Author Archives: dipidydoo
Winchester Wander
It was time for Ian’s 4 day South Downs Way walk to get underway. In 1997, we walked the SDW from Amberley to Hove, as training for hiking in Nepal. Twenty seven years later, Ian decided to complete the remainder, from Winchester to Amberley. I would be the chauffeur, doing morning drop-offs and afternoon pickups, […]
Needles and Pins
With a MapRun event planned for this evening, in Totton, which is just west of Southampton, it made sense to spend the day in the vicinity. The skies were clear of wet stuff, and the Isle of Wight was our destination of choice. This made for a day of logistics, with a return ferry and […]
Kennet Avon Canal
We might have been more reluctant to leave Timsbury, had it not been for the telecom heavy machinery that arrived this morning, and promptly began digging up the road in noisy fashion. For a quiet country village, there has been a lot going on this week. With a relatively short drive to Shrewton, we hung […]
Somerset Coal Towns
Drama notwithstanding, our aim today was to visit Paulton, and in particular, the Holy Trinity Church, where my 3 times great grandfather, Silas (aka Cyrus) Simes, a coal mine bailiff, married Lavinia Wheeler, on 27 December 1819. It was Silas and Lavinia’s son, David, who left Paulton for Bath, then decided to emigrate to Australia, […]
High Drama on the High Street
Timsbury is a small, sleepy Somerset village, much like the other small, sleepy Somerset villages surrounding it. Nothing ever happens here. Until today … Ian woke up to see a fire truck going past, at 6am. Oddly, he thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. When we got up properly at 8am, we […]
Rain Rain Go Away
It was a remarkably quiet night in Southampton, no doubt something to do with the scoreline in the Euro Championships final (2-1 in Spain’s favour). Just as we were ready to leave the apartment, the rain began. We’d been tossing up between taking an Uber or the train to the airport, to pick up our […]
It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
Dipidydoo is on the road again! The Debbie and Ian half took flight for the UK, and the Pete and Ilze half will be heading to other far-flung parts of the world in the near future. Our paths don’t cross on these trips, but our timings overlap a little. So you will hear from all […]
Day 3 – Vague
Today’s terrain was pretty much a repeat of the other two days, except it was less open, and scrappier scrub with smaller rock. Everything was vague. Vague contours, vague tracks that blended with the general sandy ground, vague fences that might or might not be standing, and vague vegetation boundaries where yellow gently graduated into […]
A Canopy of Giraffes, and an Elongation of Meerkats
With a relatively early finish (notwithstanding my 20-25 minutes worth of errors), we had time this afternoon to visit the no 1 tourist attraction – the Monarto Safari Park. This is an open range zoo with mostly African animals, and in what was a very appealing drawcard, you are driven around in an airconditioned coach. […]
Easter Day 2 – The Wheels Fall Off
My start time was 2 hours earlier, and I looked forward to a cooler morning; it was not to be, as the temperature quickly soared again into the mid 30s. The terrain was very much like yesterday’s, but with less shade on the course. Setting was similar too, with the first few controls on rock […]
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