Pyro's Yard v2.0

This is how it feels I've been meaning to write this up for a couple of weeks but hadn't got round to it. In all the hubbub since I got back, I've been gradually filtering through some of the stuff that I worked on and trying to process all the learning in amongst the fun. A bit like my camera taking a long time to process a long-exposure shot, it's taken me a while. So, I went out to the Alps for a couple of weeks. It's not only the first time I had a 'holiday' holiday (as opposed to a working-on-events holiday) in a good few years, it's the first time I'd been away for a prolonged bout of boating in even longer. We headed out for the first two weeks in June, which also meant that, because of event work over most weekends, it was the first time I'd been in a boat in a couple of months. Plus, I was paddling with a bunch of (as I've phrased it before) 'gung-ho kiddies' all a good ten years my junior. Yes, I'm the old man of

After a fitful nights sleep, punctuated by one of our room's occupants getting up to go to the loo, one snoring, one farting and one making the bunk creak every time he rolled over, we got up. At this juncture I should probably point out that we were sharing a 3-bed family room, and let you try and figure out to whom each of those four categories applies. YHA breakfasts are as they were way back when I worked in the YHA - basic, stodgy, cheap and very much worth it. Geoffrey and I split the last bit of Black Pudding, since apparently the lady booking the breakfasts at reception had got the numbers a bit wrong. Ross got extra veggie sausage, and declined the black pudding - strange that. And there was plenty of cereals and toast available to plug the gaps around the fryup, if so required. We so required, plugged said gaps, donned our best (or second-best) lycra and got the bikes ready for the off. Before we offed, we also donned our best waterproofs, since the morning was, frankl

It's been a good while since I did anything in the way of long-haul cycling. There's been a fair bit of commuting to work, but that's only a handful of miles each way. There's been a few short MTB rides over the winter. Aside from that, the last time I did any serious riding was the 12hrs of Exposure  and since then, I've just been bimbling. So when Dad came out with the plan to ride the Hadrian's Cycleway, it seemed like something that would probably kill me. The full route is 174 miles, Ravenglass to South Shields (or Glannaventa to Arbeia, if you're pretending to be a Roman) , but with only a weekend we decided Bowness-on-Solway (Maia) was the better start point. Apparently, this is the actual western end of Hadrian's Wall itself, and the rest down to Ravenglass an extension, the Western Sea Defence, plus for our purposes, it brought the first distance estimate to a nice round 100 miles. And cleverly remembering the old adage that 'misery loves

It's been a funny old road for the last couple of years... or a funny old river, maybe. In my little journey to get back into kayaking properly I've been through a little bit of a revolution, a couple of different boats, one coaching course and an awful lot of thinking and analysis. And after the weekend just gone, I think I'm starting to get somewhere. Like they always say in addiction counselling, admitting you have a problem is the first step, and this post on UK Rivers was that first step for me. It took me a long time to write, a lot of thinking, a lot of deliberating as to whether I should post it or not, but like an addict taking the same first step, I stuck it and got a wonderfully positive response. Some great advice from top-level coaches, some "you are not alone" comments from other 'mortal' boaters, and a good set of thoughts and ideas from everyone. One quote in the UK Rivers topic stood out: "Consider your motivation for taking par