After checking in we needed to get ourselves over to the kilt shop to get our kilt fitting for the Ceilidh on Saturday night, which was a blast. We didn’t get up and do any dancing however, it really was a couples thing. But was great fun to watch the dancing. Before heading to the party we had a long walk around Perth collecting Geocaches along with the other 1000 or so people attending Mega Scotland 2010… What must the residents of the town have been thinking of all this.

Dinner was quite exciting, it started off by the piping in  of the Haggis followed by the Ode To The Haggis with a slight variation to bring into it a bit about Geocaching. The ‘show’ before dinner was served lasted about 10 mins, very entertaining to say the least.

Gord and I both opted for the Haggis. It was over heard that the Haggis was by all accounts was top quality.  it was Gords’ first time ever having Haggis, I had had it before however I think it was canned so that’s not real Haggis   We both loved it, it was spicier then we’d expected, not hot spicy but just pepper type spicy.

After the Ceilidh it was back to the camp site for more much needed sleep.

Sunday, Aug 1st, we didn’t really know what to do, the weather took a turn for the worse on Sunday after a couple of nice days. We headed to Edinburgh to have a walk about. The weather really went to hell about after 90 mins of us getting there. We’d stopped for Pizza in a nice but hot little Restaurant… Outside were 100′s of people attending the big buskers festival that was going on.

After lunch we’d started to wander the streets to see what we could find.. This is when the contents of the Firth of Fourth stated to drop on the city. We took refuge in a Whiskey shop and even managed a sample of something that Gord bought to take home for a friend. I bought a couple little pocket sized bottles, just enough to fill the nice little MacKenzie key ring flask that I picked up   We had managed to find one geocache in town before heading back to the car and returning to the camp site to attend the ‘Yorkshire Day Away’ Geocache Event being held just about outside of our tent.

Monday, Aug 2, we had to return to Perth to return the kilts. It was an exceptionally lazy day due to the typical Scottish weather. Before leaving the camp site for the day we had attended yet another Geocache Event, ‘Bun and Brew to recover from the post Mega blues’.  nearly everyone from the camp site was there along with the Scottish weather, no one invited that though. 

We decided that since the showers at the camp site were sub par and long queues at time, that we would go swimming instead. We’d gone to the Leisure Centre next to the Mega Scotland venue. We were attracted to it because of the water slides that took you outside of the building, no we didn’t get on them haha.

Finished with the swim it was off to the kilt shop to drop everything off followed by a nice slow drive back to the camp site by the slow country roads. We’d managed to bag another 6 or 7 caches before returning to the site including Gords 500th cache!!!

After a bbq dinner of burgers and having had a chat with another cacher in the camp about a cache that he could find, we all decided to go and blitz the area looking for it. Nothing at all. Even a local dog walking muggle gave us a suggestion of where it should be, but nothing was found. After around an our we had to give up the search out of frustration and failing light, it was after all after 10pm by now.

Tuesday, Aug 3rd. It was time to back up and say good bye to Scotland and lead back south of the boarder again. Stopping for a breakfast just outside of Edinburgh we found a local cache near by. Next stop was the boarder for some photos and a rest and, yup you guessed it, another cache on the boarder.  From there it was on to Hexham. We’d found a tourist info place to get a list of camp sites. Gord liked the sounds of one place, Hadrian’s Wall Camping and Caravan Park.

We opted for using the small tent, we got it set up then went for dinner at a local pub. Excellent food it was too. We went for a small walk along a segment of Hadrian’s Wall. We did about a mile of the wall I suppose. We had to share the path with a lot of cows, that was a bit exciting as some of them weren’t interested in sharing the path and wouldn’t move out of the way.

That brings us to now… It’s time for bed.

Wednesday, Aug 4.  Well, it was and uneventful night in the small tent. There was just a touch of rain during the night was short lived so no bother at all. We were packed up and out of 950 so not bad going really  

We struck off for the ruins at Vindolanda and managed to get the just in time for one of the guided tours of the site. It must really have been impressive in it day. There were apparently some 500 soldiers and 1500 or so civilians in the area of the fort. There are many photos which I’ll get uploaded at some point..

The admission to this site also provides us access to the Roman Army Museum, which will be next on our tour before heading back to Cambridge.

We’d made it back to Cottenham just shortly after 7pm, sat for a few mins then got the car all cleaned out and got the tents out and hung up to dry out.

That’s the end of what was a most excellent adventure to Scotland for my largest Geocaching evening, well OK fine, my FIRST Geocaching event, hopefully not my last either.

