Gates

After fetching J back from attempted escape into the road for the 4th time in 10 minutes on Sunday morning, we decided to put in a gate. Having not rained here for some time, digging the holes for the posts was not too easy, but they are now at least a foot into the ground with concrete about the base. I don't think they'll fall over. The next challenge is to make the gate work. There may be trouble and some swearing ahead...

At that point I decided that I should go out on my bike whilst the sun was still shining

Just to keep up with BWB here is a picture of my new second hand mountain bike that I took for a spin around the woods on Friday.

And here is a statue if a little boy having a pee for those of you who are interested

Switzlerland for Lunch

The meeting in Rheinfelden in Switzerland didn't go exactly as planned as the main participant from their side couldn't make it in the end so I had a nice lunch outside in the sun and a fairly relaxed meeting in the afternoon. I had a short meeting on the train and then read my book whilst eating sushi in the airport. Other than getting home rather late, it was not such a bad day really!
Friday was a public holiday in Denmark so we are having a relaxing long weekend painting, and generally pottering around fixing stuff.

Camping

I have been trying to think of something interesting and I can't, I suppose I am simply not an interesting person at the moment.

We are hoping to have a test camping weekend in a couple of weeks as we have a long (4 day) weekend to use up somehow. The plan is to head to Sweden for the test.

We bought a tent in Wales like this:

It is a 6 person mammoth with 2 sleeping compartments so that J can have his own room and it is high enough in the middle to stand! We have sourced tables, chairs and stoves to borrow and we are more or less fully equipped.

Now we have to decide on a destination and plan for the inevitable bad weather...

Book ideas

Well the title says it all really, I have suddenly got loads of things to do at work (there is always a lot to do at home). Then obvious thing to do in that situation is to write a blog entry!
I get the feeling that my readership is gradually coming back after my Easter break so I really must think of something interesting to write at some point.
On Thursday I am going to Switzerland for the day and Friday is a bank holiday here so I guess I have to get as much done as possible in the next 48 hours.

In the meantime, I thought I would share my idea for a book (I have one every couple of months, but of course never do anything about it). This one is as usual cycling related, I thought it may be fun to try and ride all of the sportif (amateur non-race versions) of all of the Spring classic bike races in one season just before the pros do them and deal with the inevitable nightmare logistical and physical problems of doing it. I think it would require quite a lot of planning and frankly that will be the end of the idea. The advantage of the idea being killed off in that manner is that I never have to get to the point of realising that I have absolutely no talent for writing...

Final Pics

It was disappointing that our visitors had to cancel their trip to Denmark this weekend sop we just took it easy around the house.


Here are the last few pictures from our holiday.

In Brussels

With Mr T on the beach

Driving the tractor at Shustoke

Chasing the geese

We bought some reins for J whilst in England, they proved to be very useful in Stratford upon Avon where he tried to chase after anything he could, especially the geese and swans...



He enjoyed the boat trip a lot as you can probably see.

Life in Denmark is rapidly returning to normal so there is painting to be done this weekend...

More pics as promised:

Paddleing in Porthmaddog


Watching a dog in the river in Betws y Coed

Pop over to Big Williams World to see his rather nice new titanium purchase!

Back from the dead (blog)

I have finally got the pictures downloaded from our trip through Belgium to Wales and back, here is a little taster starting in Brussels. (Unfortunately MK didn't manage to get any pictures of the Tour of Flanders as her hands were full...)

Grand Place

In the park

The SAS hotel suite

Update of Wales to follow...

I am in a project management training course this week (all in Danish I may add) and this is leaving me little time or mental capacity for writing updates, but I will try.

I'm back

At last we are back home from our adventure and we are all a little tired. Thankfully the antibiotics seem to be doing the trick on my throat and we are getting over the the colds so we should be in tip-top form just in time to go back to work on Monday morning.
The ferry from Harwich to Esbjerg was good, we had a nice cabin and J slept well despite being on a couple of duvets on the floor between our beds. So now we are more or less settled back home and catching up with the last couple of weeks. I will post some pictures when I have a few moments.

Back on line

The last week has been a bit up and down, I caught MK's throat infection and it has been the worst of my life. (Typical man I hear you say in unison!) bleeding sore and tonsils the size of tennis balls. Anyway, the doctor told me to put up with it so I have been suffering in near silence for several days now and it is finally getting a bit better.
Wales is great as ever and even more so when the weather is as good as it has been: warm and sunny.

