Saturday:

I woke up at about twenty to six, twenty minutes earlier than I’d wanted to, and decided that I might as well get up and on the road rather than sitting in bed. This, and the fact that I’d done pretty well all the packing and preparation the night before meant that I managed to get out of the door by half six.

The roads on the way to Aber were mostly clear, with the exception of a cattle lorry or horse box between Leominster and Rhayader and a slow car just on the approaches to Leominster. This meant that I was doing the speed limit most of the time and arrived at 10:15am, taking three and three quarters hours. Not too bad for the full length of the A44.

Upon arrival I tried to get into the Savannah guest house car park, but it was full, so I drove down to the Bath Street car park instead, went to the loo and trundled off back to the Savannah with my stuff. Luckily, just as I was exitting the guest house, one of the cars in the car park left, so i moved my car into the little car park.

I still had loads of time before the meeting up with people at midday, so i aimlessly wandered around Aber, drank a nice latte at MG’s Cafe (which is next door to the legendary Charlie’s) before walking the length of the prom and admiring the scructural geology at the base of Constitution Hill. It was then time to meet up at the bandstand, where Alec and Shona were already sitting. It wasn’t long, however, before Helen (with little Alex), Howard and Tina, Rachel, Graham and Chris, Nick, Caz and finally Jim and Catrin turned up.

The afternoon’s a bit of a blur. Mostly having lunch, drinking tea, bumbling about and chatting, I think. This was followed by dinner in a Thai place… though they had problems fitting everyone in at the same time, so we became two groups.

The day was rounded off by a trip to The Fountain pub on the other side of the bridge.

Saturday’s pictures can be found here.

Sunday:

I had to be out of the B&B by 10am, so after the nice cooked breakfast talking with Howard and Tina, I packed up my stuff into my small weekend bag and stashed it away in the boot of my car. it was 9:50am by this point and I knew that Rachel, Graham, Chris and Helen were going off to church and that Howard and Tina were off to buy lots of cheap reconstituted wood pulp in Hay-on-Wye, so I was at a little bit of a loose end, as it were.

I decided that I might as well just walk around and see if there were any places worth looking at and photographing with my little Canon IXUS II before others might be ready to get together and/or those at church had finished with thier duties. So, I wandered along the prom in a southernly direction, beyond castle and down to the entrance to the harbour, back along little roads to the bridge and then walked down to see what I could of the re-formulated station and the Vale of Rhiedol railway.

It was now half eleven, was feeling a bit thirsty and a little bored so walked back to the prom, sat outside PD’s Diner, drank a large latte and texted the only two people in Aber for whom I had their mobile numbers and who I knew weren’t in church, Alec and Shona, informing them of my location. It wasn’t long until Shona turned up and a little while later, Alec.

The rest of the day (before I drove home) was spent in that little area, with Alec looking at all the motor bikes sat on the prom and talking to the bikers, various talking, eating etc. going on and little Chris managing to get himself soaking wet in the sea just in time for Rachel, Graham and Chris to go off on the little train to Devil’s Bridge.. not the best of times then.

Well, by this time it was about 3pm, everyone else was going their separate ways so I did the same. I noted the time I left the car park, it was 3:15pm precisely and wondered how long it would take to get home.

Well, the traffic was horrid. On all the bits where I could pass traffic, the traffic flowed or was non-existant. However, on all the fun windy bits and anywhere where you can’t overtake, I was down to about 30-40mph, if I was lucky. And I had to endure this sort of traffic problem right down to the Oxford side of Woodstock! However, I *STILL* managed to get home in only 4 hours!!! I have no idea how as I’m sure I was averaging about half the speed I had on the way up to Aber. I got home at 7:15pm, unpacked, watched Top Gear and Coast before uploading my pictures and going to bed.

Sunday’s pictures can be found here.

Well, I’m back from Cornwall.

The journey wasn’t too bad with only a few heavy showers and one traffic jam.

This morning before I left I saw my Dad’s ADSL modem breifly try to sync with the exchange and then cut out again. BT are probably just testing their equipment before the proper installation happens.

Anyway, as you may have noticed, I’ve uploaded all my diary entries and have also put all my photos online on the Nikon gallery, though I broke Gallery/PHP with my first attempt. I’ve also factored out the events into another album which includes a very much abridged collection of the Culdrose Air Day photographs.

Back to work in the morning… blurgh!

It was a partly drizzly day today, grey and a bit dreary at times.

Despite this I decided to take a bit of a detour on the way to the petrol station in Helston via a circuitous route which covered most of the eastern side of The Lizard peninsula: Mullion -> St.Keverne -> Porthoustock -> Portallow -> Manacan -> St.Martins -> Gweek -> Trewenack -> Helston. Lots of miles travelling on narrow Cornish roads, some where the follage brushing both sides of the car continueously.

