Gears?

I've been thinking about it for a long time, and have finally bought a singlespeed bike.
I was a bit concerned I might get a kicking on it, but not having to think about gears makes riding such a sublime experience I'm about lost for words...

Driveside simplicity

:-)

Belgian Independence Day

Saturday July 21st is, according to my diary at least, Belgian Independence Day. In celebration of this, I took two days off work and we went walking in the Lake District.

This turned out to be quite remarkable for two main reasons. Firstly, I actually managed to get a Saturday off work, and secondly, our much abused natural world chose this weekend to unleash rainy fury on the Midlands.

Fortunately the closest we got to it was watching it on the news, drinking wine, while the sun set over the Lakes...
That brief interlude of tv aside, we spent the rest of the time walking and chilling. It was great.

It was windy...

It was cloudy...
It rained a bit...

Bethan bought some new waterproofs, so I bravely offered to test them by throwing her into the bracken...

I can('t) see my house from here...

One of us can't stand up straight...

In the process of making a walk into a scramble, which turned out to be quite off-putting for the group behind us, who then seemed to stop and spend a long time looking at maps :-)

Spot the person...

An awesome weekend. Makes going back to work a drag, but you're never more than a few days away from a day off.

Demo day...

After raising my blood pressure all week by its absence, the "Great British Summer" finally arrived on Friday afternoon in time for the demo day at Paddlesport.

I just want to say a huge thank-you to everyone who helped make it an awesome day!

Here's some photos;

Lots of cars...

Lots of people...

Lots of potential...

Lots of space...

Lots of cloud, but fortunately at the end of the day...

Hubris and Nemesis

New boat...


...busted paddles.

Summertime...

"...and the livin' is easy"

It rained. We drove to Lancaster, Fear fed us, we duffed about on Sunday morning, met up with Craig who I've not seen for ages, dithered about deciding what to paddle, then went to Wennington Weir for a play.

See, it was definitely sunny when we got on, hence the optimistic shorty usage.
(Yes, I was just jealous that I'd forgotten mine...)

Craig on the wave

Bethan either coming off the wave or completing a spin. She doesn't look happy about it though...

Matt caning it to get back on the wave

Spinning a Mamba; tricky at times, but totally worth it

"Check out my shiny helmet"

Craig looking cool

Matt with the big guns out

"Spin you b******"

(Team Sidewinder...)

After we got off, we retired for tea and medals, then retired further to the warm, welcoming embrace of the White Cross for more tea and more medals.

Happy days.

Also, say what you like about the current Labour government*, but you cannot deny that smoke-free pubs are an absolute triumph.

(*who have, in my opinion done a generally good job)

Kenneth Grahame was no fool...

It never fails to amaze me that something as simple and easy to do as paddling can have such a profound effect on me; earlier, I got on the river, paddled for a bit, met a guy in an open boat taking some kids out and had a good chat about everything and anything, went up Osney Lock, paddled a bit more, came back down, talked to the lock-keeper for a while, then sat on the wash of a little cruiser back to town. I then paddled up the Cherwell up to Magdalen bridge and back in the sun, with stunning views of Oxford opening up round just about every corner.

"Is it so nice as all that?" asked the mole, shyly...

"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat Solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing, absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

"Simply messing about in boats, or with boats. In or out of 'em it doesn't matter. Nothing seems to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."

Too right.

A little bit on fire...

Plenty of excitment at the shop the other day; a brief flicker of the lights, then a smell of smoke. Turns out, the box where the mains power comes into the building and is then split accross various businesses and to 3 phase etc, had been faulty (but for how long we don't really know) and had finally kicked the bucket and caught fire.

It later became evident that at some stage it blew 3 fuses on the pylon a bit further down the estate and took out the 3 phase for the unit at the back. The disturbing thing is that our electricity didn't actually stop even when the supply was on fire...

The Fire Brigade came pretty quick, and the electricity people came a lot later.

End result; no electricity for just over a day. We're back on now, but there's still a hole in the ground, which will be filled in "sometime this week, maybe".

On the plus side; it happened during the day when we were there and no one was hurt, also, we now have posters and brochures in at least 2 fire stations in the area.

Hooray for the Fire Brigade, muted slow hand-clap for the electricity board.