It has been so long!

Long time no update! well around 13 months :)  Geocaching and walking took a backseat for a good chunk of time due to arrivals of babies and dodgey knee's.

Sophie came in May. 2011

Making it two little ones.

Add this to another knee op to sort out my wonky knee post ACL op, walking was the last thing on the agenda.

Over the past month or so though we have managed to venture beyond the local parks to explore, seek and enjoy the countryside. This included a geocache! which was obviously was a church, located near Harewood.

We have some cracking photo's of these walks, ruined castles, churches and hidden tunnels.

Lotherton Hall Birdies!

Ohh thats what it's like to walk!

It's been a real long time since I last went for a really decent walk. After which I have felt really tired and ready to drop. But thankfully I managed to do this recently. Now my ACL ops are out of the way the long road to rehab and a fully working knee is all infront. I am now walking without sticks and building up the muscles around the knee.

I walked down to Eccup and found some really hidden paths through the woods that were higher up from the offical paths. Now going through thick woods in my condition is not the smartest thing in the world but I went really slow and not once did I risk turning my knee or falling. Walking in the woods brought back some good memories, the smell of fresh air, tree's in the wind and the unexpected new paths.

The only problem I had from the walk was the downhill bits, its hell on a tender knee. I managed to uncover a little waterfall and there was a few caches around the woods that I had yet to find! Not a great start when the navigator software I used on my blackberry for GPS stuff had run out and so me actually finding the caches in the woods was not going to happen. I forgot how poor your phones reception is in woods and outside the city! I really couldnt get any sort of signal.

There are so many places just outside Leeds where you can find peace and quiet! It has been over a year and a half since I have been seriously geocaching so I took a peek on the geocaching.com site and looked for new caches around Leeds and North Yorkshire, wowzers. Some places have got a huge increase in cache placements. There does not seem to be a village or path now where a cache series is not located. Lots is Scoles, Aberford, Linton now have great ones to start/complete. The only catch is they usually involve a decent length walk and dodgey terrain. Not ideal but good for caching.

Lots of new geocaches to find!

So its been a few years since we have been geocaching on a decent scale. The odd cache here or there does not really count.

I logged into Yorkshire Geocaching for the first time in ages to see if there was any news or events, it does seem alot of things in the caching community dont change! a few different names but pretty much the same stuff.

I then logged into geocaching.com and check out to see if there were any new caches around North Leeds etc. Wow thats all I can say! it does seem alot of people have been busy places caching that are close to us. Around the villages of North Leeds, linton, collingham, thorner have cracking new cache series that I cannot wait to try. Right now 2-3mile walks are a little out of my capacity but it shouldnt be too long.

Where as before I checked out the caching map around me it was filled with finds now it is sprinkled with no find caches. I must do some research into the easy ones that are on decent paths for me and the family.

Geocaching stats!

Well I might not be actually geocaching myself these days until after my knee is 100% but that does not mean my caches around Leeds are not being found!

Park Square cache - 126 found, officially only 52 DNF's lol. Always a tough cache to find, busy, nano and annoying! Not a bad amount of people look for this as it is located in the centre of leeds in a nice park around where all the law firms are. I get the odd email asking for help and I really don't mind offering some advice or clue.

The weather is now perking up around Yorkshire, flowers coming out and lots of sunshine. This is great, nothing better then going out in the countryside with the wife and baby. Feeding ducks, watching the lambs play, late sunny nights!

Nothing to report.

Walking and more importantly geocaching has taken a break! due to the fact I kinda snapped my knee, well the cartlige and ACL anyway. Crutches, op and op, rehab means no walkies for me and the family. Shuffle around on sticks and pretend I am in some forest looking for hidden caches. Maybe in 2-3 months I be back to walking unaided and caching again, one can hope.

Joined Harwood house near Leeds, the card seems good value if you go a few times. Lots of wildlife and things to do without too much walking. Bonus of it being 5mins drive away too.

Some brief things of interest, studying a OU Degree, watched avatar, Emily turned one and is as cute as ever.

Hopefully my next blog entry will be after my final operation and walking in the countryside again.

Bit of a year: Baby and walking.

Well looking back at the last year it was kind of a big one for the family. Our first baby arrived :)  Emily and so our lives changed forever. We could not wish for a better baby, full of joy and always looking to play with everyone. I am suprised when I see other babys crying all the time, I guess we got lucky, looks and temperament of an angel.

Time has flown by and Emily will be soon a year old! Taja has a big party arranged and it will be a blast. Obviously with the new addtion to the family our day trips out walking have not been as frequent but my favorite day out was to Ripon.

 

The cathedral is huge and worth a few hours to explore. The countryside around Ripon is amazing, fountains Abbey 20mins away and only 30mins from Harrogate. There is a huge amount of caches around Ripon town center and closeby.

With a baby on my back walking on flat decent paths was a must, often the local reservoirs offered such paths. Thurcross is a long walk but we just did a quarter of it and walked back on ourselves.

It has some fantastic views, as the water was placed over a flooded old village some of the houses can still be seen around the edges. There are some geocaches around and very close to the water's edge!

Hopefully we will be able to go on so much longer walks now a can carry Emily on my backpack (once I have my knee op :) and thats settled down. A holiday this year would also be something to look forward to.

