Yesterday was amazing. First time in a little while I’ve actually been out on my bike with no worries or issues. 179 miles in total!
Yesterday was the day that I decided that I need to get out and down to Broadoak Bakery. They do the most amazing Scotch Eggs and Sausage Rolls. Well worth going if you’re ever nearby, or not!
I picked up my munch and then headed up towards Tonbridge to grab me a Starbucks. As I pull up, I see in the distance a familiar face. In fact two familiar faces! My sister had gone out with her friend on their bikes, and a chap that I met while doing my day job. I said a quick hello to my sister and sat down to chat with the matey I met previously. He rides a gorgeous Harley Davidson Sportster S. I still need to figure this guys name out!
After sitting and chatting for a bit, I left everyone and headed over to Ashdown Forest. Annoyingly not really anywhere to park unless you want to pay! Wasn’t too keen on that if I’m honest, however I did manage to find myself a little lay-by. Parked up and just sat on the hillside overlooking the forest. Relishing in the sun. I sat probably around an hour. Taking it all in. Of course though, I had to grab a few photos.
When it was finally time to head home, I couldn’t simply go the quickest way. I headed down the A22 towards Polegate and stopped in the services for some “dinner”. An Asda meal deal from the petrol station! It filled the hole! After eating I took the long way home via Ashford! Straight across the south east coast. A27 – A259 – A2070 then back up toward Maidstone.
It’s one of a very few dry sunny days at the moment. So it’s time I went out on the bike for a little jolly!
Part of the route I was taking was to explore the roads I had not been on before. To try find a good road to ride. 140 miles and I found myself some nice views, but also some trouble!
I headed from mine down the A274 then working my way over to the A22. As I went along the A265 I noticed something strange. My bike wasnt handling as good as she normally does. I pull over and what do I discover? A puncture! No!!
Thankfully I come prepared for situations like this. I keep a repair kit under my seat and a pump in my bag. It’s always good to be prepared for this kind of thing to happen.
With the puncture repaired, I managed to get back on the road. Found a little place. No idea where and grabbed some photos of Lucy.
Somehow I ended up at Ashdown Forest. As I was driving around admiring it, I noticed an ice cream van. I had to pull over.
After my long ride out, I headed back to sittingbourne to see my mum for the evening. After leaving and heading back home, once again the bike wasnt feeling right. The tyre was going down. The repair was not holding. I pulled over in the pitch dark and pumped it up. It had to get me home, and thankfully it did. I eventually took lucy to get a proper repair done. That cost me £45.
Annoyingly a week after this, I ended up getting another puncture. So I forked out the £400 for a new set of tyres. Michellin Pilot 6. Expensive, but well worth it. Its literally the only thing keeping me attached to the road when I ride Lucy!
When flights are cheap, the world is your destination!
Both me and my son jumped at the chance to have a day trip over to Venice, Italy. £37.50 each return from Stanstead! Hell of a bargain, who could say no to that?
The day started at 7am. We headed up to Harlow. Had a breakfast, got some Euros and parked up at the train station. Jumped on the train and headed to Stanstead.
Of course after checking into the airport and going through all the security we headed to the nearest pub! Two pints later we nearly missed our flight, but thankfully made it just in time!
Finally arrived in Italy. Not a clue of what we were going to look at or do. Just jumped in the nearest taxi and headed to Venice. No plan, no organisation, just pure adventure!
Stumbled across an ice cream shop. Very friendly clerk in there. Perhaps the owner, I’m not entirely sure. Ordered our ice creams and tried to pay. No luck on the card because my wonderful bank blocked it, but thankfully we had cash. Smallest amount we had was a €20 note. €16 back in change with a warning to be careful using cash. There were a lot of pickpockets about. Oh great!
A couple hours later and it was dinner time. If I was travelling to Italy, I wanted to try authentic Italian pizza! So that’s what we did. We ordered two pizzas and had half of each. I think because we were in Venice and there was obviously a good market for fish products, most of the options had fish on them. I certainly ain’t eating a pizza with fish on it!
