adventure – Page 3

Aurora Borealis – Northern lights, Iceland

Day one in Iceland has been full on since we’ve arrived, we had a superb flight, good transport to the city centre, and have had a jam packed day since just doing everything the tourist does. Including booking a number of tours off of the beaten track rather than the usual ones we have done in the past.

We’ve had some dinner this evening and retired to the bar and everyone is very tired now. I doubt there is no one in our small group who hasn’t been up now for at least 19 hrs and we are all starting to flag. However, i have looked at the Aurora forecast map and it’s going to be a lovely clear night with at least a 40% chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis.

Though most are wanting to hit the sack, I convince them to give me 20 minutes more just to take a walk down to the harbour. It’s blowing a hooley. The wind is biting and it’s almost -8 in temperature. It’s not a pleasant evening.

But, boy were we treated to a beautiful light show in the heavens tonight. Lots of people pay good money to go out on these Northern light hunting trips, when for nothing, tonight a show took place above the city as it usually does, when the conditions are right, for free.

What a fantastic sight, and whilst walking back to our hotel it was lovely to hear people say. “We are glad we followed your advice tonight Dave, and went out for that little walk.” The thing is that time in situations like this is precious and you have to make the most of your time. We could have missed this spectacular scene for the sake of being controlled by tiredness.

We’ve seen them in the past at a very low level, but tonight surpassed our expectations. It’s not often that nature puts on a show for free, but when she does, she does it in a spectacular fashion.

Tonight was a spectacular show

What a night.

Thanks for passing by. Peace to all.

Stupid volcano

I know this sounds like a stupid title for a post, it is really, it’s one of those impatient child like statements that we, so called adults make from time to time.

We’re off to Iceland again this weekend and it’s always been one of my dreams to be able to witness an erupting volcano. However not a massive one, a small inconspicuous non invasive one would do just fine.

At the moment the weather in Iceland is actually warmer and better than it is here in the East Midlands, and that always confuses me due to their proximity to the arctic circle. I lay money on it, what usually happens is we head on home and then the land blisters and there is a new eruption for a few months. But when we plan to return the land seals up like a small surface cut and then scabs over.

It’s quite frustrating

I constantly check in with the local news streams, as well as looking at the large amount of Volcano cams that are online and providing live coverage of the most susceptible areas.

That said we are really looking forward to our break in the land of ice and fire, however at the moment there doesn’t seem to be much of either.

Happy days.

Just another reason to not go wandering

I’ve seen this news article and it just strengthens my reasoning to never visit Australia.

I have relations in Sydney who were over here about 6 months back. They are constantly trying to sell me the dream and trying to get the wife and I to visit. I’ve always been of the opinion that everything that lives there wants to kill you, both big and small and this article just broke the camels back as they say.

The attraction for me is less now, after spending over 24hrs in the air do I really want to face my biggest fear – Spiders. I’m not just afraid I’m totally petrified of them, we don’t have venomous ones here in the Uk, but all the same if you see a guy running down the road screaming its probably me as the wife deals with the issue…she really is the brave one.

Whilst speaking to Cousin Bob who is a builder on the outskirts of Sydney, he was casually trying to convince me to travel by saying that in all his time there he has rarely seen a large spider, however he said just watch for the little “red backed bastards” (pardon my language). Why? What will they do? I asked. “Ah they’ll probably kill you” he casually replied.

My mind was made up. Never going.

Happy day everyone 🕷️

Never too late to try new stuff

In the last ten days I’ve done a whole lot of things I probably wouldn’t ever had thought I’d probably be doing at this stage in my life. But I guess I can now tick them off the to be done list.

The wife and I took a few days away at Hopton on sea on the east coast just a couple of miles from Great Yarmouth, it was a Christmas present to each other as to be quite honest there was nothing we needed so we thought we’d just treat ourselves.

My wife is a few years my senior (I won’t tell her age as she’ll probably kill me 😂) and I’m just into my sixtieth year, so I’m not particularly old, however I do have asthma and arthritic issues and a long running issue with my kidneys that are under constant scrutiny, that said, I tend to ignore being told what I should be doing, and will give anything a go if I feel up to it. Here’s what occurred this week.

