Aberdovey 3

One day I took the mountain bike on a Tour de Cadair Idris off road ride. The weather was great, the road rough and the going hard. Very enjoyable, but I was wiped out by the time I got back to the hotel.

Aberdovey 2

There is the hotel, brilliant above the sands and below the sky. This may well be our last year there, so it felt a little bit different. Some of the staff remember Rowan when she was 4 years old on our first visit. Times have changed.

Aberdovey 1

We are just back from our annual trip to Aberdovey in Wales. The weather was perfect for the week, not a drop of rain and plenty of sun. We arrived on Sunday, and went down to our beach as usual - to find my required 100 metres exclusion zone well in place. Truly one of the world's great places.

D&R

I got this shot of Danielle and Rowan in the evening sun this week.

Last one from the wedding

Here is the obligatory "everybody get over there" shot from the wedding. Danielle and Rowan are in there somewhere. "Toby the dog", who belongs to Fay,  is bemused on the left.

Wedding 2

Not often the three of us are photographed together [Milo can't work out the auto-focus] but here we are at the wedding .

Wedding of the Year

Edward and Fay got married in a Quaker wedding in Wenslydale yesterday. It was a great occasion, very moving, lots of fun with people we knew from York there as well. A friend's band played, children ran about the gardens and we all had a good time. This photo is from the walk from the meeting for worship to the reception in Fay's parents garden; traffic was stopped.

Plants

Same walk, we found these very tall yellow plants on the old railway line at Kiplingcotes. Plenty of butterflies made it a lovely sheltered spot.

OM&HD

The 2011 census has revealed the population of York to be up, to 198,000 people. That is a lot.
Rowan took this shot of me and Milo yesterday in the Wolds.

Sales

Here are Rowan and Milo in the Wolds this week.
I have sold a couple of framed prints at the Gallery in Beverley so today we went over to supply/replace. The Gallery is going pretty well I think.
Can't quite get used to having a British one two in the Tour this year - it makes watching the thing a very different experience.

School is over

The school holidays have started for Rowan. Yesterday we went a walk in the Wolds, a beautiful quiet valley where we saw these butterflies, a Marbled White and a Ringlet.
We have discovered Lianne La Havas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcXl6CDqpvY who is brilliant.

Turning Tables

They are redeveloping a bit of land near to the railway station. These two turntable pits have been uncovered, they would have been the bases of two roundhouses for engines in the days of steam. It is strange to have such archaeological surprises when they were built only 100 odd years ago.

Swarm

We were sitting out in the [all too rare] sunshine today, Rowan back from the USA and sleepy, when Milo noticed a bee on the lawn. Danielle wondered what it was doing there, looked around and realised that there was a swarm brewing. Here they are in the apple tree, waiting to be knocked down into a bucket and put back in their hive. Attention seeking really.

On a Long Pier

After 2km of the pier you find yourself 2km into the Thames, with the thunderstorm cleared the sun lights the sodden timber.

A long walk ...

When I set off down the pier it was bright sunshine, mid-way there was a huge thunderstorm, by the time I reached the end it was sunshine again. Not a lot of people were out there as you can see.

The Seaside

I was in Essex earlier this week for work. The Thames estuary is a strange place where seaside accouterments sit side by side with oil refineries, power stations and grime. This is end of Southend Pier - at over 2k long, the longest in the world. Brilliant

Red Peppers

Went out with friends Julie and Andrew for a meal at Hotel Du Vin last night. Very enjoyable, walkable distance, just right.

For the first time I have grown really good Red Peppers - I am pretty amazed, they look just like Marks & Sparks ones. Organic too.

One Day

Here is yesterdays schedule.
02.30 - Wake up, worry that I have to get up in one hours time, fail to go back to sleep
03.30 - We all get up, make a cup of tea, dog in car, drive to Manchester airport
04.30 - M62 is closed between two junctions. No diversion is signed but we make it anyway.
06.00 - Say goodbye to Rowan who is flying, via Dublin, on her own to Boston to meet up with her school hockey trip [she was delayed so she could run at Gateshead]
07.30 - Coffee in Starbucks at Services.
08.30 - Danielle walks dog, I sleep for an hour.
12.00 - Sat in the City Screen Cinema ready to watch 5 hours of Wagner Gotterdammerung on a live HD link from the Met in New York. Amazingly we stay awake [mostly] and [perhaps more amazingly still] really enjoy it. Excellent.
17.00 - Decide to pass on the street party we were invited to and get home.
19.00 - Watch Bradley Wiggins hold onto yellow in the Tour, just a brilliant rider.
20.00 - Walk dog on the still-sodden Moor.
Sleep.

