we missed the worst of the bank holiday traffic and we actually had a very smooth journey arriving in pleny of time.

Last time I ran at Abraham’s Valley and Wolseley Park it was on M21 Elite at the JK. Given that my overall fitness has headed in just one direction in the intervening years I had made the sensible decision to run M21 Long this time round. Ed Catmur started on the Elite course at the same time as me and, as they had a similar loop with some common controls to start with, he provided a good incentive to run hard from the start. Unfortunately he disappeared from sight on the way to my fifth control and two controls later I became really unstuck. It took  two attempts from different attack points to eventually locate the correct re-entrant in the middle of all of the greenery at number seven wasting me around three minutes. (See RouteGadget for the gory detail.) Judging by the splits, I wasn’t the only one to have trouble here. In particular, Geoff Ellis lost over seven minutes here sinking his chances of a win.

From this point onwards I was on my own but was enjoying myself running through some undulating but generally runnable terrain. I even managed not to make any great blunders when it came to the ‘technical’ quarry section. Even so, I was pretty shocked when I looked at my splits printout at the finish and it showed that I was in first place. I was well aware, however, that James Williams had the last start time on my course and was more than capable of beating my time. I met him coming out of the download tent just as the prize giving started…

He had beaten me by 24 seconds. It was a shame as a) it was my birthday and b) it is the last year that I will run in the 21 age class. However, I came in to the race simply expecting to be somewhere in the top 5 and had by no means had a clean run so I was happy enough to take second place on the podium and collect my BOC 2010 water bottle. (No medals for M21L as we’re a self-selecting bunch who aren’t prepared to run the Elite!) After a slice of birthday cake out the back of the car we retired to the delights of Stafford Holiday Inn Express and the attached pub.

The next day we returned to the same venue for the relays. The weather had taken a turn for the worse but thankfully the rain never really came to anything. Christine had been moved up in to SOC’s first team on Women’s Short as her calf wasn’t as bad as someone elses! Tamsin Moran came in third and Christine managed to hold on to sixth place. Jane Morgan then pulled them up to an impressive second place. Duncan consequently managed a second trip up on to the podium to collect another water bottle (and a medal this time – where’s the justice there?!).

I went out in penultimate position on second leg of Men’s Premiere. Hard to push yourself knowing that your third leg runner intends to walk round but I managed to reel in a few runners on a fairly clean run and come a respectable 10th place on my leg.

We had another smooth journey back home to round off what was a fun and successful birthday weekend.

20100424 Southampton Common GPX

Duncan was, as usual, asleep by the end of his bedtime feed. Shortly after we left Emma, we could here her advising Duncan to ‘go to sleep now’ and ‘quiet now’. This was then followed by the sound of footsteps thundering across the floor (Emma has inherited her mother’s light steps!). By the time I made it upstairs again though Emma was tucked up in bed again. She had, however, made the mistake of sitting three of her toys upright in the middle of the floor – bit of a give away! Before long though it had all gone quiet.

True to form, Duncan woke twice in the night but was successfully extracted on both occasions without waking Emma so we shall consider the move a success. Hopefully it will mean that I can, once more, leave the spare room for guests to sleep in!

Southampton Orienteering Club’s Summer Series kicked off today at Stoke Park Woods in glorious sunshine. There looked to be a reasonable turnout with plenty of new faces (the series being designed to pull in beginners as well as satisfying the desire of club members to have more local events). Christine went round the green course and I took Emma and Duncan around the yellow. I’ve been to the woods a couple of times before for RR10 races but have either been going too fast or, more likely, been too out of breathe, to notice the forest itself. There was talk of brashing but at least from the tracks it looked like a nice piece of compact woodland. More importantly for Emma, there were lots of streams for her to play in. We were back home by lunchtime which is a major plus. I’ve undoubtedly ruined my chance in the scoring system for the series by not running today. However there were a few other people missing, most notably due to the antics of Eyjafjallajoekull leaving them stranded in various parts of Europe. If we ever get our summer hols booked then there’s a fair chance we’ll miss 2 or 3 of the events later in the series anyway. The next event is on Southampton Common in a week’s time so see you there!

Our accommodation has a wonderful view over Saunton Sands and Braunton Burrows which meant that we didn’t have far to travel to today’s event. I drove Christine down for her run and took Emma around the string course. Emma enjoyed running up and down the dunes so much that we had to collect all of the off-string controls (although the walk to and from the start was a bit much for her, particularly with all the puddles to jump in). The enjoyment was increased by the copious amounts of sunshine! There were 4 hours between split starts so I could drive everyone back to the cottage, have lunch, and then drive back for my run!