Archery – I’ve tried this in the past and whilst I was on holiday I happened to be teamed up with someone who was a professional, made me look pathetic. However using his guidance I managed to get some good scores and clocked up a medal for a high score so I was happy with that.

Rifle shooting- Again I was originally teamed with a young lady who had her own gun and was an Olympic competitor, I didn’t stand a chance, again with some coaching I was able to bag another medal with a pretty good score. This was on a Ten metre range.

Climbing wall – Have always enjoyed watching this in the olympics when the athletes get up these walls in about 4 seconds flat, like Spiders on speed! My attempts were a little more serene and I managed the green route in about 45 seconds. My second and third attempts resulted in me falling and hitting my back on one of the hand grips right in the position of one of my bad kidneys creating quite a nice bruise. Wife wasn’t happy but I was, as I’d actually achieved something I didn’t think my body would let me do…but I proved it wrong.

Segway – never tried one of these before. Just two wheels and a balancing act to get it moving, however once moving I became a master of it and can’t wait to try it again, the wife wasn’t as happy and gave up after a few minutes as she thought she was about to fall off. But she tried.

Bowling – Where we were staying is where they hold the World bowls championships every year, so we had to give that a go. My Brother in law and his wife are regular players and they were my coaches on this day. Absolutely enjoyed it but I don’t think it’s something I’d take up as a full time hobby, just as in all sports you have to participate regularly to improve, and with my work commitments I can’t commit to such involvement. However I’d like to try a game every now and then.

Silent Disco – one night after all the entertainment had ended there was a session of silent disco. Basically you wear headphones that have four different genres of music and that’s it, you just strut your stuff as you would do in a normal disco environment except no one else can hear you….until you start singing. Absolutely loved it.

Dancing on tables – Total surprise this. Our Neighbour Celebrated his 60th birthday. We were invited to a brilliant venue in Leicester that serves great food, and when everyone is finished it just becomes a big party where they actively encourage you to dance on the tables! So strange but such fun and a brilliant night was had by all. We will definitely be back. And I managed to not fall off. Result.

So in all it’s been a great 10 days. It was only as I was talking with the wife in the bathroom earlier today that I said we’d done so much in the last week or two, I just didn’t realise all those things we’d done together for the first time.

I guess the moral of this post is that you are never too old to try something new and that you definitely can teach old dogs new tricks.

Stay young, stay happy. Just enjoy yourself, don’t worry about making a fool of yourself as you probably won’t bump in to those who witness you doing so ever again.

Walking

I love walking but over the last 18 months or so I’ve not done so much. I don’t mean everyday walking, I do loads of that especially at work, I mean the type of walking where you set a route, go out, get some good thinking time, clear the cobwebs from your head and get back to nature.

I used to walk miles when we had our dog Alf, but as he aged and became increasingly unwell my own health started to decrease as the purpose and need started to dwindle.

We regularly did the walk 1000 mile challenge over the course of a year and we both loved it.

As we now move on up to Christmas, my wife has gone out for breakfast with her friends, I have work later today but I’ve told her I’m going to retrace some of our old walks and maybe pop in to have breakfast somewhere and I’m really looking forward to that now. I don’t know, it’s just that sometimes you just need a good old kick in the pants to get motivated and moving, today may well be that day.

I did what I said I’d do and clocked up a nice 3.6mile walk at a slow pace, just as I would have done if I had my mate with me as he would be stopping every few yards for a sniff. I took his lead with me today the first time I’d carried it since he passed on the 16th August. I must admit I was a wreck and had tears in my eyes all the way round, so many beautiful memories came flooding back, I miss him so much.

I carried his lead, only one thing missing….

There is an old saying:

Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our
tears once in a while, so
that we can see life with
a clearer view again.”

