8°C, between showers, some are hail bearing.
Rode the Arrow and enjoyed a return to form (to some extent). Those long cranks feel fine, I can really stretch my legs on the cruise sections.
Dodge showers
Author Archives: essiep
Dennis strikes
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8°C, strong SW wind, gusts to 50mph. Sunshine too.
Floods are a feature on the landscape today. I left off the overshoes because the temperature was okay forgetting that it’s easy to get wet feet riding through a flood. As it turns out, that is what happened.
Storm to storm
9°C, sunny with light NW.
Slow but steady ride since I’m still recovering from a heavy cold. Oh, well, the coffee was good
DofE 3: Framlington, Suffolk
Training, 1 day, Gold. They’re planning Practice and Qualifying on the slopes of Snowdon.
The is was a nice job. The kids, the school staff were great. These Gold Award students were obviously high fliers.
The biggest chunk of the day was mapping and route cards. Their routes are in familiar parts of Snowdonia, well trodden by me and Rosie over the years. The only negative was the enormous drive for one day’s work.. For this reason I’m not doing this run again.
No cycling this week.
I have the kind of gravelly cough that feels like there is broken glass in my throat. Still have to work through.
DofE 2: Bury st. Edmunds, training
A daunting long drive is the result of some poor planning by me. And it’s only 1 day’s work. Is it worth it? In all, 240 miles including a stop off to visit mum. I have negotiated a stay in a local scout camp which should be good.
D1: that was straightforward, we got through the material in good time and the kids did a thorough job. The route cards were done in an Excel spreadsheet which had a few good functions. It would work out journey times from other values the groups inputted. An oddity was that it had no cell protection. Overall, it was a good system that combines traditional methods with a spreadsheet. Functions were not as thorough as eDofE’s but it lacked the infuriating bugs
The Journey Begins
The obligatory intro post from WP. This is the place I want to host.my hiking & cycling posts. As of yet, I don’t know how to extract the relevant tagged posts from my initial site and import them here.
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
DofE 1: Abingdon in-school training
+6°~-3°C, calm hi high-pressure sets in.
Same start as last year with similar weather, cold dry and frost predicted. I’ve been give permission to camp in he school grounds which solves two problems: the campsite is 7 miles away and is likely – waterlogged.
d1: been here before, and familiarity brings some ease. We have toe groups to take through a classroom based training booklet. The kids are delightful and eager. One of the girls is the younger sister of one from last year, she even texted to check, and Flo’ said I was the best one. Wooo! This group declared themselves “massive Miranda fans”. That meant catchphrases from the show sometimes, bare with, bare with!
Overnight, I planned to camp but given the chance to bed down in some kind of annex, I took it. With some time to kill, I did another page in the A5 sketchbook.
Day two, a Sunday. More classroom training but with added trips outside. I showed them how to put up a tent and finished the syllabus.
The centre manager wants instructors to have the same groups on practice in march. I’m only on the reserve lists so sadly…..
Latest: I’m on! I’ve been moved off reserve and will now work with both groups in march.
Winter fortells spring.
5-8°C, sunny and calm.
Fresh, mild warm air the at doesn’t smell of spring yet. It’s still dark early but uncharacteristically mild. Storms are approaching.
Does this route look rude to you? No? Okay, it’s just me then.
Warm winter wind.
13°C, strong S wind, dry.
Micycle 