Campaigning Success!

There are a number of situations in the world that I take very much to heart and try to do something about. Changing the world isn't easy, but organisations like Tearfund, Christian Aid, and Oxfam provide plenty of good resources to help us badger big businesses, and make our views known to our MPs.

Sometimes this feels futile. If lucky you get a standard letter or email back to your campaigning message and, though we see some token gestures to some of the issues that we raise, it's rare that the things that we ask for are actually implemented in full.

There's been a lot of campaigning going on lately regarding a piece of legislation called the climate change bill. This is going to commit our country to major reductions in carbon emissions. I've written to several members of parliament and sent postcards and emails about this issue because I really believe that it's something we need to do - and sooner rather than later.

So I was heartened today to read this Guardian article about how, not only has the government included the full emissions reductions in the bill, but it's decided to incorporate shipping and aviation emissions as well. This is exactly what I and many other people have been campaigning for.

I particularly like Thom Yorke's encouragement that "it came about simply because hundreds of thousands of people on the ground hassled their MP, who in turn hassled the government. Amazing."

So, if you care about something, find an organisation that can help you campaign about it, and get writing. Sometimes it really does work!

It's alive!!!

It's been a while since the garden got much attention (though I'll be writing about the harvest soon), but this is a little set of observations that's been bouncing around in my head for a while.

Despite, or including, the slugs and creeping cinquefoil (this is what we thought was creeping buttercup), our garden is so alive with nature. Masses of it. It's awesome! Everyday, English creatures that exist all around us that you start to notice once you get close to the ground.

Earthworms: There are masses of them in our garden. Hundreds...probably many thousands. They're brilliantly camouflaged (yes, really, they look like plant roots!), live underground, and help to break down our soil and compost. Brilliant.

Frogs: We don't have a pond but we do have lots of clay-y soil and it's moisture rich. There's also a large patch of our garden that hasn't been weeded and has a thick layer of grass and weeds on it. This provides ample cover for the little amphibians and there's lots of them around. Also brilliantly camouflaged, they give you a real fright when they unexpectedly hop out of the grass. You have to be careful not to step on them at night though!

Spiders: If you were reading last year you'll know I love a good spider or two! And though we've moved house, we have plenty of arachnids in the new neighbourhood. Amazing co-ordination and web building skills. Awesome creatures. And there's a surprisingly large amount of them that just scuttle around on the ground too.

Bees: I'm not a huge fan of wasps (of which we've not seen very many this year), but bees are more tolerable. They seem to defy physics by flying, elegantly drifting from one flower to the next. They seem to come from far and wide in little teams to visit our plants. And, of course, we wouldn't have our fruits without their pollinating. Sadly, bees are rumoured to be in decline. We may well be setting up a little log or something next year to encourage bees to nest in our garden.

Everything else: There's beetles, ants, slugs and snails, weevils, grubs, caterpillars, centipedes. Really a plethora of different tiny creatures who make up the eco-system that is our garden. Some of them we love, some of them we hate, but they're all important in keeping the ground workable and fertile.

Nature is truly an awesome thing and when you get close to it you start to realise that even more. We praise God for the amazing things that has made, the detail of each little creature and the incredibly complex way that it all works together to bring us our food.

Brain Dumping with wikidpad

Recently someone asked if there was a good tool for dumping lots of stuff that was in their head in a GTD (Getting Things Done) manner.

I use a tool called Wikidpad for this. It's a desktop Wiki, which enabled you to write short or long notes, and link them together in a variety of ways - in much the same way as a web-based Wiki. But it's not very well documented and there's not tutorial for using it. So here's my own little guide to how I use it.

I'm not going to cover the basics of Wikis - you can read about them elsewhere. Wikidpad uses simple CamelCase as WikiWords that automatically become links to other pages (though you can suppress this for specified words).

I'd recommend opening the help Wiki and looking at the pages TextFormatting, TodoItems and WikiDocumentAttributes as a starting point.

For me, what really makes Wikidpad useful is its auto-indexed attributes and todo-type tags. Not only do your pages appear in a tree showing their location within the Wiki (essentially creating folders of related information), but you can also create hierarchical attributes that are
indexed and then displayed as a tree in the "Views" section. This is essentially an index of information that you've "tagged" with attributes.

For example, I can have a "Customer" attribute. If I put the text "[Customer:New Technologies Inc]" on a page, this will create, in the index, a customer folder, containing a New Technologies Inc folder, containing all the pages with that attribute.

This is HUGELY useful because it means I can "tag" information in a whole multitude of different ways:

• By customer
• By any number of different references that may exist (e.g. a request for change reference).
• How's about atrtributes by date? I can effectively create a journal by using attributes like "[Diary.2008.10:07]" - then everything I did on that date is referenced from the index views under 2008 -> 10 -> 07.

Another example is meetings - I write up meeting notes in my wiki with
attributes for like:

[Diary.2008.18:15]
[Customer:Random Corp]
[Meetings.Present:Dave Smith]
[Meetings.Present:Joe Bloggs]

Thus helping me answer questions like "Wasn't that mentioned in a meeting with Dave back in November?" quickly and easily.

The todo's are good too. I can use keywords like "action", "todo", "done", "track" and "question" to gather items that need my attention. If I write "action: Send documentation to account manager", this will appear in the index under my actions. These can also be nested - so I can classify actions. e.g. "todo.Personal: Book next year's holiday", or "action.Objectives:Deliver storage improvement project".

I'm not entirely clear in on the GTD philosophy - I know a little - but this is great, it allows me to group all my meeting actions and todo's together, review them in one go, pick off the little ones that can be cleared down easily, and then focus on the bigger ones.

The only thing that this doesn't really allow is setting deadlines. But I'm sure you could use some combination of todo's and attributes to do this.

In fact, it's the combination of a page hierarchy (as in a standard Wiki), todos, and attributes, that make this tool powerful and flexible. You can really customise it to how you want to work!

Of course, these's a full search facililty, as well as the ability to produce lists of backlinks, rename pages while keeping WikiWords consistent, and you can do neat things like add little icons to your
hierarchy of pages.

It's a bit clunky at first but worth persevering with - it really has become my second brain (and it's backed up to a memory stick FREQUENTLY!). I also export all the pages to HTML every now and then so that Google Desktop can index them too.

Hopefully that's of use to someone. Enjoy! And if you've any other tips for productivity, let me know!

Magic Roundabout!!!

Sorry. I can't help it. This is simply a gratuitous link to a piece of 1972 news footage that I've discovered about my beloved Magic Roundabout. Great stuff!

Discipleship Academy and SoulSpace

I've had an inspiring evening with these two little events. They won't mean much to some so I'll try and explain.