As my GPS track shows, I failed to make the most of a child free preparation to my run and ended up returning to the start kite before eventually locating the first control! That put me 5 minutes behind the leaders and I never really recovered. I struggled to interpret the complex contour detail on the 1:15,000 map and always felt myself lucky if I did hit a control spot on. I was 7th on the day but 8 minutes behind the leader which put me 8th over the two days. Others in our accomdation faired much better with Christine 3rd on W21S, Mark 2nd on M50L and Alice winning W50L.

On my return, the Easter bunny had visited our garden and Emma enjoyed hunting out the chocolate eggs, even if she couldn’t seem to see them even when they were right in front of her face!

I arrived at the start two minutes late for my call-up but with two minutes to spare before my start time. Typically, nobody asked to see a whistle or why I didn’t have a number. Having picked up the map though I had to run back two boxes to check the board I’d run past earlier to ensure I was doing the right course! Things improved after that and in general I had a reasonable run on M21L with no major blunders. It was hard work though with much of the forest reduced to a large mud bath and at times the course just seemed to be designed to take us in to every corner of the map. I ended up in 6th place, a respectable 2 minutes down on second place although Geoff Ellis was a further 3 minutes ahead.

Having exchanged my parents for Christine’s, this morning we packed everything up in to the car and headed to nearby Bicton College for the JK Sprint Race. The college grounds provided a mixture of open fields, woodland and a complex of buildings. I was running M21E and the courses started out across the fields before heading in the to the woodland. This is where I faultered a couple of times, struggling with the large scale for what is otherwise classic orienteering terrain, as shown by my GPS track on RouteGadget. That was more than enough to see me way down in the results. After some sunshine, the rain returned in force whilst we waited for Christine to finish. Ambulances aren’t an uncommon sight at orienteering events given the nature of the sport but the arrival of a police car is always somewhat worrying. It was only later in the day that we heard the tragic news that Dave Stubbs from Berkshire Orienteers had passed away whilst out on his course.

We came down to Devon last weekend for my Uncle’s 70 birthday party. We have since been staying in a holiday cottage on the outskirts of Sidmouth with my family. The cottage is nice and large which is lucky as the weather has been pretty miserable so we’ve spent a lot of time inside. Sidmouth itself isn’t all that inspiring, particularly in the rain. We had a trip out to Otterton Mill for a walk. I ended up sat in the car with a sleeping Emma who woke just as everyone else was forced to return by an ever increasing downpour.  The photo is from Branscombe Beach (infamous for the grounding of the MSC Napoli) where we managed to get some sunshine (in between the showers). The sun came out again just as my parents left for home but sadly we were touring Sidmouth looking for a replacement tyre having run over a nail. The following day we went in to Exeter to pick up my brother who, having driven my parents home, had returned via train.

Interestingly, haivng just re-read a post from October ’98 when the Google Street View car came past and we’d just been to Manor Farm Country Park, we were back at Manor Farm on Sunday. This was another freebie courtesy of our Culture-all Passport. We’d been attracted by an ad in the county council magazine for a “Nature Navigation” day. This entailed the loan of a GPS to follow a short trail around the park with cardboard cut-out animals along the way. Something like a hi-tec orienteering string course but with the difference that the event was actually popular! Perhaps it was force of habit but the GPS seemed overkill and it would have been more fun with a map. The farm itself was a bigger hit with Emma with lots of young animals to see. She even enjoyed the story teller with his ghostly tales. (One of Emma’s favourite activities at the moment is to get us to make up a story for her which generally has to entail an animal biting their tongue!)

Neil and Alice are off on the other side of the world for the next week or two and have kindly lent us their cycle chariot. Emma was certainly keen to give it a go as she was sat in the seat with the cover over whilst I finished assembling it! Unfortunately Saturday wasn’t really the best day for venturing out on a bicycle as it was drizzling from dawn ’til dusk. By mid-afternoon we had to get out of the house to maintain sanity and a bike ride round the local playgrounds seemed as good an idea as any. As you can see from the photo, Duncan was slightly less keen about the whole idea but then he did go off to sleep shortly after we set off! I certainly found it an easier ride towing two rather than having Emma in the rear seat although there’s not much in the way of hills around us to really provide a test. Given its size, it remains to be seen whether we take it away with us on holiday and, given the price (now about £800 for this model), even more so whether we decide to buy one for ourselves.

20100315 Green Course, Dibden Inclosure GPX