Month: October 2020

Dark nights but upbeat about the future.

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Well, despite the picture above, I haven’t been doing much lately, so no update to johnsunter.com

To be honest I’ve been feeling a bit down. I’ve always suffered with seasonal effectiveness disorder and now a 2nd Covid lockdown has just made me even more miserable.

No adventure on the horizon (well none that definitely won’t be cancelled) and I’m drinking a bit too much.

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My meet up with Nick yesterday ended up being cancelled (a bit disappointing really and since Manchester is going to be imminently, fully locked down, I don’t know the next chance we’ll get to do it).

On the plus side, I’ve started watching loads of new TV stuff – Wynonna Earp, The Umbrella academy and Star Trek Discovery

If you have young children, I highly recommend the Disney live action drama Mulan. I watched it with our freinds daughter Amy and she really enjoyed it.

I went to see True Romance and have dinner at Chez Jules (for several years we didn’t have a cinema in Chester, so a local restaurant stepped up and started showing films).

Have seen a few things at Storyhouse cinema, including Capital, Ford v Ferrari and A life on our planet with Sir David Attenborough.

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Things at work are going well (I haven’t missed a days pay throughout this nightmare, and were busier than ever) I suppose I’m due some good luck after the events of 2009.

I even have my own modest office now (it’s early days, but I have great plans for this place 🙂

Really struggled to get back into a routine when I returned to work (3 days a week, Wed & Fri at home).

I started using a daily checklist, inspired by the book checklist manifesto which I highly recommend.

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A couple of things have worked out this year.

We went camping to Beddgelert. A very “keystone cops” affair, as we arrived at the campsite on Friday evening, and it had closed down.

After about an hour, I realised that we were booked into another campsite, 2 miles away (the one we’ve visited before and really like had closed down. I couldn’t remember it’s name so just googled Beddgelert campsite, it pointed me at the other one and I’d booked it).

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Anyway, we ended up having a really good time and among several day walks, completed Moel Hebog up the hard route.

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Speaking of camping, my old friend Caz showed me this rig he’d set up (and which I’ve now bought myself).

Basically, 2 telescopic poles, a 3 meter by 3 meter waterproof sheet (in the army, referred too as a basha) and plenty of para-cord.

A simple concept, but it revolutionises minimal camping. In younger days, while camping, you would sit out in the evening, but if it started raining you’d retire 2 to a tent and the social aspect of the evening would sort of end.

If we’d had one of these, we could have stayed up all night 🙂

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On another weekend away (all together, I was away from home for 6 consecutive weekends) we visited Iron-Bridge Gorge.

It was organised by the excellent Brian from the Walking Group (the walking group isn’t operating officially at the moment). We ran an off book trip to Iron-bridge Youth Hostel and booked the whole thing (we had a room each :).

Lots of fun walking days. I think next time I’ll also rent one of the Canadian canoes they have under the bridge.

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In the evening, we enjoyed some nice food and good company.

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I also got to spend a day at Blists Hill Victorian town.

It was a literal recreation of a Victorian town. It was enormous and had loads of costumed actors and people demonstrating steam engine’s and stuff like that.

The search for adventure continues… although it feels a bit more difficult than usual at the moment.