A Quick trip to Welshpool
Another lovely weekend, with the sun shining and temperatures reaching 13.8ºC on Sunday.
A Day in Welshpool
We headed off to Welshpool early on Saturday morning. Anna and Morgan weren’t too keen on leaving the house at 8am as they consider that early. I of course had been up for hours having not slept at all the night before. We wanted to get there early as Brooks Cycles had kindly offered to take a look at the freehub on my bike on a Saturday whilst we did a few things in Welshpool. They don’t usually do workshop work on a Saturday as they are busy in the shop but it meant that we would only have to make a single journey to Welshpool if they could.
So, after dropping the bike off at the shop we headed off to the Coed y Dinas garden centre and shop and ended up spending most of the morning there. We ordered a new lawn mower as mine is dead, looked at sheds, bought some shoes for Morgan, bought a few other bits and pieces and had a late brunch in the restaurant – A full fry up for me, a small fry up for Anna and toast for Morgan.
The bike shop phoned as we finished lunch so we could collect my bike and there was no need to waste anymore time in Welshpool. We did waste quite a bit of time while Morgan decided what sweets he wanted in his Pick ‘n’ Mix cup though! Not that we would have struggled for things to do as there were plenty of geocaches loaded up into my phone, there was the Derwen Garden Centre to visit and the Dingle Garden, and the nature reserve too.
We did none of that and instead collected my bike, looked at a few second hand cars and went shopping in Sainsbury’s. We don’t have a Sainsbury’s in Aberystwyth so shopping there was quite exciting!
Climbing the Telegraph Pole
With my bike sorted and the shopping done we headed home and made it back fairly early. Early enough for me to climb up the telegraph pole to check on the anemometer for the weather station. The wind direction vane is stuck so I was trying to free it, but couldn’t manage to do so. I shall have to contact the manufacturers to see what they suggest. If it can’t be fixed then I shall have to buy a new one, but the cost around £160.
I have to say that the telegraph pole seemed quite a bit higher and more wobbly than last time I was up there, but I guess I was 9 years younger then which could have something to do with it!
Whilst in the garden with the sun shining I had a quick look at the bees from outside the hive and I’m pleased to say that both hives were looking quite busy. I think we’ll have to start feeding them with sugar syrup though as there isn’t much about for them to forage on at the moment.
Paprika Chicken
I then had time to experiment with a Paprika Chicken dish. We’ve cooked paprika Chicken using a recipe pack from thespicery.com a couple of times now and it has been delicious so we wanted to try to recreate ourselves. It was quite a success so I’ll have to share our recipe here with you soon.
Looking to the Stars
I also set the telescope up in the garden and gave it a bit of a service, a clean and a run through the set up procedure. I also had a new Telrad Finder that I bought recently that I wanted to set up on it. I did that in daylight and calibrated it as best I could and then set things up using the compass and level on my iPhone ready for some stargazing after dinner.
The set up worked perfectly and Morgan and I had good fun looking at the stars later that evening. The new finder was much better than the old one and it should allow us to navigate the night skies a little easier. We still didn’t manage to find much that was new to us last night though but I think that was mainly because the moon was a little too bright. We therefore stuck to the old favourites such as Jupiter and it’s moons, The Orion Nebula, and the Moon itself. We did look at the Pleiades and a few stars too and I managed to find Andromeda as well which was nice. We’re now waiting for a clear night without a moon to search out some Deep Sky objects.
