what a mess
You may remember a while ago I mentioned the tree felling in Hurn forest (and Ramsdown forest as well now) in a couple of earlier post (one of the posts had pictures). Well on Saturday I decided to ride the Throop loop my thinking being I would not be able to do it Sunday due to the impending rain (what rain??). Well I was interested in finding a new entry into Hurn forest as my old trail has disappeared into a mass of logging truck tyre tracks and mud. Well there not another entry, the only trail I found was narrow overgrown and included a 50yds walk through mud. So the likelyhood that this path will only be available in the driest month of the year. So for now when I come out of Ramsdown I am back to riding the quarter of a mile up the road into Hurn forest.
But going back to the title of this blog I can’t believe the mess that the logging vehicle make and the Forestry Commission (FC) seem happy with it. Now you compare that to when the FC kick off about the damaged caused by mountain bike riders, there is no contest. The FC cannot stand there and complain about the damage that has been done or could be done when they do a lot more damage in the name of forestry management. While I was in Hurn forest I met a forest\nature warden, he was cycling and like me was looking for a new trail through the wrecked area. To say he was not impressed would be an understatement.
At the far end of the forest down by the caravan park (where I took the pictures for a previous post), they have levelled out the ground (but only in one section) but they never made good the drainage pipe they crushed. Rather than being buried three foot down in the ground, it is now lying just under the surface of the ground. Where the tyre trenches were the ground is all soft.
Apart from the problems in Hurn forest the ride was pretty much uneventful. With the impending rain on Sunday I had a full list of jobs to do which I added to on Saturday night by breaking the wife’s PC. Well imagine my surprise this morning when there was no rain. I duly got on and done all the jobs with the intention of having a short ride late afternoon early evening. By the time I had finished cutting the grass I was to knackered. The weather looks good for the week so I might do a beach ride ride during the week.
opps, bloggers overload
When I wrote the last blog I had only intended to write a view words to explain why I had not been around, once I started typing there was no stopping me and before I knew it the whole sorry story had come out.
Just to bring it all up to date, the past couple of weeks have been a slog. The wife is on the job hunt, several agencies call asking if she is happy to be put forward for this job etc. and then that the last we hear of it, just so demoralising.
Anyway I am not going to witter on tonight, hopefully riding tomorrow, not sure exactly where or when and maybe on Sunday if I can get out before the weather comes in.
Finally a couple of earworms (an earworm is a song that sticks in your head and won’t leave) that I have had running around my head lately
16 days
That how long it has been since I last posted on here, thing are pretty much as they were when I last posted. The wife is now a government artist , drawing the dole (an old 80′s jokes). Her 4 days work turned into three days as they got it done quicker than expected.
The weekend of the 5th, 6th and 7th May were booked to go to Tosside (Gisburn Forest)in Lancashire to meet up with some friends from a mountain bike forum. I had planned to leave early Friday morning going to our branch in Preston and then when finished head over to Tosside about 40 minutes away for a weekend of trail riding. Things did not go to plan, Thursday night I got a phone call at 9pm to say that the power had again gone off at head office (they had had power problems all day but we had been told by Eon at 5pm that everything was sorted). So a change of plans for Friday morning, I now had to get to head office before they start work on Friday morning. They start at 7:30am and I live 130 miles away, you do the sums, at least head office is sort of on the way to Preston.
I arrived just after 7am and thankfully all the servers fired up without a problem, but by now it was rush hour time so we hung around head office before hitting the road shortly after 9am and headed for the M5\M6. Preston was reached just after midday after an interesting drive through the town centre (missed turn off on M6, sat nav choose the route through town).
Things did not improve with the job I had to do at Preston, missing instructions, people not putting me through correctly on phone systems and idiots on the other end of the phone. Once everything was working (well at least my part was working) I phoned the alarm company, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get things working I was told that they would need to call me back which may be on the following Monday I told them that I would not be there on the Monday and that they can come out and resolve the problem themselves, I had had enough.
We eventually made it to the camp site by early evening, lovely and sunny but a bit windy, a small group of riders went of for a early evening ride but I decided not to go, but then I decided that I would and got changed and then headed out towards Gisburn Forest (we were and 1/2 mile from the forest). I came across the new Hope trail and headed off down the trail. The first thing I will say is it not really my sort of trail big jumps and big drop offs, not my sort of ride by I got to the bottom and met up with the riders. After a play and chat we decided to ride back up to the top and do another ride down the Hope trail. Once back at the bottom we headed back into the strong wind back to the camp-site.
Back at the camp site I came across a problem, despite filling the water tank up with water the previous night our water tank was empty, not good. In the end I used the on-site facilities and then joined everybody else for our hot pot evening meal (provided by the camp site manager). It had been a very long day so it was not long before I was heading for my bed. I wanted a good night sleep for the following mornings ride.
In the end I had a lousy nights sleep, got up with a stinking head ache. As I sat there drinking tea and feeling sorry for myself, my phone rang it was my son, “Dad we have got a leak”, then I heard my daughter in the background and my son past the phone to her. Apparently she had woken up to water coming through the bedroom ceiling in our room. We made a few phone calls and past on instructions but in the end there was only one thing we could do, go home. So we packed up, said a quick good bye to everybody and embarked on a 295 mile 6 hour drive home.
