Weekend shenanigans

Evening troopers, how are you all today?

I can't believe another weekend has flown past so quickly - I'm really going to have to pull my act together if I want to be seeing a difference in my weight by the time Costa Rica rolls round in 9 short weeks!

So, randomly, I thought I'd have another photo post today. A few of these shots are from the beach last week at Porthcaul, and the rest from Saturday's biking adventures. Enjoy!


I've stayed sort of on-track this weekend - I did religiously
track everything that went in my gob, but I was 15 points over by the end of yesterday, which leaves me a bit irritated with myself - BBQs!!!! They are still the spawn of the devil!!!

That was Friday night, and being my usual chaotic self, I managed to completely screw up the times I was meant to be places, and ended up being in a mad panic to get over to the girls' place for the weekend. Me being flustered is not normally known as being a good contributer to my healthy-eating efforts, and this proved to be no different to usual in that respect. I still let myself be rail-roaded into choices I wouldn't otherwise make. In fact Friday pretty much accounted for my entire deficit for the weekend. Boooooo!




Saturday was a nice day, but with the promise of rain later, but with Lissa stuck in the house marking exam papers (she's a teacher), Jo and I decided that taking the bikes out to explore was a good idea (thereby getting out from under Li's feet, and also not leaving her out of something she'd want to do too).

After a cursory look at the map, we decided to ignore it, and just wing it and see where we ended up. The first leg was down the canal to Stourport, then locate the riverside path up to Bewdley. That proved to be a slight error as the path, which was marked a national trail-type thing, turned out to be aimed at people on foot - kissing gates not exactly being conducive to an easy passage on a bike!

We found that the terrain was varied along the ride, but the path stayed directly by the river most of the way which was fun, and we got everything from grassy fields, to gravel trails and a long section of flat single-track which was fun.

Here's Jo and I being very cheesey on the canal path, near the start of the ride. Above I'm having a mid-afternoon break, after deciding the run up a (small) hill to see what was at the top (the reservoir) and because I thought the bench silhouetted against the sky would make a cool pic (which it does in other pictures I've got), and finally because I wanted to ride back down the hill!











After a quick phonecall we arranged for Li to meet us at Bewdley for lunch on the riverside. We had a phonecall while we were still a little way off to say that the rowing regatta was on and it was absolutely rammed, but by some fluke of luck she'd managed to secure us a riverside pub table!

The afternoon's riding bought more comedy trail choices - particular favourites of which were the steep uphill bridleway / stream which was so muddy that the rear wheel just span if you tried to pedal, hence Jo being pictured walking out of it in the picture on the left (it's actually the hidden trail in the treese and shadows on the far right of the picture), and the green lane so overgrown that pushing the bikes and goose-stepping over the nettles was the only option, and we needed to spend 5 mins at the end of it unwinding all the cow-parsley from the rear mech.


On the upside, the afternoon also featured a break for home-made icecream by the river at an awesome tearoom, and a descent that went on and on and on ... and on for a good mile or two, which was very nice for tired little legs.

We also stumbled across a company locally that does 2 day / overnight Canadian Canoe tours along the river: how excited were we about that possibility?

Answer: Very, very, very, very excited.

Finally, we tottered over the last ridgeline and coasted back down to the canal to find our way home. One last hill up (who put that there????) and we arrived. Not the world's fastest trip (and not the world's longest when we added it up as best we could on the maps - only about 25 miles), but it sure was fun!

The evening was spent eating fajitas on the patio (only 2 for me though - I'd worked out my points by then and was doing a better job of tracking on Saturday) and chilling in front of a film (The Box - please don't watch it if you haven't already as it's possible the singularly most perplexing and un-question-answering film I've ever watched!).

Yesterday was all about the Sunday park ritual and dodging epic thunderstorms. And mostly being lazy. Today I've just been starving - my appetite has been on speed! (Not literally). Hey ho, been to spin, tracked my food - job done.