Photo is of Rowan in full flight in the relay

Tall Girls

This photo has Rowan and the other high jump contestants going out to the jumping area. Two things you may notice. 1 They are all as tall as Rowan [this is rare]. 2 She is busy chatting away to everyone.

We had friends Greg and Maxine round for a meal on Thursday evening, good time.

English Schools

Rowan qualified for the English Schools Athletics Championships at Gateshead. http://www.englandathletics.org/news.asp?itemid=9585&itemTitle=Aviva+ESAA+82nd+National+Track+and+Field+Championships&section=42&sectionTitle=England+Athletics+News This has been going on for over 80 years and is a bit of an event. She was part of the North Yorkshire team, this involved her and the other 25 athletes from the county staying in Durham University for two nights and competing on the international track at Gateshead. Danielle and I went up today to watch Rowan in the 4x100 relay [for fun really, they did not make the final] and the junior girls high jump where Rowan came 7th out of 24 - a brilliant effort [7th best in the country is not bad really]. She seemed to have a whale of a time [where does that expression come from by the way?] so it was a happy weekend. 3 North Yorks athletes won events, which is impressive seeing as other teams included London [just a bit bigger than North Yorks] West Midlands etc. Sky TV was filming the event, so I hope to get a clip from that at some stage.

The photo is of Rowan at the start of the relay [I was too nervous to take any of the high jump!]

Badminton

When I was 29 friend Chris suggested I play Badminton with a group of people he knew. I was reluctant, never having played properly before. One or two of the group [all from the Tottenham Carribean community] were excellent players but took infinite patience to make everyone feel comfortable playing whatever their standard. It was a lesson in humility that I always try to remember. Eventually I got the hang of the game, I did an evening class in Islington for a couple of years, Chris and I played regularly together, and I set up our own, very informal, group who played one evening a week. This was a great group. All sorts of people passed through it over the years. After playing we would go for a drink and keep abreast of what people were up to. There must have been 20 or 30 people who played at one time, including a couple of EastEnders actors and half of Pepsi & Shirley [of Wham fame].

Chris moved to Rome, we carried on. I moved to York, and the group carried on for four or five years anyway. It may still exist now …

In York I played with a Sunday evening group for a while but found it a bit serious. I really do like to set my own things up, not keen on other people's rules. So Edward and I play singles regularly at the Railway Institute by the station. We have had larger groups of people over the years but the singles is what keeps going. There is something good about playing each week – the sport obviously, but also the chance to talk about things going on in our lives. I did try some coaching a few years ago which was of limited value. Basically we both can have a really good competitive game within our limitations, we are not going to be great club players but we enjoy it.  

Ripon

Rowan had a netball session at Ripon, which meant I got a chance to cycle around the town. It is a strange mix of beautiful small old town [population 16,000] with an amazing Cathedral and a squaddie town with an army base within in and all that that implies. On top of that it has no rail station, which has a devastating effect on it, cutting it off from the rest of the world. There is a campaign to re-connect the town to Leeds via rail, but that is unlikely to be successful given the current climate.

New people

We all made it to Quaker Meeting yesterday, where we met some newcomers to York, Maxine and Greg who have moved up from Kent. He is an American writer and she is a photographer. When we say "we moved up 14 years ago" it sounds such a long time, but for us it feels like yesterday in many ways.

The photo is of part of the redevelopment of Kings Cross - this is now part of St Martins college of art.

Brindle

On the way back from Wigan we diverted to Brindle, a Lancashire hill top village between Preston and Blackburn where my grandfather was vicar for a time. It is well over 40 years since I had been there. There is now a Sustrans bike route through the village, so I hope we can all cycle there sometime.