Broadband Speed in Borth & Ynyslas

OK, time for a moan about our Broadband Speeds again!

As part of my job as a freelance website designer I’m often being called on to help people with their computers, set up e-mail accounts, sort out their broadband connections and generally teach them how to do certain things on their computers. Living in rural West Wales, many of these people live outside of Aberystwyth in little villages or in houses miles from anywhere. Because of this, conversation often turns to the speed of the broadband connections in these area and the fact that it is the people who live ‘out in the stick’ that need a decent connection more so than the people living in bigger towns.

Broadband has become an essential commodity these days, just like water or electricity and some of us are getting left behind. Mind you, most of the places I go to, however remote seem to have a better connection than I do. 2-3Mb per second is common in most places, whereas the most I can get is a 1Mb per second connection.

Bits and Bytes

When I do a speedtest (I usually use this real world checker) I get a download speed of around 900-950kbps and an upload speed of 200-230kbps.

Now, connection speeds such as this are measured in kilobites (or megabits) per second as opposed to kilobytes (or megabytes). Note the lower case ‘kb’ and ‘mb’ which denotes bits rather than ‘KB’ or ‘MB’ which denotes bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte so in real terms, my 950kbps download speed enables me to download data at approximately 120KBps. Not exactly great so it can take me a while to download videos and such like and it does sometimes mean that streaming things such as BBC iPlayer isn’t that successful.

Upload Speeds

Upload speeds are usually much slower – The ‘A’ in ADSL stands for Asymmetric meaning that the data transfer into the house is faster than the data transfer out of the house. This is usually fine as most people download more than they upload. However, I do quite a lot of uploading and recently I’ve been really pushing my upload limits.

As part of my backup strategy I’ve started using Carbonite as an offsite backup. The first thing I needed to do in order to use this was to upload all of my files to their server. Obviously I didn’t back up everything, but by the time I added all of my documents (letters, e-mails, financial records, spreadsheets, databases etc.) and all of my photos my upload queue had hit around 50GB. I have yet to add my music, movies or even the websites I’ve built to the queue as that would add another 30GB. I started the upload of the 50GB of data of December 22nd 2009 and it has been running almost continuously night and day since then. It finally finished the upload on Monday, 6 weeks or thereabouts of uploading!…. Oh for a faster broadband connection.

Windsurfing in the estuary at Ynyslas

I’ve just got back from a nice little windsurf session in the estuary here at Ynyslas. Ivor, our local katabatic wind was up to his usual tricks with a decent NE wind funbelling down through the valley at up to 25 knots. And this was  despite the fact that the forecast was for winds of 5-6 knots. Lovely.

The wind wasn’t quite up to its usual strength, but it is still pretty early in the year so I think Ovir was just warming up. Hopefully we’ll get some really good winds in the spring.

With the sun shining it was pretty warm out there as well. I had my 5/3mm wetsuit on and boots and a hood but if anything I was a little too hot whilst on the water.

There was something going on at the visitor centre car park though. Four police cras were in attendance and the car park was closed off with ‘Crime Scene’ tape all around it and a police officer at either end preventing anyone from entering it. Anyone know what’s happened?

I know that for the best light you should really take photos early in the morning or in the evening, but at this time of year at these latitudes there can even be some fairly rich light at midday.

I just wandered over to the beach for some fresh air. There wasn’t much going on or much to take photos of, but I took a few anyway and the rich golden light looked quite nice.

Lazy Beach Days

Golden Beach Light

The Snipe that I spotted in the garden yesterday didn’t return, so while I was sat there with the camera set up I decided to take a few photos of the more common birds in the garden, those that are usually overlooked.

I think it will be a little photo assignment of mine now to get a nice photo of every species that we see in the garden here. It may take a while, but there’s no hurry. Here are a couple to start me off.

Song Thrush

Blackbird

Sat in the living room yesterday morning I saw a big flock of Curlew fly over the house and land in the field behind us. I was then determined to get some photos of these and the other coastal and estuarine birds around here. After a quick visit to A&E we went for a walk across the fields and along the banks of the River Leri.

There were quite a few birds around, the flock of curlew was a few hundred strong and there were loads of Lapwing, Canada geese on the water the odd Oyster Catcher, Plovers, Pipts (I think) and some flocks of a duck that I’ve yet to identify. I’m sure someone can identify it from the photos below.

