So, with reference to this post, we fucking went. Despite my misgivings, it actually turned out to be fairly painless, even with a severe weather warning over two of our days of cycling. It would seem that we’re part of a growing trend; this article in the Guardian says that “Britons spent £120 million on dedicated cycling holidays in 2006.” I’ll definitely not argue with the comment about it being an expensive game; the trip turned into a tour of the B&Bs and hotels (and of course their cooked breakfasts) of Southern England.

We took the train to Reading on the Friday night, and stayed in the Beech House Hotel (enormous tables at breakfast! Kyla and I were fully one third of a mile apart, separated by an acre of fried food.) On the Saturday we followed the National Cycle Network Route 23 down to Basingstoke, then headed onwards into the Test Valley, finishing in Stockbridge.  Stockbridge is as picture-postcard-pretty as most of the Cotswold villages I’ve visited, though don’t be fooled by the pubs claiming to have “riverside gardens” - there are many small tributaries of the Test running through the town, so “ditchside” might be more accurate. We stayed in the Three Cups, which was very nice, though the breakfast room was built for people no taller than 5′.

The following morning we cycled to Salisbury, partially along a National Byway.  The National Byways say that they are open to all traffic, however I think it’s fair to say that the section we travelled was more aimed at mountain bikes than the tourers we were riding.  Potentially we could have found this out if we’d bought the information packs available from their website, but after buying a load of OS maps we didn’t feel like spending any more, so risked it.

From Salisbury we cycled to Shaftesbury, which turns out to be at the top of a large hill, and stayed the night at La Fleur de Lys.  This was definitely the winner out of all the places we stayed at: free internet access in the room, which also came with a cafetiere to make proper coffee, home-made biscuits and a sofa to slob out on.

It was in Shaftesbury that we found out about the severe weather warning that the met office had issued for the South West of England.  We decided not to risk it, and the next day cycled to Crewkerne, where we took a train to Exeter; if the holiday was going to be rained off, we may as well be stuck in a big town where there might be something to do.  We stayed in the Hotel Barcelona, which is in a Grade II listed building that was once a hospital, and uses this as a theme for some of its decoration.  They were even having a “green” promotion, so we got 10% off the price of our room for arriving by bike.

The weather had calmed down by lunchtime, so we headed a short distance out onto Dartmoor, to South Zeal, where we stayed at the Oxenham Arms.  The next day we headed up to Okehampton so that we could join the Granite Way, which is part of the National Cycle Network’s route 27.  From there we headed South along the edge of Dartmoor to Lydford, then onwards to Tavistock.  Contrary to what people will tell you about Tavistock, it isn’t worth visiting.  Don’t even slow down.  Certainly don’t stay the night.

Leaving Tavistock, we headed a short distance West, over the county border and into Cornwall; destination achieved!  It took us six days to cycle two hundred miles, though we did 130 of that in the first three days.  All told, it was quite enjoyable, despite the iffy weather, and I now have thighs of steel.  Of course all this exercise now entitles me to spend the next month on the sofa watching my muscles atophise, so don’t think that there’ll be any long-term health benefit.

Kyla and I went for another bike ride on Saturday. We’d read in the February issue of Beer (CAMRA’s monthly paper) about a 30 mile loop that around a few Hertfordshire and Essex villages that starts from Royston, so we thought we’d go for that. Beer recommended taking the train to the start, but because we’re a big gung-ho, we thought we’d cycle there instead, adding a journey of about 20 miles onto our day.

We cycled to Great Chishill from Cambridge following this route, which was only really of note because we finally got to cycle along the stripy cycle lane that runs alongside the train tracks south of town. After lunch at the Pheasant we headed off around the suggested route; from Great Chishill we went to Arkesden, though we skipped the Axe & Compasses (too soon after lunch), passed Clavering and the Fox and Hounds. We meant to stop in Brent Pelham at the Black Horse, but cocked up and ended up heading onward to Great Hormead and the Three Tuns. Which turned out to shut at 3pm, so we moved on again but only as far as Hare Street and the Beehive, which is the location used to film the scene where Arthur and Ford grab a lunchtime pint before the destruction of Earth in the recent Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film. The place looked like it had recently had the interior stripped and replaced; I guess the film payed well. At this point there was talk of doing more cycling, perhaps even taking a week off and cycling to my Dad’s place in Cornwall in the summer. However, the final ten miles to Royston train station proved leg-buggeringly tortuous. I’m going to request that the next iteration of Google Maps puts the contour lines on, because there’s a surprisingly large hill just east of Royston that proved our undoing.

Out of a possible seven pubs we only actually stopped at two, so I think this is a route we’re going to have to come back and do properly sometime.

The one downside to the Acuphuncture gig on the 2nd was that I was leaving (on a jet plane, no less) for France from Gatwick airport at 7AM the following morning. Made it to bed at 1AM, then up at 2.40 and off we went! Kyla and I were in La Plagne this time, with a big bunch of friends. (Never mention that you’re going skiing - even distant acquaintances will latch themselves onto your holiday, and suddenly you’re booking and organising 15 people… fortunately I managed to duck any responsibility for planning this time.) The holiday was with Skiworld, who were… ok. The flights were delayed both ways, and Lyon airport really isn’t suited to the arrival of several hundred people, so getting there and back was a drag.  The delay on the way back was alleviated by an impromptu game of “Passport Top Trumps,” followed by opening a book on how late we’d leave (winning answer: 1 hour 20 minutes). Still, the chalet was pleasant enough (apart from the comedically small hot water tank for our basement room, which ran out quicker than loo roll at a fig-eating contest.) The weather was good on the whole, and Kyla and I now finish our third skiing holiday with a skill level of Not Shit. (In Elite terms, I’d say we’re Average.) We even took time out to chuck ourselves off the mountain not attached to sticks: we went parapenting (paragliding) off the top of Grande Rochette, which was good, albeit slightly incompatible with the raging hangover from the pubcrawl the previous night.

