A year in pictures

The following 12 pictures are the ones picked out for our 2008 calendar. We've had them printed by Photobox, and wrapped them up ready to give out as Christmas presents. We did some last year, and they proved so popular that this year we ordered 32 of them!

Brrrr.....

Well Tuesday was cold, but today even worse! It's times like this when living out in the countryside has it's problems. The roads become very slippery so getting in to Bury takes twice as long. And then there's having to defrost the car in the evening before heading home again :-(

Still, the BBC monthly outlook is saying that there may be some snow on Christmas Eve. I do hope so!! None before then though as we have to get up to the Lake District. After that then all snow is welcome, particularly if we get stuck in our cottage until spring!!

Silence

Hope you aren't finding the silence too unnerving, take it as more of a comfortable silence!

The other week on the radio they played 15 seconds of silence (Chris Evans on Radio 2). Any longer and the automatic backup at the station would kick in and play a pre-recorded tape. Since then I've had a few journeys to and from work with the radio off for a change.

At least I'm not alone - a drought seems to have hit blogs lately, so this is now a companionable silence.

Maybe I'll put up a few photo posts soon of images from this year....

A Saturday afternoon project

Take one corner of a garden



Add in two logs



Position birthday presents of:
1 x Tin bath
1 x Watering can
1 x Tap
1 x Copper pipe



Finish off with
1 x Bag of stones
1 x Frog
1 x Solar powered pump
and some water

Geocaching Monday

As the weather was reasonable and we had spent the weekend indoors completing our Inn Way report (yes it's finished! - click here to read all 9 days and recommended B&B's in the Lake District) we decided to get outside and find a few geocaches.

Looking on the website there were a few new caches set up that we hadn't been too, and we could also combine visiting them with checking up on some caches that a friend of mine owns.

First we headed to Ixworth Thorpe and had a short walk along a farm track and through some woods to get to the site. This seemed a popular path with runners, several times we were passed as we hunted for the cache container just off the footpath. Eventually I found it and we filled in the log book.

Next stop was Ampton Water where we did our first check on my friend's cache. It was still well hidden and the container was full of things to swap.

Back in the car and over to Coney Weston for the next new find. The cache was called 'Gnome Sweet Gnome' and we soon found why :




The cacher who set this one up likes creating unusual hiding places. Another later in the day wasn't anywhere near so obvious as a bright red door in a tree! Again the name contained a clue - 'Not Mush Room' - therewas only space in the 'container' for a slip of paper to sign.

We then enjoyed a good walk around Knettishall Heath, performing another maintenance check there. This cache hasn't been found for 6 months as it requires some work to find out where it is hidden.

Finally we dashed over to Brandon Country Park and had a very quick walk around a route there to check on the third of my friend's caches. The log book in this one was full as it's a very popular spot, so we put in a new one.

According to the GPS we totalled up a little over 7 miles in all of our short walks, so not bad for an afternoon.

Further progress

More days have now been added to my Lake District Inn Way report, including the amazing photographs of Buttermere.

I've booked to go away to the Lakes for Christmas this year, so hope to get lots more photographs then too.

A second blog

Once again I haven't written anything here for a few weeks. The Inn Way walk in the Lake District went ahead as planned earlier this month. 9 days of walking, just about 100 miles, went into 43 pubs and sampled 55 different ales!

That's not quite as bad as it sounds - I wasn't staggering around the fells in a drunken stupor. Each drink was only a half, and then that was shared between the two of us which brings it down to a much more reasonable sounding 1.5 pints per day.

I have starting writing up each day's walk with details of distance, pubs, scenery and accomodation, including lots of photographs. I've done this as a separate blog which is now available to view. Vist my Lake District Inn Way blog page.

The first three days are there, with the fourth due to be ready tonight. Hope you have a read and enjoy it.

[Update - day 4 is now complete. Day 5 to follow with some amazing photos of Buttermere]

Blogging on the move

I just got a laptop for my birthday which means I can now get on the internet wirelessly. I thought it would be nice to be able to sit out in the garden whilst browsing the web. Unfortunately my connection currently dies just before I get to the garden table!! A little playing around with the router box position should help get the few extra feet I need hopefully.

Also I can now see that several people nearby have their own wireless networks running. Somebody has one of those BT Home Hub things - wonder who that is? Out here at our end of Hitcham there aren't many houses so I was surprised to see so many networks.

I am now starting to set up a new blog with details of our Pembrokeshire Coast Path walk. Most of the photographs are now tidied up and ready to be published. It's taken longer than expected, as weekends have been busy recently. Last weekend was my niece's 8th birthday. R made a fantastic cake for her:


This was taken just after blowing out the candles which is why her name has a slightly Dali-esque look to it!

