A slight case of overblogging

Today we went on a walk, and went past Linton again (where we went to the zoo the other day). This time we walked all the way there, and a bit further, along the Roman Road to the south east of Cambridge. We got the bus home from Horseheath - which has lots of horses. Buses are thankfully much more frequent on Saturdays than they are on Sundays. Total of 14.1 miles (including the walk back from Addies) in 4 hours 44 mins of walking time (or about 7 hours of real time, not including the bus journey). And we saw loads of birds (Chiff Chaff! And Yellowhammer!) and butterflies and even a hare. Fab. But we're a wee bit pink.

Map is on Bikely, which is a bit slow, so do reload if it's not working. For some reason this one will import there but not on Google. I have no idea why I have so much trouble with these things!

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/2009-04-14-Roman-Road409600

Hmm, exported from Bikely and that would import into Google: Google map - this one at least loads more reliably, although the import/export process has lost some of the points, so it's not quite as accurage as it could have been.

Today we got the train to Waterbeach (a ridiculous journey involving two legs of 5 minutes each on trains and a 45 minute wait in Cambridge, but at least it was sunny), and walked the 11 miles to Ely, and then got the train home again. It was a bit windy in places, and a bit hard work, but fun. We saw lots of birds, including several we hadn't yet ticked off in our little bird book, and generally had a nice time, although it was nicest while the sun was out.

I took the GPS along, and it did quite well, only running out of battery after nearly 5 hours, about half a mile from Ely station. According to it we averaged 2.1mph overall, and 2.9mph while moving, which seems pretty reasonable. Having got home I downloaded our data as a GPX track, and tried uploading it to Bikely.com, where I normally keep bike ride and walk maps - for some reason it only imported 23 points though, which showed us merrily crossing and recrossing the river. So instead I tried importing directly into Google maps, which seems to have worked much better, though it split it into 4 sections. I drew a 5th section by hand to finish the route.

Waterbeach to Ely, on Google maps

I wish I knew what to do to make it play nicely with Bikely though!

Now with added photos on Facebook. (login should not be required)

On Friday we went out for dinner at the Ugly Duckling, and had nice chinese. Then we came home and watched the last disc of CSI season 3.

On Saturday we had a lazy day at home, we walked over to M&S to get a bit of shopping but otherwise just pottered round the house and geeked a bit. We watched the England/Scotland rugby match in the afternoon, while knitting and doing puzzles, since it wasn't exactly riveting stuff. Then we watched Barnsley knocking Chelsea out of the FA Cup, and that was much more fun. Barnsley ran circles round them and Chelsea looked like they were barely playing for 3/4 of the match. It was good to see that Barnsley could still hold them off once they picked up the pace near the end, because they thoroughly deserved the win. Finished off the evening with the last disc of CSI miami season 1.

Sunday I had a nice lie in, before leaping out of bed in a hurry to meet up with Bridget, Adam and Duncan in time to go out for a walk to Waterbeach along the river. I even dug my old walking boots out of the cupboard, which I don't remember having used at all since our school expedition to the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco in 1992. We kept a fairly brisk pace really, and reached the Bridge in Waterbeach to find it heaving for Sunday lunch - though our 20 minute wait for a table turned out to be a bit quicker. We had some nice food, and were just finished our main course when it started tipping it down outside. Duncan and I bravely shared a pudding to pass some time, and before long it had stopped again though, and we set off home again in bright sunshine, and traced our steps back the way we came (route on Bikely). One nasty blister on my little toe by the time I got home, but at least it hadn't burst </tmi>. It was about 5 when we got home, and we spent a quiet evening geeking and reading until we thought we really ought to have some dinner, which was accompanied by the first have of Red Dwarf series 2.

It was a nice weekend :-)