On May 1st I managed to get a few hours to get out alone and go walking.  I’d planned a 3.5mi walk but it turned out to be a 5.5 mile walk.  What a great place to go walking.  There were two separate wooded area’s.  Once was Archers Wood

About this wood

Parts of Archer’s Wood are believed to be remnants of the original British wildwood, a ditch and bank in the northern section is a scheduled ancient monument and, true to its name the wood was a sanctuary for highwaymen. Even today you look to the north and imagine a 14th century Cistercian monastic grange that once stood there. Flat and easy to access, the site is dominated by oak, ash and field maple and served by a figure-of-eight network of rides so it’s great for gentle walks. Be sure to stroll along the main ride to spot the rare and beautiful wild service tree – and look out for foxes, woodpeckers and nuthatches.

The other was Aversley Wood, both just outside of Sawtry, Cambridgeshire.

About this wood

A woodland gem in England’s least-wooded county, expansive, impressive Aversley Wood is well worth the steep trek (sometimes boggy in winter) required to reach it. Believed to date back to the Ice Age, it is one of Cambridgeshire’s largest ancient woodland sites and a full tour is not for the faint-hearted – but very rewarding, with impressive fenland views.

You can see the full route of the walk with notes along the way by going to www.stepwhere.com.  I’ve been using this site for storing and planning my recent walks.  You can see all my public walks by going to my user name, M1XZG.  The process I’ve been doing with the site is planning the walk online and loading the track onto my GPS, then, when I’m out walking I record the actual track I walk and upload that to www.stepwhere.com. 

To see some photos from the walk of the woods you can CLICK HERE for my www.flickr.com gallery.  Here are a couple of the photos.

If you get out walking why not share your routes?   Also, why not check out www.walkingforum.co.uk – it’s a fantastic site for all manner of walking discussions.

A detailed account of the walk …

I started by parking in the small lot that services a large open park and allotment area off St Judith’s Lane.  Walking out of the car park I turned right and followed the road to a “T” junction, 1.6 km (1 mi)  This is where you can enter Archers Wood.  Just inside the wood is a map, I had a quick study of the map and planned my route sort of through the wood.  I figured I’d walk the outside route around the wood.  The paths were mostly dry and in very good condition.  There was one detour put in place due to some flooding of the path but that was it for any sort of problems.  The wood is mostly on an incline and that was at the lowest end of the wood.  The rest of the wood was very dry with only a few muddy spots from the recent rains.  Through out the wood there are very nice benches placed in excellent locations providing nice views through cuttings or paths in the wood.  I didn’t find any wildlife except birds while walking through this wood, however there was plenty of evidence of small game by the number of rabbit runs.  If it weren’t for the din of A1(M) very close by this would be a perfect place to come and reflect on life and enjoy the quiet.

Exiting the wood by the same gate I entered by, I turned left and continued to follow St Judith’s Lane for just about 1 km (0.6 mi), just past a large farm on the right side of the road you’ll find the Public Path sign.  Follow the path for 1.7 km (1 mi) and that will bring you to one of the entrances to the Aversley Wood.   About 260m before the entrance is a park bench.  This is where I’d stopped to break out my stove and kettle and make a cup of tea and some lunch.  After about a 30min break or so I packed up and headed into the wood.  This was another spectacular wooded area.  The paths were well maintained and very wide with ample chances to sit on benches and reflect and enjoy the quiet.  Because of the geography of this wood there was pretty no noise from the outside world at all.  The only thing to be heard was the rustling of  leafs and the birds.  Again, I didn’t see any wildlife but it’s clear it exists from all of the small game runs.  I did see what I think might be badger tracks, I meant to take a snap of them to check it out but meh, forgot   After quite some time walking around the wood I finally left via the North Eastern most corner with a gentle ascent up a hill then down the other side right back to the park where I started off.  

The total distance was 8.9km (5.6mi).  The weather really couldn’t have been more perfect, it was sunny but a little cool so it made walking not too hot.  Sitting idle you could feel the cold after a while, but it was very nice. 

I’m looking forward to future walk and hope to plan for a number of them to be through wooded areas like these.

Check out blog postings over at Dean Read dot net. Here is the video of their Ennerdale Wainwrights video.

