Day 7 of Summer – Scouting on the Beach

Yep, that’s right, we’ve now had a whole week of summer – amazing I know, but true. It wasn’t quite so hot yesterday with temperatures only just topping 20°C at 20.3°C here, but that was just about perfect, especially with a light cooling breeze.

Unfortunately for me there wasn’t a huge amount of time to enjoy it during the day buy I did get out in it for a bit. I spent all morning doing chores around the house, changing the tyre on my bike which had exploded the day before and working on various website projects. I also had lots of phone calls to deal with and had to prepare a few other computer related things too. Anna was off to work and was dressed extra smartly today as it was graduation day for her department and Morgan was off at school.

After lunch I had a job to do on site at a local business – nothing exciting really, just adjusting various templates in their accounting software that I had set up for them several years ago. I would then have to collect Morgan from school as Anna would be working late thanks to the graduation ceremonies and after-ceremony reception. This meant that there was no time for training for me today, a shame seeing as it was such a nice day but it was supposed to be a rest day on Saturday so my plan was to swap the days around, have a rest day on Friday instead and train tomorrow. As it happened I probably could have fitted a session in as the afternoon job didn’t take long so I suddenly found myself with an hour or so to spare. Not quite enough time for the ride that I had scheduled on my training plan though so instead I gave Jon a call and arranged to meet him for coffee and cake. Well, if I can’t expend a few calories I may as well consume some instead.

We sat on the seafront in Aberystwyth watched the world go by drinking coffee, eating a delicious eccles cake and chatting about all sorts of things. The sea was completely calm, there was barely a breeze and people were enjoying themselves on the beach. It wasn’t too busy though and at times like these you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. Aberystwyth was putting on a show for all of the graduands and their parents.

I was soon back to reality though, first with the school run and then a mad dash around Morrisons Supermarket in order to buy supplies for the Scout meeting that evening. We were meeting on the beach at Ynyslas and I had to get everything ready while Anna was at work. With such nice weather it seemed rude not to have a barbeque on the beach withe them so I had to stock up on burgers, sausages, bread rolls and veggie options.

With that over and done with it was time to feed Morgan, respond to the emails that had come in over the course of the afternoon, drop Morgan off at Cubs and then get things ready for Scouts. I also had to make various phonecalls to various banks because for some reason the money I had tried to pay into one of my accounts earlier in the day had been refused by the receiving account. I’d had a call from the bank that I was withdrawing the money from but had refused to give them my password details as I couldn’t be sure of who they were. This meant I had to call them back and go through hundreds of security questions to find out what the problem was . A hundred may be an exaggeration actually but it was at least 10. Once I discovered the problem I had to call the receiving bank, go through loads of security questions again only to find out that the account had been ‘put on hold’ because I hadn’t used it for 12 months. It had money on of course, I just hadn’t paid anything into for 12 months. I’m not really sure why that means it gets put on hold  but I then had to go through lots more security questions and ISA declarations before they would re-activate the account. I think it is all sorted now though.

Trouble is, while all this was going on I was quite hungry and started snacking whilst on hold. First I polished off a jar of peanut butter, then a jar of chocolate spread, then a frozen homemade smoothy and then I started on the crisps and chocolates. Anna arrived home with a little box of chocolates too so I ate those, and so the calorie consumption continued. I’d been fairly good over the last couple of days, getting down to 66kg, but by the time I got going last night I blew it. Only 9 weeks to go until my next race though so I need to get into shape.

Anna arrived home, while I was picking strawberries from the garden. We caught up with the days news and then the Scouts arrived and we headed over to the beach with them. They had a great time, creating beach art, playing games, paddling in the sea and playing in the dunes as the sun slowly set over Cardigan Bay. Anna and I even did some basic beach art to help inspire them (see the photos above!). The Barbeque went down well, but as usual there was lots left over so I ended up eating about 4 hot dogs and 4 burgers – and then continued eating once I got home. Needless to say I’m back up close to 70kg today and feeling fat – These rest days are no good for me!

Another busy day here in West Wales and the weather looks set to stay summery for a while yet.