Windermere is my favourite lake, not just because of it’s scenic beauty, surrounding fell views and vibrant atmosphere, but because of it’s practicality. It’s quick and easy to get to, there’s lots of parking, fantastic cafes to top and tail the walk and endless walking variety. This post chronicles one...
Now that I’m retired I need to watch what I spend and an important part of that is not travelling too far from home for great days out walking. The ‘Lytham Loop’ is an important part of that strategy, I can cycle to Lytham and do ‘the loop’ and it...
I go on holiday about 12 times a year and my favourite, out of season, holiday location is The Bay, just south of Filey Town, but still only a short walk away from it’s wonderful sweeping bay. The Bay looks like a reconstruction of a traditional village, but the whole...
We discovered Arnside as a family when we stayed there in a holiday home a few years ago and fell in love with it. The holiday was curtailed when I collapsed on the bedroom floor and inexplicably went into hypothermic shock and had to be wrapped in sleeping bags for...
I came late to programming, being too old to discover it at school, and my first introduction too it didn’t go well. I was forced into writing assembly code to control a traffic light in electronics class at university, torture. I soon forgot everything I’d learned, keen to block all...
I’m always losing my Fitbit one activity tracker. It normally lives clipped onto my belt, but it gets caught on stuff and yanked off every few months. Usually I have a good idea of when this might have happened and track it down manually, but yesterday it was really lost. ...
Well I’ve finished my first retirement challenge, Visiting a Different Cafe Every Day for 30 Days and it worked out well. When I first thought of this ‘challenge’ I was mostly having a laugh with myself, it’s hardly a challenge to go to cafes and lots of people commented “can...
I’m just past the one month mark in my retirement and just moving out of the – I’m on holiday – phase and moving into the – rest of my life – phase. It’s a slightly disconcerting feeling, but a hopeful one. During the first month I took some concrete...
Slightly overlapping with my 30 cafes in 30 days challenge, I’m starting up a new 28 day challenge, the overlap and slightly shorter duration is necessitated by the logistical impossibility of eating garden grown food while on holiday in London with Steph. Since I’ve only just started growing my own...
One of my first retirement challenges is to complete 100 of the best walks in the UK, as a way to increase my fitness, but also as a way to introduce myself to many areas of the UK that I’ve not visited before. As my fitness builds I’m going to...