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.