I don’t have a plan as to when I’ll do it, but I’m thinking mid-late summer.  Need to plan to do some day walks first and get an idea on what I’m in for.  The other “problem” is also finding someone to do these with.  It would be pretty foolish to attempt this sort of thing alone with the lack of experience.  So, I need for another nutter up for some fun too   If that’s you, lets chat, drop me a comment.

Lisa and Emma immediately found the horses in the fields to go and see plus a swing set to play on as well. I was a bit worried for a while, there were no other kids around. Then, a family came trooping back into camp. They’d been out to the Banham Zoo. It’s about 1/2 mile down the road. Anyhow, Lisa and Emma quickly became acquainted with Hanna, 7yrs old. They spent the next 3 or so hours playing all sorts of games and running around the farm.

The camp site itself is a small family run business. It’s run the brother of our neighbour, very nice folks. They popped around to check on us and see how we were settling in. Quite layed back, they haven’t asked for money as yet. The site is, as I mentioned, small. Only about 6 or so pitches, most with electric. We didn’t bother with that, I’d brought the 120amp battery with us. More then enough power for the week to run a laptop if needed and charge the phones. I brought a 12v florescent lamp as well but likely won’t need it.

The kids are knackered. They’ve had a busy afternoon that’s for sure. Tomorrow we’ll be walking to the zoo and checking out the animals and whatever else they have there.

Well that’s about it from here tonight I think. the big people are knackered too and ready for bed now as well.

Watch this space for the day 2 report. I won’t be posting pics on the blog, but check on facebook, flickr and mobypictures and of course Twitter.com/m1xzg for updates.

Btw, this is all from my phone, there are likely spelling errors, I will fix them later. Don’t think I have a spell check on here.

Posted by Wordmobi

I’d really like a MSR Whisperlite but they aren’t cheap, however, they are very versatile.. best you read about them on the manufactures website (click the link back there).  At some point I’ll likely get one of these, but not right now. 

For now I’ll have a go with this Hexamine stove.    This the very same one I have picked up for £4.00

To night I decided to do some timing experiments to see how long it takes to boil water in both my crusader cup and a small aluminium kettle.  The Crusader cup took 6m20sec to bring 1L of water to a boil and the Hexamine cube held the boil for 3 minutes.  Might want it to boil longer if you were sterilizing water, but just pop another cube of Hexamine and it would be good for another 9 mins of burn time.  The kettle, which has a lid, only took 4m30sec and the same 9 min burn time on the cube so that means 4m30sec of the water being held at a boil.

A couple of pics and a couple of videos can be seen below.. click to enlarge or see the videos.

Well, now just have to try it out in anger one day in the field

So, I decided to take her with me.  The question was where too.  I decided to take her to Wicken Fen again.  We’d gone there before (Wicken Fen…) with Lisa’s school.  That visit was good for the kids but we didn’t really get to see too much of the place.  Today when we went back we’d ended up walking about 1.25 to 1.5 miles around part of the area.  Lisa had a good time but sure was tired.  Surprisingly she didn’t fall asleep on the way back home.

There are some pics and a video from the day HERE – here are some samples.

Anyhow, I took a load of pics which you can see if you CLICK HERE.  Some samples of the pics.

Yuki was working and I needed to get out of the house today with the girls, so I decided to take the to this park.  We’d talked about it for a while but today was the day.

You can see the photos from the Flickr Gallery.

The girls had a great time.. they even did some crafts there too.. they painted some paper butterflies, they did some drawing and coloured in a small bit of paper that was then pressed into a badge with a pin in the back to put on their clothes.

Not having any luck at all on the net finding the information I needed to build a cable, I’ve finally broken down and paid £26.00 (including shipping) to buy one.  I’ve wanted a DC cable mostly so that I could a) go camping without the need to have a tent pitch that was powered (extra cost), and b) be able to power my CPAP should we have a prolonged power outage at home (fairly low risk of this, but a risk none the less).

Click on the image below to see the full sized one.  This is a page from the manual that came with my cable.

Basically, should someone have posted something like:

To make your own Respironics Shielded DC Cord, Part number 1001956, you will need the following:

• 1 x 2.1mm (5.5mm outside) X 15mm Coaxial DC plug
  Such as: Maplin’s Part number HH61R (www.maplin.co.uk)
• 2-3m of suitable wire for a max of 7amp DC (depending on your CPAP model)
• 2-4 Clip on Ferrite suppressors, such as Maplin’s part N89AB
• 1 x 12VDC cigarette plug, suitable for upto 7amp DC

The construction of a DIY Respironics CPAP DC Cable, model number 1001956 is quite simple.  Wire up the cigarette plug to the DC plug that will go to the CPAP, be sure to wire the tip of the cigarette plug (Positive 12V, I suggest a multi-meter to confirm this in your car or battery pack you intend to use) to the centre connector of the 2.1mm DC plug.  Wire the negative to the other remaining connections. 