By the time we got home the leak had stopped, I was in no mood to venture into the loft so I decided that was going to be a Sunday morning job. Unfortunately at around 1am in the morning the leaking started again and in short I just lost the plot. I could not sleep in the bedroom I was curled up on the sofa and the black clouds were now at ground level.
Sunday morning dawned and I was in no mood to venture into the loft so we did the only thing we could do and called a plummer, it was a cost we could do without but we had to fix the leak. Thankfully they came out quite quickly and considering it was a call out on a bank holiday Sunday it was reasonably priced.
By now it was to late in the day to do anything so I just sat on the sofa feeling sorry for myself for missing out on the weekend.
The miserable weather has stopped me from riding lately, I went out riding this past Saturday and Sunday but both were shortish rides. I did consider riding yesterday except it rained and it rained again tonight. Tomorrows an early start, Thursday is shopping night as it is our sons birthday on Friday. So it is the weekend now before I get back on the bike.
a bush grabbed my handle bars and threw me off my bike!
It has been a couple of weeks since my last post, last weekend the black clouds in my mind descended and with that I was in no mood to do anything least of all write a blog or go out on a bike ride. The black clouds were linked to the wife lack of employment (impending lack of at the time) and the pressure such things bring (a stressful week at work did not help). Well I can report that she finished one temp contract on Friday starts another temp contract on Monday which is currently only for 4 days with a possible option for longer, plus and there is another possible temp contract in the pipe line. But as we have learnt, these options come and go quicker than rainbows (and there is no pot of gold at the end either), so I am not betting on anything.
So it was with some determination that I climbed on my bike at midday yesterday to go for a ride, the sunny warm weather forecast for Saturday morning turned out to be wet and windy. The rain stopped about 11am and most forecast were predicting showers with the rain coming back early evening. As I am a way bank holiday weekend riding I really wanted to get out and ride otherwise come next Saturday morning it would be 3 weeks since my last ride. The weather forecast for Sunday (today) was heavy rain and wind, (for once they were right) so I had to take my chance.
Before I went go riding I changed my tyres back to my winter mud tyres having fitted my summer tyres some weeks ago. Like the rest of the UK, since they announced a drought, it has not stopped raining. On taking the rear tyre off I found a very large thorn stuck in the tyre, the tyre was not flat so I guess the thorn was pretty well sealed in the tube only letting a small amount of air out of the tube. Because of the Sunday weather forecast I had planned to do a long ride on the Saturday, but with the morning rain I changed that to going on the clubs Saturday afternoon easy ride. But with black clouds looming I ended up leaving early for a ride on my own with the intention of getting back before the black clouds deposited anymore of there contents.
The local heath was just like riding in the middle of winter, mud and water everywhere, went wide in one corner, the bush grab my handle bars and steered me further into the undergrowth, fortunately I managed to get off the bike before being enveloped by the bush. I was not so lucky next time, going down a narrow trail my front wheel caught the edge of the sunken trail, as it was so muddy rather than ride up the edge the wheeled turned harder against the edge of the trail until the bike stopped and spat me out over the handle bars and in to the undergrowth, brambles make for a soft but prickly landing.
The creak I mentioned a couple of blogs ago was again missing, I have a theory on that, but I need to test that theory and wet weather is not the time to test it. Start tin to ramble so I am out of here
lack of communication
Sometime ago there was a report in the papers and on the radio about the level of customer service given to customer by various companies. At the time the worst customer service came from communications companies. Well I can say that from where I am sat it was true then and it is still true now, nothing has changed. I get to deal with a lot of communication companies from the likes of BT down to the smaller independent companies and communicating is something they have still not mastered.
What has got me wound up this past few days is the fact that I need to purchase a mobile dongle for work, just one dongle but Orange seem to be happy to ignore my offer of money for a 12 months contract. I thought (how ever foolishly) that it would be easy to go to the Orange shop and purchase a dongle, well it would of been had I been happy to purchase it in my name and pay for it via my bank account or via my credit card. But it is for work and I won’t be the one using it, apparently their system can’t handle a purchase for a business in the shop (or though I have had some thoughts on this more later).
So I thought I would phone Orange Business on Thursday afternoon, three times I tried, three times got through the menu system and three times I was cut off. So I clicked on that little button on their web site that say arrange a call back, twice I clicked and filled in the form have and guess what no call back. I tried calling them again to day, this time I got through the menu system, the phone rang and rang and rang and then a nice lady told me my call was important to them and they would answer the phone soon possible, then it rang and rang and rang and then the nice lady…………….. you get the picture, (Before anybody says well buy one from one of the other mobiles communication companies, I can’t, it has to be Orange, it is a long story).
Now I have been thinking, that I can’t be the only person wanting to buy a dongle (or phone) from an Orange shop for business. Was it just to much trouble for the shop assistant to process my order (we got as far as sitting in the little cubicle and tapping away on her screen). So I am going to try one of the other Orange shops in the area. But what gets me is the stupidity of it all, I just want to purchase a single Orange dongle and so far Orange are refusing to deal with me.
If you work in a mobile phone shop that deals with Orange, you could be my next best friend 
