Good morning folks
I trust you are in tiptop form.
Here is the latest hotch-potch of nonsense I have the cheek to call a blog.
2nd blog in 3 months, need to step up a bit.
Spring is definitely in the air, at last (I personally hate winter!)
New back cog so I can go and new brakes so I can stop, thanks to Steve 🙂
Will it ever stop raining?
Never mind spring, roll on summer!
So without further rambling, here is the blog.
The Nipper.
Just to say a big thank you to all who sent messages.
Thankfully we are turning a corner now with the Youngster.
A few more follow up appointments this month.
Saturday night disco is back.
Onwards and upwards.
(We shared the chips!)
Man-with-a-van?
Back in the distant year of 2001, I bought a van.
I had been looking in the Auto Trader (magazine, pre-online) for weeks and weeks and after viewing a lot of duffers, I found an unpolished gem somewhere on the moors outside Halifax. An old gentleman called William was selling his old Transit van (white, naturally) after a mishap towing his caravan through Portugal. A pothole had flipped the caravan and turned it into matchsticks, so he gave the chassis to a scrap merchant and filled his van with all the caravan paraphernalia, selling it all as a job lot for £999.
An absolutely terrifying test drive (William driving, black ice galore, as fast as an ageing Transit can go…
The V5 changed names and it was mine.
(Despite being a happy snapper all of my life, I cannot find one single photo of it, so for artist’s impression, it looked something like this).
My brother, James, is a Carpenter and with his help we kitted it out as a basic, but very comfortable campervan, which I took everywhere, mainly the Lakes and Scotland, (when I wasn’t transporting fridges and furnture for people. It is remarkable how popular you become when you have a van!)
Before the Influencer days of “Vanlife” and “Stealth camping” were a thing, I just used to bomb up to the Lakes the night before a race, sleep like a baby in a layby} and all was good. I absolutely loved that van, it never let me down but when I first went travelling it had to go (it was slowly rusting away). I sold it to the brother of a lass I met in a camping shop in Kendal, who lived in Skipton. I drove it there, sold it and rode my pushbike back, with £999 in my pocket.
I never do things simply…
(* When I used the phrase “Sleep like a baby in a layby”, I wasn’t implying nor suggesting that you should let a baby sleep in a layby. A cot in a house is probably better.)
Fast forward to 2021 and the not-so-great Firesale.
“Everything must go”, and it did. Pushbikes, guitars, amps, climbing gear and my old faithful Honda C90. I sold a large chunk of my soul on ebay on that sad day.
That trusty little 90cc grapefruit-engine-sized step-through never, ever let me down, why oh why did I sell it on?
It did however free up some brass to buy a van.
I started looking around but in my price range everything had been to the moon and back and/or had some major mechanical fault.
Junk basically.
Then by sheer chance a mate at work told me that his sister was selling her van and wanted a quick sale!
I booked a one way train ticket to Oxford and filled my pockets with readies. My mate had said “It’s more muscle than van”, which was cryptic, but upon driving home in the almost immaculate Nissan Elgrand (I had to look it up too), the petrol gauge seemed to be a victim of gravity, at a time when fuel prices were at an absolute all time high. (E5 petrol too, which is even pricier!)
“More muscle” now made perfect sense.
(In its defence it was a 3.2L V6 automatic after all, fuel efficiency wasn’t its forte!)
Looking around I found a chap called Simon in South Elmsall who did LPG conversions. He did 3 per week and had a 6 month waiting list.
“Do you ever get cancellations?” I asked.
“Never” was his response, so I waited patiently for 6mths and then paid my money for a conversion, in effect bringing the running costs down to half,
IF I could find any LPG that was.
This rare commodity was a bit scarce, with additional problems of some pumps not working efficiently due to atmospheric pressue, tank pressure and pump pressure. Complicated.
In the end the not-so-great Firesale of 2023 forced me to sell it on and I bought “El Rojo”, my beloved 2002 K11 Micra.
