Biking, Eyes, Birthdays and Snow!

I went down to my sister's place in Farnham last weekend. It was my dad's 65th birthday on Friday so we planned a trip to London for the entire family.

On Saturday morning I had a quick ride around Caesar's Camp near to where my sister lives. I hadn't done much exercise for the past ten days because of illness so I was eager to get out on my bike again.

Here's the view from the top of a hill at Caesar's Camp. It was very quiet because it was early Saturday morning and I only saw a few dog walkers around the place.

Because the place is only a few miles from Helen's house I decided to cycle there and back as well.

For some reason there were some cows at the army training camp as well and as usual they were in the way of my cycling path! You can get a good idea of most of the terrain around the camp from this picture as well. While it's not an ideal off roading site it is certainly better than nothing.

Unfortunately on my way back from the camp I fell off my bike again! I was waiting at some traffic lights to turn left and I didn't realise that I had a front puncture from some glass on the road. As I pushed off to turn left the front wheel just slid from under me as the metal rim made contact with the tarmac. I bruised and grazed my left knee quite badly from falling on the road but other than that only my pride was damaged. The poor woman behind me in her car looked quite shocked at my fall, but I smiled and waved at her to say that I was ok.

It was quite typical for me to survive the off roading without any problems and then fall over on the simple bit on the way back home.

Later on in the day we caught the train to London for a spot of Chinese lunch and to take a trip on the London Eye at 3pm.

The train trip into Waterloo station was a nightmare as the usual 40 minute ride ended up taking around three hours! At first there were some engineering works which meant we had to take an alternative route into London and then there was a fire on some signals which caused all trains into Waterloo station to be cancelled.

At one point we were all packed like sardines on a train for about 90 minutes. What made it worse was my bad cough. At least most people on the train were quite friendly and also very understanding.

We finally made it into London and didn't miss our allotted time for the London Eye. I remember coming here when it first opened and came to the conclusion that it was ok but probably not worth the £14. I came to the same conclusion again today!

At least this time it was during the day so I could see more of London but all the same for a thirty minute ride it wasn't that great.

Even my nieces Aimee and Elise didn't think it was that great. What didn't help was that just as we got off the Eye it started to rain quite heavily so we had to run for shelter and decided to head back to the underground instead of hanging around outside around the Eye.

For the rest of the afternoon we visited a great Italian ice-cream parlour which serves ice-cream in the shape of Italian food. You could get pizza or spaghetti shaped ice-cream which even tasted great.

Elise ordered some spaghetti ice-cream while I stuck to some mint choc chip which had way too much cream for my tastes. I even had a banana milk shake to complement my gluttony.

After this we went for some shopping around Covent Garden. I had planned to look for some new shoes, but just ended up with a couple of new tops from Muji and Icebreaker.

In the evening we had a great Chinese meal in China Town. While the main courses weren't that great the two starters of roast duck and lobster more than made up for it.

On Sunday morning it snowed quite heavily for a couple of hours. Most of it settled as well and we had a great time playing out in the snow while it lasted.

Elise couldn't wait to get out in the snow with all her skiing clothes on.

Even my mum and dad joined in the fun. Here you can see my Dad, Aimee, Elise and my mum in my sister's back garden. You would never think that this photo was taken in the start of April rather than the middle of winter.

We had a funny snowball fight as well around the back garden. At one point my dad was chasing and being chased by Aimee and Elise trying to throw snow at each other.

I helped Aimee and Elise build a snowman in the back garden. Even with both the girls trying to sabotage the snowman by passing a large branch through its middle for arms and also knocking half its head off in an effort to shape the head. It was one of the best snowmen that I've ever built. With the help of Helen it had all the trimmings as well.

At one point the carrot nose of the snowman fell off and Elise innocently put it back on the snowman's waist!

Surprisingly enough most of the snow had melted by lunch time, mainly because it was April and the daytime temperatures were quite high in the sun.

As you can see Aimee was quite taken by the snowman!