Monday, 29 June 2009
bazza's got talent
the ridgeway re-visited part 1
The forecast for the weekend didn’t look promising; hot and humid, and thunderstorms. Never one to shirk a challenge I stuffed enough kit in a 35l rucksack and set of for Radnage late Saturday afternoon to meet up with other Backpack club members.
On a way up a detour off the M40 was made to Marlow for a supplies stop and a wander. Marlow is a pretty little Thames riverside place that appears to be a piece of displaced west London, like someone’s taken a chunk of Chiswick (Turnham Green Terrace?) and moved it up stream.
Penny and I timed our arrival at the campsite with the only downpour of the weekend. The downpour didn’t last and we found ourselves a flattish pitch near to the others.
Despite having the car I opted to leave all the car camping kit at home; I wanted to see whether I could get all the stuff needed for an ultra lightweight trip in the Berghaus 640. The short answer was just about. There was just enough space to squeeze in an evening meal but I’d have even less had I filled the platy that I’d also packed. So to answer my my own recent musings on what size rucksack I should be looking at; something with a capacity of 40 to 45l is the answer. That’s not say that the Berghaus won’t get used, in the bag was a two person shelter and groundsheet, so for bivi only or bivi/tarp summer trips it should be fine.
A pleasant evening was had in the Crown Inn where we exchanged stories about the trips we’d done, characters we’d met whilst thunder rumbled harmlessly in the distance.
Friday, 26 June 2009
accu-chek avia nano
More shiny new kit, this time a blood glucose monitoring machine, bought to replace the Acc-chek Active meter that I’ve had for about eight years that now seems to be nearing the end of it’s days. Unfortunately they have discontinued this model which is a shame as it was the only device that if the reader failed then you had the fall back of still being able to do a visual reading.
The Avia Nano has a number improvements over the Active, for one it has a backlit LED display. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve struggled with head torch and meter trying to get a reading in a dark tent. In cold weather squeezing enough blood out of a finger is always a problem; not enough and the monitor wouldn’t work or gave a false reading. The Nano only requires a tiny amount of blood to do the test – a miniscule 0.6µl, a fraction of what I’d need for the old machine. And you can add more blood within five seconds if necessary. The meter comes with a lancing device that holds a barrel of six lancets so no need to be fumbling with individual ones and the subsequent disposal of a sharp. There’s an adapter supplied that allows you to take blood samples from other areas of your hand if required. This is new to me and I’ll have to wait until the colder months to see whether the heel of my hand would give out blood more readily than chilly fingers. However given the size of the droplet of blood required using a different area of my hand might not be necessary.
As the Nano is smaller the overall weight of the components is 30g less than the Accu-chek Active. Apart it’s lack of ability to do a visual check this monitor has a number of gains over my old system, let’s hope that I don’t drop it down a mountain or dunk it in the sea.*
* Having put one in the Bay of Biscay once before I now keep all the bits and pieces in an Ortleib A6 document wallet, along with a silica gel sachet. I’ll grumble about having to carry extras ‘just in case’ but it’s wise to keep some of the test strips from the old machine in the wallet too.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
st margarets
The first street sign just after the bridge crossing the Mighty River Crane
The new surgery adjacent to the above
The drive
To the station
The surgery sign supplied by the NHS
The other surgery sign
Things are starting to drift...
Where's the punctuation gone?
Going, going, gone.