My 6th Micra; I learnt to drive in one, one was my first car and another one took us to Mongolia, along with a string of other K11s.
This was all in the middle of Honda Jazz-gate (don’t ask). It was fate, as I was outbid in the last second, but the higher bidder disappeared so a very nice man in Kettering called John sold it to me and I have been happy ever since.
However, whether it is want or need, recently I have been becoming increasingly obsessed with vans of all shapes and sizes. I realy wish eBay did not exist at all at times.
Again, as always ex-work vans have all been thrashed to Jupiter and back and/or have previous MOT horror stories, so I am currently swaying more towards a “Micro Camper” (Citroen Berlingos, Peugeot Partners, Renault Kangoos and Sooty and Sweep vans). Part of me fears it will be a bit too diddy, but watch this space!
Like most of my life, I am living in daydreamland, but you’ve got to have a dream…
Plans.
Training hasn’t quite been going as planned…
2024 was to be the year of S&C (strength and conditioning), which it has been.
I signed up for a year of SCY (Strength, conditioning and yoga for runners), with 2 weekly attempts to keep up with the instructor, online thankfully (I only ever tried yoga once before and almost gave the 100yr old teacher called Xena, a nervous breakdown, I am not very bendy at all).
The idea/theory is that running alone is not enough, you do need additional strength training to prevent injury (an injured runner isn’t just a bear with a sore head, more like a junkie with no gear!)
Have also invested in a weighted vest and a wobble board too, which are both entertaining and have just done a “Weighted vest Stairmaster” session, which almost killed me but all this is just covering up the blatant fact that running is not going well at all and it is indeed running that will get me up them there fells for my ambitious/audacious/unrealistic race programme which is as follows:
March
Stan Bradshaw Tour of Pendle, Witches county, Lancashire: (Didn’t run, good start to season!)
Coledale Horseshoe, Lakes.
May
Jura fell race, Scotland.
Limping into…
June (deep breath)
Duddon fell race, Lakes
Ennerdale fell race, Lakes
Buttermere Sailbeck fell race, Lakes
Great Lakes fell race, Lakes!
Plus/and/or, possibly, a crack at the Tranter’s Round.
If I am still alive, June inexorably leads into…
July
Wasdale fell race, Lakes
(Only one race in July as I was absolutely destroyed after Wasdale last year!)
August
Borrowdale fell race, Lakes
Borrowdale falls on my birthday this year, 22 years after I first ran it as a young lad!
I never plan past August as my legs will probably have dropped off before then.
Ambitious?
Perhaps.
Best get some running in then, hadn’t I.
(All of the above could be wiped out in a flash, as the fickle balance of training properly/not getting injured is a rather precarious one.
In addition to this, I am generally a disaster in normal everyday life, so an empty calendar, giddiness and the FRA Fixtures booklet are a heady and potentially dangerous cocktail!)
Raiders round-up.
The mighty Shipbuilders took a trip to deepest, darkest West Yorkshire at the weekend, Belle Vue, Wakefield to be precise.
Despite being in the game, for most of the game, the ex-Superleague side took the honours and Barrow bowed out of the 1895 cup.
As previously mentioned, we’re focussing on the league this year 😉
And finally
I have been out and about with the camera.
Still got a lot to learn, please bear with me, it will get better!
Just local this time, but with history, scenery, botany, wrong turns and more, here is the ladfromtad.com vlog – episode 2
The subtitles (again) make even less sense than I do, but that does give me faith that AI will never completely take over the world, as long as there are mumblers about like me!
Thank you for reading and watching 🙂
That’s all for now folks.
Hasta la proxima.
Johnny
p.s. If that wasn’t enough rambling for one sitting, I just stumbled across this old link to a past C90 adventure 🙂
https://alpkit.com/blogs/deeds/operation-point-clunk-north-part-1
LADFROMTAD.COM 