Would you refuse free money?

Sounds a silly question, but after a quick poll here there are a lot of people who do. They nod along as I explain it, then decide that it's all too much effort. Telling them that I've collected over £400 in six months picks up their interest again a little, but you can see they aren't going to do it themselves.

The secret to this is cashback websites, in particular www.quidco.com. Online merchants will pay a fee if you arrive at their web site from a referrer (such as Quidco). In the case of Quidco they then pass this fee on to you. The only thing they do is keep back the first £5 that you get in a year to cover their costs. Other sites typically keep back a portion of every referral fee they get.

The biggest amounts of cashback come from insurance - something that we nearly all need to buy every year. At the moment you can get back up to £120 with some insurers. In fact this brought the total cost of car insurance for this year down to just a few pounds (the insurer also sent me some vouchers for taking out a new policy which was nice of them) I was close to ending up in profit!

Finance has become something of a hobby of mine over the past few years, enough that I could bore anyone with it if I went on too much. So I'll leave it there, and hope that some readers may follow through the link above.

Slow progress

No blog updates in 4 weeks! Two and a half of those were because I was away from any form of computer enjoying my holiday. Since being back there just hasn't seemed to have been the time.

All the photographs from the last holiday are still waiting to be organised and run through photoshop to smarten them up a little. Work has been keeping me busy during the week. Too many stacks of paper at home to sort through in the evenings. Where does it all come from? I think the Royal Mail disputes may actually be a good thing! I can get the current piles out of the way before anything more arrives.

Other free time has been spent planning another holiday (yes I'm going away again!!) In September I'll be walking the Lake District Inn Way - 90 miles, 7 days, 44 pubs... basically a long distance pub crawl. I'm trying at the moment to book bed and breafasts along the way. Ambleside is proving to be impossible. The walk starts there, so had planned to arrive on Saturday, stay the night and then start walking on Sunday. But nowhere will accept a booking for a saturday night only. They all want 2 nights minimum. Some of them even advertise themselves in the guidebook to the walk - that shouldn't be allowed! Now I'm ranting and so will stop here and calm down.

Holiday Time Again!

Yay - it's Friday, it's 5:30 and it's time to finish for a two week holiday!

Pembrokeshire Coast Path here I come. Well, just need to pack tonight and then navigate over to Wales tomorrow whilst avoiding any floods. Then it's a few days in a cottage to relax before starting the walk proper on Wednesday next week. 185 miles, 12 bed and breakfasts (so 12 full cooked breakfasts!) and I'm sure a there'll be a few pubs along the way.

Oh and there's about 35 geocaches on the route too which I'll try and find.

Photographs as usual when I get back.

Sunset from Hitcham

A few quickly grabbed photographs from the end of our garden last night as the sun suddenly dipped below the cloud and set.


Even a patch of nettles can look pretty in this light.


The final one, to the right there's a glider about to turn and land at nearby Rattlesden gliding club (you need to click and see the bigger image to make out anything!).

The Angles Way (day 2)

Sunday turned out to be not such a good day as the Saturday had been. This was both in terms of weather and also the walk itself.

After a good nights sleep (being woken once by ducks drinking water of the tent that had collected overnight!) we got the tent packed away just as it started to rain. The rain lasted for most of the day, never really heavy but never light enough to take off waterproofs so it was quite hot and sticky going.

From Scole to Harleston the path seems to wind backwards and forwards at random. We crossed the main A143 several times. Approaching Brockdish it suddenly doubles back and takes you about 3/4 mile detour to end up a few hundred yards further on down the same road. Then you are taken back over the A143 once again to pass through an industrial estate and new housing developments at Harleston. I'm sure there must be some nice part to the town, but we never got to see it.

Today wasn't really a day for photographs, but we did take one of a bull as we passed by his field. Not sure that the fence would really prove much of a deterrant to him if he wanted to get out!



Things did improve a little after Harleston. Then we decided to cut our walk short as we had to be in Bungay by 6pm that evening for a meal. As we came down to Mendham we spotted R's parents in their car who were supposed to be meeting up with us a few miles further on. Just by coincidence they had stopped to check the map and then saw us coming down over the fields and waited. They had tried walking some of the path further along near Earsham and found an electric fence right across it with no clear sign where the path went. Given this we agreed that the 13 miles that we had done already were enough for the day and drove to meet up with the rest of the family and get cleaned up ready for going out.

The rest of the evening was lovely, the Thai Kitchen in Bungay is highly recommended if you are ever looking for somewhere to eat.