We had the typical chorizo pizza and a Margherita pizza. Easy enough. Now, I’m used to the typical type of pizza you get in the UK. Specifically deep pan pizza. This was nothing of the sort. The base was thin, crispy and tasty. It was fresh tomatoes, great cheese and all around bloody nice!
After dinner we wandered around some more. I had a great time. I will be doing this again. Nothing beats experiencing something great which is unplanned. Here’s to the next adventure!
So as you know I have had an issue with water ingress into my mk3 Ford Focus and I thought I had fixed the issue. Turns out I was utterly wrong.
Water was still coming into my car. I started by checking some of the other rubber grommits under the rear of my bumper. Suddenly I was greeted with dripping water on my face and arm.
So today I was doing a safety inspection of the M20 and A20 through Kent. I stopped in one of the laybys on the A20 to call in a defect to the communications centre, and this is what I found. I wish I hadn’t.
Sadly this is the kind of stuff that the laybys on our network have to deal with; people not planning their journey properly and getting caught short, which then end up using the “outside toilet”. At least this one used something to wipe!
Needless to say I also called this in to get cleared up! Disgusting
I attended my temporary traffic management basic course today.
This has simply got to be one of the easiest tests I have ever done! It really is a basic course as the name suggests. It’s a quick run-through (over several hours of course) of the different types of traffic management. 12A/B, 12C, and 12D.
The course explains each type of traffic management and the tickets needed to do certain things with each. It also highlights basic health and safety within the industry, types of equipment used, how to maintain a closure and safety zones within a closure etc.
The test centre used was based in Chesham, and the instructor was someone who I have worked with previously. I did the course with 7 other people, 1 of which I work with from the A21 depot, so it was quite an intimate affair.
There was an array of people on the course. Only 3 of us had any experience of working on the roads. One was a taxi driver, one is an instructor for first aid, two unemployed, one warehouse worker, and one farmer.
We all passed the course with flying colours with a score of 20 out of 20. All in all it was a good course with good instruction, but as the name of it suggests, it is basic, but it’s the first step into traffic management.
So recently I’ve had a little problem with my car. For some reason and still an unknown reason my car has been letting in water, which pools in the spare wheel well and then splashes through under the back seats and on to the footwell behind the drivers seat.
I spoke to Ford regarding this issue and they said it was a common known fault of the Ford Focus MKIII. The air vents on the exterior of the vehicle tend to come loose and allow water to build up between the skins of the car which eventually comes into the interior. I looked up what they said it could be and it turns out they’re right. It is a common problem. It’s all over the car forums. I went back to Ford and asked that as they know about the problem and it is a common fault, will Ford pay to rectify the issue. They almost laughed at me on the phone and said it would cost £430 to get sorted. Crap!
Well, as I am not willing to pay £430 at the moment I decided to have a little look about on the internet to see if anyone has put together a video of how to solve the issue. They have!
Ever since I travelled to Wales in back in February 2015, I have been wanting to go again, but take the kids. Although I went back in July 2015 to do the three peaks challenge, I didn’t really get the opportunity to explore or really enjoy what I was seeing while I was there.
Fast forward to 2018 and I thought it was about time I took the kids around Wales to explore and enjoy what nature offers. August 2018 arrives and I have the kids with me for the summer holidays while they’re off of school.
We stayed in a hotel near Northop Hall for 6 nights, which isn’t too far from Chester and Liverpool. The majority of the holiday was to be spent around Snowdonia National Park which meant a little travelling, but not too much.
We set off from the hotel at around 7am and stopped in Conwy for breakfast at Premier Inn. £9.50 for all 3 of us to have a full English. After breakfast we stopped at Tesco to grab something for later on in the day and to make sure we carried plenty of water with us.
At around 11am we set off down to the Pen-y-Pass car park at the foot of Snowdon arriving shortly after at around 12pm. Upon arrival we found the car park completely full and no spaces available. I went back to Llanberis to check out their park and ride service and found it half way between the two. Upon parking I realised that I didn’t bring any change with me to pay. I found a layby closer to Pen-y-Pass and called for a taxi up to where we were originally going to park.
We finally got all set up and ready to start the trail at around 1pm. I decided to go The Miner’s Tack as that’s the way I took when I did the three peak challenge and it’s a nice walk and there is plenty to see along the way.
