Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
I’m in!
My GP has signed me as fit to participate so on the 6th-9th June 2008 I will be cycling from London to Amsterdam and onto Brussels. That’s about 320 miles, approximately 100 miles a day 3 days running.
Starting at St Pancras in North London, we move straight onto Harwich, Essex (East coast, East of Colchester) where we will jump on an overnight ferry to Hoek Van Holland. Once in the land of windmills and clogs, the 59 miles to Amsterdam are tackled. Since that is only given 4 hours to be completed in, I think the 3 hours spare in Amsterdam will probably be a little rest for my body. But once 3pm hits we are straight back to the business of 60 miles on to Kinderdijk, near Rotterdam. Now by this point I expect my legs to either be the size of tree trunks or ready to fall off, so naturally the longest stint of the weekend is welcomed. 120 miles from Kinderdijk to Brussels where I assume there will be a huge party and I will be allowed to get extremely drunk and not move my legs for 21 hours until the 1556 Eurostar to St Pancras.
Here’s a rough map of the route to give you an idea of the scale of the task (click to enlarge):
Then I’ll probably have to cycle home.
So that’s the itinerary, which I hope I will be able to keep up with – training better start now, but of course there is also the matter of the sponsorship of £1350 I have to raise by then for The Mines Advisory Group. So keep your eyes peeled for the fund raising site and blogs demanding your money that will be starting very very soon.
Please send me any possible fund raising ideas you might have as soon as possible!
Monday, November 12th, 2007
So we had an interesting view from our offices today, about 12:10 we saw a massive plume of smoke coming from East London, as you can see below it was quite large:
This is taken from Chelsea Harbour, about 12 miles away from the site of the fire. I used to cycle past that road on my way to work from Leytonstone. I don’t think anyone will be injured as the area – disused warehouses right next to the A11 (and very close to Hackney Marshes and the old Eastway Cycle circuit) – is pretty much deserted ready to build the Olympic park. Google maps shows where exactly:
View Larger Map
It looks like the BBC and police don’t think it’s anything but a large warehouse which is a good thing!
Read the BBC report on the fire.
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
I am sorry, but when I read in the Evening Standard that The Science Museum are in going to be short of funding following their elimination from the ITV show Big Lottery Fund’s People’s Millions I was absolutely fuming. The problems I have with this are that firstly, the Science Museum should not be in danger of being short of funding. It is an amazing place and needs somewhere to keep additional exhibits. More should be done by the government to support them if they are that short of public and private funding. How about starting by not claiming £9 million in expenses?
Secondly, what kind of idiot decides that the type of people that watch a teatime phone in vote show (especially following recent phone in revelations) are educated enough to decide which projects deserve funding. I would put money on a Simon Cowell fund for retired karaoke singers getting more votes that a project with a genuine ability to help educate and inspire future (and current) generations.
I have to say I think it is a ridiculous idea, already proved to fail at the most basic level. I can only hope that the claims for cash that resulting in this source of funding to the Science Museum being a failure are absolutely worthwhile. Somehow I doubt it.