The Angles Way

The weather really did seem to be on our side for the walk and camping. On Saturday we had maybe 10 minutes of rain while walking. For most of the day we could just go along in t-shirts. Lots of storms around nearby though so I'm sure many people weren't so lucky.

The Angles Way proved to be quite a mixed sort of path. The start from Knettishall Heath was lovely, as was walking through the many fens in the area. Who knew there could be so many Fen Lanes, Fen Streets, Fen Roads all in a small area! We detoured slightly around Redgrave and Lopham Fen to find a geocache there. While there we passed a great nest box - just hope that birds can read.



Other views...

(I wonder who styles this cow's hair?)




Shortly before reaching Diss the path seemed to change from a well used way into a random collection of footpaths. At one point it heads straight through a field currently 6 ft high with oilseed rape.


A path had been cut through earlier in the year as the crop was growing, but with the plants either side being so tall they had just collapsed in. Thankfully it hadn't rained there so they were dry to push through.

Finally at 7pm we arrived at our campsite in Scole - 8.5 hours and 19 miles from Knettishall Heath. It's a nice quiet site, with the River Waveney running through it. We last camped there 12 years ago when cycling, and not much had changed. It was still inhabited by lots of friendly ducks. Immediately after setting up the tent we got our first real downpour complete with thunder. Great timing! It only lasted for 15 minutes or so then we could get on with cooking tea.

Must be mad!

Despite the forecasts predicting so much rain and thunder and lightning over the weekend, I'm still seriously planning to go walking and camping tomorrow along the Angles Way.


Starting off at Knettishall Heath, the path follows the Little Ouse river to it's source at which point it looks like it then starts flowing in the opposite direction to become the River Waveney. If all goes well I should be camping in Scole tomorrow evening, then heading on to Bungay on Sunday.

Then in Bungay the plan is to meet up with family for a meal out to celebrate my niece's 9th birthday. Is walking gear and rucksack (potentially dripping wet) considered suitable attire for a restaurant?

Video of the poppy field

A short panoramic video of the field of poppies we saw at the weekend in Blaxhall.

A weekend holiday at home

The weekend just felt like a holiday for some reason. It was totally relaxing, but full of activity.

On Saturday R and I went in to Ipswich to do shopping. This isn't something that you could normally call realxing, but for once we got everything we were looking for and also avoided all of the rain showers too. We used the Park and Ride in to town for the first time ever. It was nice to have a change and avoiding queuing traffic in to town, plus the overpriced car parks. £3.00 for up to 5 people to get the bus in and out.

On Sunday we got our bikes out of the garage for the first time in over a year and headed over to R's parents. We all went out on a 21 mile route using the lanes and bridleways around Rendlesham. On one part we came across a field dotted with some wild flowers we haven't seen before and haven't yet identified.



On the way we found one geocache that we had looked for a few weeks ago but hadn't been able to find. Going back a second time, we discovered it within a few minutes. The pot was small, and well camouflaged, but we were sure we had checked there before. Even this time I overlooked it once.

Further on was a field completely filled with poppies. Quite often in Suffolk the crop fields have quite a lot of poppies in them, but this was the fullest field I have ever seen. A farmer who used to own the field stopped and told us that this was the finest display he had ever known in 40 years. Apparently the field used to be regularly sprayed when sugar beet was grown there so they never came up. Then Jordans cereals wanted oats grown there, and the use of chemicals was restricted so the seed started to grow. Now the field has been set aside for a few years and this is the result.




The photo's really don't capture the full effect. The church is Blaxhall, so stop by if you are in the area soon.

After our exercise we rewarded ourselves with an Indian meal at The Bengal in Wickham Market.

Monday morning started out a bit wet so we were'nt sure what to do. We met up with R's old schoolfriend who was back in Suffolk for a few days and went to complete another geocache at Hemley. This involved looking round the church there to get information to put coordinates together where the actual cache container was hidden. This turned into a great walk along the River Deben.

Next stop was Newbourne Springs nature reserve as the sun had now come out. We found a small clearing and had a picnic lunch there. The reserve was really quiet, we almost must have had it to ourselves. Apart from the loads of butterflys flitting about.



Moving on again we returned to R's parents house where the River Deben (much smaller here than it was at Hemley) runs past the end of their garden. We paddled along in a boat, watched by cows in the meadows alongside.



To cap the weekend off we went out for tea again, this time to The Seal pub in Woodbridge.

Shame to be back in work today! I'd much rather have continued our 'holiday at home'.

