Tag Archive for 'Fun'

Geocaching!

Published on 29 December, 2009. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Geocaching (by William Hook)

I have discovered a new hobby. Geocaching. :D

I’ve heard about it before, years ago, when someone hid one under a bridge (it was on the news), but I pretty much ignored it. Then a while ago, someone I follow on Twitter (yum9me) started tweeting about it so I thought “hm, sounds interesting”. Anyway, I decided to try it out recently, so I downloaded the “lite” (free) version of the Geocaching app for the iPhone, and gave it a go. Anyway, it’s quite fun – I started off with one in London – the South Bank Lion geocache, which is near the Lion opposite Big Ben. I found another two today, in Birmingham, and it’s quite fun – and depending on where it is – pretty easy to do.

The whole idea around the “sport”, if you can call it that, is that you find GPS co-ordinates for a cache, plug them into your GPS unit (I use my iPhone), and then go searching. For example, next time you’re in, say, Iceland, you could attempt to find this cache. The cache itself is usually something small – the inner city ones are generally either a film canister, or a tiny plastic ziplock bag, and the country ones are usually a bit bigger, such as a container the size of a mug or a small box. Inside is anything from a log only, to other stuff like a coin or something similar. You can even hide your own cache if you want to, as long as you follow the rules and so on (eg, you have to put it on public property and it has to say what it is, etc). I might do that one day – there are a few spots I can think of around where I ride my bike that might be quite good.

I mean yes, it is ultimately a pointless sport, but it’s fun to do nonetheless. I’ve found 3 so far and I haven’t even started on the ones in Stafford…which I’ll do when the weather gets a bit better (it’s freezing cold at the moment and it’s raining now).

Go Ape!

Published on 20 September, 2009. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

08_AFL_Tarzan (by kelly last)

So, Go Ape. What is it? Well, simply put, it’s a bunch of platforms, wires, and other stuff high up in a bunch of trees. If that doesn’t sound exciting, well, in real life, it’s actually quite awesome. You basically make a booking on their website, turn up the next day (or whenever), go through the safety briefing (cause, you know, falling out of a tree and killing yourself isn’t all that fun :lol: ), and after about 20 minutes, you’re into the treetops.

It’s quite simple really, you just climb a ladder, and go from tree to tree over a few different platforms – for example, a solid log, a wonky bridge, a log hanging from ropes, etc…and then there are a couple of sweet zipwires – you attach your harness to the steel wire, jump off the platform, and let go, and you go flying across a pretty expansive area (at least in Cannock Chase, where I went – the longest one was 260 meters).

I went this afternoon (just got back a while ago actually :D ) and it was pretty sweet. The course isn’t amazingly long, but it keeps you busy and does take a couple of hours to get through. I would highly recommend it if you have one nearby. :)

There are some videos and photos on their website if you want to see (I didn’t take my camera/phone on the course, so no photos from me :P ), and they have quite a few locations around the UK, so it’s not too far to drive most of the time.

London / Thorpe Park

Published on 15 March, 2009. View Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Tidal Wave

This past week, I asked dad if he’d like to go down to visit Thorpe Park to go on their new ride, “SAW”. However, he suggested that instead of staying at a hotel outside of London, we go and stay in London, spend Saturday there, and then go to Thorpe Park on Sunday. So, that’s what we did. We drove down on Saturday morning to London (dropping off someone in Cheltenham on the way), and spent the day in London itself. We did a few things…went to a few shops, went on the London Eye, rode the Dodgems at the Namco arcade near the Eye (which are fun, and only £2, so if you ever get the chance to, go have a ride :P ), went on the Underground, and so on. The usual London tourist stuff. :P

By then, it was about 5:30pm or so, so I went back to the hotel we were staying at (Radisson Edwardian), and watched a bit of TV (dad went walkabout somewhere I think)….then gave up on that (nothing good on) and watched something off the BBC iPlayer on my iPhone. :P Anyway, about 7:30pm we went out again to the “Pizza Express Jazz Club” in Dean Street, Soho. Annoyingly, you have to book to see the Jazz (which is downstairs), but the upstairs section was busy, but we managed to get a table without waiting. Had dinner, then went back to the hotel.

Sunday (today, as I’m writing this post), we woke up early, had some breakfast at the hotel, checked out, and drove to Thorpe Park. We arrived at about 9:30am, and had to wait for about half an hour, but we managed to get in early. However, the main reason I wanted to go to Thorpe was to ride SAW, and…annoyingly, the one day I chose to go there, they had a power failure to half the park! :evil:

So, the whole trip was pretty boring because of that. They were only running a handful of rides, including Nemesis Inferno, Tidal Wave, Samurai, Vortex, Detonator, Flying Fish, and Depth Charge (of which I rode all of them except for Detonator). Great fun. :roll:

Anyway, we decided to leave at about 2pm and go to Legoland instead, but that ended up being a big fail too. Because it only opens next weekend. So, we gave up and just drove home (note: I hate the M6). All in all, not a very thrilling day, so hopefully next time I’m in London, they’ll have the rides all open and running. :(

I still don’t understand why they don’t have some kind of backup system in place…after all, half the park had power (all the lights and vending machines and shops had power), so why not somehow get the coasters to use that power as a backup? Surely it doesn’t need that much power to run a chain lift and brakes? Oh well.

Oh, and when we drove down to London on Saturday, I went and met Fr3d in person, to pick up some stuff (a HDD and a Logitech MX Revolution mouse (which, btw, is win)) I had purchased from him. :D I still want to meet some of the other people off IRC, including Knucks, PJ, M4rk, and Chrissie. :P

Anyway, that’s my eventful weekend. Wheee.