"Discipleship" is lots of things. For me it's the process of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, learning his ways, following in his footsteps, trying to lead a godly life. What's a godly life you might ask? Well, part of the process is finding that out. There are general rules but it's worked out in different ways for each person, and each time.

We've just had a new youth minister start at our church and he's really interested in helping people on this journey and is exploring ways of doing this. Discipleship Academy and SoulSpace are two of these things.

Discipleship Academy is mostly for the young people of our church, but I'm tagging along as a "fellow journeyer". I'm hesitant to call myself a "leader" in this activity because I'm actually going through the process myself.

This is intended to be 12, monthly sessions looking at, and equipping us to do discipleship.

I missed the first session, but went along today and it was really inspiring. The youth minister has produced a set of what I would call "tools" (things like study, reading, finding space, journalling and attending church) which we're all discussing the use of and encouraging each other to actually do. It was really good and I'm sure that these tools and sessions will be useful for us all as we try to do "discipleship" together.

SoulSpace is the new minister giving our Sunday evening church service a bit of an overhaul. We won't be doing this every week, but it will happen 2 weekends every month.

The idea of this is that rather than do a typical church service (a "hymn sandwich" as he called it today), we'll be trying to do church things in different ways. Sometimes we'll sing, sometimes we wont. Sometimes there will be a talk from the front. Sometimes we'll have group discussions. Sometimes we'll have other creative forms of worship or prayer. We'll just try, as a community, to learn from God and respond to him in different ways.

And community is key in both of these activities. This is something we'll do together. But also something that is not confined to Sunday evenings - the things we learn, the things we're encouraged to do, will, hopefully, spill over into the rest of our lives.

So tonight we've looked at:

• using the Bible as a tool. How can we use it? How do we break it down into bite-sized chunks, read it, understand it, and apply it to our lives; and
  
• authenticity - being real. How do we carry all this church stuff with us in our daily lives. Are we honest with people about who we are, and what we believe in? Or do we hide for fear of being "found out" and embarassed about that key part of our lives: our faith?

These are both difficult things to grapple with - Jesus didn't promise us following him would be easy. But I've been really inspired tonight in both these things, and the fact that a little pocket of people around me are also grappling with them helps a LOT.

We also had a really good church service this morning. The speaker did lots of storytelling, which I always find a powerful way of communicating. The story was of Joseph and the key thing I got from it was that he wasn't called by God. He didn't have God speaking from a burning bush like Moses, or a revelation from angels or anything like that. He just did what he thought he should be doing and God lead him and worked through him. Some people have things that God clearly wants them to do, but the rest of us shouldn't feel left out - God can do great things through all of us who follow him, wherever we are!

It's weird writing publicly about my faith, but in the interests of taking a step in discipleship and being real, I feel I must be writing more about what God is doing and saying. My faith is more important than my cycling, gardening, housework, DIY, music and technology interests, but that probably doesn't come across here. I hope it will in future!

New Game....New Dangers

I need to write about this incredibly important subject to warn you of the dangers of a sport that I've recently taken up.

This sport requires:

• excellent balance;
• pin point precision;
• dedication and repeated practice of repetitive actions;
• a good head for numbers.

Yes, I'm not kidding. I've taken up darts!!!

We have a cultural change program going on at work and we have a glorified sports and social club in our office. One of the things this little committee (that I'm a part of) have done is install a darts board.

And I must confess, I've really rather taken to the game, but it's also caused me some problems. I should add the the squeamish can read on, there are no descriptions of gory holes in the head or feet coming up.

Darts Players and Culture

I'm slightly baffed by darts players and culture. Given the list of attributes above, you'd maybe expect the stereotypical darts player to be a geeky, thin, glasses-wearing mathematician type.

So it's slightly confusing that it's mostly played by hairy, overweight man who've spent too long in the pub.

And what's with all the women that are forced to follow it. IF you ever watch it on the telly there's always bikini-clad models walking around. At work, we ordered the board, surround, scoring machine and a few sets of darts from a company called Red Dragon Darts. When it arrived it came with a catalogue which was more soft-porn than precision sport. I don't link to their website for similar reasons - I almost couldn't condone them as supplier!

Bizarre.

The Game

The game is quite addictive you know. Having invested £12 (not much really) in my own darts (it's much better if you get used to a set that you always use) I not only play the odd game, but I'm practicing by playing solitaire "round-the-clock" - hit all the numbers from 1 to 20 in order.

You have to get worse before you get better too. When you start you could hit pretty much anything, but, aiming for twenty, as you do, you usually end up hitting anything from 12 through to 18. 12 and 18 give you pretty good scores. As you improve that range narrows, and you start hitting more 1's and 5's. These are NOT good scores. This is the stage I'm at.

As for hitting doubles...that's a different matter altogether.

Dangers!

I said it was dangerous. Shortly after I started playing my shoulder started to ache. I thought this was a general wearing-out type pain, but then Sally said "Maybe it's the darts?", and I think she's right. It puts a lot of tension on very specific parts of the arm, and the repetitive action can certainly take it's toll.

Also...you may remember my stomach pain from my long bike ride a couple of months back (see the bottom half of this post), well, I reckon this has actually turned out to be darts-related too. When I throw my arrows I tend to lean forward and put all my weight on my front (right) leg. I think my hip flexor was getting quite a lot of strain put on it by this with the result that cycling made it flare up and become painful.

Not kidding...you can really do yourself an injury playing darts. And not necessarily one that involves being hit with a pointy stick.

You have been warned!

Playing with Symfony

OK, here's where I kinda "come out" as a true geek. Most of this will probably mean nothing to any of you and for that I make absolutely no apology whatsoever.

This whole post is a bit of a brag, but it's writing up what's been an intriguing afternoon/evening for me too.

I have a pretty strong background in Software Engineering, but I'm a bit behind with the times. I don't really know much about how people go about developing applications these days. It's something I've been meaning to get to grips with for a while. Today I've been playing a bit with Symfony - a PHP-based web development framework, with the aim of re-writing the database using a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack and Symfony. If you really care I'm using an installation of MoWes on a USB stick to keep this all portable so I can develop from work or home. Thanks must go to those on Twitter who have thrown some of these technologies my way.

Web-based applications seem to be the way of things at the moment (unless you're doing hard-core coding for things like OS's or embedded systems, which I'm not). And all the little projects I can either get my hands on, or dream up, are all web-apps that would benefit from a rapid-application development (RAD) type approach.

This has sort-of been happening a bit at work as I look after a database with a web-based front-end. This is currently written in PHP, outputting static HTML (i.e. no JavaScript) but when I wrote it I tried to:

• abstract the database operations;
• separate the data model and the presentation so that the code didn't need to be updated when new fields got added, deleted, etc.;
• create some generic code for those things that remained the same for all pages (cookies/authentication, standard menus, banners, etc).
  