A like-minded soul

Looking through my site stats on friday I saw that several visitors had arrived from another blog which I haven't seen before. It's A Simple Life of Luxury.

I followed the link back, and found that Alan had written about my last post. Reading through several of his and Anna's blog entries, we seem to be very similar. He too is a geocacher, and enjoys what the UK has to offer. They have recently been to Islay, which has been featured on Springwatch this year.


Well, the sun is still shining outside so it's back out into the garden for me. The vegetable patch is starting to look fuller, and there are a few tomatoes in the greenhouse, though still quite green yet.

A Very Welsh Week

Back from holiday. And I could do with another one to recover. We all had a great time, with lots of varied activities.

The cottage was great - an upside down design with the bedrooms downstairs and the kitchen and living room upstairs. This meant you could sit in the evenings and look out over the hillsides. There was also a deck in the back garden with a big barbecue. We had a fun BBQ night with my parents visiting, and also some friends from the Lleyn Peninsula.

In a lot of ways my nieces got to experience the same sort of holiday that I spent as a child here 20 years ago. Then we stayed on a farm and made good friends with the owners. Back then my sister and I would get to go round the fields, see the animals and help out in the cow sheds and with the sheep.

This year was just the same - a field of about 130 sheep and lambs needed to be moved 2 miles to another field. So we helped out - sometimes encouraging them on from behind, and others getting ahead to make a lot of noise and waving to send them the right way at junctions, and keep them out of gardens, streams, churchyards etc.

Another memory I have is of riding around a field on a scrambler motorbike. This time it was a quad bike and the girls loved it.

Trips out included Beddgelert, fishing from Nefyn beach (unsuccessfully), walking at Borth Y Gest, getting drenched at Borth Y Gest, watching seals at Porth Dinllaen, and going aboard the lifeboat there. R and I also had a couple of more sedate days at Bodnant Garden and walking round the walls in Conwy. We finished up with a 5 hour sea fishing trip which was also very quiet - just a few dogfish to show for it.

Anyway - on with a few photos...

Beddgelert


Sunset - Nefyn Beach


Sunset - Nefyn Beach (almost gone!)


Approaching storm - Borth Y Gest


Nefyn Bay


Yr Eifl


Porth Dinllaen


Bodnant Garden


Conwy Walls

Too much ... too little ...

'To do', and 'Time' that is.

Did anyone see where May went? I remember it starting a day or two ago, and now it seems to almost be over.

No blog updates for two weeks - unfortunately that kept getting dropped to the end of my list of things to do. Two new software releases recently at work have kept me far too busy. Evenings seem to have been spent planning more holidays for later this year, and packing ready for next weeks trip to North Wales.

We are staying in a cottage for a week in Nefyn on the Lleyn Peninsula. As a change we won't be walking every day. It's a bit of a family holiday so plenty of days on the beach and being touristy.

Then at the end of the week we will go and stay with my parents in Abergele for a couple of days. We have chartered a boat trip for the Sunday to go out fishing. Last time we did this the sea was a little too rough making us rather seasick. This time we shall be prepared!

So it will be into June before any further updates. Expect pictures of Welsh scenery next time.

A long weekend in the Langdales

One bonus of my working 4 day weeks is that when a Bank Holiday Monday arrives, I get the Tuesday off in place of it. So last weekend I also booked off the Friday before and got 5 days away for 1 day of holiday.

We went camping in the Lake District, staying at the National Trust campsite at Great Langdale.


Getting there took us 5 and a half hours, and we set off at 5 in the morning! You can't book a pitch at the site, so it's first come first served. By getting there early on Friday we felt we had a better chance of getting on, and this proved to be true. They expected that by the afternoon they would be full.

After pitching the tent (spending ages hammering in pegs that seemed to know just where the stones / tree roots were) we went out for our first walk. This was up to Stickle Tarn, then around over Harrison Stickle. From up here we could look down on the site, and see it filling up.


(Campsite is in the trees in the middle of the picture)

Mountains are something we are sorely lacking in Suffolk. Walking in the Lakes is a completely different experience. We were puffed out after just a couple of miles, though to be fair we had climbed up 2000 feet.

Saturday was a great day to walk, there was a little cloud on the tops of the hills, but it was warm and forecast to stay dry. We did a long day, walking from the campsite up to the top of Bowfell (2960ft), along to Esk Pike (2903ft), then onwards to the highest point in England, Scafell Pike (3210ft).


(Bowfell Summit)
Back at the campsite that evening we watched a mountain rescue team assisting an injured walker on the hillside above the campsite. Someone had been struck by falling rock, and had to be lifted off by helicopter.

