Geek Stuff

Last weekend Christine and I went to Norwich to see our friends Tammy and Rob. I was a good weekend and we got an unexpected bonus - snow!

We had just been having a quick look at the cathedral (nice cloisters and labyrinth) and as we walked into the centre of town snow was falling thickly. It was a sticky type of snow that clung to everyone's coats turning them into walking snowmen.

It was a really festive feel with the chill in the air, snow and Christmas lights. Norwich has an old town feel to it which made me feel like it was a scene out of Harry Potter (but with less interesting shops).

My fireworks party went well.

It's a bit of an indulgence. I do love it when my house is full of people (especially when they are all my friends) but it's not like I can meaningfully talk to them all. I guess at the end of the day I should restrict myself to having one or two people around where you can have a good chat and really find out what I going on in their lives. But the fireworks party only happens once a year and there's nothing wrong in having a party every now and again. Every enjoyed themselves and seemed to enjoy meeting a few new people.

We tried to make the most of our 3-day Cadw pass. We started at Conwy castle. This was my favourite castle, it had a great view of the river and also Conwy itself surrounded by the town walls.
We then made a big mistake by going all the way to Rhuddlan Castle to find it closed (it was still nice to look at, just not worth the long journey).

Not wanting to drag a very worthy chairty/rememberance tradition down to a fashion parade, but how does everyone else manage to keep their poppies so perfect? Everyone else seems to have perfectly flat, unwrinkled ones, even their leaf stays upright. I always try to look after my things but after only a day my poppy was creased and the leaf kept faling down. Is there something I'm missing?

Last weekend was in Birmingham for the Veterinary Christian Fellowship committee (Christine is a member of the committee, I just tagged along). It was held at a place owned by the BMS which had nice lodging, far superior to the usual bunk bed type that most Christian weekends have.
It really surprised me how quickly I felt at home there, but maybe it's because I've already spent a few weekends with the VCF committee so I didn't have the usual "don't know many people" that you can get. They are all great people and it's really encouraging that the VCF is growing. They now have a part time person working for them and have managed to do lots more than before. This year they are hoping to have more local groups as being a Christian vet can make it hard to fellowship with other Christians (working long hours in a remote area etc.). It makes me wonder how many other Christian groups there are based around a type of work there are. I should get round to looking up a computing one...

I was confused as we had a clock on the flat screen TV that I hadn't worked out how to put back an hour, but overnight it had corrected itself, fooling me that I had woken up early.
However we were still in time for the breakfast buffet. This is my favourite part of staying in a hotel and it did the trick for me. Although they did keep running out of bacon causing a long queue.
Before getting on the motorway we had a look at the Ironbridge. It was a shame we didn't have time for the museums but did have a look around the tourist information centre that had some informative displays. The trees are just turning colour and the bridge with the Severn valley looked great. Maybe it was the fact it was Sunday morning or just the weather, but it was very peaceful and I was the most relaxed I had been all week.

We had to get up a bit early so we could tidy up the cotage. I'm going to miss looking out of my bedroom window and seeing sheep.
Cleaning out the grate of the log fire was very messy and dusty. I feel sorry for my Mum who hadx to clean our coal fire when we were growing up.
We avoided the touristy Llanberis pass (it's very nice, but we had travelled there a number of times during out holiday) and went via Bethesd which also had some great scenary. We stopped off at Llangollen which had the added bonus of having a canoe competition going on. (Although this meant it was hard to find a parking place.) The tourist information place had a arts display and we also went to the local museum which was interesting and free.

It took us a while to get to Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). It looked OK on the map but the roads in Wales can sometimes be a bit slow.

CAT started as a bit of a hippy commune and now is a fairly well developed tourist attraction/educational centre. Sort of like the Eden Project but without so much cash. We had a good time and the weather was dry (you could just about do it in the rain but it wouldn't be as nice). We liked the water powered funicular railway and the exhibits you could interact with but there were a few that were out of order.

We had been following the weather forecast so we knew what to expect. We made the best of things by staying in bed for a lot of the morning (it had been a long day yesterday).
Then we went to Llandudno to the shops. I bought SFX magazine from Smiths and Christine bought some embroidary things. (The shop was a bit strange, the door was locked and we would have gone away if it wasn't for the owner coming to open the door for us. Maybe they did it because the winds were so strong.)

It was an early start today as we needed to be at Snowdon for 9am for the early bird special. In the end we ended up getting there for 8.30.
It was good fun going up on the train and I liked the commentary but two mins after getting out of the train the hail stones came down and everybody ran back to the train to sit there soggy for the next 25 mins waiting for it to slowly go back down the mountain.