Category : Travel
Was looking for a way in which to keep the kids under control on my last surf trip.
There are a few factors you need to take into account when setting off on a surfari :
- Transport – nearly a 600 mile round trip to Cornwall
- Accommodation – we had booked a caravan in Devon but were going to Cornwall
- Swell – we checked the surf reports regularly on MagicSeaweed and Sharkbait, hence the redirection from Devon
- Equipment – suitable wetsuits for the water temps, waxed and ready surfboards
- Clothing – warm stuff for when you get out of the water ( I love my Quiksilver striders )
- Sleepy Stuff – like some blankets or sleeping bags
- Money – enough for 3 hot meals a day – or a frikkin picnic if your friends insist
- Toys – some gadgets and chargers like ipods and mobile phones – even a portable DVD player
All the above are easy.to sort and come quite easily from experience, but the hardest factor to cover is that of childcare. when you are single, not only do your pockets jingle (with cash), but your freedoms are limited by few ogres.
So – the most pressing problem was how to convince one’s spouse that being a single parent for a few days will bring her closer to the kids and be an enriching experience for all involved (while I catch some waves). This is a hard sell, believe me, they are not easily fooled and as the time for departure approached, and the weather conditions in Cornwall improved, I became more and more aware that something had to be done should I wish to leave with smiles from all and get on and enjoy my holiday.
Luckily I have a friend who runs a childcare agency, I gave her a call and she suggested a childminder for the Saturday and Sunday who was fully CRB checked and had passed her paediatric first aid course. It did not cost the earth and certainly made my (watch free) surf sessions down at Newquay all the more chill.
Tigerlily supplies loads of nanny jobs and nursery jobs for a variety of locations including east Sussex, Herts, Hamps, Surrey and suchlike.
For those going to Newquay the best information can be found here : Fistral Surf report, Town beaches worked well when the swell was high and south westerly, ….
I have had the Nokia 6500 slide for a while now and it is as I would have expected.
But this has quite annoyed me.
For a start, when I synchronise it with Nokia PC Suite it gives me the option to install Nokia Maps. i would like to, even though the mobile has no GPS functionality it would still be nice to search and look at the maps. Any way that is that really, you cant install them on this.
More annoying is the preinstalled TrafficTV app in the phone. on initial boot it looks like a maps app sort of thing and I played with it for a while, but was worried lest I rack up any data costs. I tried deleting it from the phone in case I started playing with it after a few beers, it wouldn’t let me.
Worse was to come, I called Orange Customer Services yesterday on a separate matter and they told me that I had been signed up for a £4 a month contract to TrafficTv, I had made doubly sure that I had not accepted any terms or conditions to that affect. I am super wary of such things these days.
happily they cancelled this dubious obligation on my part and we parted on good terms. I even took up a free 2 month evenings and weekends data offer so felt quite pleased.
To summarise, watch tgose prebundled applications installed on your new mobile phone. They are throwing a lot of money in development of these devices and need to claw it back by increasing average revenue per user……… Sneaky bunch they are.
Well, friends of mine are off to the states ( the Unites Ones ) next month for a few weeks, and had a while to ponder how they would deal with their communications needs whilst over the pond.
They rather sensibly acquired a Pay As You Go American SIM card and then needed a suitable mobile.
Luckily I had a spare Nokia 6230 nokiaing about which is TriBand and unlocked, its talk time is not superb, but they have picked up a car charger from ebay and an American PSU.
They will need to find about networks and call charges I suppose and calling them from Brighton will be expensive so I will forgo that option.
If data charges in the US are as cheap, comparatively , as their fuel charges I guess they will be able to access their email via GPRS as the Nokia 6230 supports this method.
The large storage space of free webmail these days, Gmail or MSN, allows them also to email themselves and store whatever planning documents, maps and information they will need whilst travelling for easy retreival via the web.
The kids, as they do, had been doing my head in on long journeys. In my youth I sat patiently for hours upon end, taking in the scenery and chatting with my parents. This generation is lost without electrical input, it appears; they are like irritating gadgets, always needing a charge, and I can’t be arsed, it is true, to talk for the entire journey (maybe it is evidence of the change in my generation as much as theirs). So I gave in, I bought a portable DVD player, and now have to listen to the soundtrack of Shrek 3 for the whole trip….
Now I am always desperate for some sun and sand, this year the weather has been so dire that a late summer holiday is looking like a necessity.
The school holidays are almost over and I have been looking for a last minute holiday booking. As I am an experienced independent traveller I will happily just book some cheap flights and find a place to stay by myself once I am there.
Lookin, though online at some of the offers available I found many last minute holidays at the Holiday Hypermarket, many of these include self catered apartments and flights. I am wanting to get some Greek Sun on my shoulders, some sand between my toes and some soft rembetika music drifing over the murmuring of the waves on the beach…they have some fantastic deals….
.. All I have to do is to book the holiday, apply for a passport for my eldest and get a sick note so that I can take her out of school on holiday during termtime.
As a child I proudly strutted in my first pair of “Docs”. I was a proud as punch in them. The very fact that they were :”Oil, Fat, Acid and Alkali resistant” was indeed a great thing for any shoe. That these perfectly buffed leather shoes had air filled soles and were resistant to all but nuclear attack gave them a huge status in my cupboard.
