Snow in Devon

We were lucky to have snow for a few hours on Friday. We where almost at school when the snow started to fall heavily. As 4WD vehicles were going sideways Mummy phoned school, and they confirmed that they would be closing for the day - "Hooray." We were even luckier that Daddy had a sledge in the garage (that he hadn't told us about) and that we have a garden steep enough to slide down. In Poppy and Jake's words- "This is the best day of our lives."

More photos here.

Tarka Trail

Two months ago we thought Poppy'd never ride a bike, but she's proved us all wrong. Today we suggested a gentle ride from our home in East-the-Water to Instow (2.5 miles away) on the Tarka Trail. Mummy provided back up in the car, sure that one of the children would find it too much. How wrong we were! Both children were bright-eyed and red-cheeked by Instow and had no intention of stopping there at all. Instead they rode on to Fremington, a further 3.5 miles, with great enthusiasm. We stopped for a long, delicious lunch at Fremington Quay Cafe, to celebrate our eleventh wedding anniversary, before retracing our steps. Jake retired at NDYC and hitched a ride home with Mummy, citing poor weather conditions as his reason for stopping! Yet Poppy was determined to prove that she could complete the course and arrived home half an hour later, splattered with mud and full of pride.

A GPS tracklog of the ride can be seen here.

Double Rainbow

Whilst on the Rescue Boat last weekend, I saw a perfect double rainbow, complete with supernumeraries. It was so close you could almost touch it. It framed the White House on Braunton Burrows. If only I'd had a camera. For the science behind rainbows have a look at the Atmospheric Optics site.

Garmin Speed Freaks Competition

Have a look here. I'm currently on the Leader Board, but it won't last for long. I think I went faster earlier in the summer, but that was before I acquired the GPS. It was a perfect reach in flat water, and we positively flew past a small fishing boat. The skipper reckoned that I must have been doing 30 knots - yeah, right. Probably closer to 20 kts, but it was fun.

Google Earth and GPS

On what was probably the last sail of the season, in a Force 5, gusting 7, we managed a top speed of 16.4 knots in a short sail that covered 12.4 miles. An image of the route can be seen in this Google Earth image, or download the trip data into Google Earth as a KMZ file here. Martin and I had another cracking time surfing down the waves, and even sailed through the new Bideford Quay Fountain to wash the sails.

An alternative view of the tracklog can be seen here - this gives a log of the track against time, with faster speeds in red and slower speeds in blue.

19 knots!

Well what a sail! We managed a recorded 19 knots over the ground on a very blustery sail (F6, gusting F7) on the evening of 3rd September 2005.

Martin Caddy was very nimble out on the wire, and deftly kept the hulls from ploughing too deeply, avoiding several pitch-poles.

A quite knackering and exhilarating sail. The track of this sail can be seen here.

It was an odd sensation sailing when the rest of the club had called it a day.

MagnaLog track here

Fairport's Cropredy Convention

We recently attended Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, the UK’s friendliest music festival, with a hint of Folk. We had 33 hours of music spread over 3 days.

Highlights for us were The Muffin Men (see Jake here, half way between the end of the flute and the sound tower – look for his blond head, and here, near the coach window), The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, and of course, Fairport Convention.

We camped in a field behind the stage, and had a great time. The weather was very kind on the Thursday and Friday, but the heavens really opened on Saturday – at least skin is waterproof. Fairport ended the festival with a cracking 3½ hour set, culminating in the usual “Matty Groves” medley followed by a group sing-a-long to “Meet on the Ledge”.