Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
There’s no such thing as going OTT with chocolate where Anna’s Birthday is concerned. Rich double chocolate chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and chocolate ganache topped with tonnes of chocolate maltesers! And that’s not to mention the 17 large bars of Cadbury’s Choco Latte (yep, that’s not a typo – it was 17 bars!), the...
So far this year on Bank Holidays we have been open water swimming in Borth and Ynyslas rather than from Aberystwyth. I thought I’d offer the same this Bank Holiday but had no takers so ended up going on a swim adventure of my own. Out and Around I started in the estuary and had...
Check out this beauty… The Four Spot Orb Weaver (Araneus quadratus). The heaviest of the UK spiders and she made quite a clunk when she landed on me just now. According to the Advancing Arachnology website. As with other members of the genus, A. quadratus macerates its prey, rather than merely injecting digestive juices, sucking out the resulting...
It was pretty much business as usual for us this Bank Holiday. Plenty of kayaking, surf-skiing, bike riding, mountain-biking, running, swimming and surfing for me. Nothing unusual there, just a normal weekend really. There was baking and cake-eating, cleaning and gardening and all the things that we usually get up to. We popped into Aberystwyth...
With wind forecast last weekend I thought I’d message Steve and invite him down for a sunny, summer windsurf session, just like the old days! Steve used to come here almost every weekend to windsurf and certainly came when there was some decent wind forecast. I don’t think he’s been windsurfing here for about 4...
A few people from work have been doing occasional scrambles in Snowdonia lately. The last was up Tryfan last year. There was a plan to repeat this on Tuesday and do Bristly Ridge which we missed last time. I fancied something a little different though so suggested we head to the Carneddau instead. The aim...
You may remember that Anna treated me to a fine dining experience at Ynyshir Hall for my birthday last year. It was 11 courses of Michelin starred food by renowned chef Gareth Ward. Not the full on dinner experience due to the cost, so just the lunch menu but it was still a meal to...
Just a few quick clips from my windsurf session today as my GoPro was a little misted up, it wasn’t quite set up properly and I can’t be bothered to go through hours of footage looking for the best bits! It was a top notch windsurf session though so hopefully you’ll get the gist from...
Technology is pretty good sometimes. My photos and videos from my phone get automatically sent to Google Photos so that I have an online backup of them – along of course with about 6 other backups on various Hard Drives and then backups of those Hard Drives, another of which is in the Cloud. Actually,...
I couldn’t possibly go a whole week without doing some proper exercise so I hired a bike from Colin at Larnaca Pro Cycles. I decided prior to going out there that I didn’t need a super high specced bike for the type of riding I was likely to do, although the Cannondale Evo Super Six...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
 |
 |
More live data from Ynyslas
Subscribe for full access.
Weather trends, weather extremes and historic data. See what you get here.
Is It Worth It? Chasing Grams on the Hebridean Way
Wednesday, June 4th, 2025
