Life's about experiences. These are mine.
It never ceases to amaze me how, after over 35 years living in Reading, I am discovering new things about it. In this case, I wasn’t certain that I wanted to highlight this publicly, as it’s a perfect spot, and I don’t want others to find it! To the Dump The Fobney Island Wetland Nature …
Continue reading “Fobney Island Wetland Nature Reserve, Reading”
I’ll get the jokes out of the way at the beginning. I was concerned that today’s trip would be a load of rubbish and a waste of time. There, now we can move on. Our u3a Out and About group had considered a trip to a waste centre in Oxfordshire but trips around there were …
As the weather is taking a break from being in the 30s, we decided to get in another leg of the Thames Path. Because of our desire to only use public transport wherever possible, we chose to only go as far as Eynsham today. This is because to get home (and therefore back to the …
Continue reading “Thames Path – Day Seventeen – Oxford to Eynsham”
I forget how I came across Longplayer but I was fascinated by its intersection between two of my interests: music and technology. Conceived by Pogues member Jem Finer for the turn of the millennium, Longplayer is a composition that plays for 1,000 years without repeats. It can be played by a computer or “live” using …
Reading the latest Martin ‘Money Saving Expert’ Lewis email last week it reminded me that Amazon do behind the scenes tours of their fulfilment centres, something that I’d had on my to do list for a while. Why was Lewis highlighting it? Because it is free to attend. In the week between my booking and …
Another leg of the Thames Path checked off ✓. This time an 8.5 mile quiet and rural stretch bookended by Abingdon town and the city of Oxford. Here One Minute, Gone the Next For the first time since we started walking the path, we were joined by some friends on this stretch. They kindly offered …
Continue reading “Thames Path – Day Sixteen – Abingdon to Oxford”
It’s been a long time since we have visited The Eden Project – 25 years in fact. We last visited the year that it opened and I think that it is fair to say that it has changed enormously in that time. No longer is it obvious that this was once a clay pit, as …
Continue reading “St Austell 2026 – Day Three – The Eden Project”
Globally, the total combined spending on weather forecasting is apparently well over $10 to $15 billion annually. That’s an enormous amount of money and, given that several billion of that comes from public funds, I don’t think it’s offering terribly good value for money. Take today for example – the forecast said overcast but no …
Continue reading “St Austell 2026 – Day Two – The Lost Gardens of Heligan”
When we told friends that we planned to visit St Austell in Cornwall for a break they were very quick to point out that it was known as St Awfull (gleefully highlighted by the Daily Mail, which I refuse to link to). That when they’d visited they had managed to book themselves into a tired …
Continue reading “St Austell 2026 – Day One – Charlestown”
I was in the loft clearing out some other stuff when I came across some of my old diaries. There were about 12 in total – a small number of pocket diaries and about ten journals. These spanned the period from the early 1980’s right up to the 2000’s. Some were complete and others had …