Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
Another glorious day on the Isle of Man – sunshine, blue skies, a cold wind, 4°C and snow-lined roads. I made an early start and headed out for a bike ride whilst Anna and Morgan had breakfast. My ride took me through Colby and into Port St Mary, along the coast road into Castletown and...
After a long day and night travelling to the Isle of Man we didn’t want to waste a day of our holiday catching up on sleep, so we had breakfast when we arrived at Anna’s Mums and then headed off for a day out. We had a geocache or two planned, the sun was shining...
It’s nice to see the sunshine and some colour in the garden at last. Things are still off to a slow start this Spring though with snow still on the hills and very little happening in the garden. Here’s a few flowers enjoying the sunshine on Easter Sunday.
And today’s “Cake of the Day” is a delicious Earl Grey Tea Bread smothered in butter. Made with soft juicy mixed fruit soaked overnight in earl grey tea and treacle. The flavour of the super strong earl grey tea shines through the rich fruity bread and the treacle adds depth to the loaf. Tea Bread...
Easter Saturday dawned clear and bright. It was still cold but at least the wind had eased. I felt a little better than I had yesterday so we decided that a family day out was in order. We wanted to hide a geocache in Cwm Rheidol so we prepared some boxes, log books and cache...
Although geocaching.com is our geocaching website of choice, there are some alternatives. Opencaching run by Garmin is one of them. Although run by Garmin it touts itself as being free and open and powered by users saying that they are a collection of hikers, bikers, techno geeks, treasure-seekers, scouts, families and just plain nature lovers who deserve to geocache the way we...
After the bad news on the beekeeping front yesterday I’m afraid it isn’t all good news from the fish tank either. The plants are growing really well and putting out roots all over the place. The strong lighting and the fact that the old gravel in the tank is packed full of nutrients seems to...
Some bad news I’m afraid. Our final colony of bees has died. We lost the other colonies going into winter as they didn’t manage to re-queen last summer due to the terrible weather and then weren’t strong enough to get through the winter. The one colony we did have left was strong and looked healthy...
The fish tank resurrection continues. One of the reasons for going to Bristol for the weekend was to visit our favourite aquarium shop, Aquajardin just outside of Gloucester. We hadn’t been here for years but as it was Mother’s Day we went along with my Mum and Dad for a wander around the adjacent Blooms...
The plants I ordered for the fish tank arrived yesterday. Rather than pick individual plants I decided to just buy a plant collection specifically for a 36″ tank from Java-Plants. Not only was this a lot cheaper but it was easier too and would give us a good start. The plants all arrived in good...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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