You know when you get to the train station and just miss your train, you reassure yourself that the next one will be there within the hour but the longer you wait it would appear this isn't the case.... well that's sort of what this blog has turned into!
Anyway me and Naomi are doing fine, we're both alive, and happy and everything... we even survived the burning barrels last night in Otter St Mary:
Which was rather fun... incase your unfamiliar with the set up of what happens in Otter St Mary you have a small Devonshire town, 20k+ people, barrels coated in flammable fluid and a bunch of crazy people who run through the said town with these barrels attached to their backs boshing the 20k people out the way... its surprisingly entertaining!
I do love these typical stupid British traditions... but its what makes us so great..... I guess! However one of the highlights for me was eating a Pork Bap... mmmmm:
We then spent today burning off the calories induced from the above photo by walking on Dartmoor... how original!
Well due to the initial misshap of the frist week... i.e. booking the first B&B for the wrong night, we ended up expanding our trip into two weeks. OH WELL!
Dartmoor Picnic!
Well in-between our last B&B from the previous post to the next B&B we had a couple days at home so we figured we'd make the best of our location in devon and go for a picnic and walk on dartmoor!
Well when we arrived at our designated picniq spot the weather had other idea's so we decided to share the experience with paul:
Then we went for a nice walk up over them there Moors:
It was smashing... we saw sheep and some horses and even some fish!
The rest of the weekend consisted of us sitting on our arses doing nothing well I say nothing Naomi did make a Tasty Tasty Chicken Pie!
We went to Mousehole
However we didn't see any small rodents... I wonder how many time's joke get's pulled when mentioning Mousehole... incase your not aware, Mousehole is a small village in the south west of Cornwall, 8 miles away from LandsEnd:
Right there to be exact! Prior to leaving Naomi cooked us up some tasty tasty tasty BLT's which we ate upon arrival. Mousehole is a very pretty traditional Cornish fishing village, and as a result its very compact. However it sure does look nice:
But I feel due to the abundant supply of Artists in the area and board youth, they do get up to some wacky activities, we walked past a beach/rock beach and there were hundreds of piles of rocks like this:
It was very odd! However did have an adverse effect upon our behaviour as we decided to add our own... I say we from the photo it looks like I contributed but I think my efforts where in an adverse effect to the piles of rocks on the beach:
We then checked into our B&B which was located just outside Mousehole called the Panorama Guest House. We then walked back to Mousehole (which is just about doable from the guest house but only just. As we had a dinner reservation for 8pm at 2 Fore Street it was TASTY! However due to the level of sophistication the restaurant projected I did feel a little out of place in just a polo shirt and the food although very very tasty was a little minimal most notably a distinct lack of carbohydrate on my plate however I should really have spotted that and added a side of chips.... or something! We followed the meal up with a visit to Mouseholes only pub The Ship inn in which we had two cornish ales:
The B&B we stayed in wasn't quite as nice as the one in Perranporth, however it did rate as the best Breakfast with the inclusion of BEANS! yey!
Fireworks & Hose
Well we rounded up our Hodgebodge of a holiday with my parents visiting to install an outside tap (for a hose). The tap got installed and the fireworks were AMAZING! However below is a rubbish photo taken with my shaky hand!
Weddings and Thorpe Park
To round up our 2 week holiday we decided to head east towards Surrey & Southampton, here we witnessed a good friend of ours wedding and were very happy to see him and his wife tie the knot! YEY!
Then Thorpe Park double YEY! I've never been to Theme Park in England before... have been to one in Wales and Italy mind! We visited Thorpe Park with our close friends Stephanie and Sam our favourite rides were Stealth and Saw however had the weather been of a more suitable variety I feel Tidal Wave might have been up there, but it was freezing yet we still decided to ride it:
It's summer Naomi's on her Summer Holiday (school teachers eh!), I have some days holiday to use... lead to one thing... ROAD TRIP! We decided we'd utilise our fine position within the southwest peninsular to expand upon our knowledge of the local beaches.
First stop Mousehole Par...
Well we had planned on going to Mousehole first (this being our first B&B stop), however we successfully managed to get our dates wrong booo... however this has mean we've an extended holiday so yey! With a couple swift phone calls and a look at google maps we managed to settle for a alternative stop for our first day... this being Par... Par isn't the most desirable place to stop at in relation to other places in Cornwall however it's not exactly the worst place we had a nice little picnic on the beach:
Then had an ice-cream:
And I we proceded to get successfully burnt by the sun... I feel quite ashamed of myself especially seeing the exact thing happened on the first day of our honeymoon! Our B&B (Emms Cottage) was a very quaint cornish house which had been converted to a B&B as the owners kids had moved out. It did seem a little odd sleeping in someone else's house (as most B&B's do) but this was quickly out shadowed by the AMAZING Cooked breakfast and Coffee mmm!
