Good morning folks

Here is the latest claptrap compilation that is my life, the Ladfromtad.com blog.

Taken a day off work, so rather than going fishing or trying to sort out my shed, I thought I would maximise my £36 investment in WordPress and write something.

Now, warning, this blog is a bit running-centric and I know that running is boring, look at me, I’ve run all my life and I am the most boring person I know! So, I will keep it brief.
It is just that I have been putting so much of my time/effort into running, now that I can run again, that there is not much time for anything else.

A few things have been appartaining since the last wrap-up.

The Nipper (and I) went on a Fishing course, where she wasn’t been advised by someone who had fished a long time ago and wasn’t very good at it back then, so we both learned a lot, thanks to the Get Fishing team, Dave (LDSA) and Kippax Pond.

Summer is here, what’s not to like about that (apart from nettles, sunburn and hay fever).

So, here goes.

For a man who thought that his running/racing days were over this time last year, it has been a bit like being released from prison, (without the poll tax exemption, bent screws or cavity searches!)
Running is a fickle game though, injuries are way more common than purple patches and fitness is hard gained/easily lost.
It is a very difficult balancing act indeed!

Ennerdale Horseshoe

My first “proper” fell race since my comeback. I had run Guisborough Moors, but most races in the Lakes are a step-up, mainly due to ascents and terrain.
Ennerdale Horseshoe is not actually a horseshoe, it is an out and back, which means if you bail or miss the cut-off times, you’ve got a long way to get back as Green Gable is about 10 miles from the start.

“HOTTER THAN IBIZA” screamed the headlines.

Water was everyone’s worry. Water is dead weight, 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilo, but due to there having been no rain for weeks, most water points (streams and becks) were empty. Fortunately some marshalls (and some very kind spectators) had a bit of water.

Now I had run this race twice before. Once in 2001, again in 2011.
Both times I had been fit and had no worries about getting the trip.

This time I was full of doubts and getting around was my only goal.

Things started well. Great Borne, Red Pike, good line round Haystacks, Green Gable, feeling brilliant round Great Gable (thankful for a bit of shade, it was bloody hot) and thinking “THIS is what I have been missing!”

Over Kirk Fell, down the gully, passed a bloke who was chucking his guts up and onto Pillar and Haycock. In races you use a “dibber”, a piece of very important plastic which goes in the checkpoint box, bleeps and records your time (at that point). It is a safety measure and has replaced the old “bread tag” system where you frisbeed a bread tag at a marshall on some windy summit and they threaded it onto a wire, thence giving positions at various points on the course. Courses have checkpoints which you must visit. If you miss one, you are disqualified. Five minutes after passing the summit of Haycock, I had a thought. Had I “dibbed”?

After a bit of “Of course I must have” dithering, I went back and dibbed again (I had dibbed the first time I found out later), that is when the wheels started to fall off and I started going backwards.

Heat, the dreaded “bonk” (when your body runs out of fuel) and dehydration all conspired against me, but I got around and finished.
The catering team (Scouts) had made huge amounts of food, but I just couldn’t stomach the sausage roll that the Scout Mistress was trying to force on me, I wasn’t making much sense.

I had supped 2 litres of water before the race, 2 litres during and 3 litres afterwards and I was still dehydrated.

Two separate crashes (not me) made it a long detour ride home, including reversing back down a one way track for longer than my gearbox/clutch liked.

Runningwise, a grand day out 🙂
Brilliant to see some old friends, after a long Peruvian sojourn and time away from the fells.

As a perfect summary, check out my mate John’s video HERE

BGR part I

The Bob Graham Round is a fellrunning challenge.
A simple circuit of mountain tops first run in 1932 by a Keswick Hotelier called Bob Graham, who ran round in a pyjama top, sustained by boiled eggs.
There are 42 summits over 66-72 miles with 27000ft of ascent and it has to be done in under 24 hours. I did mine in 2009 (Club member No.1508) with my mate Glen. It is a tough day/night out.
The deal is that once you have done it, you agree to help other people on their round. To do a BGR involves a LOT of training, recces, eating on your feet and a big slice of good luck with the weather.

This bit gets confusing, so I will use names here.

Scott: A runner I met whilst running back to the start after the Calderdale Way Relay. Doing his Bob Graham Round on 1st of July.

Richard: A mate of Scott’s, who I met after the Ennerdale Race, but when everyone was a bit heat-monged to be coherent.

Abby: Another runner, doing her BGR on the 17th of June. Richard had volunteered to help her via a FB group and I offered via Richard, the morning after Ennerdale. (However, 20 minutes after agreeing, I took a crashing fall on the rock strewn terrain that stretches for at least 10 feet down by Tad river.
Grass for 3 miles in either direction and I tripped over an invisible tree root. Daydreaming about the the day before before I hit the deck hard, smashing my head, elbow, hip, knee and twisting my metalwork ankle. I limped home, body and pride battered. It was touch and go whether I could run, but when one of her team dropped out,I felt morally obliged).

So, I got up at 3am and drove to Keswick to meet Richard, then we drove to Dunmail Raise, where we would run to Wasdale then later get a lift back to Keswick where I would pick my car up and give Richard a lift back to Dunmail, then drive home. Complicated logisics? You bet.

So, meeting up with Richard (who I had met once) and Abby and team (who I had never met) was a big departure from my not-wanting-to-meet-anyone post pandemic malaise, and it was bloody brilliant!

Leg 3 is tricky in the mist and clag, but fairly straightforward if it is clear (famous last words). It is all about the “lines”. There are paths between some peaks, but it is the best lines that keep you on schedule.

All went well apart from a slightly dubious line on Bowfell. There must have been 100+ hikers on top of Scafell Pike, the highest peak in England, in stark contrast to the 4 people on Scafell, it’s lower neighbour, only 46ft lower and England’s second highest, but sadly neglected mountain top.
Lord’s Rake was as loose as ever and the scree run down to Wasdale was l-o-n-g and hot. It was a fantastic day out on the fells.

Sadly Abby started slipping behind schedule but gallantly carried on to get round in 26 hours. She will be back!

Running Out Of Time Relay!

In a brief nutshell I joined the Green Runners, as their ideas (pillars) struck a chord with me:

1) How YOU Move

2) How YOU Kit-up

3) How YOU Eat

4) How YOU Speak Out

As I previously said, I am not a tree hugging vegan hippy, but who knows, one day I might be!

Through the Green Runners I heard about the RUNNING OUT OF TIME RELAY.

A national relay snaking from the top of Ben Nevis, up the road in Bonny Scotland, to Big Ben, down the Old Smoke.

I signed up for 3 stages, 2 of which I did a recce of and one I didn’t, which came back to bite my ar$e!
Leg 1: Copmanthorpe school – Bilbrough Three Hares pub
Leg 2: Bilbrough Three Hares pub – Tadcaster Costa coffee
Leg 3: Tadcaster Costa Coffee – Aberford Arabian Horse pub

The incredible summer gave way to one morning of monsoon rain as I waited for my bus (pillar 1: use public transport).

I was invited into the school where a very enthusiastic hallful of school kids asked and answered questions from the support team (3 Cumbrians, what are the chances of getting 4 Cumbrians together, outside of Cumbrian?!)

Radio York were there to capture the occasion and to a roar of applause, Graeme from York ran in with the baton and to the biggest cheer I have ever heard, I was off, into the torrential rain, soaked to the skin by the time I left the school grounds and down a country lane, where a rocket powered DPD van almost cut my relay short and simultaneously obscured the ever-so-slight, but very important road junction I should have taken. Splashing blindly onwards, I did sense I was off route but the magical power of the Pudsey and Bramley vest and its calming “Don’t fret, it’ll come good” mantra took me 3 miles off course, meaning that the generous time schedule (which was running exactly to time after 10 days) became a race to get to Taddy in time, to pick up another runner.

I raced down quiet country roads, past the Three Hares pub (shut) to Tadcaster, running through town with a golden baton!

Picking up Emma at Costa we waded on through the rain to Hazlewood Castle for the off road death-by-nettles section (which luckily I did know).
Why do these stinging buggers sting more when wet?
Who knows?

Onwards to Aberford, bang on time, then jogging back to Tad, when the rain eventually eased and I went home with very red legs, but a feeling of “job done” and 20 miles in the bank.

The 4th pillar is SPEAKING OUT and here was my bit on the telly.
(The questions I was asked were not the questions I had in my head, hence the pained expression!)

Remember, don’t burn your trash, don’t take private jets, don’t buy single use plastic stuff and don’t fill your drawers with brand new clobber when your old gear can still be used/fixed/flogged on 🙂

The bumbag is 35 years old and still going strong 🙂

BGR part II

Scott (who I met at CWR) is doing for his BGR this weekend and has been training harder than Kilian Jornet and Jack Kuenzle put together.

I am on leg 3 with Richard. Bring it on 🙂

Wasdale!

Ennerdale was optimistic, Wasdale is shorter but has more climbing than Ennerdale. Ennerdale was just passed my current physical limits!

Ennerdale: 23 miles/7513ft ascent
Wasdale: 21 miles/9022ft ascent

A week on Saturday I will be dragging myself round
Brackenclose-Whin Rigg-Seatallan-Pillar-Great Gable-Esk Hause-Scafell Pike-Lingmell Nose-Brackenclose, with a fair bit of up and down in between.

I ran Wasdale once, but it was 20 years ago.
Getting round is my ambitious aim!

Raider’s round-up.

If I had pulled my finger out and scribbled this nonsense before Sunday, I could have enthused about stringing 3-wins-in-a-row together and how we were safe from the drop, so we will casually ignore yesterday’s defeat and stay positive!

Consistency has been a problem (which is also evident in some Superleague teams, even Hull won at the weekend!)
Injuries and the other usual excuses are also playing a part in the case of the Shipbuilders. It seems ironic that last season, after going up a league, with zero expectations and just a hope of staying up resulted in getting into the play-offs for promotion to this season, where we had expectations and have been dire. Similar to York’s current plight.

Just hoping that Newcastle and Swinton both continue to be rubbish and we might just be safe!

And finally…

“Who’s yer man?”
This ancient mystery is finally unravelled…

Until the next time amigos!
(If/when I have recovered from the daft idea of trying to relive my youth in the form of trying to run races I last ran 20 years ago!)

Cheers
Johnny

Good morning folks

Here is the latest haphazard round-up that is tumultous life and trascribed as this blog.

Been a busy old bee. Just about settled into the new gaff. Started a new job, (two jobs in fact). Limping along with the Run365 challenge and even done my first UK fell race in 13 years (and my first race since Misti Sky Race in 2019). So, it has been a pretty positive time and I have no major grouses nor beefs, which must be a first in the history of this blog in its various grumbling guises (noise, traffic, neighbours, red tape, etc…)

The Nipper has been away with Brownies!

We got fishing, once, to the seaside, beside the sea, and caught our tea.

Spring sprung (finally) and the lambs arrived.

I even got up t’Lakes for a day last week. Lucky you if you are in the Lakes right now. West is best this week. I lived there until I was 14 and cannot remember a whole week without rain! (My obsession with the weather never fades).

So, without further adieu, here is the Ladfromtad.com blog…

TAXI!

Since my last scribblings I have started a new job at work, two jobs in fact and bloody good numbers they are too, which is just as well as I will be working at the British Library until my late 70’s, (I wish I was joking!)

