Author Archive

Torchlit Ponds

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

As the track below shows, last night we were running the Six Ponds route once again (although this time counter-clockwise). What it fails to show is that we were doing so in the dark, the clocks having changed at the weekend. Darkness is a relative term though with some of us sporting large head torches and others the smallest of LED lights. It was a good chance to creep on some impressive stags. Back to the roads of Southampton next week…
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Staying dry

Monday, October 27th, 2008

In common with my in-laws, I was grateful not to be in the Lake District this weekend at the Original Mountain Marathon. As featured all over the BBC news, the event was a bit of a wash out (to put it mildly). In my case, I was asked to run the long score a couple of months back when someone’s partner looked like they might have to drop out. Given that they would have been looking to win, I dread to think how little kit I might have been carrying in a bid to keep up! Instead, I enjoyed a dry Saturday with my family back in Hertfordshire.

If you want to read a less sensationalist report of the weekend’s events than those provided by the mainstream media then I’d recommend those on SleepMonsters and planetFear.

Cornish delight

Monday, October 20th, 2008

679We spent a long weekend visiting Christine’s brother and his wife down in Falmouth. We headed down on Friday, stopping at Bridport for a lunchtime break. It was like a dream come true for Emma – more pebbles than she knew what to do with! On Saturday we headed over to the massive stretch of beach that is Hale Sands. Lots to see with kite surfing, land yachting, and land kiting (apologies to devotees if I’ve incorrectly labelled their favourite sport!). Emma enjoyed drawing in the sand but was a bit bemused by the rest of the party building a large fort and then proceeding to watch the sea take it over.
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Wet and dark

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

It was cold and wet this evening but that didn’t seem to deter a good crowd turning up for tonight’s run – in semi-darkness despite a six o-clock start. You can see the anti-clockwise loop below. I should probably add that the orienteers in the group obviously did some entirely different loop out to the east due to the embargoed area for next year’s British Champs – I just lent my watch to one of the other group. 😉
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Autumnal sunshine

Monday, October 13th, 2008

676As the Sunday morning mist burnt off to reveal a beautiful sunny day we decided to make the most of our Hillier Gardens membership that Christine renewed a few weeks back. We certainly weren’t the only ones to think so as the car park was heaving. Fortunately the gardens are big enough to absorb the numbers. Once again Emma went to sleep on the way there which meant we could just sit and read for 45 minutes until she woke. We then just wound our way around the garden taking in the autumnal colours and inspecting the sculptures that make up the annual Art in the Park exhibition. Emma sadly still has to learn the maxim “look but don’t touch”. Let’s hope no lasting damage was done!

XC season kicks off

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

673The Hampshire Cross-Country League kicked off on Saturday at Farley Mount. I had a nice pre-race snooze with Emma as she’d fallen asleep in the car on the way there. She did wake up in time for us to go and see Christine put on a good show for her second lap.
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Frozen savings

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

We’re still reeling a bit today from the fact that, as a result of the collapse of Landsbanki, we can’t currently access a large chunk of our savings held with icesave. More worrying is that, despite having intended to do so on numerous occasions, we just simply hadn’t got round to spreading our savings around to ensure that we were under the FSCS limit. Absolutely stupid in hindsight particularly given all the warnings but there we go. Anyway, nothing we can do about it now so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Looks like we might have to put our plan to upsize whilst the housing market is depressed on hold for a bit now…

Sly insurers

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

We took Norwich Union’s free 7 day driveaway cover when we picked up our new car and, after a bit of research, I decided that I couldn’t beat the annual quote that they’d given at the same time. I’d asked them to phone me back on Friday so told them to go away when they phoned on Wednesday evening. Then no-one phoned on Friday! When I phoned them today I think I made the mistake of giving the reference number for the temporary cover rather than the quote. They then proceeded to give me another quote for £5 more. They agreed to match the price of the original quote though and we went ahead. Only when the paperwork for the original quote turned up in the post later in the day did I discover that they had also managed to increase the excess by £100. After another prolonged phone call they agreed to decrease it again but we’ll see what actually happens.