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Camping on Purbeck

Friday, August 24th, 2012

One day in and the weather forecast was set to be dry for at least the next few days: staycation over! The first campsite Christine phoned in Dorset had space and we started packing the car! Travelling down to Dorset on a Friday in summer is never the best of ideas and we had to sit in a few queues on the way down. The campsite (Norden Farm) on the outskirts of Corfe was much as we’d expected – lots and lots of caravans and tents but you did get a small playground and some scraggy looking farm animals to amuse the children. On our first full day we headed down to the beach on the Swanage Railway. I’m not sure the children were too fussed with the steam engine but they enjoyed the pirates (local Lions club members) on board handing out chocolate money. It was a bit overcast but warm enough to make the most of the beach and we ticked lots of boxes with sandcastles, ice cream, Punch and Judy and a tea cup ride!

On the next full day we walked along the ridge from the campsite to Corfe Castle (my Dad had recently purchased National Trust membership for us which we used to the full on this holiday!). The children enjoyed the quest, learning about castle life and answering questions to earn their ‘gold medal’ on the way out. The sun was in evidence and, with the children feeling a bit frazzled, I walked back to pick up the car so that we could head down to Middle Beach on Studland Bay for a couple of hours (also National Trust owned).

The National Trust card was also burning the next day. We parked at their Shell Beach car park and took the chain ferry over to Sandbanks. From there, we took the ferry across to Brownsea Island. We didn’t managed to walk round the whole island but we did manage to tick off all of the items on Emma’s latest trail including the peacocks and, more illusive, a red squirrel.

As the weather was still set to stay fair, we extended our stay by one more night and headed back to Studland Bay, spending our last day at Knoll Beach. We must have spent about five hours just playing in the sand with the occasional foray in to the water. We didn’t even have to resort to the rather swish looking NT cafe.

All good things must come to an end and, with rain forecast, we packed up the tent the next morning whilst it was still dry and headed for home. The journey home took a good hour less than that on the way there, reminding us of just how close this beautiful part of the country is if you travel at the right time! I think the best part of the holiday though had to be the fact that we left the pushchair at home. Duncan walked everywhere and with little complaining. Long may it continue!

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SeaCity Museum

Saturday, August 18th, 2012

We had been entirely inept in our holiday planning this summer and consequently the appointed time arrived and we had a) not had Emma’s passport back four weeks after sending it off for renewal (how much trouble can a five year old have got in to?!) and b) not booked anything in this country either. So our staycation started with a trip on the train to the new(ish) SeaCity Museum in Southampton.

It costs an arm and a leg to get in (if your not a Southampton resident) and we were grateful that the girl at the desk ignored Emma’s last birthday. Emma was primed with the obligatory museum trail which, combined with an assortment of flaps to open and close, kept her and Duncan amused in the Titanic gallery whilst the adults actually tried to read a paragraph or too. There were a few hi-tech hands-on exhibits which were well done although they tended not to support many hands so there was some queuing involved. It must be chaos if they have a school party in!

We then moved on to the “Gateway to the World” exhibition which was also well done. I certainly learnt a few things about the area even if the children didn’t (e.g. that there was a motorway spur road planned that would have obliterated much of the Portswood Road area). The last exhibition was “Titanic the legend” which wasn’t much to write home about but did give Emma a chance to do some colouring and make a paper hat (having given up on the trail).

By now it was lunchtime so we thought we’d sample the café rather than trek in to town. This proved to be a bit of a mistake. The food was reasonable but the service was pretty dire. The staff were well meaning but they seemed generally incompetent. After about 20 minutes of waiting for my quiche I went to enquire about it at which point it became clear that my order hadn’t made it from the till to the kitchen! During the intervening time we saw food go back uncooked, cutlery not provided and order numbers reused (or perhaps they were table numbers but we were given ours before we’d selected a table)…

We ended our trip out with a quick look around the adjoining art gallery (free) but Duncan was getting tired by now having been made to walk everywhere so it wasn’t long before we were on the train back home. All-in-all, a reasonable day out but not one we’ll be looking to repeat in a hurry. I’d have included more photos but for some reason photography wasn’t permitted in most parts of the museum (another black mark).

