Just been doing my regular 2-minute refresh of the clipper website and it looks like Hull and Humber have just this minute crossed the finish line.
Not a bad first race :)
See http://tinyurl.com/yomhej for the full details.
Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Sunday, 16 September 2007
Clipper '07-'08
This weekend I drove up North first to Manchester to hang out with Vlad, Samia, and Huseyin. We had a nice meal out at Pizza Express in Prestwich, before heading to AMC in the centre to catch 'Run Fat Boy, Run'. Thandie Newton is damn gorgeous, which helps.
Saturday evening I drove the remaining 50 miles or so to Liverpool to join a few well-wishers see of my Uncle Quentin. A very average meal was followed by a thirty minute drink in an impressive hall at our hotel. Unfortunately everybody else had been up into the wee hours of the morning, which meant I was left stranded in my hotel room at 10PM with nothing to do. For once I managed to remember my book; in this case Haruki Murakami's 'new' novel, 'After Dark'.
I've covered sixty or so pages of After Dark already, and it's as good as ever. What's slightly odd is that this book is written entirely in the third person, which is very uncharacteristic for Murakami. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. While previously I've been a middle-aged man (probably just divorced (or soon to be)) who enjoys cats, pasta and jazz... this time I'm a fly-on-the-wall. A very big change.
The hotel, the Adelphi Britannia, which is opposite Lime St station, reminds me terribly of the Dolphin Hotel from an earlier Murakami novel. I half-expected a high-class prostitute to turn up... that or for a professional young receptionist with a tight blazer to take a fancy to me. No such luck.
Up this morning for breakfast at 8AM, Quentin and Angie would have been at the clipper preparing for half an hour or more... hopefully sorting out the 30Kg of porridge that appears to have been loaded onto the boat! What's more impressive is that 30Kg isn't for the full ten month trip, it's just for the first leg; a mere four weeks!
Quentin is one of the relatively few people who is planning to do the full ten month stint... other people sign up for one or more legs, depending on how much time they can set aside from work, or indeed if they think that they can't put up with four hour on-deck/in-bunk shifts and weekly showers for that long.
This afternoon the boats peeled off, did a quick turn around Albert dock and eventually headed out into the Mersey for more parading before the official race start at 3PM... Quentin's clipper, 'Hull and Humberside', headed out into the sea in second place, just behind 'Durban 2010 and Beyond', which is surely a good start, but is by no means indicative of the final result. According to Quentin, in one of the previous races three boats sailed across the leg finish line within 23 seconds of each other!
Not too much more to say about it for now... plenty more info to be found at www.clipperroundtheworld.com and I'll upload some photos when I got my slides/negatives back from processing.
Saturday evening I drove the remaining 50 miles or so to Liverpool to join a few well-wishers see of my Uncle Quentin. A very average meal was followed by a thirty minute drink in an impressive hall at our hotel. Unfortunately everybody else had been up into the wee hours of the morning, which meant I was left stranded in my hotel room at 10PM with nothing to do. For once I managed to remember my book; in this case Haruki Murakami's 'new' novel, 'After Dark'.
I've covered sixty or so pages of After Dark already, and it's as good as ever. What's slightly odd is that this book is written entirely in the third person, which is very uncharacteristic for Murakami. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. While previously I've been a middle-aged man (probably just divorced (or soon to be)) who enjoys cats, pasta and jazz... this time I'm a fly-on-the-wall. A very big change.
The hotel, the Adelphi Britannia, which is opposite Lime St station, reminds me terribly of the Dolphin Hotel from an earlier Murakami novel. I half-expected a high-class prostitute to turn up... that or for a professional young receptionist with a tight blazer to take a fancy to me. No such luck.
Up this morning for breakfast at 8AM, Quentin and Angie would have been at the clipper preparing for half an hour or more... hopefully sorting out the 30Kg of porridge that appears to have been loaded onto the boat! What's more impressive is that 30Kg isn't for the full ten month trip, it's just for the first leg; a mere four weeks!
Quentin is one of the relatively few people who is planning to do the full ten month stint... other people sign up for one or more legs, depending on how much time they can set aside from work, or indeed if they think that they can't put up with four hour on-deck/in-bunk shifts and weekly showers for that long.
This afternoon the boats peeled off, did a quick turn around Albert dock and eventually headed out into the Mersey for more parading before the official race start at 3PM... Quentin's clipper, 'Hull and Humberside', headed out into the sea in second place, just behind 'Durban 2010 and Beyond', which is surely a good start, but is by no means indicative of the final result. According to Quentin, in one of the previous races three boats sailed across the leg finish line within 23 seconds of each other!
Not too much more to say about it for now... plenty more info to be found at www.clipperroundtheworld.com and I'll upload some photos when I got my slides/negatives back from processing.
Friday, 7 September 2007
Peak Imaging
While pondering the purchase of a decent Paterson dev tank, light-proof bag and all of the other good stuff to allow me to dev my own TX400 and Neopan 1600 I figured I'd check on the costs of mail order dev. Vlad pointed me at Peak Imaging who I'd always assumed would be out of my price range.
Peak cater to professional photographers and do B&W, C41, slide and probably all sorts of crazy types of film I don't even know about. From what Vlad has told me, Peak do some seriously impressive (and expensive) prints. Much to my surprise Peak don't charge serious cash for dev only.
