A Simple Life of Luxury

Twin Lens Canon 450D

I’ve been toying with the idea of a new camera or two for a while now. My existing camera is good, a Panasonic DMC LZ10 but it isn’t quite perfect. When I bought it I was after the best of both world, the easy an portability of a compact and the versatility of an SLR. At the time it was fine, a good zoom lens, plenty of exposure control and settings to play with all in one neat body.

But, it is out of date now and doesn’t have a particualrly high megapixel rating and in some ways it was always a bit of a compormise. The ‘compact’ nature meant that there wasn’t ever quite the level of conrol and sophistication you get from an SLR and to be honest it wasn’t that compact so was still quite a big camera to carry round.

So, what I want is a nice little, rugged waterproof, small compact that I can shove in my pocket or rucksack when i’m out cycling etc and a proper digital SLR so that I can get back into some proper photography. Anna was thinking of buying me the compact as a joint Xmas and birthday present but then I saw what looked like a good deal on a Canon 450D Digital SLR. I got the twin lens kit which comes with the standard 18-55mm Canon lens, a 70-300mm Tamron lens and a 4GB SDHC card. The second lens isn’t a Canon lens but the equivalent package with a canon lens was selling elsewhere for around £700 whereas this package was £540 and then you can get £50 cashback from Canon.

On top of this we got cashback by shopping via r-points and some cashback from our credit card so we actually paid around £480 for it.

Trouble is, it has already arrived, but one fifth of it is my birthday present, another fifth is my Xmas present and the remaining 3 fifths I’ve paid for. I think I’ll manage to convince Anna that I’ve paid for the camera and smaller lens so I can start playing with it now and she has bought the second lens which I’ll get for my birthday / Xmas.

I shall have to think of some photo assignments to go on now.

Hiding gecoaches for others to find can be rewarding. It can also be quite time-consuming. First you have to identify a suitable hiding place, then you have to create the cache itself, hide it, write a description and possible devise a puzzle for it and then create the listgin on the geocaching.com website and finally get it approved by a Grounspeak Reviewer. After that you have to maintain the cache thoughout its liftime.

So, it is always good when people write nice things about your cache in their logs and a recent log on my ‘Watery Wales 1‘ series of caches by ’scrap happy annie’ made it all worthwhile.

The log said:

Now this is all what geocaching is about - bringing us to beautiful areas we would never have known about.

Thank you very much for this wonderful series of caches - I was in awe at all 4 of them.

This was our first find - we did it in a heavy mist and did not realise the lake was there until my husband nearly fell into it! It gave him a bit of a shock and me a bit of a laugh. The mist cleared whilst we were signing the log - what a lovely place.

and

Left a great container geocoin here because I am so impressed with this fantastic series of caches - well done to forcesofnature for concieving such a brilliant set of geocaches.

Thanks Scrap Happy Annie…. Glad you enjoyed them.

I haven’t been for a walk in the hills for ages so decided to head off to the north side of Cadair Idris on Saturday for a walk and to do some geocaches.

I parked at Ty Nant and walked back along the road a little way to the Gwernan Hotel and the start of the Foxes path. It was pretty wet and as soon as I started gaining some height the clouds smothered me and visibility was pretty low. It wasn’t in any rush and I’d never been up this path before so I took my time and took in what little I could see of my surroundings. After about 45 minutes I reached the stream that was coming from Goat Lake (Llyn Gafr) only to find that it was a raging torrent. There was no easy way across so I had no choice but to wade through with water up to my thighs.

The first geocache of the day was nearby (Cadair Idris - Goat Lake) and I found it easily before heading on up a steeper climb towards Llyn y Gadair and a second gecoache (Cadair Idris - Llyn y Gadair). Once again there was another very wet river crossing just before the cache… I was being made to work hard for my caches today.

From here, rather than continue up into the gloom and on towards the summit I followed the edge of the lake around and then headed off west towards the Pony Path along the foot of Cyfrwy. On this fairly indistinct path I met a couple of walkers coming the other way who were a little disorientated so I put them back on track and then headed off towards the Pony Path.

Once on the pony path I headed up again towards a third cache (Kadair Kats) and then further up the path towards a fourth cache (Cadair Kites) which I didn’t manage to find.

The weather was still pretty bad so I turned back and headed back down the Pony Path to the car after a fairly short but nice walk in the hills. I may not have been able to see much and I did get very wet but that is all part of the fun of walking in the hills.

Mountain Stream Cadair Idris

Mountain Stream Cadair Idris

Mist and Murk at the bottom of Cadair Idris

Those who know me or read this blog regularly will know that I fund my ‘Simple Life of Luxury’ as a freelance website designer which in many ways allows me to get my work-life balance just right. Although, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog there are pros and cons to working from home and things don’t always work out how they should.

Being self-employed gives me the flexibility to work when I want to and get out an enjoy my surroundings at other times. Being my own boss also (to certain extent) allows me to choose what I do and when I do it. It does of course mean that I am almost always working and find it hard to switch off, that there is no one to work with on problems and such like. There is also the worry (especially in these uncertain economic times) that there is no guaranteed income, no holiday pay and no sick pay. If I’m not working then I’m not getting paid.