Part of my job is Despatch/Delivery, which highlights to me all the mistakes I am making in my sideline number; the one way rampage to madness and bankruptcy that I call selling on eBay, which is just about to be knocked on the head (again, honest!)
Despatch/delivery do it properly, without the Blue Peter, last minute chaos that is my ebay operations.
I am working with a cool team and a decent gaffer, amd the other half of the job is also ace; driving folk around in the BL car, (we are not a taxi service, before you start booking trips to Torquay, Thurso or Teesside Airport).

It is cool as I get to drive round, and I like driving, and to talk to people, and I like talking, and this is work, and I even get paid for it!

It is not all rainbows, unicorns and Milk Tray though. The roads are full of tosspots, idiots and self-entitled ar$eholes (mainly in Range Rovers with personalised plates), but that is the same for everyone.
(Disclaimer: Not all RR drivers are ar$e$. If you put some RR drivers in a Mini Metro they would still be ar$es and once, a RR actually let me out at a junction!)
A deer, doe a deer, a female deer ran in front of me last week and I had to toot at a partridge (not a euphemism) another day, so it’s a bit like being on safari (*so goody) down the A59 York road, dodging animals and speed traps.
In other motoring news, the Jazz has gone (hoorah) and Red Rum passed its MOT (double hurrah).

*Have I reached an all time reference low here?

Green Runners.

I am not about to become a tree hugger, start quoting Greta Thunderbird or spout from a recycled cardboard soap box, but this is something that has been brewing in my mind for some time.

We have all known about climate change for a long time. The scientists warned us, we largely ignored it, the world is burning (as were a lot of BBQs this weekend) and we should really do as much as we can to reduce our carbon footprint/impact on the environment, if we give a $h!t that is.
Recycle, reduce, reuse is just a bare minimum.
Just to start thinking about NOT buying that banana wrapped in a single use plastic bag (not a euphemism) is a start. It is not hard and if we ALL do something, it might make a difference.
I am taking part in the RUNNING OUT OF TIME relay, from Ben Nevis to Big Ben next month. Anyone can join in, run, walk or cycle a stage.

Carry the baton in Britain’s biggest sporting celebration of climate action and nature! 

Join the Running Out of Time Relay and help pass the baton from Ben Nevis to Big Ben.

There are 366 stages along the 2,661km route so, whether you’re a walker, wheeler, runner or cyclist, there’s a stage for everyone!

10th June – 11th July

Sign up HERE: https://running-out-of-time.com/

If you run/jog/walk and you give a toss about the environment, pay your £2.50, make your pledge and join the GREEN RUNNERS.
A running community making changes for a fitter planet 🙂

(It is slightly ironic and indeed hypocritical that my new job is a driving job, but we are getting an electric car soon!)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly…

(Me, not the surroundings).
I will be honest, a year ago I really thought that my running days were over.
Long Covid, whatever tit is in its broad medical umbrella term, had buggered up my lungs and ticker, meaning I could no longer do what I loved doing, namely exercise. We all have our own coping mechanisms for dealing with the white noise headache called life, and running was mine, even though my knackered old body is wearing down, I still like to do my bit.

One of my GPs (not a sporting type, unless the Eat-all-you-can-buffet becomes an Olympic event) told me last March that after C19, I would be at Couch-to-5k fitness level. He was right. Every scrap of training I had done in the previous 30-odd years (some odder than others) had gone, disappeared.
It took me a long, long time to accept it, but anything I had done/run, had to be forgotten about and reset.

I set myself a goal this year to run every day, as I really thought that racing wasn’t going to happen, but slowly, slowly, I got fitter and then ran on the hills a bit, then stretched the long run a bit, then entered a race!

The good.

The Guisborough Moors race was a race I last ran as a junior in 1987.
I beat Will Styan (who I think was English Champion at the time, although he was obviously not having a good run on the day, but his dad Andy STILL holds the Langdale Horseshoe record from 1977). Anyway, I won the race and was immediately dragged before the Steward’s, as I had “cheated”. Apparently I had cut a corner after the leading group had been misdirected by a marshall (also knocking 10 minutes off the record!)
I was disqualified and placed last, and after absolutely burying myself as a youth! I vowed never to return…

Let bygones be bygones as they say, and I rocked up after 36 years abstaining, swallowed my pride, paid my £6 and ran around, catching up with my old LAMM partner, Barry.

I gave it my absolute all on the descent and couldn’t walk for a few days.

A good start! Chuffed to bits to be back in the racing fold, albeit more toward the back of the field, than the front. It was a start.

The bad.

I received a late call-up to the team for the auspicious Calderdale Way Relay. A 6 stage, 50 mile relay up hill and down valley in deepest darkest West Yorkshire. I was paired with Colin on leg 1.
Relays are quite unique, as all kinds of cock-ups can occur, as it is difficult to know exactly what time your handover will arrive, it is not a 400m track! I have seen other teams absolutely beasting themselves on legs to arrive to an absentee handover, (as happened to the first ladies team this year).
A logistical headache, but a great day out. Last time I ran was 2001, when it was in December. Now it is held in May and the sun shone.

Had a bad day at the office, never got going, felt shot before the start and suffered the old enemy stomach problems 😦

Got round by hanging on to Colin’s coat-tails, then jogged back to the start.
A good 22 mile round trip, but a decidedly disappointing below par performance.

The ugly.

Pride always comes before a fall.
So I thought I was fit enough to enter a longer race. The Lakeland Classics races are Borrowdale, Buttermere, Duddon Valley, Ennerdale, Langdale, Three Shires and Wasdale. All of which I have run, bar Buttermere.
I love the Ennerdale valley, it is for me, one of the best and last unspoilt Lakeland valleys and (if you don’t get crushed by the high speed logging lorries) a great place without the trappings of cafes, glamping pods, gear shops and crowds.
The Ennerdale Horseshoe is just short of 23 miles with 7513ft of up and down.
I entered this in advance, and also entered Wasdale (21 miles with 9000ft+ of climbing) for good measure.

A “recce” is an outing prior to the race, to suss out the course. I had run it in 2001 and 2012, but couldn’t remember much. Fell races are not marked, so if the clag is down, you have to be able to find your way around the course, all of which have their own “lines”. A recce is a good excuse to get lost and/or make a complete balls of the route, plus a chance to try out food/gear and not leave everything to the big day. A bit like a rehearsal, where if it goes wrong, it is not as much of a drama than if it goes wrong on race day.
I was up at 4am, away by 5, A1-A66-A5086, a red hot day, followed by a navigational boo-boo and a seeming unability to coordinate my feet over the tops. It was shambolic.
I had 2 litres of fluids on me and had hoped to top up in a stream, but all the streams were dry and at halfway, as it was taking me so long I decided to bail at Green Gable.

However, Ennerdale Horseshoe is not an actual horseshoe and Green Gable is about 11 miles from the start, so it was a bit of a trudge back down the valley, through the forest and along the lake to the car.

6hrs after setting off, burnt to a crisp and drier than a dead dingo’s ding-a-ling in a desert, I got back to the start. Basically my fitness had been found out. The Lakes is a different kettle of fishfingers and demands some respect (and some proper training).
Bananas, gels, hopes, dreams, aspirations, nostalgia and having listened to Finlay Wild’s podcast is not enough!
Will I get round on race day, within the cut-offs?
It is great to have the confidence to know you can do something, but it makes it more of an adventure if you don’t know you can.
Watch this space…

Legend!

If I haven’t bored you into a running induced coma, if you like podcasts (check me out, listening to a podcast), this is absolutely bloody brilliant!

Raiders round-up.

They say you’re only as good as your last game result, which makes Barrow absolutely brilliant as they trounced Whitehaven 32:16 at in a local derby, played in York!

We can just forget all the other shockers and the possible threat of demotion, whilst we enjoy the moment of this result and the sunshine 🙂

SuperLeeds 😦

What can one say?

Déjà vu?

We’ll be back.

And finally

I harp on about my running, but apart from a few brief glimpses of victory, in a few tinpot races, I was always (and now aspire to be) an also-ran.
I do it because I enjoy it, which is a good enough reason for me.

My Dad however, was a proper runner. He ran short but ridiculously hard and steep fell races, like Grasmere, Ambleside and Kilnsey Crag. I tried running Grasmere one year and I had to walk downstairs backwards for a week!

On May Day in 1970 (& 1971) my Dad (Reuben Parsons) got up to milk 100 cows, rode his motorbike 100 miles, ran the Gawthorpe to Ossett Coal Carrying Championship race, ran for a mile with a hundredweight (50.8kg in new money) of coal, rode 100 miles home, milked 100 cows, then went to bed!

This video is a glimpse into the past…

Poor old Gordon!

Hasta la proxima amigos 🙂

p.s. Go Mountain Goats (Finlay Wild’s podcast) is well worth a listen if you like all things mountainous!

Good morning folks

Here is the latest hotch-potch of gubbins that is my self-imposed ridiculously overcomplicated life, which started life being scribbled on my laptop on the 10:02 from York to Stevenage, imitating (and failing at being) a jet-setting highflier city type, bit tricky when you look like a hobo and didn’t book a seat with a table, resulting in 2 hours of contorted typing torture, oh to be 5’2” or smaller.
Backward facing seat always gives a different perspective, let the train take the strain…

House move No#44 was (and still is) the bedlam that was to be expected and just to up the stress levels to 11, I decided to embark on an accidental buying-&-selling of cars scheme,  plus selling my life (and what was left of my soul) on the idiot-&-general-fruitcake magnet that is eBay. I also applied for another job where I work and continue with my run365 venture.
On top of all this, we had to get the new gaff ready for the young ‘un’s birthday party, which was basically moving everything out of sight and out of mind, a bit like my shed, but more of that later.
So, all in all, things have been a tad busy.

So, in no particular order here is my cathartic purging of this month’s sins, mishaps and cock-ups!

(Started on an Inter-City 125 and finished on the last day of my 2 week working holiday, in the new gaff).

Cumbria(n) forever!

This is not an April Fool’s joke, I wish it was.
As of midnight on 31/03/23 the county of Cumbria was abolished, to be replaced by the old counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness. A regional council cost-cutting exercise sneaked in under the carpet and forced through during lockdown.
I was born in Kendal, Westmorland, but when I was 2 years old, Westmorland became Cumbria, so all of my life I have considered myself and identified as a Cumbrian.
No amount of whining, whinging or wailing will change it, but can one imagine this happening in neighbouring Yorkshire or Lancashire? There would be riots!

Trying to fins a positive note, there may be a resurgence of Cumberland Westmorland Wrestling, or an increase in sausage sales or an expanding readership of the Gazette, but overall it was a sad day.

I would like to end this sorry chapter with an ode penned by a Cumbrian friend, Neil:

Cum-bri-a, my Lord.
Cum-bri-a,
Cum-bri-a, my Lord.
Cum-bri-a,
Oh, Lord, Cum-bri-aaaa!

Cumbrian ‘til I die.

Moving on.