It's a bit clunky but it works well and the time spent coding the abstractions has saved me a lot of time with subsequent modifications.

So it was a surprise to find that most of what I've done, or tried to do, fits with the principles on which application frameworks are based (see the Fundamental Concepts section of the Symfony book I'm reading). The terminology is all a bit much to take in in one go, but essentially I was doing things right.

Or is it a surprise? My computing teachers were always keen to teach us good principles like abstraction, and I've always held that my fundamentals are good. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise.

That's not to say that learning to use Symfony is quick and easy. I'm working my way through the tutorial, but without a lot of time it could easily leak from my head.

Possibly more techie posts like this to come as I learn more. Or maybe I'll have rewritten the database before I get a chance to write again. That'll depend on how good all this new technolgoy really is!

2 Films: The Notebook & An Inconvenient Truth

Two films watched this week - most unlike us.

The Notebook

Recorded while we were on holiday, this charming love story didn't really impress me. It was a simple couple-meet, couple-torn-apart, couple-get-back together story, wrapped up as an old man reading the story to his wife who's suffering from dementia and amnesia. Touching and cute, but for me, ultimately lacking in a special something.

An Inconvenient Truth

We got this out of the library to watch now that Sally is involved in climate change projects.

It's a good documentary, mostly based around a lecture given by Al Gore. It's a well-made documentary film with good graphics explaining the science and facts, and Gore is a great speaker. An hour long lecture on climate change could easily be dull, but I was far from bored and found the whole thing informative and challenging.

In fact, I found it quite scary. It'll certainly get me rethinking my own impact on the climate.

Clapped Out

I'm a cyclist - you can probably tell that - and I love all sports of different kinds. But there's one that I've never got on with...running! It knackers my kness and every time I try to take it up I have to give up quite quickly because I'm in pain.

So instead, I tend to run by proxy. I know so many people who are really into running, and I engage with other runners by talking about...err...other runners. I'm a middle man in the running circles of Swindon.

So, with today being the Swindon Half Marathon, my duty was not as a runner, but as a supporter.

It was a beautiful day for it - if anything too hot - and Sally and I pedalled out on our bikes to a fine spot on the course where we would see people running out (at about 3 miles) and back in (at about 9 miles) from the same place.

But I'm not really sure what to do as a running-race supporter, or how to cheer people on. We clapped a lot. In fact, we clapped almost non-stop for about 3 hours! And we called people's names and shouted things like "Well done" and "Keep Going", but it all feels a bit lame.

The hard core runners seem to view this as a distraction, and they keep focussed on the road ahead, barely acknowledging your presence. The ones at the back seem to appreciate it more, and occasionally engage in some banter. When I told one friend "Keep going! You're doing well!" he shouted back "No I'm not!".

So, I hope we helped some people along.

It was quite inspiring too. This was a small race of only around 1500 people, but it seemed to be a LOT from where we were standing. My sister and her boyfriend are pretty quick but there were a surprisingly large number of people running at a similar pace. It all made me think that surely running 13 miles is something that I could do.

One friend of mine called back "Your turn next year Wintle!" as he ran past. Perhaps he's right. Perhaps I should try again, take it easy, build up slowly and have a go at running with the aim of running next year's Swindon Half.

Hmmm...

To finish, I pay my respect to those I know who ran. I'm hugley impressed by their commitment and effort. Sarah, Guy, Dave, Carol, James, Mike, Stevo, Ray...well done!

A week in Sicily - Pantalica and Home

Part...umm...well...the last part!

I'm probably on about part 74 of my holiday write up now.  You'll be glad to hear that it's (probably) the last one.

After climbing Etna on the Friday, Saturday was supposed to be a bit of a day off.  But the thought of just doing nothing somehow didn't appeal.  We had plenty of crosswords to try and get through, but we wanted to explire Sicily's interior a bit too.  Plus it was a little cool and cloudy and not necessarily day-by-the-pool weather.

Necropoli de Pantalica

So we embarked on a trip to Pantalica.

An hour or so's drive on some very steep and windy roads through the Sicilian countryside brought us to this beautiful place, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  A necropolis - a 'city of the dead'.  An unspoilt nature reserve full of cliff-side tombs dating back to around 1300BC.  A wild and eerie place.  All the tombs are empty now but you are left with a feeling of awe and reverence for the place, and the people that build it.  Who would be climbing sheer cliffs, risking life and limb cutting holes in the rock with primitive tools?  It leaves our puny burial ceremonies looking fairly shabby in comparison.

We spent a while exploring Pantalica.  There is a clear path marked all through the valley and "exploring" basically involves following the path in one direction, and then re-tracing your steps back to the car. We stopped off next to a shallow pool on the way, for some lunch.  This really could have been a film set or something, it was almost unreal in its purity and beauty.

On returning to the car we set out to find some other, less spectacular Necropoli nearby, which were also quite spectacular.  Tombs, dwellings and even churches carved out of the rock amongst breathtaking scenery.

This place is mentioned in the Rough Guide, and is even one of the listed top 30 things to see/do while there, but you could so easily pass it by.  "Who want's to go and see a load of tombs?", but this place is a true gem!

Palazzolo Acreide

Leaving the Pantalica area we checked the Rough Guide to see what else was nearby, and decided to call in at a place called Palazzolo Acreide.  This small town has a great Archaelogical park.  It's at the top of a fairly big hill, so we recommend taking the car up to the top if you can.

This place is mostly well-preserved Greek tombs, dwellings and temples.  But it brings things slightly more to life because it's all layed out as a small village.  You are almost transported back in time and you can imagine ancient people wandering around, meeting together and heading to worship.  It feels like a place with community, rather than just a random collection of ancient buildings and artifacts.

And the highlight of this place was the greek theatre.  Marvellously intact, with an entrace hallway, tunnels to walk through to your seats, and bits of the staging and set still on show.

Dinner back in Noto rounded off our day.  We found a reasonably good restaurant but the service was a bit brusque.  Never mind.

Sunday and Home

Sunday was a real day of rest as we packed and prepared to head home.  Mostly spent around the hotel it was a good chance to chill out.  We blew a load of money on a last meal in the hotel which was GREAT!  I mean, it was one of the best meals I've EVER had.  If you're in the area and not staying at the Masseria degli Ulivi, then at least go and eat there!