I was trying to think about my browsing patterns this time last year, not much changed I am afraid. You Tube I follow alot more, one or two of the people on their make some cracking blogs and its a nice way to spend 20 odd mins at dinner. I have virtually stopped playing poker, I dont have the patience or time to play where it is worth it now. Small things like 70:30 beats would send me on tilt.

I am planning on major declutter and ebaying alot of my old gadgets, cd's, dvd's, books, or anything I can flog for a few quid. I might try setup some ecommerce website if I can decide on what to offer/sell.

The Great white Christmas

Every year we used to talk about Winters of the past. "Ohh when we was kids it used to snow huge drifts". Well for once in my life that I can remember it really was a bad winter. The snow started a week before Christmas and did not go away until well in the new year, around 3 weeks.

Just when you thought it was going another 5-6 inches topped it up. Add the cold snap (yeah i know it sounds crazy, but extra cold) the ice made the roads some days undriveable on.

The above picture is of Roundhay park on 24th Dec 09. It really is hard to see whats happening as the fog/mist was so strong you could not see the hundreds of people sledging on the famous park slopes. You could hear a huge buzz of voices and kids playing but only see them within 200 yards. The snow at this point was about 10 inches deep, pretty hard to walk about in.

The lake at Roundhay was for the first time I can recall almost frozen solid, a layer of snow covering its top. Not sure how thick the ice was under the snow. Really beautiful scene's and it was good for baby Emily to experiance.

The above picture is a walk around Eccup Leeds, running along side Sandmoor golf course. Not one single person playing golf today! thats a suprise. This was taken about the 18th Dec 09, the first couple of days we had snow. I had taken the day off work and went for a 8mile walk. Tiring but fun.

The only problem with walking on fresh snow is that it covers up the really deep puddles covered with ice. So a good job a had a friend with wellys test the ground in front of me on the walk.

England for the two weeks after Christmas pretty much went to a standstill. There were days when going out was not an option, people starting panic buying provissions from shops! (lol always makes me giggle). The most annoying aspect of the bad weather for me was the absolute fasination with every news station about gritting the roads and running out of salt. Leave the small roads and grit when icey, case closed.

So the last snow we had was two weeks ago and it seemed a distent memory for us, until today. More snow has laid and the weather is unpredicatble for the next week or two. Let the games begin!

Let is snow and snow and snow.

I don't think I can recall such weather in Yorkshire at this time pre Christmas where we had so much snow. Normally it is for half a day then vanishes from memory. This time its been around a week already. As off today its now blizzard storm outside and the roads that were cleared are now covered again.

Unable to go away due to the weather I decided to pop around the local waters, otherwise known as Eccup. The sky way blue but it was bitterly cold. Walking across Sandmoor golf course was spooky not one golfer out braving the cold with coloured golf balls.

Being a friday the ususal busy walking routes were really quiet. Over the day walking around the water and the woods past Emmerdale set we passed 3 people!

Caching while in the snow seemed a great idea until we found one but realised our hands were numb after! not ideal searching in snow for small containers! we stopped at one find and just enjoyed the walk. Even with the Sun out it was still below freezing.

The problem with this walk was all the deep puddles were iced over and covered in snow, so you didn't know where they were! lucky for us wheelies worked a treat :) It was a little longer walk than intended. 3 1/2 hrs and about 8miles. Really tired and ready for some hot drinks and food at home.

WoW, Runescape and blogging

I have played online games since around '96. It started with a game called Subspace, it was free and like a massive asteroids game with bells and whistles on it. Thousands played it and it was a fun experiance, chatting to similar people and giving grief to noobs from across the world, what else do you want? I played over 200 days on this game over 6 years of playing the game, I ended up pretty good and captaining the Uk against other countries, but found EQ and my time with subspace was done. My degree soon took me away from the huge time sync of EQ but it was filled with DAOC and various other MMORPG's until World of Warcraft came along.

World of Warcraft was like everything the others games had rolled into one, in 2005 i settled into a leading guild on a server and raiding 4-5times a week. Burning out and sick of the politics that so called l33t people always seemed to have i created a small guild with some RL friends and continued to play the game until recently in a very casual game. It's strange that I love online gaming but prefer to solo most stuff and come and go as I please. At least a with a friendly guild you can chat away.

Having a break from WoW until after Xmass and decided to try Runescape out, all I can say is lol. It's like going back into the late 80's remember a Amiga game called the Hobbit? lol its so bad, clunky and tiresome, I cannot even be bothered to give it a huge go.

This blog is kinda moving direction until I can pick up the Geocaching m'larky. It's not like it matters to be honest, but I do plan on going back to the topic eventually! I try and find interesting blogs but it seems many are left for dead after the initial burst of posts by keen bloggers. Poker blogs follow this well trodden path, post post, downturn in poker fortunes and no blog to be read for months. I did like someone's poker blog called Mick McCool, sadly is never updated anymore.

Last topic, I hate the fact I can never finish books. I don't read at home, why should I? I have Sky TV and a laptop, no my reading time is strictly left for bus rides too and from work. I have the latest Dan Brown book to read :) its been delivered from amazon for over two months now! please motivate me to get started.