Next stop PerranPorth
The was the first of our Planned stopped, we chose this place to get our Surf on, however as we drove through the tipping rain... the likely hood of either of us dipping our toes in the water was getting rather slim. However where there's a beach there's fun regardless of the weather! We checked into our B&B (St George's Country House) which was a short walk from the beach... here are some of the views from the B&B to the Beach:
Our first task once at the beach was to locate somewhere to purchase a Pasty, we'd gained local knowledge that a certain Butchers (Chapmans) held the towns title of the best Pasty... will it be better than Oggy's or even my mums...
Quite amusingly I'm sure my dad has a large array of similar images (with himself and my mum replacing me and Nay obviously)
The Pasty's got awareded best Cornish pasty of 2000.... wasn't 100% convinced myself, if Oggy's was an 8, and my mum's being perfection at 10 I'd rate these at a good effort 7...
Next we read our books, since Par I've been hooked on reading this particularly entertaining read: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night about an Autistic person's detective work about finding out who killed the dog... the insight into the authors mind is rather compelling as such I managed to read the whole book within 3 days... which for me (at a reading age of 12) is rather good! After a hour or so of reading Naomi's short attention span kicked in and I was forced to fly our kite... did you know that the beach at Perranporth has a By-Law of a no-fly zone of kites outside of a designated zone... I didn't either until a life guard told me off! We rounded of our day out at the beach by having a classic Cornish afternoon snack of Devonshire Cream Tee's (coffee) in The Tin Fin... which is where we returned for our actual tea!
The B&B we stayed in was more of a Hotel so no oddness of feeling like we were in someone else's house! However the Bed sheets were still thick winter sheets which combined with the extra heat our Sun Burns Tan's were giving off we didn't have the most comfortable of sleeps.
Our final Stop of this Mini Tour was Padstow
Well I say Padstow the B&B (The Harlyn Inn) was actually situated just off Harlyn Beach (I think that's the name). We checked in then went down to the beach... which was rather windy and cold:
Quality self portrait there!
So this stay on the beach was short lived and off to Padstow down we went in search of Food! Which seemed like everyone else had the same idea as the place was rammed! However we managed to find a pasty shop (The Chough Bakery) which held the best Cornish pasty of 2008... who gives out these awards? If we go back to my original rating system I'd give these a measly 5, no bad points and the crib was in the correct place and they didn't do anything silly but just lacked any flare... if I was to liken these pasty's to a car it would be a Ford Mondeo, Naomi however must have forgotten what a good pasty tastes like and gave it an 8! That's on Par with Oggies... MADNESS!
We decided to combat the strong winds on Harlyn beach by purchasing our First Windbreak! This was swiftly set up back at Harlyn beach and book reading commenced...
Look how happy Naomi is with the windbreak!
However the reading was short lived partly down to me finishing my book... chicka chicka yeah! and Partly down to Naomi's short attention span! So a walk of the amazing beach was in order:
At the end of the Beach we discovered some cool rock pools as well we saw a water snail thing:
And an sea anemone:
The next day started rainy but soon turned sunny, so we went for another walk of the beach... it really is a nice beach! We hid in a cave whilst it rained:
Then the sun came out meaning I could get a good snap of the beach:
We rounded our Mini road trip off with a relaxing afternoon on the beach followed by a quick dip in the sea!
Welldone on getting to the end of a MAMOUTH blog post! Here's a mini video of the highlights:
Well to say I've not updated this blog for ages would be the truth.... so I guess I'll stick with the truth... however to say sorry about this would be a lie! I'm not sorry! Us Hodges have been too darn busy! So what's happened since the last update?
Well I successfully competed in the Clic24 hour race as a solo entry and completed 23, 10mile laps to cover a grand total of 230miles (incase you couldn't do the maths there). So that was quite awesome, although still not the toughest race I've entered, that award is a joint affair, both being MTB marathons, the first one being the Schwin 100 - 100km race across mid wales, which ok 100km compared to 230miles that's nothing, however I was 15 at the time, and had to get special permission to enter as minimum age was 16. The next being the Newnham 90 (2 x 45km laps) 1 week after finishing my final year of university studies (so you can imagine I was fighting fit), I bonked (think of a car's petrol light coming on) after 10min into the second lap and being the stubborn person I am continued the rest of the lap running on fumes. However the 230miles were nothing compared to these to events it was actually marginally fun! So much so I'm going to enter again next year!
Anyway enough harping on about my racing what have the Hodges been up to? Well you know this and that and ooh we bought our first house!
As in our first house which we own! WOOP, no more paying a landlord! Due to us now living in a house and not a flat we're now able to do such fun activities as this:
We also went on a little adventure up north to watch flight of the Conchords in Birmingham, which was rather exciting. But the main even obviously has been the fact we now have a really nice home! And since we've enjoyed many bbq's and just general relaxation the panda's are enjoying their new home too:
Well that's all for my very random blog post, I feel information overload has resulted in a very boring writing style, lets hope my next update about our energy smart meter will be more interesting!