When we fled Arequipa and Peruland in September 2020 we really had no concrete plan and for a man who used to plan everything (fuelled by OCD) this was not easy. My phone feeds me constant reminders of 1 year ago, 2 years ago, (which is generally photos of junk I was putting on eBay at the time), etc, and just now I am reliving the not-so-heady days of early 2021 AQP lockdown, when (the not yet disgraced at the time) President Vizcarra) announced rules pandemic rules of “One person allowed out of the house only to go to the shop/chemist/doctor/hospital, with the only shops being open being supermarkets and “bodegas” and an extra special men allowed out of Monday/Wednesday/Friday, ladies allowed out Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Nobody allowed out Sunday and a curfew from 8pm-6am”
Zoom was my lifeline (as that was my job/life for 6mths and still is on a Sunday night with my mates at 7pm). So anyroad, we jumped ship and came back by a contrived route to Blighty via Government approved taxi and 3 flights back to Taddy and to the beautiful hideaway that is the caravan. It was meant to be a stop-gap but got stretched and stretched until now.

Caravans are ace, it’s my 4^th stint in a caravan as a home, but if you are not a one-knife-one-fork-one-spoon minimalist, it quickly becomes unmanageable.

That. Is where the shed came in!

In 2013, during a(nother) house move, I had the brilliant foresight to put up a shed* as temporary storage for, yet another rushed house move. “Stuff it all in and sort it later” became my motto. Circumstances forced several other rushed house moves and then when we jetted off back to Peru in 2014 I secretly hoped the Shed Fairies would sort through all the tat, leaving all the good stuff neat and tidy and organised.

(* As a general rule, I won’t pay someone else to do a job I can do myself. Retrospective apologies to both my brother, James and my Dad, for the 2 sheds I have put up, both of which were a complete nightmare and with hindsight, I would have happily splashed the cash to someone who does it for a living who could do it in 1/4 of the time!)

I am generally pretty good at giving stuff up &/or cutting it out completely (chocolate, beer, coffee), normally for no reason other than personal stubbornness, but my one major weakness is buying crap on the internet. At first it was just an excuse for not going out shopping during the pandemic (“Stay at home”), but after a 7yr sojourn in the non-internet-nor-mail-order land of Peru, where I struggled to buy anything my size, the temptation was too great once back on Amazon soil.
Reformed gamblers are always looking for “Value” and the internet is a bountiful place of value and bright lights, where anything is just a maximum of 3 clicks away. It is just too easy. Buy it/try it/return it/flog it.
I spent weeks and weeks “sorting out” the shed, making space for more and more junk and more and more hobbies; camping, climbing, cycling, fishing, fishkeeping, motorbikes…
When “the guilt” would kick in and I would have a clear-out blitz, basically to get some more pocket money. This became a pattern, and a bloody hard pattern to break.

As all our old house stuff was at the back of the hangar/shed, it was a massive effort to empty the shed, something that demanded dry weather and something that I have never actually managed yet, so we bought new stuff for the caravan, which in turn became fuller and fuller.
I was kidding myself basically.
So, eventually (now) it all needed to be sorted out and either sold on, given away, recycled or burned. With burning being the only fast option, (but my dad hates fires and as it is his land, not really an option!)
eBay attracts the biggest audience, but with the highest percentage of tyrekickers/timewasters/freaks, some of whom are decent (normal) people, the rest who are just after something for nothing, with Mr. eBay sat back rubbing his hands when not sat in his undies counting the money pouring in! Selling fees go up and up and margins get tighter and tighter. A friend of mine who was a full time eBay seller, recently gave it up as it has just become harder and harder to make a buck.
“Good natured recycling” is what another mate of mine calls it, which is a better way to look at it. Even in these cost of living crisis times, it remains hard to sometimes even give stuff away, but it feels rewarding if you can sell something to someone who will appreciate it and maybe just about cover your P&P time/costs!
It is not a way to make money when one is skint.
(I only eBay when I am skint, which I have now realised is basically all the time, but believe me, I would kick it all well into touch in a heartbeat…)

After photographing and listing an item, you then get the questions;
“How big is it? (see description)”
“What colour is it? (see photos)”
“What is your “best” price? (see starting price and if that is 99p, hope for your life that more than one person is interested)”
“Will you post it? (COLLECTION ONLY PLEASE generally means a big fat NO, as it is to big/fragile/awkward to take to the Post Office)”

Then you get the ghost bidders, people who raise their hand, nod their head, scratch their nose, wink, then slope off into the background when the Gavel does down. So you have to relist it, when “watchers” (more often voyeurs than interested bidders) will assume there is something wrong with the item and send you a “Will you take a shilling for it with free delivery to China?” message. Then the pantomime starts again.

IF you do get a sale, you either have a demented “Blue Peter on speed meets Challenge Anneka” frenzy to catch the Post Office after work, or arrange a rendezvous.
I have met some really interesting, brilliant, genuine, lovely people but as many hardened “punters” who say the item was a “no-show”, then you start the Lost Item procedure, I could go on, but you get the general picture.

I have had a geezer from Essex coming up to buy a pushbike, a Cornish fisherman (defying all lockdown rules) to collect an imitation “Gibson Flying V”, and most recent a Missionary in Ghana, sending a courier from Birmingham, to pick up a keyboard going to a church in Accra  and many more, but very soon I would like to put it to bed. He says, typing this on a laptop on a train, facing backwards, on the way to Stevenage, to buy a car, which brings me nicely on to the next topic.

IBUYANYCAR.COM

I had a Honda XR125 Trials bike in Peru, I absolutely LOVED that bike, it took me to places I would never have seen, but when a big school bill suddenly reared its ugly head and the realisation that I had probably used up nearly all of my 9 lives in the Lima traffic, it had to go.
Bloody ‘ell, you think eBay is bad!
There is a kind of second hand market in Peru, in its relative infancy. Mercadolibre.com and the like. Online notice boards really, not a platform as such, with zero protection.
I did sell a bass guitar on there, what a ballache process that was, but buying and selling vehicles is a whole new level of pain that is!

Any vehicle; car, motorbike, mototaxi, llama or other, if being sold by someone married, needs to have both parties present and in agreement for a sale. A morning of inconvenience at best, but if one party disagrees or cannot go to the “Notaria”, forget it.
Every piece of paper/documentation in triplicate, (how I miss Latin American red tape) and then to “Banco de la Nacion”.

In Blighty you just have to hand over the green bit of the V5 and Voila, it’s your’s!

Too easy?

In January 2022, after selling my penultimate crown jewel, my beloved red Honda C90 SuperClunk, (the last crown jewel is my double bass, which I have carted round houses/flats/caravans/shed since 1989), I bought what was meant to be a long term project and investment which was our Nissan Elgrand campervan.

It was a beast! 3.3Litre V6 Automatic, which did about 10mpg, on a good day.
So, a conversion to Bi-Fuel, with a LPG conversion was the answer I thought, a tankful of gas for 80p a litre would make motoring practically free, but LPG became harder and harder to find and it still only did the same MPG. With high insurance and £300+ tax, it had to go too, which it did, to the first viewers (after filtering out the usual tyrekickers), had I sold myself short? One never knows, but the second hand vehicle market had definitely become a seller’s domain.
I started looking around at cheap runarounds; Ford Fusions (£30 tax), Fiat Pandas, and the Honda Jazz, with its patented “flat boot”.

I quickly became blinded by the GOV.UK MOT checking site.
Pretty much everything in my budget was either:
a) A future MOT failing money pit.
b) A complete rust bucket.
c) A combination of A & B.

We all make mistakes in life, it is how we learn (in theory), but this particular car deal was one to forget.

Now I was only after a cheap runaround and you don’t buy a Honda Jazz to race around the bus station car park on a Saturday night. Extreme steadiness personified and with a generally “mature” driving population cross section.

I did my 10 point check and had seen a few red flags/bargaining tools, but when it came to that awkward moment of bartering/haggling, something I did every day in Peru with hard-nosed emotionless efficiency, the vendor refused to budge. It was an onsight purchase, I could have (should have) walked away. There were “several” others interested, said the guy.
Lina was silent and the Nipper was uncharacteristically (scrabble bonanza that one) ungiddy.
A voice came out of my mouth “Ok, I’ll take it”.

What the handbagkettlepartridge was I thinking?!

I spent the rest of the day in a kind of mourning, sulking, what have I done, low mood.
Even washing my new acquisition didn’t endear it to me, there was no spark (well there was a spark, it is actually quite a good starter, but there was no passion or lurve for the new set of wheels).

THEN, another car model I had trawled eBay and Auto Trader for weeks and weeks for popped up as a “search alert” (dangerous things them, don’t be sucked in).

A K11 Nissan Micra, 2002, full service history, 21000 miles, undersealed, not a fleck of rust and not one MOT failure.

I was basically checking out the bridesmaids on my wedding day! The ink on the V5 had barely dried and I was eyeing up other motors!

I moped about and overthought it completely. There is only one picture hung up in the new flat and that is one of Lina and myself sat on the bonnet of the Silver Streak on my 40th birhtday, in the Gobi Desert. (“You are both smiling” says the Nipper! Not much of that these days).

Nostalgia is a very, very dangerous thing.

I did the sums (when I say I did the sums, the books were already cooked, it was really just a case of justifying it to myself and the convincing Lina that it was a potentially brilliant investment), Then I got in touch with the Vendor, John from Letchworth…

Cutting a long story short, my “value” addled brain justified a way of buying the Micra offset against selling the Jazz, backed up by a small buffer of junk sales on eBay.

So I bought a one way ticket to Stevenage and met the nicest North London couple you could ever meet, John and Anita, in a car park next to the station, had a good chinwag, checked the oil, did a few donuts round the car park and then drove it home.  John even filled the tank before I left, what a guy!

So “Red Rum” now sits outside my kitchen window and makes me smile when I look at him 😊

Anyone want to buy a Honda Jazz???

Smells a bit fishy…

I have always been interested in fishkeeping (now there is an admission by a Honda Jazz owner, zero rock and roll points this blog!)
As a kid, I had a small tank full of tropical fish, with very little idea of what I was doing, I had massive problems with algae and most of the poor little fellas ended up being buried in the garden.
Then as a young man, I was given a big tank and swatted up on it more and was quite good at it, until I came home from work one day and heard a “drip-drip-drip” which was the sign of a hairline crack and which pre-empted a trip to the pet shop with all my fish stock (not soup) in a bucket.
Then, during Lockdown in the caravan, I thought it was something that the Nipper and I could get into, so we bought a small aquarium, set it up and it was generally a success.

Now, tropical fish are not like goldfish, you can’t just scoop them up and plop them in a bowl of tap water, so moving a community of fish is a bit tricky. You need to set up a second tank and let it “cycle” which takes 1-2 weeks.

So, back in August, for my birthday I bought a HUGE tank off eBay from David in Normanton and kept it undercover for the big move, (as indeed we originally thought we were moving last summer, but it never happened).

Now my memory is bad, but I don’t remember it weighing as much as it did when I bought it, but then we only had to move it 3 yards from David’s garage to the van. There is a base which also weighs a ton and both units are a 70” cube, which holds about 1240 gallons of water!

My brother Danny is way stronger than me, but we both struggled to lift this new tank from the trailer to my door, then the shock-horror-realisation that it was about half an inch to wide to get through the door, and even if we did, to then get it up a flight of stairs and into the lounge, without dropping it, would be at very best, ambitious.

A plan B was quickly cooked up. I had to look for another tank.

Facebook marketplace is an unruly, unregulated version of eBay, but it has its uses and it turned up a tank in York, which I could collect that night!

