Category Archives: Personal

footprints in the sand

Leave only footprints

footprints in the sandOne of my mottoes when travelling has been:

Leave only footprints
Take only memories 

So whilst walking across Woolacombe beach as part of my South West Coast Path trip I couldn’t resist taking the above photo.

In fact one of my ambitions in 2000 was to walk around the coast of the UK as far as possible in barefeet and carrying a coracle for the estuaries. :-)

I started (without a coracle) by walking from Scarborough to Redcar in 2000 followed by Kings Lynn to Cromer at various times since.

I’m now on the South West Coast Path which will add another few miles to the total…

 

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Oregon & Eee display

Geoff’s Weather Station

Sally bought me a Oregon WMR88 weather station with anemometer, wind direction, outside temperature and rainfall gauges. I’ve finally have it working with the Asus Eee running XP Pro in its 8GB of memory and uploading the data through my WiFi to Wunderground. Giving the lovely chart above.

Next job is to mount the anemometer onto the TV aerial above the house to minimize ground effects. That can wait for the warmer weather though.

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A pensive sally

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Starting to get concerned about walking 300miles in temperatures above 30 degrees centigrade!

There is a good write up from some who did The Lycian Way earlier this year here http://bit.ly/qWhrOV I’ve ‘borrowed’ their GPS trail and put it in the Gaia GPS iPhone app and also on my etrex unit! Let’s see ho often we wander off the trail

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Swimming Season over

Geoff Jones at Jesus Green Pool

@GeoffJones @JesusGreenPool

Yesterday was the final day of the Jesus Green pool swimming season :-( with my use of  the iPhone Daily Data Tracker application I know that I swam 69 times since the opening day on the 14th May.

In the 69 visits I swam a grand total of 35.78 miles ( 630 lengths), I didn’t time myself but my daily 10 lengths usually worked out at about 32mins. I only managed to swim the mile (18lengths) twice this year, mainly due to my fingers turning very white :-( and for the first time this year my left little toe.

Real shame it has to close so early in the year given that the water temperature was still at 18degrees, perhaps we regulars could run it as a private club :-)

So where do I go for my swim now? Maybe join Nikki & Liz in the river at NRC before 7am every day? Perhaps not as there are no hot showers to revive my circulation. The river in Chesterton is way to busy with racing eights at that time……

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Oliver Jones


Geoff Jones with Grandson Oliver

Latest member of The Jones Family

Congratulations to Renata & Steve and a warm welcome to my third Grandchild :-) Oliver Jones born at 12.03pm on Sunday 4th September weighing in at 3.52Kg (7.7lbs).

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

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Shortcut on the GR10

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Tonight I christen my new birthday sleeping mat from Sally The tent is safely pitched in the garden of Yann Cornic at his gite in Saint Lizier gite in Saint Lizier
Last night I was sharing a room with Michael and Cherie? In the slightly hippy gite at Esbints learning about sheep dogs and farming in the mountains from it’s young owners ( who were about to disappear for the night salsa dancing) whilst his father was stuck, on his own, in a mountain cabin for 90 days looking after the sheep!

I left M&C at 8am to Walk the Tour du Val du Garbet to here, imagine my surprise to bump into them walking into Seix (pronounced Sex). Yep I had nearly walked a circle :-( I continued into Seix with them and then found the correct walk! Some shortcut, twas another difficult day.
An even bigger surprise was when trying to negotiate the final bend I was to discover them behind me again :-) two pressions later they returned to Seix, by taxi, for the Tour de France tomorrow and I continued my walking here!
Tomorrow I will journey on to Aulus or even Bassies.

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Rambling, rain & recked

Having walked 51 miles in the past three days and with over 18,000 feet of ascent and descent on the GR10. Last nights storms & heavy rain this morning gave me a good reason to spend an idle day here in the luxury of La mason du Valier :-)
Yesterdays highlight was been only feet away from a massive eagle taking off from a dead cow! The low was getting lost 3 times descending from Clot de Lac in thick cloud :-(
Tomorrow is another epic day to Esbints, the guides reckon 10 hours so I guess it will be more like 12!
The calendar here says my birthday saint is St Samson, let’s hope I live upto the name….

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