Dave Haygarth, family and friends…
I pick my events to blog about. I do quite a bit and blogging about them all like some training diary could get dull. But in my modern era (i.e. since I started blogging in 2004 and started collecting GPS data in 2007) the Golf Ball fell race has been covered with almost obsessive regularity. Continue reading “Files, Damn Lies and Statistics – 2015 Golf Ball Fell Race”
I often spend time thinking about my local treasures but so rarely spend the time to sit down and write anything. But today I went a ride with cycling friend Alan Dorrington over Rooley Moor Road and I found the route inspiring enough to speak out. Continue reading “Rooley Moor Road – an appreciation”
Since we got the caravan early last year we’ve been building up mentally to the big one. It’s very special for me to do a road trip like this with the children in the caravan because it bears an amazingly close resemblance to my own memories of the same in the mid 1970s. My dad would take us all down there over two days’ driving (on what was, presumably, less fast but less busy roads) and the days have lodged deeply in my memory. Continue reading “France Holiday 2015”
We had a relatively quiet one for Elsie’s 7th. A friend Lucy and one of Lily’s friends came over and we went to the Jump Nation trampoline place in Manchester. An hour was easily enough. Red-faced, whacked out and happy, the girls all came back and we had a mini party lunch at home.
https://youtu.be/MqyVgjI3Lkk
Sally, Simon and the boys came over in the afternoon along with Grandma and Alice and another treat tea was earned.
Photos here on flickr
No matter how I try, I can’t just let the 3 Peaks Cyclocross happen around me. Continue reading “Blue Monday – coming back down from the Three Peaks Cyclocross”
I’m coming back. The race that first sucked me in in 1995 has provided every emotion to me in the intervening years. Continue reading “2014 Peaks Prepped.”
After a few years of overseas holidays in summer and winter, we spent our first summer at home for 5 years. We headed up to Scotland – lured in part by the Commonwealth Games, and part by the year’s big purchase of a touring caravan, we had a two-point holiday over a fortnight. Continue reading “Summer Holidays 2014 in Scotland”
A family milestone reached in seemingly no time. In September 2007 the little girl (pictured right) started at Broadway Primary School. Just about to turn five, Lily was definitely ready to start school, but it still seemed soon, and she seemed so little. Continue reading “Lily’s final day at Primary School”
I’m writing this very early on a Monday morning after what I have to assume was just a fantasy – a dream lived out in immense detail. I woke up ealy feeling still adreniline-pumped from a dream so intense that it felt like it had actually happened to me. Continue reading “Was it a dream? Did the Tour de France come to Yorkshire?”
I rode my bike a long way. And with a lot of climbing. That’s all. Continue reading “A Midsummer Bike’s Dream”
We chatted about it for three years, then eventually it happened. It was bound to – I nagged.
We got ourselves a caravan in the early part of the year with the aim of getting away a bit more often and a bit more easily whilst the children are still young enough. Lily’s 12 this year and has four years of family holidays left in her, going on what seems to be the average of friends about us. It was time to act.
Our first trip was on Elsie’s Birthday – 24th May. Frank had just reached the age where he could go out and meet other dogs, so we were free to go. We hit Lytham, for some beach fun. A couple of weeks later we went to the Dales to stay in Howgill in Wharfedale. THey’re just break – mini, simple breaks, but we’re really enjoying the ability to do this. The proof is in the pudding: we have a large tent, we have the ability to book B&Bs, but did neither. This is already happening – it’s working!
Some photos of our first two trips here
We took the opportunity to have what may be the last chance for a big round-a-table tea party for Elsie’s 6th Birthday. They grow up quickly and the pass-the-parcel stuff doesn’t go on indefinitely. Elsie had a lovely time – as did we all. Parents dropped off, ten classmates went nuts for two hours, ate loads, played lots, then it all subsides so quickly. A really lovely load of compacted fun.
The party was hurriedly tidied away as we rushed off to make the most of the long weekend with our first ‘test’ family caravanning trip about 2 hours later… so birthday tea was a treat of Fish n Chips by the sea in Lytham, followed by a bit of a stay-up!
Photos here on Flickr