Journal

Skipping it

Back in April I bought myself a fairly techno skipping “rope” because I thought it’d be cool to learn to skip. I’ve never been very good at it, but due to the skipping skills of the likes of Rocky Balboa I always wanted to learn.

At first I was pretty crap, as expected, and I thought I’d cut too much off of the rope when I was trying to get it to the right length. Turned out it was a matter of technique, though, and after a few evening practices I was up to speed. I still haven’t mastered the hopping from one foot to the other style that Rocky made to look easy, but I’m working on it.

Brother in law Ian said that I skipped like a girl when he was down last week, which isn’t particularly flattering, but if you check out these videos of me skipping and Ian skipping, I’m sure you’ll agree I’ve got better technique! 🙂

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Journal

Happy Trails

Today the weather was finally good enough to drive down to Delamere forest and get out on the bikes.

Being the usual, hard-charging go-getters that we are, we set off around two in the afternoon. Sure, this was late enough that we missed a good deal of the sunshine, but it was at least cooling a little by the time we found our way to Delamere and parked near the visitor center.

Follow the first trail we saw, we set off on what quickly appeared to be the opposite direction to what everybody else was traveling. Later though, when we stopped for a rest, we saw that others passing who had chosen the same trail blazing direction as us. Admittedly, we did seem to be going upstream somewhat from the majority of folk, so maybe we missed something at the outset.

The trail was fairly easy, for the most part, with a fiendish couple of inclines that we encountered along the way. Fliss did very well to make her way up one of them, carrying both herself and Elisha, as it was tough enough for me on my lonesome, spinning my wheels in the sandy ruts.

Interestingly, we just kept cycling on without really knowing where we were going, or ever fearing that we would get lost. I just figured that eventually we’d circle back upon ourselves if we followed the paths, and that turned out to be the case. Just as it was starting to get painful in the ass department, we approached the visitor center from the opposite side to which we’d left, which was a welcome sight.

Scoring a trio of ice creams from the shop, I asked some young lad to take our picture while we ate our reward for effort.
Rob, Elisha and Fliss at Delamere forest

After that it was time to head back. As the road there had been a little confusing, I thought we’d maybe take a wrong turn on the way back, but it all fell into place nicely. It’s not so far away, really, and we can get the bikes in the car in next to no time, so it’s the kind of outing that’ll be a no brainer over the summer should the weather be kind to us.

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Journal

Dinner at Negresco Deco

For Fliss’ birthday I took her out to a recently opened restaurant in nearby Woolton. Negresco Deco has replaced what was a rather seedy looking lager and football joint with a homage to 1920’s jazz club style – the interior is really very nice, lots of dark wood and white tablecloths going on, with a sophisticated atmosphere to suit.

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