At both ends of the cable, as close as possible to each of the plugs, leave not much more then 3-4cm of cable “exposed” put a couple of the clip on ferrite RF suppressors.  These are quite important as they will ensure the dc is free of RF (Radio Frequency) or Electromagnetic noise.  These, should they get into the machine, could cause damage.  You can likely get away without them, but frankly for the extra £5 it will cost for these it’s worth saving your £500+ CPAP.

That’s all there is to it.  I really hope people find this useful, for some reason there has been a black hole of info about these cables, and I’m not sure why.

**DISCLAIMER** This information has been provided purely for theoretical and personal information.  I will not, nor can not, be held responsible if you are not competent enough to build this simple cable and end up damaging or destroying your CPAP.  I’m pretty sure in the wonderful lawsuit happy world we  live in it’s also most likely a violation of your warranty to attach a home made DC cable to your CPAP machine.  You have been warned, don’t come crying to me if you blow something up, also, don’t ask me to make one for you.  These are beyond simple to make.

The weather couldn’t have been better for the day.. it was a little overcast, but that kept the heat down which was good.

(click to see full sized images)

You can see the rest of the pics taken yesterday by CLICKING HERE

Click to read on ….

It was a great day out, the kids had such a great time.  We were in the “Diving Beetles” group.  The first thing we did was pond dipping.  This involved using nets on the end of sticks.  The kids (with help from the adults) swept the nets through the water then tipped the nets into pans filled with water.  In Lisa’s first dip she got a large snail and a couple small bugs.  We also managed to get a pretty good sized newt.  The Wicken Fen staff managed to fish out a massive newt that was about 3 or 4 times the size of the one we had.

The second “adventure” was the mini-beast hunt.  This had the kids looking under logs for whatever sorts of things they could find.  There were worms and a few other bugs to find as well.   The second part of this was to use large nets on sticks, sweeping them through the long grass to see what they could catch.  There wasn’t much here as there was already another group that did this before us so everything was already scared off

The final event of the day was a short walk along the spectacular boardwalk they have that winds through the Fen.  The boardwalk itself is interesting, it’s constructed entirely from a plastic material that has been completely made from recycled materials.  The walk on the boardwalk was a guided tour by one of the Wicken Fen staff.  The kids were given pencils and a sheet of paper with several animals, birds and other critters that are found in the Fen, they had to find these.  This was made easy in that they only had to look for the wooden cut outs of the creatures that were left on the boardwalk for them.  The guide would then tell us about these and give other info about the Fen. 

It’s a great place and I think we will go back again one day to explore the boardwalk and other paths that wander through the Fen.

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal.

Read the full story here..

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | ‘Sex pest’ seal attacks penguin

Urban Forest 2.0, come from KQED in San Francisco. I’ve been listening to their NPR mp3 stream for a few weeks.. it’s quite an entertaining broadcast covering pretty much much everything imaginable.

I’m not a tree hugger by any means but I do like green space. One thing that really impressed me when I moved to the UK was how much green space they have in their cities, towns and villages. Every village it seems has a “village green”.. these are usually lined or ringed with trees along with a large area of grassy area. In a lot of villages they will have fairs or carnivals come and setup in these greens, as well as they will hold local events in them. You will have no doubt seen a number of pics from events we’ve been to in Cottenham on it’s village green.

KQED have a story about a new database that is trying to catalogue every tree in and around San Francisco, a monumental task to say the least. They’ve then stuck this on the net for all to access. From the KQED website they have the following to say.

In the past, San Francisco’s long-term urban forest planning was hindered because there was no way to share information, much less get the community involved. That’s all changed, thanks to a significant partnership effort between Friends of the Urban Forest, the City and County of San Francisco, and Autodesk. By working together and leveraging new technology – MapGuide Open Source – the project team has created an Urban Forest Map, which digitally pinpoints the location of each tree, maintains tree data in a consistent database, and offers web access to the tree data – key for maintenance and planting efforts. The community can get involved by posting photos and stories about their own trees that they plant and map online. With the launch of this collaborative effort and the support of the Mayor’s Office, a critical step has been taken to move San Francisco’s urban greening efforts forward.

Check out the video: