A couple of weeks ago I went up to Manchester to see my good friend Jeff get married to Claire. They had an absolutely lovely wedding in Manchester and it was wonderful to see my friend get married and be so happy. It was a simpler wedding and much better for it in my opinion. Mainly just the church service and a gathering of friends afterward.There was the usual church ceremony just after lunch and then an afternoon reception. There were also a couple of other people that I used to work with at the same company where I initially met Jeff there. It was also very good to catch up with them too as I hadn’t seen one of them for quite a few years.
After the afternoon reception there was an evening gathering at the hotel where we were all booked in to stay. I was great to get together and chat over a few beers with Claire, Jeff and Steve for the rest of the evening.
The following morning I had a relatively early start, well early for someone who had a few beers till one am the previous evening. I bought my mountain bike up to Manchester to get some cycling with Dave who lives there.
On Sunday morning he took me to Delamere forest near Chester, which he had been walking around before. We found some excellent trails and also a technical area in the woods especially made for mountain bikers to test their skills.
Here you can see Davey standing on a very steep slope after he stopped about half way down realising how steep it was. He said he could barely stand up where he was let alone cycle down it. After he climbed back to the top I went down with some advice from Dave. Basically just ‘go for it’ and maintain some speed, so I did and managed to get down to the bottom. Shortly after Dave came down the slope too with a massive grin on his face.We went though plenty of streams as whenever Dave lead he appeared to be magnetically attracted to the streams and automatically went straight through them when he had a choice. Needless to say we got very wet but it was all good fun, if a little icy cold!
As usual for a ride I managed to come off my bike and graze myself. I was going down another steep technical bit after Dave and I was going a little too fast and had to turn right a little to avoid a tree. Unfortunately I was going too fast and went crashing over my bike and straight into the tree. I managed to put my left arm in the way to stop myself doing a face plant into the tree, but managed to graze my arm and leg quite well. It looks like some cat had attacked me as I had a series of three scratched lines on my left arm and some grazing on my right leg. Still no permanent damage done and some more stories to tell. Dave was watching me fall from the bottom and said it looked very good and he was a little jealous of my graze marks. As usual it was much worse than it looks in the photo, honest!
Well Lola has been settling in quite well in my house now. She doesn’t automatically bolt out the house whenever I get near her now. She even lets me stroke her a lot of the time. She particularly likes having her belly and under her chin being stroked for long periods. She purrs so much I think she’s about to explode! Well she should like living here as she does just about get her own bedroom and bed in the spare room, well I only ever used it for guests and doing laundry.Quite often in the morning she gets up when I do and walks with me down the steps and then sits on the bottom of the steps watching me rush around the house. One morning I was running a little late for work and I almost forgot to feed her. I guess I have some responsibility to someone other than myself now.
