I have been walking and occasionally running in the hills of the South Downs around New Alresford for a few years now. Our youngest son has music rehearsals every Saturday so have a couple of hours to kill. I kept putting off cycling, but the challenge of the hills became too great. The first challenge was to make sure that I could fit both my road bike and a euphonium in the boot of the ST. Luckily, this turned out not to be an issue although we were down to two seats. Continue reading
Long, Autumnal Coast Walk
A few photographs taken on a 17.5mile Saturday morning walk down the Hamble River from Warsash and along the edge of The Solent to Lee-on-the-Solent Continue reading
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A Saturday Morning Walk in June
A few photos from a walk down the old canal at Titchfield, along Meon beach and back through Brownwich. A lot of kite surfers at Meon taking advantage of a very strong breeze. Couldn’t help but smile at the old, abandoned telephone box in the middle of a field. Continue reading
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Please Just Let Me Unsubscribe!
I recently noticed that every morning I was logging into Gmail and deleting a whole load of emails without even opening them. They were mainly the result of months of online shopping expeditions and fruitless experiments with various new social sites. There was nothing wrong or malicious in any of them, it was just that I was no longer interested in what they had to say. So I have embarked on a brief campaign of unsubscription. Eventually, I should end up with less to wade through every morning and less chirrups from my phone as another unwanted email arrives.
Experience told me it wouldn’t be that straightforward and experience has proved to be correct. Here is my advice to anyone running a mailing list…. Continue reading
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Run to work – under 40 minutes
Great run to work this morning. Rather grey skies, but finally a break in the rain. Managed to beat the 40 minute mark for only the third time ever. That’s a couple of Friday beer tokens in the bank I reckon.
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Back On Track?
The sun’s been out, the temperature is rising and I think I might finally have some exercise momentum. Managed three 4.5 mile walks to/from work and two exercise bike sessions of 30 and 40 minutes. If I manage my run to work tomorrow and a walk on Saturday it’ll have been a good week.
With a bit of luck I can start shifting a bit of the weight that’s been hanging around since Xmas. Continue reading
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Don’t Listen To The Weight Loss Statisticians
A friend posted a link on Facebook to an article from the Guardian – Why the weight is so hard to shift: guidelines have been wrong all along. I read it and played with the linked “online tool” and it got me thinking.
Somehow, the whole premise seemed wrong. The whole approach to weight loss that it described – guidelines, targets, government scientists, calculations – just didn’t feel right. I could imagine the badly photocopied “diet sheet”. It’s easy to be smug when you’ve already lost a lot of weight and that’s something I try, sometimes unsuccessfully, to avoid, but why are they making it seem so difficult. (As an aside, I’m also an ex-smoker and so can become very self righteous about how easy it is to give up smoking too.) Anyhow, the world described by the article left me feeling quite depressed. It conjured images of hospitals, men in white coats, wagging fingers and pages of charts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of charts. My entire weight loss programme for the last three years is fully documented in a spreadsheet and logged online. I’m a geek. Spreadsheets and charts make me happy. But I’ve never had any fixed goals saying “I must reach here by then“. Continue reading
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Photo: Snapped on a recent walk
This photo is a great combination of good subject and interesting light. It’s unusual to find such a varied collection of trees, together in this sort of arable setting. It’s more usual to find a stand or line of trees of similar type. The light and sky gave a great silhouette effect. I can’t claim too much credit for the photo, just I was in the right place at the right time.
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