Lina was not quite as onboard/enthusiastic about the idea as the Nipper and me, so she stayed at home unpacking boxes whilst we borrowed her car and trotted off  to try and  find the most hidden/impossible to find address in York. Now I am not judging the guy, but it was immediately evident that him and his mate had been having a smoke, and not just Benson & Hedges. They kindly put the tank in the car and after parting with some hard-earned we drove home, with Valentina asking me “What is that smell?”, as the car reeked of weed.

All was going smoothly until I tried the tricky manoeuvre of getting into our yard with its extremely tight right hand bend, and on an inky black night, as those of you who have scraped cars will know, if it goes wrong, reversing out of the problem usually makes it worse. I had never scraped a car in my life until then. It did not go down too well.

After getting the tank and cabinet upstairs successfully, it then proceeded to smell out the lounge with its stink of skunk. After a fortnight, the old boys from the old tank, were rehoused in the new tank and seem quite relaxed (possibly helped by the smell of weed. The old tank was sold on to a bloke who had bought it for his 5 year old son, so another cycle continues!

Meanwhile, no fishing outings this month, but hopefully will put that right soon.

Raiders round-up.

Not much sunshine at Craven Park yet this season 😦

No quite the out-of-the-blocks blinding start of last season, more of a “paced” approach.
Trouncing everyone (including Wigan) in the pre-season friendlies, then…

One solitary win, a draw and 5 defeats.
Away at Ally-fax today, a win would be a bonus!
Not panicking yet, but work to do.

New job?

Next time…

And finally

Last January, I caught Covid 19, (I might have mentioned this previously) which flourished into the not-so-delightful condition known generally as Long Covid, around about the time when everyone was sick to the hind teeth with lockdowns, facemasks, social distancing and the general pain in the ar$e rules, regulations and restrictions of the pandemic.

It came and it stayed, making me not really ill but a long way off feeling well. I had big problems sleeping, breathing and regulating my heart rate, and any ideas of exercise were out of the window, as C19 was a condition that it was not possible to push through, as it kicked back twice as hard.
I have already moaned about this at length, so the hopeful epitaph to this sorry episode is that I have found an inhaler that works, maybe coinciding with waiting for 14mths and it now seems to have gone. Hurrah!

On Thursday, I achieved one of my dreams that was simply to get back out into the hills, for the first time since the El Misti Race in 2019. Something that I seriously thought I might never do again.

It was a very steady (slow) outing, the weather was typical Peak District (rain, wind, mist) and I got lost, but it felt bloody great 😊

The Mickleden Straddle, in the High Peak was my first ever fell race as a senior and also a few years later, my first ever DNF, where my self imposed “vest only” declaration in early February was a trifle foolish!
Not an especially hard or technical race, it had a bit of everything including a few miles of tricky navigation, where naturally I got lost on Thursday. Did see an amazing toad though, which paced me for a while until it got away…

It was an important run for me as it finally buried the ghosts of my unfulfilled dreams of AQP, plus hopefully the last of bloody C19 and also that blot in the formbook DNF in 2003!

If my legs fall off tomorrow, I will be content that I did make it back onto the fells again, if only once!

Nicky Spinks is a person who inspires, motivates and amazes me in equal doses. An incredible person.

I met her in 2018 at a talk with another great Fellrunning legend, Joss Naylor.

THIS VIDEO is what makes me want to put on my trainers and get cold, wet and muddy!

That’s all for now folks.

Stay cool.
Johnny, Lina, and Valentina

p.s. If you do have time and want to see another truly inspirational video, watch THIS!

Morning folks

Hope this finds you in tiptop form and finest fettle.
Had a day off work and had planned to escape to the coast to try and catch our tea, but Hurricane Charlie decided to visit, so I thought I would scribble a quick blog instead.

January survived, a month which always seems like it lasts about 6 weeks (financially) and an absolute eternity (climatically), surely the worst of the winter has passed us??? (Probably not, but I live in hope).

A lot and not a lot has happened since the last wrap-up.
Christmas and New Year done and packed away for another year.

Great to see ‘Are Kid James and family from NZ, first time in 8yrs.

The Nipper produced this map! Looks like an adventure, with plenty of excuses for getting lost 🙂

New year, new start, 12 grapes, 12 resolutions and all that.
2023 is definitely going to be a year of change and house move #44 is imminent.

So, here is the latest Ladfromtad.com round-up.

Healthy, wealthy and wise?

Not sure about the above?

I would be happy with the first one, but unfortunately fate/long covid dealt me a bit of a duff hand, and now a year on after catching the Coronavirus bug, I am no better and to be honest, none the wiser what exactly is going on?

I am still under the Pulmonologist, who has prescribed me a(nother) new inhaler, but not until I have done my 3 week fast (no inhaler!)
It is tough going. I have this little tube called a Peak Flow Meter, which I blow in every morning and night (AM results are pitifully feeble), then write it down on a graph and the Doctor will see me again in June (which is quite soon, in NHS timescales).

The GP told me “That I should be grateful I survived (Covid)” which I am, but which was basically another way of saying “Stop crying Nancy”.
I would like to see them do their job, on 3hrs sleep a night, on my salary 🙂
I know I shouldn’t be so sensitive, but their comments irked me, (I went back to work absolutely seething!)
Yes, I am grateful I survived. I am grateful for a lot of things, but it is like going to the Quack’s with earache to be told, “Well, think yourself lucky you’ve got 2 ears sonny!”

I am not ill-ill, just way, way, way below par, perhaps firing on one of four cylinders. There are people a lot worse off than me. It is just frustrating as I don’t know if it will ever get better? If I knew it wouldn’t, I would accept the fact and move on.

Luckily I can do a bit of exercise, jogging or cycling to work is about my limit, but I am grateful for that. Breathing, especially at night, is my nemesis. (Writing this at 2am is a sign of my zombie style sleeping). I am told it’s not asthma nor COPD, but what is it?
As with most things covid related, it is inconclusive.
Time will tell, maybe.

At the Bank of Tad, needs must/hard times have necessitated selling most of my Crown Jewels, the van and my CX bike are up for grabs if you know anyone?

If you are interested in either, please drop me a line at: ladfromtad:gmail.com 🙂

Daydreams and aspirations.

A man with OCD, who has run all their life, always needs a goal, a target, an objective, something to obsess over, but after a year of this malaise, I have had to accept that a triple Bob Graham Round or winning the UTMB are not likely to happen anytime soon.

So, I have ditched all notions of quality or quantity, and inspired by my mate Ross, I am aiming to run every day this year, for at least 20mins.
Most days I can fit it in as a commute, sometimes it is trickier, but it is definitely doable, (he says 1/12 of the way in), as long as my knees don’t implode along the way. It is glorified jogging/power walking, but healthwise, I can manage it. I measure my pulse and don’t push it.

Like most habits (good or bad), it is just a case of making something routine.

New goals, new goalposts.

The 365-shuffle is on.

News blackout

Continuing my self-imposed media proscription has been good (for my head) but part of me thinks that a balance would be a better thing.
(Balance and moderation, 2 things I have always struggled with).
A lot is happening now in Peru, but I only hear snippets.

Politicians the world over and only interested in looking after themselves and lining their fat, greedy pockets (with a few limited exceptions).

Facile perhaps, but in the short time when I worked at Suma Wholefoods (a food cooperative where there are no gaffers, no hierarchy, everyone earns equal wages and has equal say), although things take a little longer, things do get done.
I am not saying we should completely rearrange society, but sometimes the so-called powers-that-be are just bending us all over and laughing in our faces (figuratively, unless they are contortionists, or just very supple!)

Let it go…

How often do the actions of somebody else hack you off (or worse)?
Probably every single day; someone’s flip comment, a radgy work colleague, a Hitleresque boss, or some Jerkass driver.

Just this morning, I was driving down the street, a narrow residential street, I paused to let a bus come the other way, then a bloke (who I know, but who maybe didn’t or maybe did know it was me) flew past at about 50mph, I beeped, he gave me the w@ñker hand signal and flew off, doing the same to all in his all-important way.

I stewed on this for an hour and thought, what am I doing?

I am not turning into a Buddhist, a tree hugger nor a Happy Clapper, but this phrase makes sense:

“You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.” ~Buddha

Darn right 😉
Take a chill pill (and hopefully see the tosspot pulled by the Busies, just down the road!)

Big move

Time to move on…

When we fled Peru during the Pandemic, we were fortunate to be able to stay in my parent’s caravan, it is a top spot and always feels like you are on holiday! Winter is a bit trickier and if you are not a one-spoon-one pair of undies-one shoe minimalist, storage soon gangs up on you, but the location is amazing and we will be sad to leave.
However, now it’s time to move on into the big wide world.
House move #44 is beckoning.
It is my shed that is giving me nightmares.

Tight lines!

The Nipper and I have both been fishing for about 9mths now, myself after a 30yr break and the young ‘un, starting from scratch. We both fancied something new this year, so decided to head east (or maybe one day west) to the seaside, beside the sea.

Without boring you with the details, sea fishing is different to freshwater fishing in that:
– It is free! (Nobody owns the sea and if they do, they don’t charge you to fish in it).
– You can eat the fish (freshwater fish, apart from trout and salmon, all go back in, you wouldn’t want to eat them anyway as they apparently taste like muddy flavoured cotton wool full of pins). Catching your supper is a huge bonus.
– You never really quite know what you are going to catch!

So, you can generally do what you like, but you have to dance to the time of the tide.

We’ve had 2 trips so far, both to Hornsea (of Hornsea Pottery fame, long gone now). To say it is January we have been spawny with the weather both times.
First time the bairn caught a handful of flatfish, a weird looking Rockling and a load of Whiting. I caught a cod.
Next time, after being chased off the shore by the incoming tide, we retreated King Canute style to the promenade, only to spend the afternoon getting drenched by waves, but catching a decent sized flounder for tea.
It was a decent size, before I tried to have my first attempt at filleting a fish, which meant we had enough left to make half a small fish finger.
We both agreed it was delicious, but by that time we were both starving!
Watch this space…

Raider’s round-up

It is very easy to get giddy with a few favourable pre-season friendly results, but bloody ‘ell, what results they were!

52:24 win against North Wales Crusaders.
An abandonment due to failing floodlights whilst beating local Jam Eaters Workington Town.

And…

a 26:14 win against 75-time Superleague champions WIGAN WARRIORS.
Trouncing the blooming Pie Eaters.

Let’s hope it is a sign of good things to come this season 😉

And finally

Possibly, tenuously based on a true story (Bristol Zoo), this is well worth a watch.

Enjoy 🙂

“This is my car park…”

Hasta la proxima, baby!
More nonsense coming your way soon…

Cheers
Johnny & the ladies x

P.S. If you are looking for a class film to watch at the flicks, get yersen to see EMPIRE OF LIGHT (Trailer in the title!)

Good morning folks

I trust you are in fine pre-festive fettle.
After a lacklustre year of blogs totalling less than less than the digits on one hand, WordPress.com auto-subscribed me for another year and so I thusfore strive to write a bit more habitually or maybe more customarily next year.
So, before everything descends into fallen pine needles, flickering/failing fairy lights , Rudolf jumpers and Egg Nog/Snowballs, here is Mambo No.5 of 2022, up to now…

I will be honest, I (personally) have had better years, as have many of us.
Out of a pandemic straight into a war into a global recession and continual political clusterf@cks, it is easy to get a bit down in the dumps.
I stopped watching the news this week, there are no cats-rescued-from-up-a-tree stories these days and it grinds you down, so I currently live in ignorant bliss.
We all have bad days, little bra$$, and arguments with the husband/wife/lover/cat/dog/guinea pig, but the world is still a beautiful place.
Life is short, live it to the full and keep smiling 🙂

The comeback?