Monday was heading home day.  The SatNav took us on a VERY weird route to the airport and failed completely to find us a petrol station.  The small scratches to the car went unnoticed.  And we were amused by the presence of a large number of older English people on our plane, who'd obviously all booked with the same tour operator.  Hearing one of them ordering "Four cappucino americanos" made me feel that I'd done quite well with my Italian, and my order of "Due cappucini e una panina" felt quite authentic in comparison.

The English baggage collection was surprisingly swift and collecting the car from the car park was a doddle.  Re-learning driving on the left was interesting and my brain was well confused for a while, especially at junctions and when we hit the motorway.  But I quickly got back into it.

A great holiday, with a little stressful day surrounded by some amazing places and food.  Summing up the holiday was mostly done in my first post.  Check out the highlights there.

I leave you with one thing that confused and amused us.  Now, my Italian isn't great, by any means, but I can mostly get by with at least reading signs and notices.  This bottle baffled though, as the best translation I could do of "Con il suo gusto morbido e delicato..." was "With the delicate taste of death..."

Perhaps someone else knows better?

Note: Google claims that "morbido" means "delicate".  Hey - easy mistake to make!

A Week in Sicily: Mount Etna

We awoke on Friday feeling refreshed and healthy, had an big, early breakfast, and headed up the coast to Mt Etna.

Actually there was some packing in there too...we had lots of decisions to make about packing our day sacks and what to wear. In the end I think we both ended up with full-on walking gear, including hiking boots, several layers, hats, gloves and waterproofs. The Rough Guide said it could get pretty chilly up at 2500 metres, so we prepared for the worst.

The drive to Nicolosi, a large town in the southern foothills of the volcano, took about 2 hours. The Rough Guide had made this out to be a small town but it seemed pretty big. We'd punched the address of the Tourist Office into the SatNav but it lead us to a random back street with no shops or offices in sight.

Nicolosi is at 700m and already the temperature had dropped to about 14 degrees - but it was a fine day with great views up to the top of Etna.

Encouraged by the size of Nicolosi and the big road signs to "Etna Sud" we decided to skip the information office and head up the mountain.

The impression in my head, gleaded from both the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet we'd borrowed, was of a narrow dirt track leading from Nicolosi to a tiny out post, "Refugia Sapienza". But the road, though steep and windy, was great and had fantastic views back over the Sicilian scenery. And Refugia Sapienza was a thriving toursit spot with lots of little gift shops, huge car parks, and several large hotels and restaurants. Oh, and quite importantly, a cable car station and lots of large 4x4 buses to take you higher up.

We parked up, and wrapped up. The temperature had dropped further to about 12 degrees and a chill wind was blowing. We were beginning to appreciate having brought fleeces with us.

We considered our options - a 4-hour-each-way hike, an "Excursion" with a load of old people on a bus, or the swift cable-car ascent. The cable car was expensive, but worth it. As the tracks and paths opened up beneath us we realised that it was actually a LONG way to the top, and not a hike that we had time for.

The whole place is set up for excursions and getting you to pay to have an easy ride. There are no maps, or directions or guides for walkers. The guide books are mostly photographic.

Having said that, we appreciated the facilites at the top of the cable car, with a good cafe and toilets.

We headed out into the now-very-cold air with the aim of following whoever else was walking. We got a little way and the wind picked up and blew some snow in! Yes, Sicily in September and it's snowing. Well, we were at quite an altitude at this point and very much in the clouds.

We retreat to the cafe to discuss our options over a cappucino. I was accosted at the bar by some hilarious Russian guys who'd obviously had a vodka too many and were buying more alcohol to warm them up. After escaping them, the weather had cleared slightly, so we decided to head back out and brave the elements with the aim of reaching a crater higher up.

We nervously started following the bus tracks. It would be easy to get lost in such a stark and barren landscape, but the bus tracks and the posts that marked their route up made it easy really.


It's a weird place. Quite lunar with just a vast expanse of black lava heading up into the distance for miles. It's bleak and barren. Disappointingly unspectacular and yet, intriguing and captivating.

The cold, mist and wind prevailed on our walk up. It occasionally cleared with views to the coast but not to the summit. We had no idea how far up we had to go and the scenery was, frankly, quite dull.

As the weather closed in again, we were getting cold and weary and decided to give up. It could have been several kilometres to the crater. It could have been 100yards, but we couldn't see, and we were cold and bored. Don't get me wrong - it was a great experience, but we were worn out and had a cable car to get back before closing time.

We headed back down and reached the cable-car station. It had turned from thriving to almost deserted in the couple of hours that we'd been gone so we chose not to hang around and went straight back down to the car.

It was an awesome place. I'd recommend going. I'd recommend starting earlier than we did and heading up the mountain in the morning to give you plenty of time. I'd recommend taking FAR MORE warm, outdoor clothes than you'd expect, and if you're up for a hike then go for it!


We fought our way past some CRAZY motorway driving and called in at Syracuse on the way back for an excellent pizza in an Ortigian restaurant, only ruined by the fact that we over-ordered and had to send half of it back because we were so full.

Anyone know how to say "The eyes are bigger than the stomach" in Italian?

A week in Sicily: Not a trip to Etna, no honking and definitely no Kangaroos!

[Note - a few photos have been added to other holiday entries, should anyone care]

After a my stressy day, and the lessons learned from it, and our prayers being answered, the Thursday was much easier.

The plan was to go to Etna, but this demanded all our energy for a long drive and some serious walking, so when we woke up feeling pretty exhausted and slightly unwell (nothing serious - just too much strong coffee we think!) we decided that we'd have a restful day, and head up Etna on the Friday.

So, with food and relaxation foremost in our mind we decided to go shopping and to the beach. We found a little grocers shop in Noto - amazingly OPEN - and bought sandwich-making stuff an a good old English newspaper.

With rations to hand we then made our way to the Vendicari Nature Reserve and the beach.

We made this journey via Eloro - an archaeological site. But this was sadly closed. In fact, it looked very closed, completely deserted and quite scruffy and litter-strewn. A shame really as their may otherwise have been some good history on show.

Vendicari was excellent. 3 Euros of parking got us a good quiet beach, and safe swimming.

Now, we sensed that Italians weren't very good with following rules, so the important rules for the nature reserve were made quite explicit on a number of large signs. One rule in particular caught our eye; we were warned that "E' vietato introdurre specie animali o vegetali estranee alla fauna e alla flora tipiche della zona." (Something along the lines of "It's forbidden to introduce foreign animal or plant species to the flora and fauna of the reserve")...complete with an amusing graphic showing us what might constitute breach of this rule:



We had a nice few hours on the beach, complete with home-made sandwiches. A bit of cloud and wind came and went and we left in the early afternoon. We headed to the nearby town of Lido di Noto (an uninteresting little place on the seafront) for a drink. We parked up, grabbed a couple of bottles of Coke (no cafe's sadly) and then...it absolutely chucked it down with rain.

Coke...in the car...on sea front. It could have been Bognor, or Scarborough, but it was Lido di Noto in Sicily. Just our luck! There was plenty more evidence of the previously-mentioned lack of road drainage, and we drove our poor little Micra through the floods back to the hotel.

Boy were we glad not to be up Etna!

We chilled at hotel a little before heading to a supermarket we'd spotted for a bit more shopping and then dinner in Noto.

A much better day!

More signs

As a slight side note on driving. We mostly understood the road signs but had a couple of favourites, for which I hope the following links still work.

First this one - or one very similar to it. Anyone have any idea what this means? If my car was on fire I'd probably get out, not carry on driving it.


We saw some of these too, which we came to refer to as "No Trumpets":



All seems to be explained at this site here - oh, and it's "No Honking" apparently!

Fortunately we weren't in China where you can get both of these at once?


Another blogger has some fun Sicilian road signs too.

A week in Sicily Part 5: Bored yet? I am.

Why am I even writing this? Ho hum.

Actually, that was pretty much what I thought of the Wednesday of the holiday..."why am I here?".

I'm not very good at holidays and day 2 or three is usually pretty stressful. This was no exception.

The day started well with sunshine, the usual fantastic breakfast, and chilling out by the pool. My crisis began when we headed to Avola (the lively town we passed through the day before) for lunch. Turns out that not only does everything in Sicily close from about 12 noon until about 4pm, but most of Avola is being rebuilt. We found somewhere to park, and had we wanted the usual combination of an espresso, cigarette, and some cake, we'd have been fine, but no sandwiches for sale in this thriving town at lunchtime!

We gave up and headed back to a signposted Trattoria near a beautiful gorge called Cava Grande. The gorge was closed due to bad weather making it unsafe, and we weren't sure if the trattoria was serving food and we didn't know how to ask.

So it was back to Noto where we picked up Pizza and ice cream and satisfied our appetites.

In the meantime we've scraped the hire car's hubcaps & scratched bumper.

Back at the hotel I'm fuming, angry and frustrated. All my reasons for not liking to holiday abroad have materialised.

Sally is hugely patient - bless her. It takes me a long time to chill out but after a light dinner at the hotel I'm mostly OK.

What did we learn? That Sicily shuts down between 12 and 4 and that Avola is a rubbish place for tourists.

We pray before we sleep that tomorrow - a planned trip up Mt Etna - will be easier.

A week in Sicily Part 4: Yummy, Historic, Crazy, Stressful, Amazing, Wet, Complicated and Incorrect

Tuesday - Historic Cities

We woke feeling great and well rested to some glorious Mediterranean sun.

Breakfast in the bright and welcoming breakfast room was a delight. A proper Italian cappuccino, pastries and cakes galore, fresh fruit and a selection of cereals. My perfect morning meal. Yummy!

After filling up we started exploring, starting with a drive to the nearby town of Noto. Again, the SatNav helped us out but didn't really get us to the centre of the city and we struggled to find somewhere to park. We eventually parked up in a place that turned out to be on the outskirts of the small city, and we walked down the hill towards the centre.

Part-way down the hill we came across a very provincial town square in front of a big church. This was a classic Italian sight: old Italian men gathering in the square in rough suits and flat caps, smoking their cigarettes in whatever shade they could find, whilst talking loudly and gesticulating wildly. Perfect!

Noto, despite being very small, has some fantastic buildings and there's plenty to see. The Baroque architecture is everywhere and captivates the imagination. Well worth a visit if you're in the area.

We spent some time wondering and taking photos before ambling back to the car and heading off to the bigger city of Syracuse (aka Siracusa).

Struggling with Sandwiches in Syracuse

The journey to Syracuse not only confused the Sat Nav (some bits of road were closed or being rebuilt), but gave us our first taste of proper Sicilian driving. Turns out they are a bit crazy after all. We saw some mad overtaking manoeuvres - even from big trucks! - and they drive right up close behind you. This all not helped by the fact that visibility in the Micra was awful.

After arriving at Syracuse and fighting our way through the equally-crazy city-centre mele of cars and scooters (are there any rules of the road?), we again had problems parking - not least because we didn't have any Euro coins to put in the parking ticket machines - we only had notes!

Eventually we found a free space in a fairly dodgy looking part of town, and walked back towards the historic centre of Ortigia.

By now it was definitely lunchtime, and we wanted to grab a sandwich. This was the start of several lunchtime stresses for us. It turns out that buying cakes, cigarettes and coffee is pretty easy at any time of day, but buying a sandwich is a bit hit and miss.

We eventually found a cafe selling the sort of thing we were after. It had seats outside for an al fresco dining experience. But what did we do? The food was on display in counters inside, so did we go in, see what we wanted, then sit outside and wait for someone to take an order? Or did we buy the food inside and then take it out to eat?

Most people sitting outside seemed quite happy that there were no menus, but we were a bit baffled.

We proceeded to the counter and asked for some panini (sandwiches), and as we were being served some other people came in and started paying. We decided that the system must be to pay first, then get the food. But we still weren't sure about sitting outside.

AAAARRRGGHH!!!! This is why I hate being abroad. Doing the simplest things becomes incredibly difficult when you don't know how things work and don't have a good enough grasp of the language to be able to ask.

Eventually, I think the cafe staff worked out what we were trying to do. Gave us our sandwiches, ushered us outside and took our money once we were finished.

Wandering the Back Streets of Ortigia

Full of good wholesome Italian lunch, we then picked up our Rough Guide and went for a walk around Ortigia. Wandering backstreets is something that Sally and I always seem to end up doing. We try to follow signs and directions but almost always end on off the beaten track in foreign cities. Why doesn't everyone else end up doing this? We always seem to be alone.

It's slightly fun, but becomes a drag after a while, especially when you're trying to see the sights and you can't find them.

The Cathedral - Reverence, but at what cost?

We eventually found the Duomo (Cathedral). An AMAZING building. It's a place that has been built and re-built over the centuries, but unlike most places, you can see how it's been built over. There columns of the old greek temple on which it was built are still there to see, and you can see how the new bits of building have been overlaid, and set within these. The fairly modern facade was added after an earthquake brought down an older entrance to the building. Inside, the building was dark and quiet, huge and expansive, allowing your mind to awe and wonder.

As a Christian I have conflicting views on the nature of big churches. A place like Ortigia's Duomo brings me to a place of great reverence. These places make God big. They cost lots and took lots of effort to build. These were probably the finest buildings of their times, and they were built for the purpose of worshipping God. I find it amazing, and it makes me wish that WE could do such amazing things for God.

But I also question what God would have us do? Giving our lives, out work, our money, as offerings to God is exactly what our faith requires. But is using that wealth and effort to build a place of worship, where Christians can lock themselves away and revere the Lord the right thing? The Bible makes it clear that our God would rather have us help the poor and needy, share all we have with those in need, and bring righteousness and justice to all, than hoard our wealth within the church.

I love the huge reverence that these people had for the LORD. But wouldn't their sacrifices have been better used for God's purposes?

Spooky Catacombs

A quick ice cream (I LOVE Italian ice cream!) and we headed back to the car and out of town. It had started raining again, and large puddles has started accumulating on the roads which, oddly, don't seem to have drains. This puzzled us because when it rains in Sicily, it really buckets down!

Our next destination was the catacombs. We found this easily using the Sat NAv, and we found some parking too. We even had Euro coins to put in the machine. But...where do we pay? There were no machines!

After some deliberation, we spotted a free space by the road and parked there.

Catacombs are fascinating places. When we went to Rome we made a long trip outside the city to visit some. They are underground networks of tunnels that form a burial site for Christians. Thousands of people were buried in tombs underground in these places and they are spooky, but intriguing places that again show the great lengths that people went to in reverence of God.

One thing tha I found in both Rome and Syracuse was that the guides that took you round the catacombs were incredibly knowledgable, multi-lingual, and very helpful. Catacombs are always well worth a visit if you're near them.

Dinner in Noto - Don't Trust your Rough Guide!

We headed back to Noto for dinner via the town of Avola, which looked like a cool and thriving place. Back in Noto we still couldn't find a place to park. We drove in circles for a bit with the SAt Nav bleating out "Recalculating....recalculating..." (seems they're not so good at finding parking) then eventually we found a free space.

Wondering round Noto earlier we'd seen plenty of places to eat, but on our return they all seemed to have disappeared. Where had all the restaurants gone?

The Rough Guide we had recommended a couple of places. The first was a restaurant just off the main square. It has a load of seats outside but no one was eating there, there were no menus on show and, frankly, the place smelled of wee. So we avoided that one. Next up was a restaurant described by the Rough Guide as "the best restaurant in Noto". This was not to be the case. They weren't serving Pizza, and the food we did get was cheap and pretty poor quality.

Perhaps Noto's not such a good place to eat after all? And we'd certainly recommend using your head rather then the guide to find a good place to eat. It's not hard to work out the good places, but it is made difficult when there's no menus or prices on display - which was often the case in Sicily.

Language Complications

Over dinner we were trying to learn a bit more Italian to get us through the week. We had some phrases in the Rough Guide and an Italian-English dictionary. I somehow got distracted looking at English pronunciation. How complicated is that? How is anyone supposed to learn a language where the following groups of letters sound the same:

• t, tt, ed and bt (tea, butter, walked, doubt)
• k, c, cc, ck, ch, que (key, cool, soccer, lock, school, cheque)
• ch, tch, tu, ti (cheer, match, nature, question)
• j, ge, dge, di, du (jump, age, edge, soldier, gradual)
• f, ff, gh, ph, lf (fat, coffee, cough, physics, half)
• s, c, ps, ss, sc, st (soon, city, psychology, mess, scene, listen)
• f, s, ti, si (fishing, sure, station, tension)
• m, mm, lm, mb (sum, hammer, calm, bomb)
• r, rr, wr, rh (red, marry, wriggle, rhubard)

And that's just the consonants! Note that some letter combinations have more than one sound (e.g. ti = question, station - subtly different!)

Vowels are even worse - check out these groups:

• augh, a, oa, aw, ou, oo (caught, ball, board, draw, four, floor)
• oo, o, oe, ou, ew, ue, u (boot, move, shoe, group, flew, blue, rude)
• i, ur, er, or, ear, our (bird, burn, fern, worm, earn, journal)
• oar, e, our, or, io, er (cupboard, the, colour, actor, nation, danger)

Even the letters y, i and u can all sound the same just on their own (yet, onion, use).

Our language is BONKERS, and I have a renewed respect for anyone that tries to learn it!

Less hungry, but not hugely satisfied, we headed back to hotel for some well earned rest. We certainly had a busy first day.

A Week in Sicily Part 3: Up, up and away!

Flying Out

Part 3 and we haven't even left yet. I do waffle!!!

An alarm at 5am, a quick rise and off to AirParks Gatwick (booked as part of the package with Expedia). I'm not a connoisseur of airport parking but this seemed fine, other than their new computer system not working at first. But we dropped the car off, checked in, and got the bus to the terminal. Easy peasey.

Having checked in online the day before, we did a quick and easy bag drop. We heard others checking in and not getting seats together so it seems lots of people check in online, and it's worth doing to get the good seats.

We headed through security with it's baffling no-liquids rules and dedicated shoe X-ray system (this always seems ridiculous but who are we to argue with the security experts). Breakfast was at "eat". A quick sausage sandwich...pittifully small, far too expensive, and lacking ketchup, but just what we needed...and then off to the gate.

A very British flight

The flight was quite entertaining. British Airways crew are typically British. With a vague aloofness, slight lack of dedication to the job, dry humour and no apparent foreign language capability. It was fine.

The pilot was the funniest. Before we took off he informed us that "The engineers have now fixed the intercom but, in the airline industry we have a saying that the flight can't take off until the weight of the paperwork matches the weight of the plane". And upon landing we were welcomed to Catania Airport and blessed with the catchphrase "If you're here on business, may it be a pleasure, and if you're here for pleasure, may it be the business".

The flight was good, and the little "Deli" snack pack that we got with a salmon roll and some other goodies, was surprisingly good quality.

We arrived at Catania in sunny and warmth and sat on the plane watching our baggage being grossly mishandled by Italian airport staff before heading to arrivals.

First Impressions

Don't you find that first impressions of a foreign country are always of the loos! After a two or three hour flight you kinda need to go, and it's the first thing that you notice is different. The brand names are different, the flushes work differently, the signs are in different languages. If I was designing an airport I'd make the toilets in arrivals the most amazing place, shiny, gleaming, spotless, automated. Just to make a good first impression. Catania's loos were reasonable, but it alerted me to the fact that I really was no longer in the UK and I'd have to get used to things being a bit different.

Baggage collection was a bit slow. The Italians might throw your luggage around but they take they don't do it because they're in a hurry.

We grabbed some pizza (cheap, yummy, and needs little Italian to order) and then headed to collect our car. And guess what? IT'S BLOODY RAINING!! We've travelled 2000 miles to escape the crappy English "summer" weather. We're about as far south as you can go without leaving Europe. And it's dull, cloudy, and wet. How depressing.

Driving....getting it right!

We picked up our hire car, a little Nissan Micra with aircon, central locking, radio and all the mod cons, without needing to speak much Italian...thankfully.

We reported some un-documented scratches to a very stern Italian lady who didn't seem to care all that much. And then the fun began.

I've never driven on the continent. I'd been told lots of things about it:

• it's fine
• you'll pick it up quickly
• just follow everyone else
• watch out for roundabouts
• the biggest problem is grabbing the door handle instead of the gear stick

And most of them proved true.

Driving on the right wasn't a problem at all. Judging the width of car was hard - I'm so used to having the middle and edge of the road being the other way around, and Sally let out a few muffled "eeeks" as I drifted too far right, but generally it was OK. My biggest problem was non-roundabout junctions; turning left off main roads (must remember to stay on the right) and working out which direction traffic was coming from.

So, psyched up and ready to get it right, we headed off. Now, I'm a pretty organised person. I had a little green plastic folder with our passports, all the printed-out doucumentation for the holiday, pre-paid vouchers, maps of the airport parking and hotel, and so on. So when Sally ask "Where's the directions to the hotel?" I naturally had the answer.

"Errr...I don't have them"

So - praise the LORD (literally!) for our borrowed SatNav. A few screen-touches and we had directions to Masseria degli Ulivi. Phew! What an idiot I am.

The drive was quick and easy. The Sicilian driving didn't seem as crazy as I expected (though this was to change later in the week), and we arrived safely at our hotel. To find....oh.

It looks like it's still being built.

Masseria Degli Ulivi

You hear all these nightmare stories about people turning up to their holiday destination to find that their hotel is still a pile of bricks and a bunch of uninterested builders. So when we turned through some blank, concrete pillars, into a gravel courtyard with several diggers and some big piles of aggregates, we had to do a quick double take. "It's fine...everything's fine" we said to ourselves.

The hotel turned out to be amazing and we think they were just building some new rooms.

Set about 15 km outside the town of Noto, Masseria degli Ulivi is a converted olive farm. Simple, but charming. Not grandiose, and fairly limited in facilities, but with only 18 rooms, an excellent (if a little expensive) restaurant on site, acres of land, a tennis court and swimming pool, and no one or nothing around for miles, it's a perfect place for a quiet retreat, and to use as a base for exploring the historic south-east of Sicily. If you want a 5-star luxury experience, look elsewhere, but if you want to get away from it all and chill out, we'd highly recommend it.

But it was still cloudy and cold. Boooo.

We ignored the dullness and the lack of sunshine and took a very British dip in the cold swimming pool before wandering around the hotel grounds. Foreign places often feel like they're not quite finished and this is no exception. Bits of path were missing, and it felt like they'd not quite completed some of the work they'd planned. But this is the mediterranean way and it in no way detracted from our enjoyment - I offer it as a simple observation.

We grabbed an amazing proper Italian Cappucino and set and planned our week- there's lots to do!

The hotel dog arrived to welcome us and took a liking to my clothing. He was VERY naughty and appeared to be pretty untrained and untrainable. But he was fun to have around. Perhaps Italian phrase books should have a "dog instructions" section. I sense he didn't understand "SIT!" and "DOWN!" but I didn't know the Italian equivalents and my attempts at Italian-style arm waving and gesturing seemed to go unnoticed too.

We ate in the hotel's excellent restaurant. It was expensive for a full meal with wine but really good food. Very earthy Sicilian dishes - I had Gnocci and rabbit - and truly heavenly, but strong, local wine. Worth the money, but we probably couldn't afford to eat here all week.

We enjoyed many hours deep sleep that night!

Cycle Touring Article

This is a completely blatent note to self. But it deserves a note on why I have to make it.

I have an article on the web. I want to save a reference to it but the site isn't one I'm following with Google Reader via its RSS/Atom feed. Normally I'd spot the article on Reader and "Star" it to remind me about it being useful.

I'm sure there are tools out there that allow me to usefully save links to pages that are of interest. But what/where are they? Any tips gratefully received.

In the meantime, here's a useful article on Cycle Touring for beginners that I spotted. Cycle touring is something I've dreamed of since getting into cycling and, while it's not something I expect to be doing in the near future, I hope to give it a go one day.

Here it is then: Preparing for a Cycle Tour

A Week in Sicily Part 2: Travel

Preparation and Leaving

I mentioned before about our booking problems and needing to go on holiday from Monday to Monday.  Well, I was busy leading the music at church until about 9pm on Sunday, and our flights were leaving Gatwick at 8am.  After some deliberation, we'd booked into the Europa Hotel near Gatwick (cheap, tacky, horrible beds, but only £54 for a night!).

Sunday, then, was a day of preparation and packing.  It was a bit frantic, but we were pretty organised and managed to check in online.  I was, initially, a bit sceptical about doing this, but it's dead easy.  You log on, choose your seats, and print your boarding passes.  Then when you get to the airport you just do a bag drop and go through security.  Easy!

Packing was confusing too.  What to take?  It was going to be averaging 25 degrees, but we were planning climbing Etna, which is 3000m and the Rough Guide recommended taking winter clothes.  Do we pack hiking boots?  Day sacks?  Gloves and hats?  Heck, yeah, we've got big suitcases so chuck it all in!  In the end we were glad we did and we used and greatly needed all the above!

So, after church (my third time leading the music...which went OK, but not brilliant), packing up the guitar and music and throwing everything in the car on Sunday night, we headed for Gatwick.  The holiday had begun!

Satellite Navigation

Some good friends of ours had loaned us their SatNav system (a Garmin nuvi 310 Deluxe).   This was to be a VERY useful bit of kit, depite occasionally having some very funny ideas about how to get places.

We'd taken this on a little test run on an errand in Swindon a few days before.  I'd struggled with having the extra information to hand - where to look?  Signs?  The road markings?  The Garmin?  Aarrgh!  And it didn't seem very good at preparing you for junctions.  Imagine approaching a roundabout with three exits and three lanes.  The Garmin would say "drive...0.2 miles...then...enter roundabout".  But which lane do I get in?  By the time it said "enter roundabout...then...take...third...exit", it's too late.  So I had to do a bit of learning about combining the SatNav's guidance with signs and cues from the road.

And the trip to Gatwick was another trial, including driving some places I didn't know (it took us M4 and A329 through Bracknell and then onto the M3 before hitting the M25).  More about the Garmin later.

This route to Gatwick was pretty quick - about 1 hour 40 minutes!  The Garmin delivering us to our destination perfectly, and the Europa hotel being as awful as we remembered.

5 hours sleep then, and it's off to the airport!