So, when a part-time job was advertised recently for a website editor working on a project based at Aberystwyth University I thought it looked like an ideal opportunity to add a little security to my cashflow and work alongside others. I applied for the job, got invited to interview and soon after was offered the job.

I started earlier this week and have yet to settle in fully but the team I’m working alongside seem good, the project itself is interesting and hopefully the promise of a guaranteed pay-cheque at the end of each month will take the pressure off a little. This should allow me to pick and choose projects for Pixelwave Web Design a little more allowing me to enjoy my ‘Simple life of Luxury’ without worrying too much about work. An added advantage is that I’ll be working a couple of days at the university so I’ll be able to meet Anna for lunch which will be nice.

The overall plan is to get the best of both worlds. Some security and the chance to work with others from the part-time job at the university and the flexibility and freedom of being your own boss by continuing to run Pixelwave Web Design.. Lets hope it works out like that!

As I mentioned in my last blog post we spent the day on the other side of the Dyfi estuary on Saturday as Morgan wanted to go out an take some photos. he took quite a few and once again some of them were pretty good.. Although he does seem to enjoy taking photos of his own feet and taking photos from a moving car!

It may sound odd but some of the shots from the moving car actually produce some interesting photos. Maybe he is on to something there.

Autumn from a moving car

Lobster pots in Aberdovey

Feet

Anna’s car has decided to die on us… Perfect timing as this has already been an expensive few weeks! First we’re having some work done on the house which will cost quite a bit, we’ve bought some new household appliances too I lost around £750 worth of windsurfing kit at sea and we booked a snow-boarding holiday for the New year, Christmas is coming, my car needed a new battery and its MOT and tax is due and now Anna needs a new car!

Oh well, no choice but to head off an buy her one, so yesterday we drove around to Dyfi Yard Repairs on the other side of the River Dyfi to see if they had anything suitable. It didn’t take too long and after a quick test drive of a dinky little red Nissan Micra. It seemed fine for our needs, economical, small but perfectly formed, so that was that, we put a deposit on it and will hopefully collect it later this week.

We then headed into Aberdovey for some lunch and a little walk so that Morgan could take some photos as he is quite into photography at the moment. I’ll probably post some of his photos later, but for now here are a couple I took.

Aberdovey in Autumn

Lobster Pots

I had a nice ride around the ClimachX trail just north of Machynlleth on Monday. Unfortunately on the first bit of singletrack a rock flicked up and snapped the little gear cable guide that runs under the bottom bracket shell on my bike so the rear gears stopped working.

Once we had figured out what had happened I ended up pulling the cable tight so that I was in the largest rear cog and then fixing it there by trapping the cable under the bottle bosses on the bottom of the downtube. This meant I was unable to change gear but at least I was in a gear that was usable for the rest of the trail.

I managed to complete the trail like that in perfect sunny, autumnal conditions and have now got hold of a spare cable guide and fitted it to the bike. While I was at it I changed the gear cables too and hopefully everything is back up and running ready for tonights night ride.

This mountain-biking malarky could be almost as expensive as windsurfing!

It does go to show though how important it can be to know a little about bike maintenance and repairs. On this occasion if I hadn’t it wouldn’t have mattered as I wasn’t far from the car but things like this could happen miles from anywhere without any help so it is always good to know how to repair common problems and also to have an idea how to ‘bodge’ things should something more unexpected happen. You can’t fix everything out on the trail but in many circumstances you can at least put things back together enough to get you home.

If you don’t know how to do such things then check out the books in the Amazon widget on this post and add them to your Xmas list!

I had a busy day on Saturday. A nice early start, an hour or so of work and then into the car for the drive to Bristol. Breakfast at MacDonlads and then met up with Jay’s ’stag party’ for a korning of activities.

First up was Quad biking which was fun. Muddy and slippery but I soon got the hang of it and was flying around the trail. It was a shame they didn’t organise any races or anything and that the course was so narrow which prevented over-taking in most places, but it was still fun.

Next up was pilot-buggy racing which was even wetter and even muddier but once again I soon got the hang of it and was negotiating the course pretty well. Again though there were only two of us out at a time and no-overtaking was allowed which was a shame.

After that we lounged around for the afternoon before heading into town. The others were all planning a night at a comedy club but as I was driving and had already spent far too much money I decided that after meeting in the pub it was probably easiest to make the long drive home. My eyes were pretty sore from all the mud though and the weather was atrocious until Hereford so it wasn’t the most relaxing drive home but it did at least mean I was home and sleeping in my own bed.

All in all a good day getting wet and muddy as can be seen from the photos. Believe it or not, I had already washed once at this point!!

Richie and Brad in fetching overalls!

Richie, Brad, David, Chris, Me and Jay

Me, Richie, Brad, David, Chirs, Andy and Jay