St. Rumwolds Raft Race at Bonnington
A small hint to anyone taking part next year, don’t pick a fight splashing the opposition if:
The crews of Mamma Mia and the Silver Duck found this out to their cost. The school children enthusiastically water ballooning the rafters. It was great fun to watch.
Attack on the Silver Duck
This sign was at the London Aquarium. Spot the maths mistake.
London Aquarium shark exhibit
Google Street View has been in the news a lot recently and after a previous sighting in Tenterden, today I spotted a Street View car on the A20 by the Pilgrims Hospice.
So, whether you believe Street View is an invasion of privacy or not, now is the time to cut the lawn, clean the car and the windows, because your house will be appearing on the internet soon.
PS I would avoid putting out the dustbins in your dressing gown too.
A bad start to the Easter weekend was being turned away at the entrance to The Hop Farm at Paddock Wood to see Peppa Pig. Staff told us that it was too crowded inside and we should “come back tomorrow”. That isn’t really an option when you have already driven a long way. When others that were coming out were asking for a refund because they had not even seen the Peppa Pig character when they were at the show, it was clear that a different attraction had to be found to avoid disappointing my 5 year old.
Leeds Castle was the next nearest big attraction for Easter weekend. There was a treasure trail that lead to a chocolate Easter Bunny for the children and a kite display. The children could make their own kites in a big marquee and a kite shop was on site with reasonably priced kites if you wanted to join in. Everyone was having a brilliant time. It is easy to forget how much fun children can have with a kite. Safe to say that being turned away from the Hop Farm gave us a much more involved family trip out at Leeds Castle.
Most people don’t really have a clue about what to look for when buying a second hand car and I am one of “most people”. You can read the buying advice given on Parkers, Autotrader or any other website but there is always going to be some thing you forget to check. I cannot give any advice on picking a reliable car at a reasonable price that you cannot already find on the internet.
So, why am I writing this? Well, for many people buying a car comes down to style, features and colour. When you are buying from new, this is easy. All the cars are neatly laid out in a brochure telling you exactly what you can get and most dealerships have a range for you to look at. How do you get the same when you are buying second hand? You go to a car supermarket. I visited a supermarket in London and found 30 cars of the make and model I was looking for. I was able to check all the different available permutations of interiors, exterior colours, air conditioning or climate control, radio or CD multi-changer and decide what I liked the best. Buying from the supermarket was not for me. I was told I could not take the car for a test drive until I had effectively agreed to buy it by paying the initial deposit. That just seems like madness.
Armed with this knowledge I went back to trawling the used car sites on the internet knowing exactly what I wanted. As it turned out the supermarket cars had done more miles and were more expensive than the one I eventually bought. To top it all the private garage gave a good customer service and were happy to test drive the car over speed bumps and up steep hills.
Today I was a passenger on the first Eurostar train to carry passengers on the High-Speed rail link through Kent.
I had volunteered to take part in the evacuation exercise within the tunnels and had assumed this was beneath the channel. Unfortunately the evacuation exercise was for the new tunnels under London and the Thames. Not nearly so good a talking point. More disappointing to for my mate Andrew Jones who was probably thinking that he had been invited under false pretences. The passengers were nearly all men, most of whom were carrying expensive cameras and camcorders. We also got to see the newly redeveloped St. Pancras station which is still under construction.
The evacuations went smoothly without any noticeable problems and then it was on to the first high-speed passenger train journey in the UK. We made the journey from Folkestone through Ebbsfleet to London in about 21 minutes. The ride was smooth and the speed hardly noticeable until you watched as the cars on the motorway were being left far behind. The train manager announced that we were doing 300 km/h and a small, self conscious cheer went up from the passengers. At this point Andy said he could not let the opportunity pass for another first and he headed off to the toilet for his first 300 km/h pee. The experience was obviously a good one as Andrew returned grinning from ear to ear.
Andrew over exagerates the effects of travelling at 300km/h
Spent today at the V Festival. Heavy rain was forecast all day, but by the time I got there it stayed dry, much better than some other years.
Tha bands I caught were:
If the people at V really want a decent festival then concentrate on providing a good listening experience instead of squeezing extra stages into the venue. Channel 4 should be livid that the stage they sponsered was pretty much ruined by the bass bleeding over from the Bacardi tent on the right and from the Strongbow tent on the left.
Despite my moans I really enjoyed the day.
Just heard on the news that two thirds of all foreign lorries stopped in a police check in Kent yesterday had faults that made them unroad worthy. BBC Kent has an article on it here. Why am I not surprised that UK hauliers are finding it hard to compete with their foreign competitors.
Yesterday was the culmination of months of training for the present Mrs. Dogsby – Folkestones contribution to Race for Life.
For those of you who don’t know the Race for Life is a ladies only charity run over a 5km course. The event is in support of Cancer Research. I was impressed with the turn out. There were two races in Folkestone on the 9th July. We were at the afternoon event and there were 2400 participants, the morning session was fully booked with even more people. Each runner had a label on their back with the names of the people they were running for, those who had already lost their lives to cancer. Some of the ladies had four names on their backs, but instead of looking sad they seemed enthusiastic knowing that they were raising money to stop others enduring the same.
Mrs. Dogsby had been training for a couple of months (under my supervision until she told me I ran too fast) and could comfortably run the 5km, but decided to walk the event with her mum and the majority of the others. All sorts took part in the race, from the very young ( 7 months ) to the very old. Some went around as a gang of friends cheering as they went, others went around quietly on their own. The important thing was that they all raised money. So, congratulations to Mrs. D and Mrs D’s Mum, they did extremely well and raised 350 pounds between them.
High points of the afternoon were