Got my Q!
Queen’s parkrun takes place at Queen’s University’s sports fields and consists of a couple of laps around the campus. Nice, enough, not too hilly. Friendly place. I got chatting to one of the staff at Queen’s and it turns out he does computing. There were also tonnes of tourists, including a woman from Finland so I tried out some of my Finnish, which mostly went well.
Good zoo. My favourite animal was the eagle but there were plenty of favourites, too: elephants, giraffes, zebras, flamingos, penguins, sealions, alpacas, lions, chimps, bongos, giant anteaters, lemurs, a reptile house, and plenty of others.
It is built into the side of a hill and is somehow hillier than the Welsh Mountain Zoo. Worse, the cafe at the bottom of the hill was closed so we had to walk all the way up to the treetops cafe to get some lunch. You do get a wonderful view from the top, though.
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is the fourth novel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. It follows on from Life, the Universe, and Everything and forms the fourth part of the trilogy in five parts.
It is very different from the previous novels. Which are science fiction. This is a romance story. With a few aliens thrown in but only at the end. Still an enjoyable read and a good addition to the series. And the rain good is good, too.
After seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy and five years in prison, Julian Assange is free.
WikiLeaks has made one a huge contribution to the world exposing corruption, human rights violations, war crimes committed by governments across the world. Governments come after you when you do stuff like that. Ask Assange. Or Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden or David McBride. It takes much more backbone that I have to stand up against a government.
There were no unclear weapons in Iraq. There was no £350 million a week Brexit bonus for the NHS. There weren’t any doctors to staff the Nightingale hospitals and Seaborne Freight didn’t have any ferries. We’re so used to the lies and corruption at the highest levels we become completely blase about it, or protect ourselves by retrospectively saying that we never really believed any of it in the first place.
Thankfully, there are some people willing to stand up for the truth. Julian Assange is one of them.
I was without my bike for three months earlier this year so I wasn’t sure I would remember how to ride a bike. Even without the gap, I cycled inside exclusively over winter so my last proper ride was Helmsley Triathlon last summer.
Luckily, I did remember. I had forgotten what a joy it is to be out on a bike when the weather is beautiful. Will have to do this more often.
My next challenge is to workout how to stop my sun cream clouding up my prescription sunglasses.
They have lots of reptiles.
I learnt some cool stuff. Did you know, for example, that an axolotl is a real creature and not just made up by Minecraft?
I was a bit unsure at first. Everything is in one room and you can get around it in around 30-45 minutes. That in itself feels like not much for the entry fee. And there were no talks on. But it turns out they just had the wrong sign up for the talk times and they started 30 minutes later.
Once the talks started, they were great. We went to two, spaced 90 minutes apart, with Dr Polly who brought out three animals each time. She told us a bit about them and then we got the chance to touch them. Snakes are lovely and soft: no wonder they used to make stuff out of their skin. Each talk was 30 minutes so there was a good hour of live stuff going on which made it well worth the visit.
There is a small cafe selling toasties where you can grab some lunch.
This is a lovely parkrun in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle. But hill, but nothing too steep, and I was familiar with most of the route having done Kilkenny Triathlon last year. There is an outdoor cafe in the grounds, too, but they could use a public toilet.
I needed a letter K for both the alphabet challenge and spell your name challenge, so this ticked a lot of boxes.
I managed to make it into the background of one of the photos by accident:
Hanging out with old friends is the best.
Jack turned a couple of conferences into a tour of visiting people in Europe so I was delighted to be able to host him for a few days. Last time he was here, we spent most of our time in Wetherspoon’s, according to my blog. This time, I’m delighted to say we did some more exciting stuff including the maritime museum, a proper pub, Glendalough, Ticknock and several beaches.
But mostly it was just nice to chat computers, philosophy, meaning of life, religion and a whole host of other topics. I managed to fully switch off for a couple of days which was great for my mental health and a really fun week.
A bunch of cool stuff to see here including the valley itself, grave yard, tower, ruined church and other buildings. But really shines if you fancy a hike. There are two lakes you can walk around so well suited to a range of fitness levels. And there was a food van selling toasties, so that was lunch sorted.
Scenery is gorgeous.
I did get eaten alive by insects at upper lake, though. I got bitten eight times despite having jeans and a hoodie on. They got my on my arms, wrists, ankles and hips. Why am I cursed with being so tasty?
Thoroughbred is a series of runs with a 5k, 10k, half and full marathon option. It takes in some nice country roads before coming back through the National Stud. Very scenic.
Parking was a nightmare. There was no event car park and all of the suggested car parks were full. After 30 minutes, we decided the find a quiet street to park on. Should have done that from the start. I feel bad for getting in the way of the locals but nobody else seemed to bother.
I haven’t done much fast running recently so I decided to go out at an easy pace and see how it went. I did my first kilometre in around 5:30 and that seemed fine so I gently sped up and soon found myself running sub-5:00 which I was delighted with. In the end, I finished:
48:39
I was thrilled with that as I don’t know when I have done a last 10k but it felt like it could equally have been a 65-minute run/walk job.
Lovely to hang out and chat with the club, too. We had 24 people running across the distances but someone I managed to mis all of the group photos ðŸ˜.