Did it

I completed the very very long 256km in about 11hours. Now my hands and bottom are rather sore mostly from the cobbles. We have ordered room service in the hotel in Brussels.

Le Grand Depart

I am mentally preparing myself for the big trip and the big bike ride, consequently I couldn't get to sleep last night and tonight it is 23:40 and I am just finishing my work for the day.

Off to bed now, there won't be many posts for the next couple of weeks, so have fun in my absence and take advantage of all that extra free time!

W

All out of excuses

I get the feeling that no-body is reading this at the moment, but I shall not be deterred!

I have managed to re-book the ferry to the UK so I am all out of excuses for the Tour of Flanders on Saturday. I'll be leaving the hotel just before 7 on Saturday morning for about 11 or 12 hours of bike riding , that will be about 3-4 hours of moderately comfortable riding followed by 6-8 hours of fairly serious discomfort (no doubt becoming pain at some point).

On the other hand I am really looking forward to taking a break and see some different scenery.

Happy Birthday George

As it says, Happy Birthday!

I have had some stupid ideas in my time, but the notion of riding the Tour of Flanders this year is turning out to be one of the most stupid. Firstly I didn't realise that it was Easter weekend when we are supposed to be on our way to England, secondly it is a very long way to Belgium (my geography let me down there or someone shoved Denmark across a bit) thirdly it is ridiculously long.

So as a result we are missing a couple of days of the big family holiday in Wales and spending them in the car as well as a fortune on Petrol and hotels. The next issue is that whilst I am not totally out of shape, I am in no way ready to ride the 270km (150 miles) of hills and cobbles, yesterday I rode 100km and I certainly didn't feel like riding another 170km.

To add insult to injury, it now seems that we have booked the ferry for the wrong day so maybe I won't even be able to start, let alone not be able to finish...

Backed up to the hilt!

No I am not terminally constipated, but I am very happy that my employer decided to implement this automatic back-up program in the office that takes a copy of everything on my PC every once in a while. I had not been in the office for a couple of weeks, but that was recent enough that I had not lost much stuff (photographs were the main worry).

Now I have decided to invest in a small server thing at home to back up our photographs for safe keeping.

I was just going to use this as my representation of a supercomputer, but I suspect that only one person would know what or who it was so here is another "oh so amusing" picture of what our future server room may resemble.

Happy Birthday

To Karen this time.

I had a bad IT day on Monday, the hard disk on one of my work PCs died taking all of our digital pictures with it. Thanfully they are all backed up at the office, but it is a reminder of the importance of backing this stuff up. Anyway there will only be google pics for a few days...

Leeds was fun(ish) and I am looking forward to being on holiday very soon as I now have a ton of books to read after ordering some with the new GPS from Amazon and buying 3 in the airport. Even J got a new book:

All roads lead to Leeds

We I hope they do because I don't really know how to get to the hotel we are staying in and I know that at least 2 of the 4 passengers will take great delight in mocking me if I can't find the place!

J slept for 13 hours last night although it was far from uninterrupted, it is better than the usual 10 hours of interrupted sleep. Thankfully the fever seems to have gone this morning and there was no sign of stuff coming out of his ears... Lovely.

On Friday I finally gave in and (with permission) went and bought some new biking shoes. Since something weird happened to my feet a year or so ago and they changed shape, I have been squeezing my feet into cycling shoes that were much too small. So off I went and bought some of these ridiculous looking things:

I got the white ones as that is the colour that they had in my size. I don't think I could have bought those orange ones though, the white ones are clown shoe enough in a size 48!

They are fantastic, incredible comfortable, no knee aches and no cramped toes. The best erhm cough pounds I have spent on biking stuff for a long time.

Camping holidays

I have been getting over excited about the idea of camping with MK and J for our summer holiday. The original plan was to stay in Denmark for the summer and have a cheap holiday as we have already paid for our flights to the US for Christmas so that will be our expensive trip for the year. However, typically for me, I have expanded the scope of the cheap, stay home holiday.

Firstly it seemed logical that camping would be cheaper than renting a summer house. Well this may be true until you add up the cost of all the gear that we don't have.