Photographing them was however next to impossible. I’ve only got a 300mm lens so need to get quite close in order to get a decent photo. Having Morgan in tow to start with didn’t help either. I think I need a longer lens, a steadier hand, a bird hide and lots lots more patience! I’m nor giving up yet though and it is quite relaxing sitting on the banks of the river waiting for birds to come to you.

We’re having a lovely winter here. Snow on the hills, frost on the dunes and some gorgeous clear moonlit nights. I should have gone for a walk in the hills for New Years Eve really as the moon was full and the snow looked lovely. It even looked quite wintry here on the coast this morning.

Early Morning Moon over Ynyslas Dunes

Morgan and I spent the afternoon in the dunes on Sunday. Yes, our noses were cold, but it was a lovely fresh, clear day and of course very quiet. We were treated to a nice sunset too.

An evening stroll

The beach is lovely in winter. Quiet, relaxed and just as pretty as in the summer.

Setting Sun

I’ve just got back from an adrenalin packed windsurf session here in Wales. I posted a session log on Forces-of-Nature as usual, but as it was such a mad session thought I’d share it here as well.

Woohoo, what a session. Went out with my big wave board and 4.5m sail and soon realised that it was a lot bigger out there than it looked from the beach!

The first run wasn’t too bad, some nice big jumps and then managed to sail out the back and have a good blast over the swell before gybing and sailing back in amongst some pretty big lumps of water. But then it just seemed to get bigger and bigger. I’m not sure why, but it was dead on high tide so that may have had something to do with it.

On about my 5th run out it was easily the biggest I’ve ever sailed in, way over mast high and not only were they huge but they had become snarling monsters that seemed intent on punishing me. At one point I had been sailing out, well powered for ages but still wasn’t out beyond the breaking waves. I was at least half a mile out to sea and still surrounded by big waves and walls of whitewater with nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide.

Then I thought it was all over as a huge waved reared up in front of me, pitched and exploded into a wall of white-water. I had no option but to hit it flat out and try to sail up and over it despite the fact that it was mast high. I hit the whitewater head on, sailed vertically up it and managed to pop out onto the top. By this staged I’d lost some momentum and it had me. I was travelling backwards on top of the white-water in its grip, pumping frantically to try to get going and not get sucked backwards over the falls. Somehow I made it, but there was another wave in front of me.

Still in the straps I pumped as hard as I could, pushed with my front foot and tried to get going again, back on the plane and the next wave was jacking up. Thankfully it hadn’t broken yet and I managed to sail up its face (I’ve never sailed so far uphill before) and just about managed to punch out over the top of it as the lip pitched forwards behind me. There were still more waves beyond it so once again it was back onto the plane and keep sailing out until eventually there was a break in the waves and I could gybe and head back to the beach.

By now I was miles out to sea and down towards the estuary. It was about now that I decided that maybe enough was (more than) enough. If I came off here and got parted from my kit or broke something then it was going to take me hours to get home. I was out on my own with no-one else around so maybe the sensible option was to sail back to the beach and call it a day.

I did of course ride some of the waves on the way back in just to show them that they may have beaten me into submission today but they hadn’t completely beaten me.

Only a short session, but a full on, scary, adenalin rush of a session!

One of the reasons we built a house here is that its such a good location for windsurfing. With 4 miles of sandy beach on our doorstep and plenty of Westerly winds and waves, the seafront from Borth to Ynyslas is perfect. But that isn’t all, we also have the more sheltered waters of the Dyfi Estuary which can be good when the wind is from the east. This is especially true in the Spring when Ivor, out local katabatic wind, comes howling down the valley.

On Friday, another combination of local effects allowed us to have a good windsurf session too. The wind was South-Westerly at about 18-25 knots. Plenty windy enough for most people, but us windsurfers like it windier so that we can use our smaller sails and boards. However, there had been loads of rain and lots of flooding inland. The Dyfi bridge was closed due to the flooding and the Dyfi River was in full flow. Coupled with an outgoing tide, this results in a very strong tidal flow through the channel in the Dyfi Estuary. The water flowing through here was moving at 10 knots or more  and flowing out to sea – in the opposite direction to the wind. This results in an effective windspeed (for someone on the water) of 28-35 knots… Perfect.

Andy and I launched from the Ynyslas side of the estuary, sailed out through the channel, walked across the point and into the channel where we spent a couple of hours blasting around perfectly powered up with 5m sails and smallish boards in really good conditions. For a change, sailing downwind was a problem though due to the speed of the current.

Once again, West Wales provides perfect windsurfing conditions.

Here’s my diary entry and here’s Andy’s diary entry.