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London 2012 Olympics

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

1046No self-respecting British blog could let the Olympics pass by without at least one mention. We had two cracks at the torch relay as it visited both Winchester and Southampton on different loops of the route. I’d stupidly booked a meeting to clash with the first so, although I cycled in and soaked up some of the atmosphere, I was back at work by the time the torch bearers hit the city (although I did cycle past a bus containing a whole rack of torches heading the wrong way out of town!). The torch was due to end a day in Southampton and the whole family headed in to see the spectacle. We weren’t the only ones by any means – we failed to buy a ticket for the train as the one ticket machine at Chandler’s Ford station was overwhelmed and I finally handed over my credit card to the guard on the train as we hit the tunnel on the approach to Southampton Central.

Unfortunately, it was rather a damp wait for the torch. We had some over-priced food to eat, had our photo taken with an unlit torch (Duncan looked particularly wet and grumpy!) and picked up some fairly naff freebies from the relay sponsors (Samsung/Lloyds/Coke). We watched the Isle of Wight ferry arrive carrying the (lit) torch and Emma may have had reasonable sight of it from my shoulders as it passed by on the road in front of us. We decided not to wait for it to return from its long tour of the city and the lighting of the cauldron.

Unlike many friends, we had been successful in the first ballot for tickets having bagged two tickets for the Women’s Modern Pentathlon. Unfortunately we didn’t get anything for the children so, whilst up in Monmouth, Christine took them to see some Women’s Football at the Millennium Stadium. The Japan vs South Africa match wasn’t the most exciting with no goals. Apparently the tip up seats were the most exciting part of the trip! The classic quote from Emma was apparently “Why don’t they just have a ball each?”!

Fast-forward to the last day of the games and, with Christine’s parents minding the children, we had relocated to London and were on a six o’clock bus to catch the train to Stratford. We were in to the Olympic Park shortly after the gates opened at seven which gave us time to explore a little and still get a good seat in the Copper Box for the fencing. I can’t claim to have any previous experience/knowledge of fencing but with every competitor having to compete against every other then there was plenty of time to learn the ropes. With two Brits in the mix there was also plenty for the home crowd to cheer for.

There was a reasonable break between the fencing and the swimming which gave us a chance to explore the rest of the beautifully landscaped park before hitting the aquatics centre. In contrast to the fencing, the 200m swim was over in no time at all. We then had to hot foot it across London to the final venue of the day, Greenwich Park, for the horse riding and combined event (running shooting). The horse riding was a lottery in every sense (there is a draw to allocate two competitors to each horse). The argument is that its a test of the riders skill to be able to tame any horse but some were definitely more obliging than others. There was one in particular that kept refusing jumps. Another competitor cleared a jump while hanging from the under side of her horse!

It was only as the last few riders completed their rounds that it became clear that Samantha Murray would enter the final stage in the mix for a medal. As the chasing start got under way for the combined event, the volume of the crowd steadily rose as she worked her way up and entered the stadium for the final time in second place. A silver for Britain in the final event of the Olympics! A fantastic end to a fun day out at the Olympics.

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Cardboard rockets

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

1043On one of my days off looking after Emma we paid a return visit to INTECH. Emma certainly remembered her previous visit as there were various exhibits that we had to seek out. A year older, I still don’t think she was particularly interested in the science behind it all as we flitted from shiny object to the next. Neither of us was particularly impressed by the science of sport area where there was more sport than science. The other special exhibit was ‘meet a physicist’ which I approached with caution, particularly as they all appeared to be female! They were showing you how to program a Lego Mindstorms robot to replicate the Curiosity’s roving of Mars (topical as Curiosity had just landed the day before). Not much physics there that I could see and I was distinctly unimpressed by the time it took to compile the trivial program but Emma seemed to enjoy it.

This time we went to see “Secret of the Cardboard Rocket” in the planetarium. I thought this was preferable to our previous encounter with the moles as a) I actually learnt a thing or two and b) there were some good star sequences. Emma wasn’t so sure due to the loud thunderstorm on Saturn!

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Black Mountains and Butterflies

Monday, July 30th, 2012

1040At the start of the school holidays I accompanied Christine and the children up to her parents’ where they were going to stay for the week. We left the children in their care on Saturday and headed off for a long walk in the Black Mountains. We parked up at Llanbedr and followed the start of the Black Mountains fell race up Table Mountain and north along the ridge to Waun Fach. We decided just to head back south from there along what would have been the edge of the forest had most of it not been felled. That did at least mean we had 360 degrees view along what is otherwise a rather long and dull ridge. The weather held up whilst we were out and it was just nice to be able to walk a decent distance (probably around 15 miles) at something more than a snails pace!

