Careful what you wish for......

We have now moved camp sites and are a bit further north .....
We are well into English/Welsh border country.

So far this year we have had some very changeable weather... when the weather has been dry and sunny it hasn't lasted more than a few days before we then pay the price with more wet and sometimes windy weather....
The average temperatures have been a bit low so I have been wishing for some warmer weather.....

Well the day we moved here was the start of a bit of a mini heatwave.... putting the awning up in the stifling heat was not a pleasant experience but at least I had got it done. The reason I wanted it up the same day that we arrived was that the weather forecast for the next day was for an even hotter day.
That forecast was spot on and like a lot of places in the UK yesterday the heat became beyond what I find comfortable.

The temperature inside Eva the Eriba with all the roof vents open and every window wide open too was very high....just look at the image below of our small thermometer.

To Hot For Comfort In My Book..

 Mind you looking at the forecasts it would appear that it probably won't last long and we will be back to cooler weather plus a few thunderstorms as well.....

One of the upsides of our recent site move is that our latest pitch is almost perfect for us.....
We look out on some lovely wild countryside with Red Kites flying overhead and plenty of other wildlife to lookout for....
Below I have added two images (one from each door) of the view from our awning....

As explained above it has been a bit too hot to be out on the bike since we have arrived here but as we will be here for a month there will be plenty of opportunity to explore the area on my road bike which I am really looking forward to doing.....

View From The Awning At Our Latest Pitch

Anonther View From The Awning  At Our Latest Pitch

More LEJOG Riders...

One of the great things about travelling around to all the various campsites that we do is that we get to meet lots of interesting people...
I don't mention them all on this blog.....indeed the last time I think I mentioned a cyclist who I had just met was way back at the end of August/ beginning of September last year when we were down in Devon at the Tavistock C&CC site....

Anyway.. the other evening a couple of touring cyclists arrived at our current site in Herefordshire and after they had set up their tent and sorted themselves out I went across for a natter.... 
I had the feeling that they were doing the Lands End to John O'Groats (LEJOG) route and
I was proved right as they had set off from Lands End four days earlier....

Back in 2008 when I did LEJOG we had stayed not far down the road at Hereford and these guy's were doing almost the same route that I and the rest of the Rev Pro Team had taken.

They told me that they were father and son and their names were Duncan and Chris Marfell..
Duncan is an engineer and they live in Andover in Hampshire.
From what they said the weather had not been too kind for them up to their arrival here and although the following day's forecast didn't appear too bad it looked like they were going to hit some more bad weather as they headed north....

This all sounded a very familiar tale as my LEJOG experience was one of wet and windy weather and chatting to Duncan and Chris brought back all my memories of that ride....

Their bike's were quite heavily loaded as they appeared to be carrying a lot more kit than I like to when on the touring bike and as Chris is just sixteen years of age I had to admire his determination to complete the ride.....

As with most people who do this ride they were raising money for charity...in this case for Sport Relief....
I was impressed by this likeable pair and offered a small amount of support for their efforts as well as a couple of bottles of Italian beer (which they obviously deserved) which seemed to go down well with their evening meal.....

I have included a picture of Duncan and Chris below as well as their charity page address....
If any of you out there can give a small token of support for this pair I know that it would be welcomed...

It's great to see youngsters taking up riding bikes and doing LEJOG at sixteen years of age has to be worthy of a token of support in my book especially as it is all for a good cause...

Just lift their address and use it to go to their charity page.... Thanks..


my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/chrisandduncan

Duncan (on the right) and Chris Marfell

More Sculptures

Regular readers of this blog will know that I do like the slightly unusual when it comes to sculptures...
The other day Anne and I visited Hampton Court Castle and in the wonderful gardens they had some very interesting sculptures dotted around....

Now this is not the Hampton Court that is situated close London....that is a Palace and is about one hundred years younger than the Hampton Court Castle that we visited which is set in the lovely Herefordshire countryside...

Like the Palace gardens near London this Hampton Court also has a maze...this one is made up of a thousand yews and has a gothic tower at it's centre.
From the top of the tower you have wonderful views over the gardens...you can then descend beneath the tower to a secret tunnel that leads out to a sunken garden from behind a waterfall.

The gardens of the castle are lovely and I might share some images of the very colourful flowers and other plants in another post.... until than I have shared a few of the scultures we saw in the gardens below.....

Another New Site.......

Here we are in Herefordshire and another new touring site.....
The drive up from Devizes went well enough with no hitches and we even managed to put up the awning the same afternoon that we arrived...
This is the second time that we have done that this year...usually we don't do it until the following day.

As it was it was a good thing that we completed the awning upon our arrival because the next day back came the rain and it was torrential....
It has continued to rain on and off for almost the entire first week that we have been here.
I have not managed to get out on the Felt until today when the sun came out and we had a really beautiful day...ideal riding weather.

The site we are now pitched up on is a small private site and it is well positioned for both cycling and walking as long as the weather is kind to us....
Looking at the forecast for the next few days we might just be lucky...

Our current pitch