Anon

And I believe this is true. There is no shame in being emotional, and what with it today, being the 20th anniversary of my mother’s passing, it is going to be a highly emotional day for me. To love and be loved is an amazing gift to possess, and to be given, but it hurts like hell when it is taken away. A lot of tears however have been shed recently and the view has not yet cleared. Here’s hoping and praying for better days.

I walked the routes we always walked, refusing to take shortcuts or to go down roads where we never used to venture, that would have been cheating him, holding his lead was strange but also comforting.

We stopped at a new Cafe strangely called “Cafe 55” I had a lovely coffee and a breakfast roll. It had a lovely atmosphere and was a nice clean environment. When I got the bill I realised where it obtained its name from as it seems to be 55% more expensive than anywhere else in the area. That aside, it was a pleasant stop over.

The last mile home allowed me to get myself together, a nice cuddle from the wife when I arrived home is always appreciated. We talked, again, we both shed tears, then realised just how fortunate we are for what we have, and for what we have been blessed with in the past.

Life is a puzzle, but once you have the borders sorted, it all starts to fall into place one small piece at a time.

It was a lovely walk. It needs to happen more. And it will.

Peace & Love.

Spontaneity

We had a lovely lunch out yesterday, it rained as it always has of late, it was so damned wet that we didn’t get to look around the 38 gardens at Barnsdale created by Geoff Hamilton off of BBC Gardeners world.

As we were pretty miffed at this we made the spontaneous decision to bugger off to Devon a day early so we could benefit from an extra day on the coast.

We left the East Midlands about 16:00hrs and arrived at our destination at around 20:15, a good journey with the only real traffic experienced as we circumnavigated Birmingham’s rush hour.

It was obviously dark on arrival, very windy and you could hear the waves crashing on the sea walls, the hotel is comfortable and we have had a cracking nights sleep. Just had our first cuppa and the sun is rising, it looks gorgeous out and guess what….it is dry!

Hallelujah

Have a great day all…

Throwing a relation out of an airplane.

Well not me in particular but we have paid for an elderly relative (73yo) to fulfil a dream and today he will be doing a tandem skydive from 14000ft above Nottingham in the East Midlands. This post will cover the day.

I did my skydive in 2009, I was in my mid 40s then and I did mine at the London Skydiving centre based at Chatteris airfield in Cambridgeshire.

I did my jump to raise funds for Watford Hospice, we did quite well from what I can remember however the total escapes me as time has erased that figure from my memory banks.

Anyway, today is not about me it’s about my brother in law Terry, affectionately known to the family as El-Tel and that’s how I will refer to him throughout this blog.

This is El-Tel’s day…and what a day he’s going to have.

We head off to Langar skydive centre in Nottingham, it’s 11:30 am and El Tel is due to jump at 13:00.

We arrive in plenty of time however the weather isn’t playing ball. It’s cloudy, quite windy and no planes have gone up yet due to this.

All we can do is wait. Many people booked in earlier are leaving as they have other engagements and they have rebooked for another day. However we’ve decided to hang about a bit, we’ve had a snack and plenty of coffee and the afternoon weather looks promising.

So off he goes for training where he gets his harness put on and goes through safety procedures and landing protocols.

The clouds have cleared, the sun is in the sky and the wind has dropped.

No time to waste it’s in to the plane and off to the drop zone.

The aircraft is a Cessna 208 Skyvan reg: G-FBPS.

It takes about 15 minutes to reach the altitude that they are jumping from, this little video below is what we can see from the ground.

Our view 14000ft below

El-Tel has also booked a video and picture package. So a camera man will be jumping with him as well.

And a few minutes later it was all over. A once in a lifetime time experience. Would he do it again? Just like me it’s a firm no. We’ve had the experience and we’ve got the memories and that’s what it is all about.

He’s had his day and thoroughly enjoyed it, we’ve all enjoyed it and it was a lovely family day out even if throwing the oldest member of the family out of an aeroplane was a bit extreme.

Life. To be lived, to be enjoyed and occasionally it’s exciting 😂👍

Rate this:

Share this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Rate this:

Share this:

Rate this:

Share this: