I’ve just got back from a weekend in Pembrokeshire. Dennis, a friend from Bristol is getting married in a few weeks time so it was a stag weekend with a difference. Nothing too ’stag-like’ about it in fact and Dennis didn’t even want to call it a stag weekend, just a weekend away before the wedding.

We stayed at Caerfai Farm campsite which although fairly basic had nice views of the sea and all the amenities you need whilst camping, including toilets, showers and a little farm shop. It was also fairly quiet and there was plenty of room. We did manage to squeeze 9 tents onto one pitch though which seemed to confuse the campsite owners!

The weather was great and most people returned looking decidedly red thanks to too much time in the sun. As well as heading off to the pub each night, we sat around a campfire on the beach wandered around St. Davids and went for a swim in the sea. I also walked along the coast path a bit and found a geocache. The beach at Caerfai Bay is a small rocky cove with sand when the tide is out. The rocks around here are perfect for scrambling over and ‘coasteering’. The coast path is easily accessible from the campsite and as part of the Pembrokeshire National park offers amazing views and lovely coastal scenery. I didn’t walk far along the coast path but did explore the nearby St Non’s Chapel and walked around the deep inlet of Porth Clais.

All in all a nice weekend away and its about time we got our own tent and went camping with Morgan. if only we could guarantee nice weather all the time.

We have recently been having a clear out and plan to finally get around to sorting out Morgan?s bedroom. He?s getting too big for his toddler bed and needs some proper storage where he can put all of his toys, and believe me there are lots that need a proper home.

I have been a member of the Aberystwyth Freecycle Group for about a year now and have done some good transactions through this group in both directions. It has been really useful as a way of getting rid of bits and pieceswe no longer use without just throwing things away. It works both ways though and I keep an eye on the offered ads to see if there is anything we need. The good items do get snapped up quickly but we?ve had a couple of pairs of sandals for Morgan, some left over pull-up nappies which is always useful and a booster seat for the car to use when we visit my mum. Someone even gave us their entire Mr Men books collection when I posted a wanted add for the free Mr Men that were available in washing powder at the time.

Recently however, and as a way to help Morgan understand that stuff costs money, I decided to try and sell a few things in the paper to help pay for Morgan?s new bedroom furniture. So far we?ve managed to sell a number of items and have made about a third of the cost towards the new furniture. I didn?t think people would be interested in some of it but so far so good and every advert I’ve put in has had some response. The adverts are free so it?s always worth a try and of course I?ve always got freecycle to fall back on if I can?t sell something before making a trip to the tip. Morgan has been very good about it as well. He wasn?t too impressed that his toybox was in the car one morning going to a new home with another little boy but once I explained that we were selling it to buy his new bed he seemed happier about the situation (he hasn?t missed it either since it?s been gone!).

There are down sides as well to both systems. Because we live about 10 miles out of town I have to take a lot of stuff into town and arrange to meet people there rather than them coming out to us but that is more to do with where we live than anything else. I also find our local freecycle moderator to be a bit of a control freak but again I?m sure she does a valuable job keeping out the junk posts from the group and ensures everything runs smoothly.

I had a clear out at the weekend and found lots more things we no longer need. I think I?ll try my luck in the paper again before offering them for free.

It was Sol’s(climbing in the adjacent photo) birthday at the weekend and Morgan was invited to his party at the climbing wall in Aberystwyth. We had never been to it before and although fairly small (I’d call it a bouldering wall) it was nice in there and Morgan seemed to enjoy it.

Morgan never really got very high and didn’t have a go on the rope with the harness, but we’ll probably take him back soon as it was good fun and is a good way to burn off some of his energy! I had a little climb too and having not climbed for several years it was a bit of a work-out for me as well!

Anna of course didn’t have a go but sat there with the other mums having a natter and did a terrible job with the photography!! At least she took some photos I guess which is more than I would have done.

OK, OK, don’t get too excited you won’t be seeing us on the TV!

After our recent trip to the Isle of Man I was contacted by someone at the BBC on the island to write a little article about our experiences geocaching on the Isle of Man.

I did, and it is now live on the BBC Isle of Man website. You can see the article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/isleofman/content/articles/2008/05/23/geo_caching_feature.shtml

We got an energy monitor earlier this week and it has made fairly interesting reading. We’ve never been frivolous with our energy usage and do generally switch off lights when they aren’t in use (although I’m better at that than Anna), and don’t leave the TV on standby etc. but having the monitor has made us that extra bit careful.

We thought we probably use a fair bit of electricity simply because ‘living at the end of the line’ means we don’t have gas so all of our cooking and heating comes from electricity. In addition my work as a freeelance web designer means I work from home so as well as having a computer, two monitors and various hard drives etc. running all day long I’m also making cups of coffee all the time and generally using electricity during the day.

On top of all that the weather station that I run is operational 24 hours a day. As well as the weather station console, it has its own dedicated computer, monitor and router which is on 24 hours a day uploading data to the internet at minute intervals.

So, we don’t know how much electricity most people use so have little to compare our usage against but it is interesting to see which appliances are the most power hungry. Every time we switch something off the monitor shws us how much energy (and money) we are saving. It has worked as we did go around the house seeing if there was anything we could turn off. The VCR was switched off completely as we very rarely use it. We left it on before as resetting the clock on it was a pain, but we never use it to record things anymore and it saves a few watts, so off it went.

My computer and its peripherals use about 200-250 watts whereas before I would leave it on if I was popping out for a short period of time I now tend to turn it off. I haven’t experimented with how much energy sending it to sleep saves yet.

There are of course certain things we can’t turn off. The fridge has to stay on, the smoke alarms have little lights on them so must use some electricity albeit a very small amount. The weather station computer stays on as does the digibox because resetting it takes a few minutes and it is often set to record various things. We may however put it on a timer plug so that it turns off between midnight and 6am as it is rare that we record things during those hours. The cooker stays on too simply because we use the clock on it to tell the time and Anna’s alarm clock is always on as well. Other than that, I think the only other things constantly drawing power is the doorbell (which has a little light on it) and ironically the energy monitor! All in all we manage to get our energy consumption down to just over 100 Watts at its base level and when we are in and using the TV, computer etc it is usually up around 500-600 watts.

As soon as we start cooking or using the tumble drier then it obviously soars. The microwave, kettle cooker and toaster can really get things going and so far I think we’ve managed to hit around 5Kw as a maximum. All interesting in a geeky way but it does help us do our little bit for the environment and probably more of an incentive to people, especially at the moment with rising fuel prices, helps us save some money too.

If we manage to save 15% our electricity supplier will give us £15. How much electricity do you use??

Phew, I’ve just climbed down from the telegraph pole after repairing the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station. A few days ago the humidity sensor failed and was produing a 100% humidity reading despite the fact that this obviously wasn’t the case.

A qucik e-mail to McMurdo who are the UK distributors of Davis Instruments weather stations and the fault was diagnosed and a fix initiated. This was the 3rd temperature and humidity sensor to have failed and the new, upgraded digital versions wouldn’t work with the SIM (Sensor Interface Module) that I had. The answer therefore was to upgrade the SIM board to the new version so that I could also upgrade to the digital humidity sensor.

The parts arrived this morning and I’ve now changed them all over and everything seems (fingers crossed) to be back up and running and providing accurate weather data once again. It meant changin quite a bit of the guts of the station, all that is left of the original now is the rain gauge, anemometer cups and the solar panel. It’s now on its 4th temperature and humidity sensor and 3rd SIM board… The joys of running a live weather station!

As usual McMurdo were really helpful and helped me get the weather station back up and running in no time.

I thought I’d give my Dad (who is something of a master carpenter) something to inspect, and no doubt laugh at, next time he visits us in Wales. So, yesterday afternoon was spent building a pergola in the garden.

We had plenty of wood left over from the construction of our timber deck so out came the tools and with no real plan I started chopping it up and fixing it together. It actually went fairly well and although it looks a little out of place at the moment once I’ve built another flower border on the other side of it and have some climbing plants on it it should be a nice garden feature and effectively divide the garden into two.

I’m sure I’ve built it wrong, no doubt it isn’t perfectly square and I’ve used the wrong joints, but it was supposed to be fairly rustic and it seems fairly secure… Of course with the winds we get here it needs to be and we shall have to see how well it fares once it has a proper battering.

Now I have to find some plants that will cope with the wind, the salty air and the sandy soil and ones that will climb as most plants don’t dare tick their heads much higher than a couple feet around here.

We’ve just had another action packed weekend here in rural mid Wales. Thanks to our local katabatic wind I managed to windsurf every day last week and although the wind wasn’t forecast to be great for the weekend, Ivor kept blowing and I managed to windsurf on Saturday and Sunday morning in the estuary at Ynyslas.

The flat water conditions do get a little boring after a while so I spiced things up trying silly tricks like body drags and carving 360’s. Both of these are fairly pointless tricks but fun to try and I guess blasting backwards and forwards across the estuary is fairly pointless in itself anyway.

After our Saturday morning windsurf session Steve and I headed off to the hills for a mountain biking session. We drove up the mountain road behind Talybont and parked on the forest road at the top of this, then headed down and around Angler’s Retreat and up my favourite little gulley before heading across to and down the chute, climbing back up to the top and then virtually retracing our tyre tracks back along the gulley in the opposite direction and back to the car. The route was only just over 12 miles, but it was all offroad and therefore fairly slow. I came off once on a tricky rocky step. I very nearly made it, but the last rock caught me out and i ended up on the floor with a sore arm and bruised ego. Later in the ride a tree got the better of me too. I tired to brush past it as it only looked like a little branch, but it was having none of it, spring back at me and sent me flying.

Steve faired worse then me though with quite a few off’s and once the cleat on his shoe broke meaning he couldn’t unclip from his pedals he went to pot and ended up upside down stuck under his abike a couple of times!

All good fun though and a good day of activities in Wales. Click here to see this route on ShareMyRoutes.com ere is the Summary view of the route topography along with me heart rate and speed.

Hows this for an interesting walk??? Not sure I could do it!

I couldn’t resist another day out on my bike in the sunny weather, so after tidying up some loose ends as far as work was concerned I headed off on my bike and I hid a new geocache while I was out there. I won’t give too much away about its location but it provides lovely views over the Dyfi Estuary and hopefully the cache itself will prove just a little tricky for some people

It was inspired by the Assume Nothing series of Geocaches that we had fun with on our recent trip to the Isle of Man. It isn’t too tricky but may fix a few people if they don’t pay attention to the description. Lets just say the container is well camouflaged! Click here for the Assume Nothing Wales #1 (Bark) geoacache description.

We have a few more planned to make this into a little series of caches so this new one is just a starter. We’ve now hidden 17 geocaches in total, so hopefully this series will take us up to 20 hides before too long.