It's not often you spend 3 weeks in England with almost no rain but we hit a lucky streak on our return visit and had glorious weather pretty much the whole time. We walked into Richmond one day and stopped in the playground for a quick climb.
Then strolled into town Having been local for a while we headed up to Cambridge, or Ely to be more precise to see my Dad and Sarah and spent the afternoon looking round the town and the gorgeous colleges and punting on the river You can either get a guided tour with a professional punter or you can try it yourself which sometimes has mixed results as this guy found out. A couple of interesting facts from the punting. I just missed this in the photo but some of the windows in this old building were boarded up, that comes from a time when there was a tax placed on windows! The phrase 'daylight robbery' also comes from that tax. And here is the pub where The Pink Floyd played their first ever gig. We went into town on the graduation day of one of the colleges so there were plenty of gowns and costumes about. Seeing so many people on bikes made me realize one of the differences between the US and UK, in the US the bicycle is used for recreational or fitness activities whereas in the UK it is also a utility vehicle and people use it to get around which you never see in the US (or at least we haven't so far)
Just before heading back to England I took Dan on his longest bike ride to date, a 5 mile ride to Bush Lake beach which has a killer hill on the way that Dan somehow managed despite having a bike that weighs the same as a bull elephant and no gears - here's Dan looking very pleased with himself as we got to the lake. On the other end of the bike spectrum here is a picture from the MS150 ride which I completed in no small amount of pain. The first day was the England v USA football match so we had to get the first 75 miles done before 1:00am. Despite really bad fog and not great weather I managed to get the 75 miles done by 11:00am - however my pedals weren't adjusted properly so I ended up straining a tendon and then overcompensating on the other leg and getting a swollen ligament (or the other way round, I can't ever remember my tendons and ligaments and Andy is out the house and I'm too lazy to look it up). Obviously the less said about the match the better (my favourite comment was when we got back to England, driving home from the airport the radio commentator said 'Not sure why England don't seem to do well in the world cup, on paper they have a great side. It's just on grass they can't perform').
Anyway here is a photo from the halfway stage where 3,200 riders left their bikes overnight in a field - the most carbon fiber I've ever seen in one place. Our Best Buy Mobile tent, which actually proved really handy to have close by. We had arranged a big screen TV to be in the main company tent to watch the game but the weather was so bad that the satellite signal was too weak to tune into. So we borrowed a 4G data dongle from the stand and streamed the match to the TV from a laptop.
That night we hit the local bars in Hinkley, the half-way stage. Let's just say that Hinkley isn't exactly London. This is Mike (our rock-star developer) trying to keep a straight face as my wine originally came in a plastic cup and was only half full as they'd run out of Cab Sav. I made the mistake of going for a different red rather than playing to the strengths of the bar which was something in a bottle.
Then strolled into town
Having been local for a while we headed up to Cambridge, or Ely to be more precise to see my Dad and Sarah and spent the afternoon looking round the town and the gorgeous colleges and punting on the river
You can either get a guided tour with a professional punter or you can try it yourself which sometimes has mixed results as this guy found out.
A couple of interesting facts from the punting. I just missed this in the photo but some of the windows in this old building were boarded up, that comes from a time when there was a tax placed on windows! The phrase 'daylight robbery' also comes from that tax.
And here is the pub where The Pink Floyd played their first ever gig.
We went into town on the graduation day of one of the colleges so there were plenty of gowns and costumes about. Seeing so many people on bikes made me realize one of the differences between the US and UK, in the US the bicycle is used for recreational or fitness activities whereas in the UK it is also a utility vehicle and people use it to get around which you never see in the US (or at least we haven't so far)
