Me and the Parliamentarians

On Thursday this week, I went down to Naseby, scene of an historic battle in the English Civil war. Walking the battlefields and re-living the key moments of the war with some military historians.

A fun part was when these battle re-enactment folk turned up, to show us the weapons of the day, Pikes, muskets and swords. Here's a snap of me with them.

Igloo...

Check out this Igloo that Alex and I have built. It's taken some back breaking work....

Merry Xmas from the Joneses

Here's a lovely picture of Alex in the snow....

Tuscany

We're just back from a simply wonderful couple of days in Tuscany. We went as guests of a work customer celebrating a trading anniversary. Staying at this lovely hotel in the rolling Tuscan hills (I'll do a seperate review of it on my hotel blog). We lunched at this traditional Italian guesthouse in Montopoli in Val d'Arno, which was exquisite and accompanied with beautiful views. We also visited this medieval castle and tasted the local desert wine with almond biscuits. The highlight of the couple of days was going to the Fattoria di Corsignano vineyard. This is a working vineyard run by Mario Bartoli and his lovel wife Elena Gallo. Set in the Tuscan hills, we spent a wonderful day there learning how to cook Tuscan cuisine, drinking the wonderful Chianti Classico (which Mario makes) and then eating everything that we prepared on long tables, set under a pergola with breathtaking views of the countryside. What made this day so great is that the Mario and Elena were such lovely people, everyone who went didn't want to leave and I'd recommend anyone travelling to Tuscany to go and visit them, we'll go back for sure. Finally, we visited Siena. You may recall Siena from the opening scene of the James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. It's where the horse race is set. It's a stunning City, steeped in Italian history, sitting on top of a large clay mountain. Dinner was at Taverna San Giuseppe restaurant with typical Tuscan cuisine, washed down with further bottles of the local Chianti Classico, I'd recommend you to eat here if you ever go, but make sure you book. We packed a lot into two days, it was however, really worth it.

Classic Car Night

Had an awesome night last night. As part of a 25th anniversary celebration of a trading relationship we took some people to this place. Basically its a warehouse/garage in E1, London stuffed full of classic (and future classic cars). You can look at all the cars, then you get to pick eight of them and take them out for a spin around a pre-determined circuit of the City. The cars I drove were a Ferrari 360 Modena F1, Mercedes ML450 (like Bobby Ewing used to drive in Dallas, a London Taxi, Volvo P1800S (think Simon Templar in the Saint), Bentley Arnage Red Label (which I absolutely loved, huge beast of a car but so easy to drive), Mercedes SL350, BMW Z1, Jaguar E-Type (one of the best looking cars ever made but not that brilliant to drive). My favourite was a toss up between the Ferrari and the Bentley. Two very different cars to drive. The Ferrari (that's the actual car in the picture), tonnes of speed and an exhaust note that you could hear coming a block away. The Bentley simply to wonder at the amount of torque the car had relative to its size, the smoothness of the ride and comfort. I'm lucky to have a job where I can do such great things. Classic night in every way.

Post Holiday Blog

We've had our holidays. We ended up in Lindos, Rhodes this time round. We had a thorougly good time, weather was warm, sea was stunning, warm and transparent. Resort didn't have many kids in, so Alex didn't meet any solid mates this time round, it wasn't through lack of effort! G is getting very close to here driving test, road confidence has really improved so hopefully Freddy the Fiat will soon have a fully qualified driver. Caroline is doing really well on her diet and losing loads of weight, she looks good for it. I'm really getting into road cycling and have invested in a super new bike (see picture) to give me added motivation to get out and crunch the miles. I'm doing a 100mile charity bike ride on September the 4th, so am busy training for that too (hoping to lose a bit of weight in the process). I've started a new blog to chart my progress and talk all things bike, you can view it here. Angus our Scottie nearly met his maker the other day, he has a aversion to doing barrel rolls in cat pooh and did his party trick whilst out on a field the other day, he whiffed from about six feet away, little bleeder.

Manchester to Blackpool Bike Ride

I completed the 100KM bike ride from outside Old Trafford football ground to the promenade at Blackpool on Sunday. Took me 5hrs and 15mins to cover the distance along with the other 8000 riders. First 65km miles was pretty easy, balance was much harder. Last 10km was really difficult with a strong headwind, I was very pleased to see the finish line and really euphoric at covering the distance. Raised £3500 for Christies Cancer Hospital, which was a simply stunning result. Piccie is of me setting off at 8.35am.