After we got home the weather was kind enough to allow my Dad and myself to dyson out the car before it closed in again.

So, now it’s gone 11pm and it’s time to go to sleep so I can be ready for the journey home in the morning.

I know that on Monday I’ve got to try to sort out the mess caused by the power fault which I was informed had taken out our machine room at work. On Tuesday I have a visit from an AV company to quote yet again for the lecture theatre stuff. What fun.

Half decent weather. Yay!

We went off to Charlestown to see the tall ship and maritime museum there.

On the whole, it’s not that brilliant with mostly junk from ship wrecks which is poorly marked and in no real order. As for Charlestown, well it’s not picturesque and has only one set of public loos which are across the harbour and up the coast path on the top of a cliff. Not the most convenient place, especially if you’re disabled.

The visit was also marred by my Mum having one of her less good days, especially when in the museum where her only thought was where the exit was and why weren’t we going for food yet.

After lunch, because my Mum wouldn’t get out of the car and wanted to go, we left Charlestown and started going homewards. However, my Dad and I hatched a plan to visit somewhere else on the way. To this end I took some turnings and eventually made our way to St.Anthony’s Head via St. Mawes.

The views from St. Anthony of the Carrick Roads and the eastern side of The Lizard are spectacular on a clear day as today was (despite the showers ).

There’s still no ADSL for my Dad, so he’ll have to cope on his own with getting it working as BT Wholesale only work during the week and I go home on Sunday.

It started off with drenching drizzle with periods of sporadic heavy rain which then slowly dried up as the day progressed. It stayed very much dingey and overcast, however.

The highlight of the day was getting out of the house to go shopping. That’s the trouble with Cornwall. Unless you want to either get soaked walking or want to pay lots to visit a mediocre theme park, there’s not a lot to do when the weather’s against you. This is especially true now with my Mum being very much like a five year old except without the bounce. i.e. a very short attention span and has to have a eye kept on her at all times so that she doesn’t wander off on a whim and very little thought of longer term consiquences of her actions, always living for now. She does still have better days but these are becoming fewer.

One word:- Rain.

OK, there was more to the day. It wasn’t worth going anywhere special. However, we did go down to Redruth to get some steel box tube and some U bolts so that my Dad can build a frame to allow him to fit the bike carrier we have onto his roof rack.

Because of heavy traffic on the road between Helston and Redruth we decided to divert over to Pool and see how Tesco had rebuilt the old “Big W” warehouse to be a new Tesco’s Extra. This was a tactical error for two reasons: firstly, I saw that they were selling decent colour inkjet printers cheaply so I decided to buy one.. And so did my Dad. Secondly, it meant that we reached Andrews during their lunch hour so we could only get the U bolts and not the steel.

The Epson Stylus C66 prints photos reasonably, actually well for a 4 head printer, which is all I’ll be using it for. It’s silly how the cost of the printer including ink is only £25 more than the ink.

The ADSL is still not up and running after a week. Of course, we can’t chivy up Tiscali to remind BT Wholesale about the connection until Tiscali’s deadline of the 4th August. I wouldn’t put it past BT Wholesale to have lost the order or didn’t have the Mullion exchange ready for ADSL on its published ready for service date.

Today was the usual visit to Meriel and Chris.

Much chatting and putting the world to rights ensued.

I didn’t have to worry about missing the good weather on “the best day of the week” as it wasn’t that good today anyway.

The weather isn’t playing fair. It’s cold, damp and not fun. The forecast for the rest of the week if cold and wet, except for tomorrow when I’ll inside chatting with Chris and Meriel and can’t take advantage of the better weather. Typical!

The only excitement today was a trip to ASDA. Other than that, due to the weather, it’s been game playing time.

My Dad’s ADSL is still not up and running yet so I can’t make sure everything’s set up on that front yet either, which is a bit frustrating. It also means that I can’t download and install OpenOffice.org for him either.

It rained. OK, it didn’t rain all the time but a lot of it.

I discovered the addictiveness of minesweeper and played on my Tréo for most of the day, hardly listening to Broadcasting House and the Grand Prix.

This evening I had a phone call from Meriel and have arranged to visit her and Chris on Tuesday.

Rubbish weather so stayed indoors.

I watched the Grand Prix qualifier and then played “Freelancer”, which is one of the 3 for £20 games I bought a couple of weeks ago.

“Freelancer” is slightly like “Elite” in that it’s a space trading and combat game. However, that’s basically where the similarity ends. “Freelancer” isn’t a patch on “Elite” as it’s not at all open ended, it’s harder to control and doesn’t have a good ship tracking scanner. Oh, and the scripted story and cut scenes are tedious and a bore.