At the time Doctor Martens boots were a fashion statement in the playground, associating yourself with the SKA movement of Selector and the Specials. they also mad you feel ‘hard’, a rather addictive sensation for a 10 year old as I recall.
Now, in life one has many various types of footwear and it is not always possible to remember them all. A few pairs. though, have burned themselves onto the diary of my life so that they seem to represent eras with great fondness. I remember, for example, my first trainers which had ruber soles which kind of curved up at both the heel and toe; the feeling of potency they gave me whilst playing football was incredible : the ball went further, I turned on a sixpence and I could even dribble… I remember in direct contrast to my Doctor Marten air safety wear my sandals, purchased in a Spanish Market, afforded my feet little or no protection but the soft and pungent Spanish leather pleased me immensely.
My fascination with large and clunky boots continued for many years. I am rather embarassed to admit to wearing Timberland Safety Boots for a few years whilst at college. A rock climbing accident whilst wearing Caterpillar Safety Boots convinced me that safety shoes had a place, and that was on a construction site or place of potential hazard.
For the next few years I wore Spartan Sandals, purchased in the Athenian Flea Market at Monastiraki, sometime going barefoot through the dusty streets, my feet were able to breathe and sing, though they became blackened and calloused and indeed did not recover until my feet had spent a few days wandering ( and being beautfully buffed ) along the volcanic beaches of Perissa in Santorini. Soon my zorbaesque days had to come to an end and I returned to the shores of England. In this shark infested, heavily populated and severly congested area my foot protection became of utmost importance so I donned my online searching cap and located some flip horroshow kickboots online – some original, steel toecapped, oi, Doctor Martens Safety Boots
Tom, with whom I have worked with for a few years has now gone his way, setting off for a trip round the world.
He will be travelling round South Africa and Australia, with a few stop overs. He will be missed.
Tom’s desk will be left as he left it.
Picture taken with Nokia N95.
Recent government studies have shocked cyclists nationwide.
In an astonishing turn of events, sure to shake many well intentioned cyclists it has been proven that the use of a bicycle in populated areas actually increases carbon dioxide gas emissions as well as other pollutants on a macro scale. The average across town trip on a bicycle is estimated at 3 miles. Whereas the bicycle itself will discharge no CO2, and on such a trip an average car will contribute around 3 litres of CO2 to the atmosphere – a substance blamed for global warming and unrest in the Middle East. Now you may imagine that a bicycle is an environmentally friendly alternative, it certainly has always been offered as a way to reduce your carbon footprint.
Well it does reduce your carbon footprint.
The new statistics recently unveiled by the Department of transport and the National Centre for the Environment have shown conclusively that a bicycle, though not itself contributing to greenhouse gases, causes such disruption to the flow of other traffic that it will account for double the average CO2 emissions of a car doing the same trip. A bicycle, using the road causes many vehicles to slow down, change gear, and accellerate, all having the effect of increasing their fuel consumption and subsequent emission of pollutants.
So, before you consider taking your rubber tyred bicycle onto the streets, please consider the environment.
The GPS on the Nokia is great, but there will come a time when my Nokia N95 talks to me as I drive. Now I have never tried that, I hate taking advice at most times, and driving is certainly no exception
To tell the truth I am a newbie to this Sat Nav/ GPS laugh, further I know that it is completely uneccessary and I cant think of a use for it – but I am a saddo, it is true, and I want to experience the trance like state of driving without wondering about the destination. Maybe this will allow me to achieve a spiritual Nirvana, no longer asking questions about : how do I get there? Which is the best path?, but just coasting idly and enjoying the Journey.
Whichever is the best method of installing some navigation software onto my Nokia N95 I will have to try it soon. I have looked at Wayfinder, Smart2Go, Nokias own bundled software and some other stuff online, but I am confused, I need direction.
Posted in Travel on 03. Jul, 2007
Now, you are looking to reserve a hotel and you don’t know where to start. I travel often and many time I book a flight only package and have to ferret around online looking for a cheap room.
I was directed recently to a great site offering hotel discounts for rooms all over the world.
Just to check the system I entered Chania ( a smallish town on the north coast of Crete ) and was very pleased ( and I must say suprised ) to find 25 results. This, to me, is proof that Hotel Reservations has a large database of cheap hotels all over the world.
When I get off a flight in a foreign country the first thing I want is to get right out and into a hire car. I was glad to note that Hotel Reservations also allows you to search for a hire car, not just with one rental agent, but through several different companies.
Exploring the Hotel Reservations site further I was pleased to see it has a truly international format. You can easily select from a list of languages and have the further option of changing the displayed currency.
The site also contains a very comprehensive city guides section and, exploring it to an obscure level I found an entry for a small village on the south coast of Crete, Plakias. Now this is, on a global scale, an obscure place, but Hotel Reservations managed two well written paragraphs on it as well as a link to some cheap hotels in the area.
The website was easy to use and gave me great results for whatever I searched for. As I am in the process of booking a family holiday and on the lookout for a cheap hotel ( along with car hire ) I shall be bookmarking and revisiting the website very shortly.