A Week in Sicily: Introduction

I know I only just wrote up our last holiday.  I probably did that just after we'd booked the one that we just got back from.  So I'm determined to write up this one before we book the next.

Booking Problems

I'm not good at booking holidays anyway, but we were, for various reasons, constrained to going Monday to Monday this time, which greatly reduced our options and added to my stress levels.

The search process in brief was:

1. The aim was to go somewhere both sunny and interesting.
2. We were reluctant to use agents, but Thompson were excellent and gave us some pointers.  Thomas Cook weren't so helpful, but tried hard.
3. We considered various places: Malta, Sicily, Bulgaria in particular.  But our date constraints made finding flights at decent times very hard.  Who are these people that check in at 4am for 6am flights?  And who's flying the planes at that time of morning?  Weird.
4. We did lots of looking online too, but trying hard to get an all-in-one package.

In the end we booked a Flight/Car/Hotel online with Expedia.  It was a bit above our budget but we really wanted to go to Sicily and had exhausted pretty much all other options.

The package would have been cheaper had we booked with Alitalia, but we found out about their looming bankruptcy and paid over-the-odds to fly British Airways.  This had other advantages, such as being a direct flight, and departing at the more sensible hour of 8am.  Thanks to my dad for pointing out Alitalia's troubles as we were about to head home and click the "Buy this holiday" button!!

What we got

A little more detail...

We flew BA direct to Catania/Fontarossa Airport on the East Coast of Sicily, then hired a small car, and headed south towards the ancient town of Syracuse.

Our hotel - the simple, charming, out-in-the-country retreat of Masseria Degli Ulivi - was located just outside the nearby town of Noto - itself a beautiful and historic place worth exploring (and one of the highlights of the holiday, if I might say so).

We were there for a week, driving round, exploring the Eastern side of the island, sampling the food and wine, and relaxing poolside and on the beach.

It was a great, relaxing break.

The Highlights

There will be more about the holiday posted later, but if you don't want the detail, here's the stuff that you really should know if you want to know what we got up to, or if you fancy a trip to Sicily yourself.

• The Hotel, mentioned above, is a great place to chill out and explore the island - just watch out for the naughty puppy on site!
• Sicily is a very rural and traditional place - at least, the Eastern Coast is.  This means that everything shuts from about noon until about 4pm.  So MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A LUNCH PLAN.  I had a very stressful day driving around trying to find lunch with only a minimal grasp of the language.  It was not fun.
• In fact, the hotel didn't offer lunch, so we were out and about most days.  The best way is to find a grocery or supermarket and get some supplies and make your own lunch.  Milano Salami is fantastic!  Don't go for the sliced bread...yuk!
• We borrowed a Sat Nav system with European mapping from a friend.  This was hugely helpful and saved us hours of time, lots of faff, and probably lots of arguments too.  But, as always, use wisely!  They do get funny ideas about where to go sometimes.  If you think you need to stick to the main road, then sitck to it!
• Sicilians are lunatic drivers with little regard for the road.  Pay attention, drive with confidence, and give them a wide berth and you'll a) be fine b) witness some crazy overtaking and turning first hand!
• Driving on the continent for the first time wasn't so hard, though turning at junctions was often confusing.  Having the car layout the other way around was probably more taxing for my head than the driving.
• Things that must be done:  1) Climb Mt Etna (more detail on this later) 2) Visit Pantalica 3) Explore Syracuse on foot
• Food is generally good to excellent and you get what you pay for.  Coffee is awesome!  Local wine is also pretty incredible, but watch out - it's strong too!
• Don't take any kangaroos with you.   You'll have to read on to find out why! ;-)

Pre-holiday Cycling News

There's a few little notes I wanted to make about cycling before I left for Sicily.  Better late than never!

An Almost-Accident

The week before we left for holiday I nearly had a nasty accident.  There's a bit of my ride to work where I head downhill on a cycle path which then meets the corner of a road (if you're really interested it's here on the corner of Affleck Close).  There's not much traffic on this road and I'm always careful descending the shared cycle-pedestrian path because there are sometimes other pedestrians and cyclists.  But once I've hit the road I'm generally pulling away pretty quickly.

On this particular day, a woman in a car was heading towards me (east, if you're looking at the map), and she decided to turn right (south), seemingly without seeing me.

I don't want to relate this story just to have a go at the woman - though I should add that I was wearing my long-sleeved, flourescent yellow waterproof jacket, it was morning daylight, and I was QUITE visible thank you very much - no, these things happen.

What was interesting was the reactions.

1. The woman's reaction in the car was to stop.  When actually, the best thing she could have done was accelerate away as quickly as possible and get out of my way.
2. My brain quite quickly made up its mind that I might not stop in time and I was fully prepared, not for a big crash, but to gently tumble into the side of the car.
3. Fuzzy (my bike, for those not yet in the know), even with brakes really-hard on, refused to be thrown sideways into a skid.  He just wants to keep moving forwards.  I did just about managed to lock up the rear wheel but it's a LOT of effort.
4. We did manage to avoid each other - but the womans face said "What are you doing???".  Indeed.

Yes, accidents happen.  This one, fortunately, did not.  But I was left with a thumping heart and the feeling that, in an emergency, your brain can process a huge amount of information incredibly quickly.

And sometimes that's a very good thing!

Strains, Chains and Velomobiles

Actually nothing to do with chains, but it sounded good and pedals doesn't really rhyme with much.

Well, OK, it rhymes with "medals" but that's about all.

Anyway, during my PB 35 mile ride to Cholsey a few weeks ago I was fighting against an odd pain in the right side of my stomach.

After this ride I had quite persistent niggles with my right hamstring and in my back.

I wasn't sure if these were related.  I'm still not.  But it did get me doing some thinking about my riding position.

Position is all important on a bike because the repetetive, strenuous motion amplifies any minor problem.

I looked at a few things.

• Was I pedalling equally with both legs? No.  So let's do some work on balancing that out.
• Is my saddle straight?  Yes, and it's at a good height too.  But I'm not sure I'm sat on it straight.  Maybe I sag to one side a little?  Have to think about my position there too.
• What about my feet?  Well, my cleats (the clips on the bottom of cycling shoes that clip into "clipless" pedals), weren't in the same position on both feet - so I've adjusted them, and replaced the cleats at the same time.
  

Will all this make a difference?  It's hard to say right now as I've not done a longer ride for a while.  It will be interesting to see how things are now.

Of course, in the background the stretching and strength work that I don't do enough of will have to continue too, and as the nights draw in perhaps I'll get more opportunity to do that.  Then, come next spring, I'll be REALLY fit and ready to go!

Maybe.