Having heard only good things, I found an envelope, stuck in a roll of TX400, Neopan 1600 and some Fuji Superia 200 (or 400), along with my debit card details. Sending is done via freepost, but they make a charge of £2.50 for return postage.
As I only put the package in the post box on Wednesday, I hadn't planned to come home this evening to find my negatives on the door mat. Very good turnaround, especially compared to Jessops, which requires a trip into town to drop them off, and a trip about two weeks later to collect (they have to send them away and they end up coming back eight days later, just too late for a weekend collection).
The sleeves Peak provide are better too, they cut into strips of six (exactly how many frames the film scanner I'm borrowing from Quentin handles) and there is no curling on any of the three different types of films. Usually I get some gungy marks on my negatives with Jessops, this just isn't true with Peak.
So... for £13.54 for three rolls of film, including despatch and a turnaround of three days. I won't be using Jessops again.
Peak cater to professional photographers and do B&W, C41, slide and probably all sorts of crazy types of film I don't even know about. From what Vlad has told me, Peak do some seriously impressive (and expensive) prints. Much to my surprise Peak don't charge serious cash for dev only.
Having heard only good things, I found an envelope, stuck in a roll of TX400, Neopan 1600 and some Fuji Superia 200 (or 400), along with my debit card details. Sending is done via freepost, but they make a charge of £2.50 for return postage.
As I only put the package in the post box on Wednesday, I hadn't planned to come home this evening to find my negatives on the door mat. Very good turnaround, especially compared to Jessops, which requires a trip into town to drop them off, and a trip about two weeks later to collect (they have to send them away and they end up coming back eight days later, just too late for a weekend collection).
The sleeves Peak provide are better too, they cut into strips of six (exactly how many frames the film scanner I'm borrowing from Quentin handles) and there is no curling on any of the three different types of films. Usually I get some gungy marks on my negatives with Jessops, this just isn't true with Peak.
So... for £13.54 for three rolls of film, including despatch and a turnaround of three days. I won't be using Jessops again.
A piddle 'round the area (with leg cramps!)
The weather this evening was so gorgeous that I just couldn't not go for a quick piddle around the block. I didn't really plan on going anywhere fancy, so I didn't bother to log my ride. I kind of wish I had now, as the ride was a really nice one... pretty fast, not too long and with some truly gorgeous scenery. I might have to adapt the ride by cutting out the first part where I was peddling along some dual carriageway (only a short bit, mind).
In the end I headed out to the Tesco roundabout, through Sandhurst, Crowthorne, Finchampstead and finally to Eversley and from there back to Yateley.
Distance: 11.78m
Average: 15.6mph (wow! Quite chuffed with this)
Max speed: 33mph (in a 30 zone)
Time: 45m
Oddly I got some light cramps in my calves by the time I got to Eversley (lucky, really, as I was mostly home). I have no idea what these were caused by... I was keeping my cadence up reasonably high, although maybe a little lower than usual towards the end (but still... 75-85rpm shouldn't cause cramps, right?). And again, I've found that I'm incredibly hungry by the time I get back. In future I'm going to have to look at eating right before going on a ride.
Here's my attempt at mapping it in Google:
View Larger Map
In the end I headed out to the Tesco roundabout, through Sandhurst, Crowthorne, Finchampstead and finally to Eversley and from there back to Yateley.
Distance: 11.78m
Average: 15.6mph (wow! Quite chuffed with this)
Max speed: 33mph (in a 30 zone)
Time: 45m
Oddly I got some light cramps in my calves by the time I got to Eversley (lucky, really, as I was mostly home). I have no idea what these were caused by... I was keeping my cadence up reasonably high, although maybe a little lower than usual towards the end (but still... 75-85rpm shouldn't cause cramps, right?). And again, I've found that I'm incredibly hungry by the time I get back. In future I'm going to have to look at eating right before going on a ride.
Here's my attempt at mapping it in Google:
View Larger Map
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
Monday, 3 September 2007
Yateley - Spencer's Wood - Wokingham circular
I headed out on Saturday to increase my distance slightly. I spent some time on Friday night plotting a route that would take me on a roughly 50km circular route from Yateley (where I live), all the way out to the M4, through Wokingham and back down to Yateley through Crowthorne and Sandhurst.
After heading into Camberley around lunchtime for some cycling shorts I set off with my D70 in the bar bag and my OS map in the map holder on top.
Did quite well to begin with, but I got tired quite quickly... partly due to the fact that I'm still not quite used to cycling any sort of distance, but I suspect more because all I'd eaten was two bowls of Coco Pops. Friday night I was unusually unhungry, so I skipped dinner, which hardly helped.
I tallied up 33 miles by the time I managed to get back... which almost didn't happen.
Distance: 32.7m
Average speed: 13.3mph
Max speed: 31.4mph
Time: 2h27m (not including breaks)
After heading into Camberley around lunchtime for some cycling shorts I set off with my D70 in the bar bag and my OS map in the map holder on top.
Did quite well to begin with, but I got tired quite quickly... partly due to the fact that I'm still not quite used to cycling any sort of distance, but I suspect more because all I'd eaten was two bowls of Coco Pops. Friday night I was unusually unhungry, so I skipped dinner, which hardly helped.
I tallied up 33 miles by the time I managed to get back... which almost didn't happen.
Distance: 32.7m
Average speed: 13.3mph
Max speed: 31.4mph
Time: 2h27m (not including breaks)
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