Hello all, so whilst the whole of the country grinds to a holt through the snow, and offically comes out of recession the main thing that has held this great country of ours together is this blog... which sadly we've not updated since new years day, due to this Chaos has erupted in the WHOLE country!
So the question on everyone's lips is what the dickens have me and Naomi been up to!? Well we've been riding some fresh powder on Dartmoor:
We've also been getting really board sitting at home... thus resulting in a new animation of ours:
I would love to say there's some deep meaning to this animation which reflects upon the inner child like emotions of our young marriage... but it really was just a animation for animation's sake... one day we'll create a full motion picture... one day!
So what else have the Devonshire Hodges been up to? Well sadly we've mostly been working! Paul (our car) has had a couple shady morning of refusing to start which has meant Naomi's been forced to catch the train to work at stupid O-Clock in the mornings! Luckily it seems he's back to his chirpy self (yes I did just say our car was Chirpy!). Whilst we're mentioning Paul, Naomi has been having more quality time with him than myself as of late, what with her driving him every day so I decided to take him away for the day on a day trip to Wales to go riding with my Brother and Dad at Brechfa:
As one might be able to tell from this photo of my dad that the white stuff on the floor is not an excessive amount of paint on the floor with black tire marks on top but is in fact yet MORE snow! Indeed the night prior to my trip to Wales (my chum Antony Bishop popped along too), the South West England and South wales got a slight sprinkling of snow (a very slight sprinkling), but this combined with a miss directed (my brother typed in the wrong address) satnav caused us to drive on a very minor icy/snowy road which was on a slight decline which resulted in this:
Surprisingly this was actually quite good fun and luckily no-one and more importantly no-cars were hurt/damaged in the production of this video! We ended up EVENTUALLY getting to Brechfa and had a smashing time riding in the snow! Here's the end results to the towels after the whole escapade:
So asides from playing in the snow we've actually being slightly adult like atm as we're beginning to start looking to buy our first house! SCARY! More on this in the next coming months I'm sure!
Well that's all for now hopefully the next update won't take AGES!
So here I am sitting on the sofa once again, giving an update of the latest shinaniganz of us here Devonshire Hodges!
Christmas Day
One of the many decorations Naomi made to decorate our flat!
Some of you quicker off the mark might have noticed that just over a week ago (I'm writing this on Jan 2nd) it was Christmas day.... So happy late christmas! Well this Christmas was the first one me and Naomi have spent together as a married couple and I think the whole excitement of it all got to Naomi as I was FORCED to wake up at 5.30 on Christmas morning to open our sockings. After this initial annoyance the rest of the day was rather pleasant me and Naomi offered to baby sit for Jo Brown as she was working Christmas day so we fed Luke at lunch time, which consisted of lots of lovely picnic style foods including my favourite of Cheese & Pineapples on sticks YUM! After lunch however we made the short trip up to Barnstable to visit Naomi's Parents at her Grannies Farm were we got our Christmas Turkey fix!
Boxing Day
Not only is Boxing day my Mother's Birthday it is also the home of one of my favorite traditions the Cardiff Boxing Day ride. These two things enabled me to have enough will power and actual power to get up and drag Naomi out of bed at 7am to drive up to Cardiff for the 10am bike ride! Fun times, the bike ride itself was rather entertaining where I'd decided to test out a new technique of Beer only Hydration, its effects were negative... the ride also allowed me to test out my amazing bodge:
(all you non cyclists skip this paragraph) Basically what had happened, I rode my bike on Christmas Eve, realised my hub was playing up, took it to bits realised all the springs on my free hub had snapped me realising this at 6pm, and knowing I'd need my bike for boxing day had to come up with some kind of temporary fix).
We stayed in Cardiff for a couple more days maxing and relaxing, and then we went back down to Barnstable to see Naomi's family for a couple days, these days were nice and educational since due to Naomi's brothers experimental tendencies we discovered that a salt shaker has adverse effects upon the appearance of my wife:
(Naomi's gonna kill me for uploading that image)
Although it was nice spending time with our Families I was very much looking forward to getting back to Plymouth as the Christmas break had lined up a new opportunity to show of my DIY skills:
Ikea had gotten the better of us and forced us to buy a new TV cabinet and some wall mounted CD racks.. and yes they are still attached to the walls!
The final bit of update hot off the press and happily sitting in my stomach's is our first "proper" roast. Last updates roast was more of a off the cuff slap up roast, this was a pre mediated roast, and with the help of Jamie Oliver's perfect roast potatoe guide, it was the best darn roast I've ever had (Obviously your's are really the best mum, but for a home made roast does gets extra satisfaction points!)
Moments later normal Naomi magically transformed into a fat and full Naomi