2022 was originally destined as the year of the comeback, for me anyway, from someone who rivals Sinatra for the number of comebacks attempted.
However, after dodging C19 for 18mths, the bugger finally got me in January and yet another comeback failed to materialise.

Breathing problems, errartic heart rates, tests, tests and more tests have proved inconclusive. There are folk a LOT worse than me and I am not actually ill-ill, just shagged basically. In the grand old Duke of York scheme of things, I am lucky to have had the tests I have had and I am grateful to the NHS, who could have told me to Do One. Keep positive, but not Covid positive!

Sadly the drugs don’t work and this inhaler contraption (not a sex toy) doesn’t work either 😦

I can just about pootle to and from work, jogging or on the pushbike, but if I ever try to up my game just a touch, a strange manevolent force bites me in the ar$e tout-suite, knocking me back to where I came from.

Deep breaths and ommmmmm…..

I have missed my CX this season, hopefully 2023? Time will tell…

RLWC 2021

A year late but worth waiting for.
The critics were out to shout it down with calls of one-way-traffic matches, cricket scores and overpriced games (which was justified in my eyes, why half fill a huge stadium with a £40 entrance fee when you could fill it with £20 ticket punters!? It looks better on the telly!)

We got to see just the one game, thanks to Badger and Shoresyman, and what a game it was!

The Aussies Vs. the Kiwis at the mighty Elland Road.

The Australian men’s side (and women) had trounced everyone who dared to take them on. Meanwhile NZ had done just enough but hadn’t truly set the world on fire.
That all changed in the first 15 minutes at Leeds when they really got in the Aussie’s faces and an upset looked on the cards, but the Kiwis let one weak try in and that was the difference and the northern neighbours ran out 16:14 victors.

England did look on course for a battle with the Aussies in the final, but sadly just didn’t show up for their semi-final against Samoa (who they had previously done in 60:6 in the opening game) and were beaten by one cruel point in a sudden death extra time golden point catastrophe. It just wasn’t to be.

(Tenuous Barrow link with Willie Horne leading out England against the Aussies at Headingley in 1952. The Lions ran out 19:6 winners).

Back to the RLWC 2021 (IN 2022) Australia beat Samoa 30:10 in the men’s final and the Kiwi women, who had previously looked strong, just couldn’t get past the Aussie women’s defence, who won 54:4

A great opportunity for some relative newcomers such as Greece and the Lebanon, but in the end the Kangaroos and Jillaroos were just too good.

However, the real two winners of the tournament were the Wheelchair rugby tournament, which had to be watched to be believed.
No spoilers, but just check this out!!!

And the incredible Sir Kevin Sinfield, who ran 40miles a day for 7 days to raise money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, Leeds Hospitals Charity, The Darby Rimmer MND Foundation, My Name’5 Doddie Foundation and MND Scotland, setting a target of £777,000 and way exceeding that amount with a total of £2,259,061.11

Still time to donate HERE:

https://donate.giveasyoulive.com/fundraising/kevin-sinfield-ultra-7-in-7-challenge

Watching Sir Kev run into OLd Trafford at Half Time on final day was the highlight of the RLWC for me.

RIP Doddie Weir 1970-2022.

Gone fishing.

The one thing that has kept me sane this year is something that would bore the pants off most folk, not this blog, but the genteel pastime of angling.

When I realised around about March time that my plans to train my ar$e off and get back on the fells was simply not going to happen, I panicked and made a hasty Plan B, for I know that without something/anything to focus on I do start to go off my head very quickly. The girls were away, I was home alone and I tried to think of something that was
a) Cheap
b) Local
c) Doable

As a youngster growing up in the Lakes, none of my mates (or especially myself) were any good at football, and as we couldn’t play snooker or darts in Clinton Davis’s garage all the time. We all took up fishing, none of us had any real idea, none of us caught much, we got cold, wet, fell in, but generally had a laugh and sometimes a mini-adventure. (How 4 of us survived crossing Coniston Water in a Canadian Canoe, in a big storm, I will never know).
I then went to Kendal Library, read some books, learned a bit and started catching fish.

Back then, cheap gear was rubbish (everyone started off with a next-to-useless “Starter Kit” from Woolworth’s) and good gear was expensive.
Nowadays, thankfully, cheap gear does the job adequately and expensive gear is still expensive.

The Nipper and I have been all over and had some top days out. (and some mishaps….)

The next big focus iin 2023 s on Sea Fishing and hopefuly catching something we can eat, bringing the food bills down and getting some fresh North Sea air in the process.

Get the chips on!

Watch this space…

Mountains on Stage.

Back in the day, pre-bairn-era, Lina and I did a fair bit of climbing.
Mainly sport (bolted) stuff, but we got about; Sardinia, Kalymnos, Spain and Almscliffe Crag (no bolts there mind!)

Along the way we mopped up every single mountain film festival going, Reel Rock, SHaFF, Kendal and all of Al Lee’s masterpieces, of which everything began with the outstanding Asgard Project, which was in fact my devious husband funnel of persuasion which got Lina into it in the first place…

After leaving the land of the AQP Holy Trinity, living surrounded by 20,000ft+ volcanoes, and back to Yorkshire, where Windmill Hill is about my steepest slope, I kind of turned my back on the hills, which were an out-and-out obsession for most of my life.

I think that the current health issues have put me off even trying, but sometimes you just need a size 12 up your backside for a bit of motivation. My mate/2nd job boss, Dave suggested this mini film festival of which the trailer really didn’t do it justice.

VAGABOND OF LOGAN was an absolute epic.
Crazyar$ed French skiers/boarders/Alpinists/rafters/chancers on a mad adventure. Reminiscent of Asgard Jammin (they were Belgian, I know!)
Watch at your earliest convenience

Not that I am just about to set off on some 45 day epic, but it is good daydream material, shelved away under the heading “One day…”
(Incidentally we saw a mouse climbing vertically up the wall, obviously inspired by the film!)

And finally…

When I sold my soul and most of my Worldly goods, I did keep back one pair of climbing shoes and my harness/rack, sadly I flogged my mandolin, but you can’t have everything.
Dream, dream, dream…

Hasta la proxima amigos 🙂
Johnny, Lina and the Nipper.

p.s. Watch out, Jimbo is back in town!
Not seen ‘are kid in almost 8 years, good to see the lad 🙂

Morning folks

I trust this blog finds you in top form and fine fettle.
Ambling aimlessly into Autumn promted me to scrawl a 4th blog of the year.
Not really taking full advantage of my WordPress subscription, such procrastination does make me wonder how on earth I ever managed to patch together a weekly version of this claptrap back in the day.
Perhaps there was more going on in daily Lima life than in sleepy North Yorkshire?

Anyroad, here is a wrap-up of the latest Taddy bobbins.

Carry on camping.

After the best British summer since dinosaurs lived on Blackpool Beach, we had only managed to get away in the Mystery Machine once this year, so I squeezed the life out of what was left of a semi-decent forecast and did 2 trips in 2 weekends.

The first sorte was up t’Lakes, my first time back home in 4 years.
(More in Raiders Round-up).

The second jaunt was up to the White Horse, not Northern Canada, but to North Yorkshire, a visual spectacle we can just about see from our gaff and an area I had never been to, and what a place.

The North York Moors is normally an area whizzed through en-route to the East Coast, but it is well worth a stop.
Quick plug for Jill in the Sutton Bank Visitor Centre, who was an absolute star!
Giving us loads of info, maps (and discounted Kendal Mint Cake), visitor centres are normally places I would avoid like the plague, but this was a bit different.

A chilly old night caught me out with my one-season sleeping bacg, but gave way to a gorgeous dawn and cracking day for a walk.

Striking camp broke all records for faffing, dawdling and taking excessive time to pack up, but we did manage a quick sprint round the White Horse itself, without getting moved down by a glider.

Well worth a visit 🙂

LC summary.

It has been a funny old year in the/my world of sport and not funny-haha.

After kicking the ale into touch and even ditching coffee, there were not many vices left, so I had BIG running plans for 2022, however C19 had other ideas…

After 4 GP visits, 3 hosital visits and seeing 2 speciailists, I am not really any the wiser. I am not entirely sure what “Long Covid” is?
Defined by the NHS as “signs and symptoms that develop during or after COVID-19 and continue for more than 12 weeks and are not explained by an alternative diagnosis.“

I got it in the New Year, wasn’t especially badly with it, but never quite recovered from it. A good analogy I heard is that it is like being a crappy, old clapped-out phone; never fully recharging, battery running out quickly, not quite advanced enough to receive updates, but just about getting by.

(I sold my Nokia and have now entered the 21st century with a smartphone, but that is another story!)

In August I thought, enough is enough and started doing some very, very steady training, jogging/cycling to/from work and actually started to think “I am over this $h!t now”, I was keeping my heart rate as low as possible and even thinking about racing in 2023, which was a mistake as Long Covid then roundhoused me and put me on my ar$e again!

The Pulmonologist said that I have “Autonomous dysfunction which is “when the autonomic nervous system, which controls functions responsible for well-being and maintaining balance, does not regulate properly.”

The Cardiologist said that I might have minor heart block which is “when the electrical impulses that control the beating of the heart muscle are disrupted.”

So, I am awaiting further tests on my ticker and seeing the Lung Lady in December.

When I go to bed, pretty much exactly 4 hours after laying my weary head down I wake up unable to breathe. I don’t have asthma but the only thing that seems to work is to use Lina’s inhaler. My watch tracks my sleep and it is always 4hrs after I hit the hay. Off to the Quack this Tuesday, (after getting a rocket off the receptionist for using someone else’s medication. It was that or not breathe, so it wasn’t really a hard choice to make for me!)

There are people far, far worse off. I occasionally go on a forum called “Covid for Endurance Athletes” and some of the folk on there are in a very bad way, but in all manner of different ways. This bloody virus manifests itself in so many forms, or not at all. It is bizarre!

Life begins at 50?

Physically, I am not quite sure about that statement.
Mentally, no comment!

I have never been ill, ever or in such bad shape, but hopefully that will change.
Inconclusive sums it up. watch this space…

Let it go…

A few years back the Nipper told me a joke.
Q: “Why can’t the lass (whose name I have forgotten) from Frozen hold a balloon?”
A: “Because she would let it go!”

For much of my time in Limaland I was in a complete radge, things would wind me up (some were justified) and a lot of things frustrated me. Difficult to explain, but stuff you don’t get on your jollies, it’s the nitty-gritty stuff you get when you live in a place; red tape, traffic, noise, the usual suspects, but you make your bed, etc…

My good mate Lloyd, who I first went to Peru with in 2004 has lived in Lima a l-o-n-g time now and he is still completely sane, testament to his character. He used to tell me “Let things go…” when I was having my usual grumble, to which I replied “Yeah, yeah” but didn’t take a blind bit of notice, continuing my “Falling Down” life…

He was absolutely right!

“Life is not linear” is a phrase I once heard somewhere and dismissed it as b0ll0ck$, but now I realise it is right.
If you do things A, B & C , does it get you to D?
No, you generally do A, B & C then get rhubarb crumble, if you are lucky, or back to A, or arrive unexpectedly at R.

It has only me taken me about 10 years to finally work this out…

8-double-0-9, the Angler’s Line…

In the absence of running and pedalling, I need something new to enthuse over.

