June 2009
Monthly Archive
Wednesday, 10th June 2009
Judith 12 Jun 2009 | : Holiday
We were getting very bored with the bad weather and it’s my birthday tomorrow. Geoff promised me a fab time down a cave in Wales somewhere, but it didn’t seem that appealing, so I checked out Ryanair and we flew off to Prague! I’ve never been there, so I was as excited as a kid before Christmas.
We got there in the late afternoon and found our hotel was a 5 minute walk from Wenceslas square, scene of the Velvet Revolution. We dumped our rucksacks and went to explore. A tasty sausage and beer later, we reached the bottom of the square and realised something was going on as a large crowd had gathered. We expected buskers, but it was an international pole vaulting competition – in the middle of a pedestrian precinct. I’ve never seen live pole vaulting before. It was brilliant. A group of office workers were having a Coca-Cola Light moment and were adding to the carnival atmosphere by dancing provocatively in their office windows – either that or they were pole dancers moonlighting as secretaries.
We spent the evening soaking up the sun and ambiance walking around, looking at the squares and buildings. Prague is stunning and people were just so unbelievably friendly.
Tuesday, 9th June 2009
Judith 09 Jun 2009 | : Archery
Another grey day, although the promised rain in the afternoon didn’t materialise. We toyed with the idea of going flying, but it didn’t look much of a sky, so we went to do archery. I must have pulled a muscle in my neck yesterday, because I progressively stiffened up as I was shooting and can barely move my head now.
As we were driving back home over the Mynd our decision not to go flying was vindicated. It looked rubbish to the west. This evening I recorded another podcast with Tom Payne, all about his preparation for the X-Alps. Should be available by next week.
Monday, 8th June 2009
Judith 09 Jun 2009 | : Archery
More bad weather, although in comparison to Sunday, it was actually ok. I.e. it was only windy and cloudy. Ho hum.
It’s good working weather at the moment, but by lunchtime we were getting cabin fever, so we went to do some archery. My shooting is terrible at the moment. Working on the advice that our coach gave us has made my accuracy shockingly bad and now I can’t seem to move back to improving. Actually, maybe the strong wind didn’t help. That’s my excuse anyway…
Rain, work, yawn.Saturday, 6th June 2009
Judith 07 Jun 2009 | : Boring stuff
Horrible, horrible day. Raining hard from the moment we woke up, we spent the morning working, sorting out registering the book with the ISBN agency, sending a copy to the contributors, etc. and then we went off the Shrewsbury for some shopping. The highlight (if there is such a thing in shopping) was the DIY shop. You can now buy a real effect fire which is a flat screen, stuck in a real fire place effect surround, with a video of a fire on an endless loop. They cost £699! I stood there laughing so hard there were tears running down my face and the shop assistants were giving me withering looks.
Friday, 5th June 2009
Judith 05 Jun 2009 | : Boring stuff
Nice morning, but by afternoon it was raining and we have been out so much recently that we spent the day catching up on work. Boring, really.
Thursday, 4th June 2009
Geoff writes: post cold frontal, light wind forecast, everything we saw said it was starting east and going through to north. So for once we didn’t agonise over which site to go, and went to Corndon. The sky was epic, we went up the east face, and saw it was off to the south; so we went to the SE face, and it was still off to the south. So we went to the SSW face (there is one at Corndon, kind of) – and it was off to the west. We had (whilst we were on the SE face) noticed a couple of people flying on the Mynd, but we were convinced that was just a temporary thermal, rather than the true wind direction, and that it eventually would come on somewhere at Corndon.
It didn’t; eventually we all gave up and drove off to the Mynd. Sure enough, it had been westerly all day, and still was, but very, very light. Paul Lawrence had earlier been at 2400′ ATO, but came back to the ridge. Anyway, we sat around for some hours, occasionally lobbing off. In the end, only Paul (again!) got up high, to over 3000′ ATO. Everybody else did little or nothing.
Congratulations to Paul, who outflew us all today!
Apparently it was the same in the Peak District too – easterly forecast, but actually west.