Thursday 17 April 2008

Weather Update for the weekend

The official Lake District National Park Authority website gives a favourable forecast for this weekend, with the best sunshine on the Western fells, which suits us. I know it's tempting fate, but I'm hoping we have clear weather, even if that means it's cold. Here's a webcam image from today looking at Scafell Pike, very close to where we'll be:

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Cor, time flies!

Cor, it's been nearly a week since I updated this, sorry!

What have we been upto? Well, on Saturday we had a mini pub crawl, we met up with Anton, Becca, Eve, Simon and Arong in Henley, in what feels like the world's biggest pub, the Catherine Wheel. It's a Weatherspoons pub, but that just meant the beer was cheap and good, and the food was OK too.
With two small kids in tow, it's amazing how much room you need, we occupied a table you would normally fit ten people around.
After Henley it was off to Marlow, Lara and I met up with Chris in a pub to watch the Newcastle v Portsmouth game (Lara was glued to it, honest) while Olga did some shopping.
In the evening we finally got round to watching all 192 minutes of Dr Zhivago. It really was very good, and even after a few drinks I was able to follow the story, and far more importantly enjoy the quality of the picture on the screen because we were using our new Sony upscaling DVD player for the first time, which claims to mean that we can watch regular DVDs in High Definition on our plasma screen. It certainly looked very sharp.

Sunday was Lizzie's first birthday, so we packed the car up with Lara and all her gear and headed off to Portishead. Lizzie had a lot of presents to open, but at first seemed more interested in climbing into Lara's car seat, but once that was moved out of the way, and some assistance was given getting the unwrapping underway, the fun started. There certainly was a houseful for the afternoon, and we enjoyed the mix of kid's & adult's refreshments - you've not lived till you've had a cornflake cake washed down with wine. Poor Olga had volunteered to drive home in the dark and through heavy rain for some way along the M4. If it had flooded she would have been OK though, we'd stopped off en-route to pick up her buoyancy aid (it's not a life jacket!) in Bristol. Another eBay purchase!

Monday saw the arrival of Lara's life jacket, and she didn't even sulk too much when she tried it on, it looks very smart and I'll post a photo up when I remember to take one, although perhaps I should wait until we're actually on the river for that? The way the weather looks that might be sometime in July! The registration for the boat arrived as well, so it's only the weather (and my lack of buoyancy aid) that's stopping us casting off. I babysat in the afternoon while Olga went to the dentist and Lara and I went for a nice walk (or should they call it a "push"?) in her pram; she's now big enough to go out in the pushchair element of the Quinny "travel system" we've got, and in typical fashion she was awake for the whole walk apart from the last 100 metres before we got home. She didn't cry though, which was a result given the noise she made while I was putting her in the pushchair at home! I was toying with the idea of killing two birds, so to speak, by taking Mishka out too, but I really should learn to walk before I can run, so he stayed at home.
In the evening we watched some of the extras from the Dr Zhivago DVD - does anyone watch those "special features"? You should, they can be very interesting! I've got loads of blockbusters that have hours of extra stuff I've not watched, I should make an effort to watch them.

Yesterday was a much quieter day, Olga took Lara to check out the nursery at the bottom of our road. Did you know you still have to pay full price for the nursery place even when you go away on holiday? Apparently that's normal practise and a disgrace! I appreciate you're paying to hold that place for your child, but it's hardly costing the nursery anything while you're child's not there and there should be a reduced rate for when you're away on holiday for two weeks. There, rant over!
I've been planning what we might do when we get to the Lakes on Sunday, although of course it's weather dependent! Yesterday the forecast was for light showers at the weekend, and indeed there was talk of snow in Northern England on high ground in the middle of this week, but today the forecast has changed to light cloud with no rain. Pah, famous last words. If the weather is OK I'd like for us to stroll up Scafell & Scafell Pike (one of them is England's highest peak, I'm sure Anton will tell me which one). With the dog & Lara. Hmm, what was I saying earlier about not running before I can walk? How hard can it be?!

Oh, just about the least interesting fact for Tuesday is that I put my sleeping bag in the wash. I should just buy a new one, but this is the sleeping bag I used when Rob & I did our geological mapping for our degrees in the summer of 1994 and I just can't bring myself to throw it away. Until now I don't recall ever bringing myself to put it in the washing machine either, so unless Mum remembers washing it, I'm pretty sure it's had its first clean. 14 years, not bad, even for me.

Today's big news is Mishka's dog pack has arrived from the States, so we'll have some fun with him tonight trying it on, filling it with cans of lager and bottles of wine and seeing if he'll deliver them to us. Again, I'll post a photo later.

So you're up to date now, and I've passed another half hour of a quiet day at work. Now I can work on my packing list for the weekend....