On the Sunday, we headed back to the Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo. Emma lasted considerably longer than on our previous visit. After waiting for a downpour to pass, we also tried out the Hedge Puzzle. Duncan chose the wrong parent as Emma and I exited the maze and made it under cover before the next shower. Emma and I then completed the trio with a round of mini golf. We also had a short walk along the river to the scene of our wedding reception (which looked even more like a shed than I remembered!).

At the end of the weekend I headed home for five days as a single child-free man!

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Orienteering at Hursley

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

1037I’m using some vacation to catch up on a few blog posts (which I’m going to shamelessly back-date). The end of July saw the last in SOC’s Summer Series of events which was notable for a) actually feeling like Summer unlike most of the other events in the series, b) being on a new area: the IBM site at Hursley and c) being organised by me! Simon Bevan had done a great job of the map, building on some initial work by Charlie Richardson. Given the lack of traffic on the day, I think I had been overly cautious in marking all of the car parks as out of bounds which limited the shape of the courses. On the day, I also spotted a couple of places where I’d been a little careless with the overprint that meant route choices weren’t as clear as they should have been.

Anyway, I didn’t hear any complaints on the day which I suspect had as much to do with the sunshine as anything else. It was certainly good to see so many people staying around for the prize giving and barbecue afterwards. Christine and I picked up first place certificates for the series. We have been to all but one this year which, when set against the fact that we are currently slipping down the British Orienteering rankings having completed insufficient ranking events, says a lot about our orienteering at the moment! We got to know some new club members particularly well when we discovered that Duncan had turned the car lights on at some point and we needed their assistance to start the car.

Thanks go to IBM for allowing the event and in particular Rick Kellaway for his support. Hopefully this will be the first of many orienteering events at Hursley!

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Emma’s five!

Sunday, June 3rd, 2012

1034It was Emma’s fifth birthday last weekend. In a compromise between quiet affair at home and all expensive paid trip out, we booked a local hall and invited all of the girls in Emma’s class, a few of the boys and a few random others. The party wasn’t until the afternoon though and fortunately Grandad and Granny Sue were around to take Emma and Duncan off to the SOC orienteering in Valley Park to contain the excitement whilst the preparations continued. (I escaped from my duties just in time to pedal over and have a run round myself. Despite having drawn the map I still took a few wrong turns but managed to head up the results.)

We had half an hour to get set up in the hall before the 16 guests arrived. They were being treated to various craft activities on the “Under the sea” theme, party games and then party tea. It all seemed to go along fairly smoothly although I’ll confess to hiding in the kitchen for much of the time! Mr Bump (our cold compress that Christine happened to put in) got rather a lot of use but there is a suspicion that this may have been related to the sweet that accompanied each incident.

When the two hours were over and the parents returned to claim their children, there was a big sigh of relief as we put the hall back in order. Emma settled to open up the large pile of presents which resulted from having so many guests, all of which were well received. In anticipation of this, we hadn’t bought her much in the way of toys but the books, clothes and swimming related items (Emma finally got promoted to the next swim class and an orange swim hat on Sunday) also went down well. The biggest present would be the new (second hand) bike from Granny Sue and Grandad. That will
take a bit of getting used to as there are no stabilisers.

There are few photos of the day in this Flickr collection. Having failed to collect consent forms from all of the parents, those with friends/family links on Flickr will be the only ones to see those from the party!

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Wildlife 10K

Saturday, June 2nd, 2012

1028Christine is now a member of Eastleigh Running Club and volunteered to help marshal at their annual Marwell 10K. This, of course, had nothing to do with securing free entry to the wildlife park for her and her two little helpers! I had to run 10K to get my ticket in to the event! We arrived early for Christine’s briefing and then I had to sit outside the entrance for half an hour until competitors were allowed in to the park. I then watched the fun run with them (Emma was a week too young to run) before heading off to warm up.

At the start, I placed myself squarely in the 35-40 minute start box. There were a fair number of people in the box in front but it’s an undulating course and, as the results show, only two people actually made it back in under 35 minutes. I found it pretty hard going and when we hit the downhill stretch from 6k to the finish I couldn’t pick up the pace. Still, I finished in 37:33 which was under the 38 minutes I would have predicted and over a minute less than my time from 2005 so I must be improving with age!

Christine failed miserably to take any pictures of me running so here’s a random one of me from one of her club mates. Although it was a little bit nippy, we then proceeded to make the most of the rest of our day at Marwell.

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