If you’re really bored, you can check out our holiday snaps here.

Miss me? I’ve been on honeymoon in Thailand for a couple of weeks. Yes, honeymoon. But more on that later.  Despite it being a) rainy season and b) coup d’etat season, Kyla and I still went ahead with our holiday.  Actually it turned out fine: the rain did appear most days for an hour or so each afternoon, but as the temperature was above 30 degrees it was actually quite welcome.  We didn’t see any evidence of the coup (quite disappointing, I was looking forward to getting my photo with a tank), but given that we bypassed Bangkok when we arrived, heading straight down to Koh Samui, that is hardly surprising: Samui doesn’t have much law and order at the best of times, being mainly concerned with seperating tourists from their cash.

We stayed in two different places on Samui: Choeng Mon, which is a fairly relaxed little village on the North East coast, then Chaweng, which is significantly more “Yarmouth”.   Actually, “Camden-on-Sea” might be a  better description, due to the number of people trying to sell you tat.

After a week or so on Samui, we headed North to Chiang Mai.  Kyla and I were surprised to find that going North in any country seems to have the same effect: the local food immediately changed to more meaty broths incorporating distressing amounts of liver.  I was waiting for someone to offer me a cup of tea and a bit of Lancashire hot pot.  The holiday took a turn for the cultural at this point; we wandered around various temples, went hiking in the jungle and visited a few hill tribe villages (mostly a highly-choreographed tourist “experience”).

We finished off in Bangkok for a couple of days. The idea behind this ordering of destinations was a gradual increase in stress levels, from quiet beach to busier beach to small town to megalopolis wig-out.  In the latter role, Bangkok did not disappoint.  Up until that point we’d laughed at the insane recklessness of the taxi and tuk-tuk drivers, but in Bangkok we finally found someone who seemed hell-bent on finding out whether or not the Buddhist idea of reincarnation is true.

Still, I’m back now.  Normal service will resume once I’ve shaken this jet-lag.

With facial hair like this, how can anything he do fail?

I went punting on Saturday as part of the celebrations for a friend’s 30t birthday party. At one point we were passed by a flock of geese, who were honking at each other as loudly as they could and occasionally doing forward rolls, waving their feet in the air as they spun in the water.  It looked like nothing so much as a goose stag do: the lads out on the town causing a rucus.

Unusual.

Cambridge’s summer event, the Big Day Out, rolls around again. This time, however, the opening act was Alex Harris and his band, now known as the New Dynamics.  I did have a momentary feeling of “Hey, that could have been me up on the big stage,” but half way through the set they played a song where Ian, their bassist, took lead vocals.  For starters, he can sing, and for seconds, he can sing and play simultaneously, two things that I’m very bad at doing.  I stupidly left the house without applying any suncream, and hence now sport my usual summertime blushing lobster look.  Ah well, pretty soon it’ll all peel off and I’ll go back to my normal hue: pallid scientist.

I spent the weekend down in Kent ushering at a friend’s wedding. (Ushering is great: all the comedy suit action, none of the speech-related stress. So far I have ushered for six different friends’ weddings and been best man at exactly zero; the main reason for this is that no-one has yet wanted to find out whether I could give a speech without saying fuck in front of all their assembled relatives. I shall be using this line in my speech at my wedding.) The ceremony and reception was at a place called Quex House, which was the home of a chap called Maj. Powell-Cotton.  The Major visited Africa a number of times in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and I will swear that he must have shot everything that he saw.  From the biggest elephant down to the smallest mammal, you can find them all in Quex house, stuffed and arranged into lifelike tableaux.  Let me assure you, it’s eerie.  He must have carried an armoury of guns of various sizes to suit the target of the moment; there is a collection of butterflies on display that I imagine the Major stalked with a weapon of Lilliputian proportions.

Drunk, in other words.

I’ve managed to pick up a cheap fretless bass: a Yamaha RBX200F. Very simple guitar with minimal features, but importantly it still has lines where the frets should be. Hopefully this will allow me to get used to the whole fretless thing yet maintain some element of tunefulness (well, as tuneful as my bass playing usually isn’t, at least). I must admit that I’m still spending a lot of time doing the “rising harmonic” trick, where you play a harmonic then press the string down onto the fretboard, where you can “push” it higher or lower in tone. Hopefully I’ll get it out of my system before I take this bass to a gig. I took both the fretless and fretted basses to a Casa rehearsal, where I played fretless for the first half. Of course after an hour or so of playing without frets, after the change-over I kept pressing down onto the frets, hence fluffing a few notes. I found it funny how quickly the different technique had become automatic.

So, now I have a suitable ax to let my Jaco pretensions run riot on. One five string and one fretless: one day I’ll buy a “real” bass.  But hey, at least I’m showing my loyalty: two Yamaha basses and two Trace Elliot amps.  I should get sponsorship, or something.

OK, I’ve mentioned the newts living in our pond. Now, despite the small size of our backgarden water feature, we’re attracting bigger visitors:

The duck picked its way around the pond a few times, then decided to get out and chase Kyla and I around the garden:

Seconds after this photo was taken, the little feathered psycho nipped me on the arm.  If life was more like a Marvel comic, I’d now have the dabbling powers of ten men.

They’re multiplying. And I may (or may not) be losing control. For all I know about garden amphibians, these little suckers could be some endangered species. They’re not very endangered in our pond, however, due to the supply of tadpoles that some unfortunate frog has helpfully provided for them.