Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

TrainingPeaks 365

Tuesday, December 24th, 2024 | Life

What’s the standard unit of measurement for evelvation gain? TrainingPeaks has gone with giraffes and I’m on board with it.

Sugar Loaf hike

Monday, December 2nd, 2024 | Life

We hiked up a hill. Classic Snowdon style: drive most of the way up to th highest car park and then walk the last little bit. And I didn’t even summit it as I wasn’t feeling great. Beautiful scenery none the less, though.

Birthday celebrations

Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 | Life

We went out for my birthday to a local Thai restaurant. But I didn’t check the opening times and it turns out they don’t open for lunch. Luckily, we found a lovely restaurant just down the street.

Kim’s wedding

Thursday, October 24th, 2024 | Life

Earlier this month, Kim and Steve tied the knot. The wedding was held at Bagden Hall Hotel in Denby Dale and included a cèilidh, hog roast and wedding-themed quiz. Best of all, though, it was a reunion of most of the Thundercats team from Sky and a wonderful opportunity for us to catch up. We also made plentiful use of the photo booth. Thanks so much for the invite Kim and hope you had a brilliant day.

Club bikes

Sunday, October 6th, 2024 | Life

DUCC has a bunch of bikes for members to use. Except that last year the university moved them and didn’t tell us where they had put them. Ans infact, they didn’t seem to know. When I went down there the first time, nobody knew where they were. Luckily, our former captain was still around and led us to to the back of an abandoned pub where there was a locked storage room with a sign on the door saying “beware of the leopard”.

We’ve now successfully liberated three of them and tested them out on some club rides!

Bunratty Castle & Folk Park

Monday, August 26th, 2024 | Life

Bunratty Castle is a castle and folk park that is open to the public. Folk parks are living museums where traditional buildings have been relocated and are often populated with staff playing characters and or demoing 19th century trades. We’ve done St Fagans and Ulster and this one was also good.

Ulster was excellent: great role-plays and lots of cool stuff. But it was quite spread out. Bunratty was all a little more compact and the map was spot on so it was easy to find your way around.

Bolton Abbey

Thursday, August 22nd, 2024 | Life

History, countryside, ice cream. Yorkshire at its best.

Flamingo Land

Wednesday, August 21st, 2024 | Life

Last time we went to Flamingo Land, we were the only people there. And it was lovely. This time, there were lots of other people there and it was annoying. Especially as it costs £49 to come in summer, and is much cheaper in winter. Still, we struggled on.

It is the first time Venla has come with us and she had lots of fun on the rides. Plus we got to see the black rhinos, white rhinos and hippos, as well as lots of other fun animals.

Explorium

Wednesday, August 7th, 2024 | Life

Explorium is a science museum for children. We did the junior section which is aimed at 2-7-year-olds. All of the exhibits are hands-on and they pack a lot of stuff in there. We were there for two hours and didn’t get around everything.

Funfair

Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 | Life

I’ve had a few days off this month so Venla and I used one of them to go to the funfair. They had bouncy castles, rides, and we tried archery. Will Venla be the next Olympic archer for Team GB? We’ll have to wait until she’s big enough to actually be able to draw the bow to tell.