Sunday's walk started out as a plan to go up Pike o Blisco, but as we climbed the wind and rain got up. Abandoning that idea, we went on a circular walk around the hill, getting thoroughly soaked in the process. Fortunately the campsite had a tumble drier available, so all our gear went into that when we got back.

By Monday morning the campsite was getting much emptier - many people left on Sunday night either to beat the Bank Holiday traffic, or just giving up due to the weather. We set out on a lower level walk for the day, which of course then turned out to be fine and dry. We did manage to get to the top of another Wainwright fell - Loughrigg. From there we had great views down Lake Windermere, back up the Langdale valley and also over to Conniston. We then dropped down into Grasmere and picked up a bottle of wine to have with our camp stove cooked meal that night.

After finishing that up we settled in to the tent, then didn't get much of a restful night due to gales and downpours. The next morning we did a full cooked breakfast in the rain! By 11am there was no sign of it stopping so we had to pack the tent up wet. By the time we left, some of the streams around the site were looking rather full so we didn't mind too much that we had to go.


The view from our tent after everyone had gone home

Waking up outdoors

Last weekend R and I completed our Sandlings Walk camping trip. Starting from Ipswich on Saturday morning, we made it all the way up to Southwold at 7pm on Monday.

We made a strange site walking across Rushmere golf course just before 9am on Saturday. Two people with large backpacks on mustn't be all that common on the fairways! Not too long later and we had left behind the built up areas and made it on to Martlesham Heath. The path then follows up the River Deben into Woodbridge. By this point it was a little after 11 and we were ready for a break. The smell of bacon from the riverside cafe was too tempting so we stopped for some mugs of tea and a bacon sandwich. Refreshed from that we continued on passing through the village of Bromeswell then down on to Sutton Common. Eventually we got into Tangham forest and set up camp at the forestry site. First days mileage - 17.5 so we were ready for the showers, food and bed.

Sunday morning was then a great feeling. It's so nice to wake up, open the tent door and just be outdoors. We boiled up the kettle and had tea, followed by bowls of porridge. We packed up and were on our way again just after 9. Starting right from the middle of the forest meant that it was really quiet. We saw plenty of birds and also a few deer. We also passed by the campsite that wouldn't allow us to book. He had just 2 caravans on the site so we couldn't understand why they wouldn't accept us for Saturday night. Still it would have meant walking an extra 4 miles the day before so we didn't mind.

It was a different story towards the end of the day of course - we then had the extra 4 miles to do! So Sunday turned into a 22 mile day. Highlights for the day included Wantisden church in the middle of nowhere, lunch at Snape Maltings and a weel earned pint of Adnams at our campsite near Sizewell at the end of the day. The biggest disappointment was planning on stopping off for a mid walk drink at the pub in Friston, but finding it closed when we got there.

The final day was 19 miles to Southwold, passing through Minsmere and Dunwich. From the very start point on the beach at Sizewell we could see Southwold lighthouse along the coast, but our route would be more winding inland. Dunwich forest was lovely. We've always walked along the coast before, this was the first time we had been on the inland route. I highly recommend a visit there. At long last Southwold came into sight again. We crossed the old railway bridge from Walberswick side and walked along past the fishing huts down to Southwold harbour. We finished just below Gun Hill, finding the final sculpture of the 11 that were placed along the trail.

Pictures to follow once I get them off the camera

That's where

So those photo's of Bury...

Top left is the framework around Specsavers. Top right is one of the door posts at Collis & Sons jewellers on Abbeygate Street. Finally the doorways belong to the Greene King brewery cottages.

My "Where in BSE" post at the flickr group hasn't been found yet. Closest guess has been the walls of the Abbey Gardens, but that covers quite a large area!


Have you seen this curious little statue embedded anywhere?


Update - 10th May 2007
The location has now been correctly guessed - it's in the outside of the Abbey Garden wall on Mustow Street (near Drive Vauxhall).

What goes where?

I just recently found the Bury St Edmunds flickr group. There's a regular competition on there to identify a bit of Bury. I wandered around town for half an hour yesterday to see if I could spot where the latest picture was taken. Eventually I decided to leave it for the day and sit and read for the last half hour of my lunch break.

Heading into the Abbey Gardens I walked straight up to the place in question! So now it's up to me to post the next spot to guess. The picture is now there - somewhere that I already had in mind once I saw the competition.

I thought I'd also have a look for some other ideas too, so here are some that I spotted at lunch time today. Feel free to try and guess (difficult for those not here in Bury!)


On closer inspection, I noticed that the bottom one is being used as a wine rack.