A Simple Life of Luxury | Weblog

Bike 1

Ready To Go With My New Wheels

My valve extenders have arrived so my new Dymag wheels are on and ready to go – I’m just waiting for the rain to clear up before trying them out. As I said before, they look good on the bike… Especially with the colour coordinated hubs and tyres. Maybe I should go with Red, White...

Dymag Wheels 3

Dymag Wheels

Check out my new wheels from Dymag Performance Cycle Wheels. Nice hey!  Can’t wait to give them a good thrashing at the  European Champs in Kitzbuhel. I’ve got a 50m deep section carbon rim up front, 60mm deep section carbon rim on the rear, laced to DT Swiss 240 hubs with Sapim Aero Bladed CX-Ray spokes....

Home Automation 1

Home Automation

I know it sounds silly, but now that I have a car with remote locking from the keyfob, when I get home and go to open the front door I keep looking for a button to press on my keyring! I’d never missed remote locking on my car until I had it and now I...

Queen Cells 3

Queen Bee Selection – Do the Bees Know Best?

I’ve been thinking recently about queen selection within the honey bee colony. Ideally, if we are selecting a queen to rule a strong, healthy, productive colony we want one with characteristics such as high fecundity, disease resistance, longevity and one that raises bees with a good temperament. The perceived wisdom when re-queening following an artificial...

Playing in the Hills 1

A Ride to Nant y Moch

It was the last day of Half Term and finally I had a day that I could spend with Morgan. So, after a few chores around the house and a little bit of work we headed up to Pendam for a mountain bike ride. Morgan wanted to head out to Nant y Moch, but I wanted...

Cute Hey! 0

Cute Hey!

Cute Hey! The new visitor to our garden.   He / She has been here for a few days and seems to like it. Trouble is I did see Robbie our cat heading off with one firmly in her jaws the other day so I don’t think it will last long in the garden. I...

Hives in the garden 2

Bank Holiday Beekeeping – Culling a Queen.

Bank Holiday Monday proved to be perfect weather for beekeeping. Fortunate really as we needed to check on the status of our bees following the recent manipulations. It was sunny, warm(ish) at around 16°C and not too windy. First on the list were the two hives in the apiary at the bottom of the garden....

Pine Carpet 0

A New Garden Moth – Pine Carpet

Morgan and I managed to put the moth trap out over the weekend. There weren’t loads of moths in it by the morning, just 12, but the trap did have to compete with the new garden lights so that may have had something to do with it. There was a new species for our garden...

Building a Shelter 0

Shelter Building with the Scouts

The Scouts seemed to enjoy their shelter building evening in the woods that we organised for their last meeting. They all got stuck in building some pretty impressive shelters and all want to do it again with the plan of actually sleeping in them. Looks as though Anna and I have another shelter building evening...

Triathlon Training Focus 0

Triathlon Training Focus

I’ve just survived two weeks of very poor triathlon training. The first was due to a taper week for a race during which time I was suffering with sciatica issues and therefore did no training, the second week was due to some sort of lurgy and a calf injury following my race at the British...