The walk started off nice and sunny and as we weren’t just walking to the top we were also exploring this was great. We stopped off at an old building at the end of Llyn Llydaw to have some lunch and have a little play. We left here around 4.30ish and continued on our journey. About another hour passed as we continued up the mountain and the weather took a crappy direction. It started to get foggy and it started to rain. Now this isn’t normal rain, it was extremely fine rain. The type that makes you wet throughout. Yeah ok, not too bad we could deal with that. At this point we were at Glaslyn and though, sod it, we’re almost there so might as well carry on.
About 45 minutes later walking up from Glaslyn the wind decided it wanted to chime in as well. So, there we were walking up the side of this mountain with fog, very fine rain and the occasional gust. We finally managed to reach the summit, thick fog as in can’t see more than about 50m in front of you thick fog, fine rain and gusty wind. Needless to say we raced to the top to touch the sun dial thing got our photos then went down to the visitor centre hoping it was open so we could catch the train down.
Needless to say the damn thing was closed. Everyone had gone and we were all up there by ourselves! Ok, well we stopped outside under a shelter near the entrance and had some refreshments. A couple chocolate bars and drinks. After about 30 minutes of resting we decided that we would make our way down and follow the Llanberis path. That path was covered in sharp slate everywhere you were stepping and was unavoidable, but was safer for the kids. Once we got down into the valley near Llyn Du’r Arddu the rain had stopped, there were no more gusts and the fog had gone. The end of the day was beginning to look a lot brighter. Finally reaching Llanberis at around 9pm that evening. Exhausted and tired, but happy we had all summitted Snowdon we walked around to The Royal Victoria Hotel and asked them if they could call a taxi for us to get back to my car. 25 minutes later, we were in the car changing into warm dry clothes and were heading back to the hotel to sleep.
The way I have described it sounds a lot more dangerous than it really was. I was with the kids at all times and made sure they were safe. We all had a source of communication and I had shown them the way we were going so we were all prepared for any eventuality.
As the weather is beautiful right now and we are at the height of the bluebell season I decided that I would grab the camera and head on out to somewhere and see what I could do.
Obviously it’s been a while since I’ve taken any proper photos so this was going to be a whole new thing for me again. Learning how to use my camera properly was the object of the game, so I decided that I would take all photos on manual. This would help me get to know my camera again.
Location of choice was Dene Country Park just on the outskirts of Shipbourne. I arrived there just after 11am and began my journey wandering through the woodland. For the first 15 minutes of my walk I only saw the odd Bluebell. I thought I had missed them. A little while later I was greeted by a sea of purple. It was beautiful.
Sadly the camera can never do justice to Bluebells, but I tried my best. Tell me what you think.
It’s now half term and the kids have some time off of school, so they were coming down to mine for just over a week, but first I thought it be good to take Ryan to Alton Towers for the weekend as now he is tall enough to go on all of the rides.
I finished work on the Friday at 6am and moseyed on home and slept until 4pm at which time I got up got showered and packed my things. It’s now 6pm and I’m driving to go and get the boy from his mums. I arrive just after 8pm and was greeted with massive hugs and kisses from both of the kids. I spend about 45 minutes there before heading up the A34 to our destination. 4 long hours later we arrive in Stoke at our hotel. Turned out to be the wrong hotel – I had put the post code for another hotel I was looking at in the Sat Nav. No big deal as the actual hotel was only 5 miles in the direction we just come from.
We arrived at the proper hotel just after midnight. Checked in and headed to our room. I go in and there are two single beds. I stand there scratching my head thinking “I’m pretty sure I booked a family room”. We went back down stairs to reception and they changed our room to a double as they didn’t have any more family rooms left. It means sharing the bed with Ryan, but that wasn’t a problem. He snores just as much as I do!
We were up at 7.30am the next morning and headed off to the nearest Premier Inn hotel as they do some cracking breakfasts. We filled up on grub and then headed off to Alton Towers arriving just after 10.30. We entered the park after the 15 minute walk from the car park and headed straight to our first ride.