Going back in time, when I were a lad, growing up in Cumbria, before the days of PS3s, Tetris and Blackberry phones, most of the lads from the village went fishing. It rained most of the time, as it does in the Lakes. None of us really knew what we were doing, we rarely caught any fish, but we always had a laugh.

Fast forward to 2022, when I realised that I wasn’t going to racing (running nor CX) any time soon, I got my thinking cap on for an activity that was:

a) Cheap
b) Local
c) Doable.
d) Maybe something that the bairn might enjoy too.

So, we have been doing a lot of fishing have me and the bairn, with mixed results, but it has been a lot of fun 🙂

Boat fishing in sunny Whitby, getting nowt in Tad River, getting muddy at Malton and cleaning up at the Mushroom Pond.

Angling ain’t everyone’s cup of chai, but it is keeping me sane right now and mackerel is tasty when you’re hungry and fish and chips are over a tenner!

Peru reflection – Part I.

A lot to ponder about.
Next time…

Raiders round-up

WHAT A SEASON!

After being promoted, the Raiders were favourites to go straight down again, but they came out of the blocks in a winning mood and kept on (generally) winning to finish in 4th spot, gaining a place in the Play-offs.

Drawn at home versus Batley Bulldogs, it was a golden opportunity for the girls to watch their first ever rugby league match and an excuse for a flying trip to the South Lakes (Peninsula).

The Romans never quite made it to Barrow in Furness, nor is there a direct route (without a boat, or locally sourced submarine) and Audrey Roberts was once quoted as saying that “Alf took me to Barrow in Furness, it was like going to the end of the earth, then driving 50 miles further!”

With this in mind, we set off at the crack of dawn and thus arrived ridiculously early, but there was a special deal for early arrivers, a £5 tucker voucher, which we reinvested in some hefty meat and tatty pies. Securing a great spot in the sunshine, with a pitch side view picnic table, life was good, but a huge black cloud dispelled my “It won’t rain today” theory and we retreated to the back of the stands.

The Raiders were without 5 of their forwards and Captain Stack, who being a Bobby, was down the Old Smoke for the Queen’s funeral, so we were up against it. Batley are a big side and after what seemed like a first half war of attrition, Batley broke the deadlock right on the hooter and despite a spirited second half by the luckless Raiders, the Bulldogs ran out winners 18 points to Barrow’s 8.
(After unexpectedly beating the Featherstone Flat-Cappers, the Bulldogs booked themselves a place in the final against the formidable Leigh Centurions, but it was one-way traffic and Leigh went up).

Barrow FC and SuperLeeds are both on winning ways too right now, long may it last 🙂

Part II of our little adventure didn’t quite go to plan, does anything these days?

We had booked in at a campsite in Ulverston called “Candlewyck”.
The website looked ok and booking had been simple.
After pitching up and dashing straight out to get some outstanding fish and chips at Priory Fishery, we headed back. It was raining and getting dark.
Primary investigations didn’t reveal any toilets anywhere, but just next to us were some big bell tents (like a teepee) which had a toilet tent behind.
A portaloo is better than a bush, so we presumed it to be the ablutions facilities. The young ‘un was inside the toilet tent when, like an angry tornado, the owner marched up “What are you doing? You can’t use that. It is for the yurt users and they pay £120 a night for a minimum of 2 nights…” Which continued on a loop, until I managed to get my question in, “Where are the toilets then?”
To which he replied “Don’t you have your own?”

I must have looked nonplussed at this point, as our van is just about big enough for 2 diddy folk (the girls) to sleep in, then it’s full.

“I’ll have to charge you” was his retort and demanded £10 on the spot.
I offered to clean it myself, but he was so radged by this point, and Valentina was a bit scared of this shouting man, that I coughed up and bit my tongue.

It put a dampener on an already damp evening.

There was nobody else on site, the portapotty wasn’t especially clean to start with and we all sat like naughty children in the awning until dark.
Next day I went to try and clear the air, but there was still tension and when I emailed, I never got a reply.

If you do decide to stay at Candlewyck campsite in Ulverston, take your own khazi and pay £20 to sleep in a field, or go elsehwere!

No more Cumbria?

On the 1st of April 2023, Cumbria will no longer exist, (not an April Fool’s day joke!)

I was born in Westmorland, which became part of Cumbria in 1974, now it is reverting back to Cumberland, Furness and Westmorland.

(Westmorland and Furness includes Barrow-in-Furness, Eden, South Lakeland, and Cumberland includes Allerdale, Carlisle, Copeland.
Cumbria is the third largest ceremonial county in England by area.

What is the big deal?

Could you imagine telling the folk of Yorkshire or the Lancashire populace that they would no longer have an identity?

A sad day it will be.

The only good thing that might come out of it all is a possible resurgence in Cumberland Westmorland Wrestling?

Trick or treat???

Always read the invitation, or better still, ask!

We all rocked up at a Halloween Fancy Dress party recently, only to discover that the adults weren’t dressed up (bar us two and one other).

The offshoot was that some little kids got scared and we probably won’t be invited back next year!

RLWC 2021

Next time.

And finally…

Life is short, enjoy yourself 🙂

That’s all for now folks.
More nonsense next time.

Johnny & the ladies x

Good morning folks

I trust this finds you in top form and fine fettle.
3 blogs in 8 months!
How I ever used to manage to keep this nonsense going as a weekly publication, I’ll never know, but here it is, a special birthday edition.

Today I am Hawaii 5-0, how the handbag, kettle, partridge did that happen?

Since the last blog, a lot and not a lot has happened.

• First family trip away in 4 years.
• Barrow RL are 5^th in the league.
• There was mini, but very delicious heatwave. (If you could guarantee that for a month every summer, I would happily take it, even with the 1 hour of pretending to sleep whilst tossing and turning all night). All those years of sweaty gurning in the Peruvian mountains actually did me some good!)

Lockdown mindset.

Covid 19, Novel Coronavirus, SARS CoV-2, call it what you will, first reared its ugly, ugly head on New Year’s Eve 2019 and the World has never really been the same since, although we do seem to be turning the corner now.
In Peru we were about 6 weeks behind, I watched the news obsessively as the giant wave crossed the Atlantic and crashed down on Latin American shores as we quickly went into full lockdown and generally not knowing what was going to happen, bad times, curfews, a horrible feeling of everyone being suspicious of everyone and everything, almost like a police state, governed by clueless politicians and worry mongering by the toxic press, all creating a general hysterical paranoia, times best not revisited (and uprecedented use of the word “unprecedented”).

We fled Peru for Blighty in September 2020, advised by the Embassy that after September nothing was guaranteed and set up shop in the caravan, flying pretty much straight into a UK lockdown, then another and what felt like a tentative and almost discouraged release back into society.

I worked part time in a busy local mini market for a while and like most places, masks were asked to be worn, but the amount of abuse I got just for asking if people had a mask was unreal.
“I’M (deleted expletive) EXEMPT!!!
Sorry for asking.
(Do masks even work? Who knows!)

Some people went back to normal life quickly, others held back and some stayed in lockdown mode, I was one of them and it was a bloody hard mode to get out of.
Stringent self-imposed routines. Monday night 8pm food shops (to avoid crowds), buying petrol at weird hours at 24hr garages, shopping almost entirely online, (although no panic buying, I never did understand the whole loo roll frenzy, some punters must still have a spare room stacked to the roof with the stuff!)

We are social beasts, no man (woman or child) is an island, we all need human interaction to flourish. So why has it taken so long to (finally) get out into the world again?

Is it anxiety? Is it a “Digging into the trenches” scenario? Did the lack of human contact make us forget how to interact and react? I have no answers.

I found myself making increasingly lame excuses just to avoid doing anything, passing up on some brilliant opportunities in the process

Obviously, we have to go to work, (unless we are WFH) but it took (me)  forever to do seemingly simple things, getting a bus/train, going into a café/boozer/restaurant, going to a party, the previously illegal act of a handshake or a hug…

I am just grateful that we are all hopefully getting there now (and also grateful for my weekly Sunday Zoom with my mates, a lockdown hangover remnant that is a good one!)

Cooking on gas – Part i.

I wouldn’t say that the van was a Pig-in-a-poke purchase, but it was definitely done without any research, when all my facts, figures, research and countless reviews read were all based on Transits, Movanos, Trafics (one “f”) and Vivaros.

The Nissan Elgrand was not a van I had even heard of, but it was too good a deal to pass.
Driving back from Wantage on that inky black night was a blur, pulling into Trowell services and watching as 25 quid didn’t really lift the petrol gauge from empty did make me wonder.

Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. And the petrol crisis hadn’t even started back then.

I did seriously think of flogging it on immediately, but the mileage was so low, and it looked to have loads of potential, although none of my conversion plans would seem to fit.

Then, an LPG lightbulb suddenly appeared!

I looked around and found a wild variety of prices for conversions, but the funnel of good reviews and common-sense lead to a bloke called Simon at South Elmsall. It was all he did and he had done 600 Elgrand conversions, owning 2 of his own. The only problem was that he was booked up solid for 6mths. I booked in for June and spent 6mths not really going anywhere and constantly thinking about selling it!

6 months passed, I took it down and 3 days later I was heading back up the A1 with my second fuel tank full of 79.9p per litre LPG. The future was looking bright…

L-o-n-g Covid

Without harking back to my old weekly Peruvian rant (noise, traffic, corruption, moan, moan, moan), I will have a quick whinge about one thing.
We all got C19 in January, the girls bounced back and none of us were really ill with it, but I found my breathing was not working, not asthma, just not being able to get a proper lungful in or out. 4 GP appointments got me referred to the hospital, in July, for a Spirometry test, where you blow into a snorkel tube and machines measure your lung capacity. I now have to wait a few more weeks to get my results. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of chaotic current things, but a big deal for me as I can’t really run nor cycle, without my heart rate going through the roof, even on easy stuff, and easy stuff is all I can do.

Most of my life I have been into running and also cycling (when I was crocked and couldn’t run) and it does become a way of life; training-racing-training-racing-getting crocked-comebacks-training-racing…

Training isn’t just haphazard randomness, every session has a reason, a purpose, an objective, but the wheels fell off my training in January and it really has left me lost, with no goals, no rudder and absolutely no spark whatsoever. Like rueing over a lost lover, will it actually do any good?

I have been going to the gym and swimming. Swimming I am crap at (even after 9mths of pouring my heart and soul into it when I did my first/last/only triathlon in 2004), the gym is hard graft as it is something that I have always avoided like the plague (the gym, not hard graft before you say it), but now my membership has run out, I have to find something else, until I find out whether I can ever get back to “proper” training.
All I really, really want is to get back into the fells. Not breaking records nor winning races, just long days in the mountains. I still haven’t been up to the Lakes yet, there is an irrational by nontheless very deep fear that I just won’t be fit enough.

(In the meantime I did however buy a bargain haul of weights off Fleabay for 99p. The advert wasn’t clear, but I now have enough weights to set up a medium sized leisure centre).

Always wear your skid lid!

I always have been an advocate of wearing a lid on a pushbike.
Helmets are much lighter, comfortable and affordable these days.
I took a spill on the way home from work. afew months back.
Your typical Audi pulls out, rider overcompensates, catch a pothole and go down like a sack of spuds, luckily on grass, whilst taking advantage of the roaring tailwind and going too fast scenario.
The driver drove off, (she hadn’t actually done anything wrong to be fair, but must have seen/heard me crash. I was lying winded on the grass when 2 worried looking blokes asked if I was ok. They said they had heard a big crash sound effect noise.
“Fine” was my automatic response, as I remounted winded and wondering what the massive crack noise had been.
When I got home, the helmet showed me the source of the sound.
Better a knackered lid than a knackered head!
Always wear your lid.

The Alpinist

I won’t say anything about this film, except that it is truly brilliant.
As part of my “getting back out there” I went to the cinema with my friend, Dave B, to see an amazing film about an incredible climber called Marc-Andre Leclerc. If you haven’t seen the film, do so at your earliest opportunity.

50, not out.

Still going, not at a place where I expected to be, but having done lots of things I had never dreamt of. Zero bra$$ but a lot of memories 😊
Lessons learnt?
Too many for this blog, don’t want to tip it over the 10,000 word mark!

Gone fishing.

Not being able to run/cycle suddenly freed up a lot of free time, but free time is useless unless you fill it, so I started thinking, what can I do that is:
a) Cheap-ish.
b) Local.
c) Inclusive (whatever that means!)
d) Might be fun…

I am a bugger for going back (in life, to jobs, places, past hopes, and dreams) and came up with fishing!

As a young lad, growing up in South Lakes, there wasn’t a lot to do.
Different times, definitely simpler times.
The Lake District hills were just a bit too far away and I was pretty shocking at football.
I did go to watch Barrow RLFC, but that was only once a fortnight.
We used to pile round to Clinton Davis’s house as he had a dartboard and a diddy snooker table, and then one day, one of us got into fishing and we all followed suit.

All of us started with a completely useless Woolworth’s starter set, which we all used for everything. We never really caught much, we fell in the water, we got tangles, we got cold and wet, but we had a brilliant time!

When I took up mountaineering, fishing sat on the back burner and then one night, someone stole all my fishing gear from my shed, miraculously it was insured and with a voucher for £2000 I went to a fishing shop in Wigan (the closest shop which the insurance company dealt with) and surreptitiously exchanged it for £500 cash, which I probably spent on beer and fancy shirts!

Like many interests, pastimes, hobbies, and sports, unless you do that activity it is mind blowingly boring to talk about, unless you are also into it.

It does feel like an absolute luxury just to go to a local pond or river and just sit there all day, chilling out and maybe, just maybe catching a fish now and again.

The Nipper had shown an interest, so she comes along too, and it is good fun 😊

STOP PRESS: Going boat fishing off Whitby for a birthday treat, what could go wrong???

Summer holiday weekend away.

Our last holiday was a 3-week summer whirlwind from Peru-England-Peru, back in 2018.
A flurry of fish and chips, visits, an odd session or two and shopping for forbidden fruits unavailable in Peru (generally shoes, long sleeved shirts and replacing worn out running socks).

With our new set of wheels, we kept putting off and putting off the maiden voyage (until the gas conversion) and we finally managed a weekend away mid-July.

Cooking on gas – Part ii

First time filling up with LPG was always going to be a bit of a mini test. It is a slightly different procedure and there aren’t many places around to get it.
(As expected) we were later away than planned, and a bit stressed so when I came to plug in at the motorway services, it just didn’t work. I noticed the previous LPG customer had only put in £7 worth, and I could only get 37p in!
Friday night, busy at the pumps, had to pay my 37p, then try again.
Slower than a snail on a sloth’s back on Valium.
It took me 15mins to get a tenner in, then, when I came to unplug, disaster!

The pump pulled out the adaptor which pulled out the main fill valve, so there was a loud BANG, the rush of escaping gas and I was left with a frozen hand and a dread that I had made a massive mistake with the conversion.

A quick call to Simon confirmed that it was safe to drive, but only with the tenner of LPG I had trickled in, and the rest would be methadone/champagne cocktail priced E5 petrol.

Bit of a blow (literally) but fixed a week after, free of charge.

Onwards and upwards to the beautiful Saltburn-on-Sea, a place I don’t think I had been to and an absolute gem of a place.
We booked in on a small campsite, which wasn’t quite on the sea.
I asked the friendly owner about getting to the coast and she gave me instructions but we got out wires crossed and she thought I meant driving and therefore told me it would take 15mins.
We set off down a trail at noon and an hour later were in a farmyard and then after patching together snippets of paths until we arrived in town. I asked a lady “Which way to the Front?”
“Which front?” she replied. “You’re in Skelton.”
Is that good or bad I wondered to myself? She took pity on us and gave us detailed directions After crossing a busy dual carriageway and negotiating a manic country lane, we ended up going through the picturesque Valley Gardens, where I kept repeating myself with “On a normal day this would be a brilliant walk” as we all trudged on in silence.
After about 3hrs, we could finally see the sea and came out of a sheltered path into the full brunt of a northern gale!

A very brisk walk up and down the pier was followed by a long walk to an amazing Chippie (Church Fish Shop) and then to the last bus, which we had missed by 10mins.

So, I caught a bus (any bus) in the general direction of where we were staying, then double-tabbed it for an hour uphill, to collect the van and finally collect the girls.

On the way home we marched up and down the diminutive Roseberry Topping, which was jam packed but very worthwhile 😊

Raider’s round-up.

The mighty Shipbuilders keep on winning, normally under nail biting circumstances, taking some good scalps in the process (York, Widnes, Bradford Northern).
The possibility of the play-offs is a tantalising dream.
Stand-out performances from me coming from the evergreen Maltese utility back/kicker Jarrod Sammut and flying wingman, Tee Ritson.

Onwards and upwards!

And finally….

10 years ago today, I celebrated my 40^th birthday in the middle of the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Gobi Desert, with a group of ralliers and warm lager, after an epic day of river crossings and torrential rain (in the desert).

One day I will write a book about it, but for now, here is the 15-minute film we made (with HUGE amounts of gratitude to fellow rallier, Matthew P, for  his editing skills.

Hasta la proxima amigos.
Cheers
Johnny & the girls

Good morning folks

I trust this finds you in finest fettle.
After taking 2 years to resurrect this blog, it has only taken 5 months to write a sequel. Apologies, time management and lameness are my only excuses.
So, here is a second dose of sardonic hyperbole from the makers of Mongoliando.com and Superclunk.com…

The key to writing is short and often, get it down on paper/off your chest, not (like this farce) adding and updating and adding and updating.
A mate at work asked me if I was still writing my blog and shamed me into pulling my finger out and putting this episode to bed!

Many thanks to all of who you commented and gave feedback for the last blog, it is more appreciated than I can say in words. Thank you.
I did have one suggestion to make it into a podcast, which caught my attention. Podcasts are a brilliant invention, (which I used to plug to absolute death when teaching). It would save readers having to plough through all this I guess? I have zero experience in the actual recording tech practicalities.

We did do a handful of Vlogs when we were in lockdown Arequipa and they were good fun/impulsive nonsense.
Any thoughts?

Since the last blog a lot and not a lot has happened.

A l-o-n-g winter of pushbike commuting, which gratefully turned into spring gave me daily sunrises that never bored me.

The Nipper turned 8.

Winter came.

Then went…

Then came back again.

Tadcaster Bridge celebrated its 5th anniversary.

We got some new wheels 🙂

But not a right lot of rock and roll
Thence follows a wrap-up of other goings on…

Covid overstays its welcome :-(

Coronavirus first knocked on all of our doors around March 2020, March the 16th to be precise in Peru and it pretty much refused to leave us alone, a right royal pain in the ar$e. Whatever one’s views, it affected everyone and everything, everywhere.

Myself and the girls finally succumbed to the bug in January of this year. Lina and the Nipper seemed to shrug it off very quickly indeed. Although I didn’t actually feel especially ill, it went straight onto my chest and set up camp there. A familiar daily pattern started taking shape.
– Wake up 3hrs after going to bed, feeling really short of breath.
– Use Lina’s inhaler, which sometimes worked and then didn’t.
– Toss and turn until dawn/alarm, feel absolutely $hagged all day.
– Struggling with anything which required any slight effort (e.g, stairs, talking).
– Not exactly asthma-like symptoms, more a feeling that I just can’t get a proper lungful of air.

I went to see the GP (I), who told me to be patient.
My blood SATS levels (the amount of oxygen in the blood) kept suddenly dropping, especially at night.

So I went back to the Quacks, GP (II) sent me for blood tests and x-rays, which subsequently showed nothing.

Spent another month feeling wrecked, so went back again to GP (III) and was given a course of steroids, which did nothing, then went back again and GP (IV) did a “Sit-stand-sit-stand” test which showed up an alarming drop in my SATS and suddenly it felt like someone finally believed me!

The Doc then told me he would refer me to a lung specialist and not to do any exercise until I saw them. So I waited and waited and was told my appointment was in August!

I am not ill-ill, nor sick enough to be off work, but just mega frustrated that I can’t run, (my longest ever time not running), or do any proper exercise, which in the grand scheme of things is no big deal, I’m not about to pull on a Team GB vest and there are people a whole lot worse off, but running is a big part of my life.
We all have our likes-vices-addictions.
If you were told to stop playing darts, stop smoking a pipe, stop going line dancing, stop buying crap on ebay, stop following Accrington Stanley, stop taking Crystal Meth, stop going to swinger’s parties, stop watching repeats of The Professionals on UK Gold, or all of the above, (in which case you have bigger problems than my mild malaise), it is a bit of a kick in the pants!
I gave up the ale and coffee over a year ago (& chocolate over 30yrs ago), so I can give things up, but I am finding it hard not being able to do something that I have done most of my life.

It is funny how you come to identify yourself with your life’s passions.
I am a runner, as it is probably the only thing I have ever been any good at. Not naturally good or even gifted, just through hard graft, but in all honesty I do have to go back a couple of years to find a patch when I was actually training properly and racing hard, right up to the start of the pandemic.
The “leaking bucket of fitness” philosophy is now going to be tested as the holes I had been patching over recent years are now gaping open and the bottom of the bucket has fallen out completely.

“Be patient” is the mantra I am now following, but it is bloody hard.

I’m not looking for sympathy. There are people a whole lot worse off and people who have lost friends and family to Coronavirus. We all want to see the back of this bloody virus.

In the meantime, to give me some kind of focus, (basically to stop me going mad), I have gone right back to my youth and taken up fishing again, which is a different story for a different blog.

Stop press: Although the Doc told me to do no exercise until I see the Specialist, as my appointment is not until August, I thought I would start doing light stuff, so I am now doing a bit of a swimming, pretentding to know what I am doing in the gym and some very, very, very light jogging, which all feels good but it bites me on the ar$e later in the day/the next day, almost like some kind of divine retribution for trying to get fit.

In short: Long covid turns you into a whingeing bloody hypochondriac!

However, this article by a local runner called Rose George hits the nail right on the head, perfectly! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/01/marathon-runner-long-covid-athletes

Cyclocross reflection.

(A bit long-winded, I got carried away).

On the weekend before we all got Covid, I did my last CX race of the season, finishing off a whirlwind of mud, crashes, trashed bike, mud and crashes, and it was absolutely bleeding ACE!

I have 2 people to thank/blame for getting me into this crazyar$ed sport.
My mate and cycling guru, Steve S and a bloke who I bought a car off, Rich C, (a friend of Steve and king of the course hecklers), both accomplished and seasoned riders, unlike this clueless newbie.

I won’t bore you with all the details, nor a blow-by-blow, turn-by-twisty-turn account. It was a hell of a buzz and a steep/overhanging learning curve. Most of what I knew from riding a road bike had to be ignored, forgotten or to simply do the opposite. (For example, on the road on a hill, you stand up out of the saddle. Try that on a muddy XC hill and you’ll be spinning faster than Benny Hill and going nowhere fast!)

The fact that I was at the very, very top of my age group (40-49) added to the fact that my age group rides with the 16-39s along with the fact that most of these riders were at the absolute top of their game all added up to the fact that I was dipping my toes in very deep shark-infested waters!

In a nutshell everyone rides laps of the course for around 60 minutes, but the number of laps is determined by the time of the leaders first 1-2 laps, BUT if you are behind the leader/winner when they finish, even if it is by a yard, you stop, whilst if you are in front of said rider, you get a bonus lap.

As someone totally obsessed with the weather, this went into overdrive on the week leading up to each race.

Race 1 – Bishop Burton College, Beverley.

The season kicked off in balmy East Yorkshire in a brilliant race organised by the bloke I bought the car off. Steve kindly gave me a lift and a shedload of tips, but I was still absolutely bricking it right up to the off, despite having a shiny new bike and a mud-free, hurdle-free course.
Bone dry, with a sandpit obstacle course and countless climbs.
Missing “the kick” at the start of the race became my trademark and after 200m I was about 100m behind tail-end-Charlie (who was in fact me, I mean the penultimate guy). My first crash happened so fast that I didn’t even know it had happened until I was on my back in the sand, (“sand, I hate sand”) with my bike clipped in on top of me, like an upturned beetle.
Managed to pass 3 riders, making me not last, but plenty passed me.
I was the very last rider to finish as I was a few inches ahead of the winner as he crossed the line, so I got a bonus lap!

Race 2 – Shibden.
(Working, couldn’t get day off).

Race 3 – Thornes Park, Shakey Wakey.

I hadn’t been here since I ran my first ever 1500m track race in 1987!
The girls came along to support, on a decent day on a very, very tight and technical course. Fell on the warm-up. Held my own in the race, wasn’t last.

Race 4 – Myrtle Park, Bingley.

Got a lift with Steve and Angela, which was brilliant as parking was ridiculously tight and their company calmed my nerves, as I knew this course had “DISMOUNTS”. A dismount is a part of course which cannot be ridden, you have to get off and run, plus there were ramps/hurdles, which I had been practising at home, but was still crap at!

Had a heavy crash on the warm up and gashed my leg on a barbed wire fence.

Didn’t feel like I was “going” in the race at all. Great course, mediocre result, wasn’t last, just.

Race 5 – Temple Newsam, Leeds, The-swamp-in-the-storm.

I had somehow managed to lose the car keys the week before the race. Not normally a problem as we had a spare set, but the girls were at “Go Ape” on the same day and we were sharing the car but a good mile apart.

It was a diabolical day. It had p!$$ed down all week and was blowing a proper hooly on the morning of the race. The course was under water at the bottom end and my bike started making strange noises on the warm-up.

Many riders have 2 bikes and a dedicated pit crew, so they ride in, swap bikes and grab a clean bike, and repeat until end.

I didn’t have a pit crew or a spare bike…

One good thing was that there was a fair bit of running, which was a break from getting drowned and slip-side-crashing. My chain came off and would not go back on. My poor bike was an autumnal collage by the end and washing it by headtorch after the race followed by not quite drying it out properly would come back to bite my ar$e.
Didn’t finish last, but was glad to finish.

Race 6 – Pontycarlo Racecourse.

Back to one of my old work haunts and the course that produced Filthy Luca Cumani’s 1998 Derby Winner, High Rise, on a stormy, extremely windy day.
I had been warned about parking being miles away from the start, but I had recently purchased a set of “rollers”, perhaps the most terrifying contraption ever invented for 2 wheels. Imagine riding through a trail of vaseline on tyres made of soap and you are close! Was well warmed up, which was just as well as it was blooming freezing. (I did see a bloke wearing a t-shirt carrying shopping back from Freeport shopping outlet, Tough sorts round here!)
A very fast course with headwind-tailwind-headwind-tailwind and 2 horrible u-turn descents/climbs, which I fell off on most laps.
Had a decent race, didn’t finish last.
Thanks to Kev F and Rich C for support.

Race 7 – Yorksport, York.

My most local course and a beautiful day. I had been training well and all the planets seemed to have aligned nicely beforehand.

Then, I crashed heavily about 3 minutes into the course and winded myself trying to avoid a crash and crashing myself. Banged my head too, but as skid lids are compulsory, I cannot use that as an excuse.

Found myself long, long last and had to pull out all the stops to get round.
Didn’t finish last, but finished.
Thanks to Badger and Shoresyman for support/heckling.

Race 8 – Pateley Bridge.

After covering myself in Fiery Jack and tempted to pop a Diamox, with the girls in tow, I was ready for a “proper” CX course.

Mud, hills, off-camber slopes, woods, rocks and more slippy, slippy mud, on the edge of winter in the highlands of Nidderdale, spent as much time on my ar$e as I did on my saddle. brilliant day out 🙂

My bike started really playing up, but finished, as did I, and not last which was a bonus. This was thought at the time to be the last race of the season, which was fortunate as my bottom bracket was shot to pieces (post Temple Newsam). BIG THANK YOU to Steve for sorting me out, sourcing the impossible-to-find parts and fixing it. I owe you!)

Race 9 – Peel Park, Bradford.

Back to where it all began! (I accidentally turned up for an under-12 training day here, after thinking it was for adults, so went straight home!)

Accompanied by the girls, on a proper winter squall of a day, (it was January), I faffed around so much that I almost missed the start and definitely missed the kick. A very technical course with one running climb. Took 45 minutes to get into it, with a very focussed last 15 minutes. The season was finally over, which was just as well as Covid struck us all the week after, bugger!

Massive thank you to Steve, Angela, Rich and my 2 girls, who showed true dedication to the cause in some truly foul weather!

CX is a brilliant sport, amazing fun, inclusive and friendly.
It does remind me of the fellrunning scene, which is coincidental to the fact that a lot of fellrunners double-up in both sports, or make the natural progression to CX. Highly recommended!

Raiders round-up.

IF I had written this blog on a regular basis, this would have been a different story. Barrow RLFC got promoted last season to the Championship and came out of the blocks faster than Ben Johnson, challenging for league leadership at the beginning, playing some extremely exciting (but ridiculously nerve racking) rugby, then it all went downhill and the winning start turned to a long losing streak, but they have hopefully started to turn this around now.

The strongest team in a long time, good management and a loyal following.

Onwards and upwards 🙂

SuperLeeds United somehow managed to stay up, miracles do happen 🙂

Peru reflections.

Next week.

Adios to the Clunk 😦

Next week.

Lockdown mindset?

Next week.

New wheels!!!

Keeping a long story short.

I was always on the lookout for a van or a van project.
When I first went to Peru in 2004, I sold almost everything and although belongings are just basically “stuff”, the one thing I really didn’t want to sell was my old Transit breadvan, which with the help of my carpenter brother, James, we made a brilliant (basic) campervan for about £200.
(Although with hindsight, it would have disintergrated into a pile of rust within months!)

I just happened to mention my van plans to an old running mate called Les, who said that his sister, Sue, was selling her Nissan Elgrand (I had to look it up) and wanted a quick sale.
Les did say that it was “more muscle than van”, but it never registered in my mind. Everything looked tempting and a deal was done via email. Train tickets were hastily booked for the next day. York to KX via underground to Paddington to Didcot. A completely blind sale with no escape route.
What could go wrong?
Since coming back to Blighty the furthest I had travelled was to Skipton (to buy a pushbike) and Manchester (for a Tai Chi trainer course), so going to the Old Smoke was a bit mindblowing and at the age of 49, my first every trip to the big city on my tod!

All went well until the Tube part. Being colourblind I was always dubious about the Underground, I had even considered jogging across town to Paddington but I only had 41 minutes from train-to-train and couldn’t risk getting lost. A bad start was made by getting on the right line in the wrong direction. I wasn’t sure if my ticket would let me get off so I stayed on dithering until halfway round the Circle Line before getting off and changing directions. After 29 minutes I was back where I started and was starting to panic as my other ticket was fixed to that train. I got to Paddington with 1 minute to spare and after running on to the platform shouting “DIDCOT? DIDCOT?” I was pointed to the futhest platform away and just made it before it set off, two minutes after the time on my ticket.
“This is the 13:44 to Bristol Temple Meads…”
Bristol? Bristol? That is not near Didcot!
“… Calling at Blah, Blah, Blah and Didcot…”
I was picked up at the station in what must have looked like a voluntary kidnapping and drove back to Sue’s. I had a test drive.

I had only driven an automatic once and that was a long time ago.
It looked the part, the cash was burning a hole in my sky rocket and it was getting late, (it was January and going dark at 4pm).

“I’ll take it”

After sorting out which part of the V5 was mine and parted with the readies, the keys were mine and although the temptation to drive back without tax or insurance was huge, it was wrong and besides, I had left the insurance left with just a “PURCHASE NOW” button for Lina to press on my laptop at home. (This is one of the many ballaches of not having a smartphone).\
The laptop at home wasn’t having any of it, so I endured a 45 minute call centre call, then sorted my tax out, so by 6pm I was away and soon completely lost, in a van I barely knew how to drive, with 2 Shetland ponies at home who like their tea around 6:30pm!

It had been a long day already and driving along A roads with names of places I had never heard of, I longed for a “To the North” sign or similar.
The M40 somehow led to the M1 and although Northampton is not very northern, I knew that Tamworth was about halfway. At what seemed like midnight I rolled in home, more than a bit wired (without coffee, having foolishly given it up a year ago).

It seems ironic that the prize of petrol seemed to go up and up and up from the day I bought the van, as it is a greedy 3.3 litre V6 guzzler (“more muscle than van”) and although I am booked in for a LPG conversion in June, I do have moments of panic (usually at the garage after the pump has gone past the £100 mark), when I just think “Shall I get rid and buy something smaller/more economical?”

I am still not sure, but I do love it, especially the Japanese telly which cannot be changed from Japanese. In fact knowing Japanese would be a BIG help as all of the instructions are in Japanese, as the Elgrand is basically a convertible, imported people carrier that changes into a van, a bit like an A-Team meets Optimus Prime mobile, but carrying Japanese tourists and not Hannibal, Face, Murdoch nd Mario Baracus). I am still saving up for enough petrol to actually go anywhere, but on short forays it drives like a beast and as an ex-Bongo owning mate said, the fuel consumption is equally dire is you drive it like a fairy or thrash it like it’s stolen!

I have a terrible “purchase guilt complex” which basically means that if I buy anything, I feel guilty as hell. I got the van for a knockdown price but its running costs (with the scandalous price of juice these days) are not great.
Currently looking at Plan A and Plan B, watch this space (or eBay van sales).

eBay, not a way to make money when skint.

Next time…

And finally…

To round off this shambolic nonsense, here is a fine musical interlude, which is coincidentally the namesake to this blog, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Babyshambles.

Thank you for your patience and next time will be a much more fettled affair.

It’s goodnight from him and it’s goodnight from me, goodnight.

Hasta la proxima, baby.

Johnny and the girls