Secondly, staying home is cheaper than travelling to say the South of France. Again, true until you decide to take a ferry half way up Norway. (Which is in itself an expensive country)

So there we are as MK has just pointed out to me, we have already planned to spend most of a new kitchen on our cheap holiday.

Maybe I need to got back to the drawing board...

Finally sparked some interest...

The rare, reclusive and often prone Norwegian Blue:

It seems that the talk of holidays and Norway have sparked some interest at last. I am quite excited about our trip but we haven't really decided which part of Norway to see, it is a very big country and it looks like traveling by road is relatively slow. We will probably stay in the south, maybe getting as far north as Bergen. It depends a little on which ferry we take, how long we are going for and what we are sleeping in.

There is a guy outside taking our terrace door off so that he can restore it to it's former glory, who knows how long that will take...

Finally, Happy Birthday Tina, have a great day.

Summer Holiday

When you are trying to think of an inexpensive place to go on summer holiday, Scandinavia generally doesn't spring to mind, even when you live here. Norway is probably the least budget conscious friendly destination in the Nordic region, so guess where were planning to go this year?

The current plan to take a ferry from somewhere in Denmark to somewhere in Norway and then go find some fjords. Norway is painfully expensive so there are a couple of things that we are planning to minimise this pain. Firstly we will take as much with us as we can of food, booze etc, secondly we are working on some low cost accommodation for which there are 3 options

1 I have applied to be a mystery shopper with visitnorway which would get us free B&B for the duration in Family hostels

2 Camping huts are like garden sheds with beds that you can rent on camp sites

3 The most optimistic and dare-devil option is that we are seriously considering camping.

The idea of camping with a toddler may be crazy, but we are at least considering it. I'll let you know what we decide...

Pining for the fjords?

Sunshine

Well the sun is shining, but it is still chilly. Not too much to report really, but there are a few photos left over from the zoo, so here we are.

It must have been exciting

He's not crying, just trying to get his hands on that big black turkey thing

Come here!

Zoo

We had a great day out on Saturday, not to Ikea this time, but to the zoo. It is a long time since I have been to a zoo and it was J's first time ever. He really enjoyed meeting and greeting the animals

A big bird

A small goat

Elephant: Big

Polar Bear: Big (oversized fish box makes the bear look small though)

Rhinos: Big, grey and a little frightening

The local farm

I wonder what this does...

About 10:30 last night:

"The heating is making a lot of noise dear"

"It sounds like there is air in the radiators, I'll just bleed them"

No air came out so I went downstairs to the boiler to have a look...

Apparently what that thing does is let all of the water out of the heating system in one go...

Woops

Then I had better work out how to re-fill it then, 20 minutes later, thankfully all seemed to be well and the noise has gone.

MK is very happy now, not only is the heating quiet, but she has also found us a cleaner.

Sleep deprived

This has not bee a good week for sleeping so far, hopefully tonight will be better, but we seem to have been saying that for about 18 months now...

Actually the kitchen looks OK in that picture!

After a careful examination of the calendar and the bank accounts, we are considering postponing the kitchen project until the summer, there will be fewer visitors and maybe a little more in the coffers...

Haircut

J has been puking all night, it's great to be home!
Before:

After:

Indoor safety gear!

Yes just book the flight and tell us when you're coming!

Hamburgers again

I am in Hamburg again so I am sorry that I cannot publish any pictures of J's smart new haircut. I'll try to do it tomorrow, but I am very expensive if anyone wants to make an appointment...
Yesterday was eventful in Denmark as BHP (MK's Dad) fell off his bike on the way to work and was taken to hospital to be checked out. Apparently nothing was broken, just bruised pride, ribs, legs etc etc and he is still on the sofa today so MK and J are off to bother him this afternoon.
Get well soon.

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Busy Weekend

This weekend, I have cut J's hair with surprising success, we have come a little closer to deciding on the kitchen and I have cycled 120km today.

Another visit to Ikea has confirmed the kitchen and we are probably going to buy a Smeg fridge (from Germany and maybe not this bright green (I hope)) and we are looking at some very funky flooring

The cycling was fn, I was on the bike for more thatn 4 hors, the legs were fine, but my bottom is not at all happy...

Then this evening I have finally made a stew that I am happy with. Pork cheeks cooked in beer with apples, they were delicious as Tim would say, tender and tasty.

Off to Hamburg tomorrow.