Posts

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Ston

Ston is a beautiful town that is famous for having the longest maintained wall in Europe or something. Turns out the wall is also a pretty excellent hike with views from the top. Due to me being a bit of an early bird I left the rest of the crew on the boat and went for a walk into town before it got too hot.

The view of the walls from the top of the fort.

I decided to wait for the rest of the boat at the top of the walls and so bought a ticket to visit the fort and walk the walls. I had a leisurely stroll up the walls taking it pretty easy. It was a hard climb but the views were fantastic.

You can just about make out our boat in the distance.

Turns out that Ston built the fort and the walls to protect the salt making pools in the picture above on the right. I also learned that the word salary comes from the word salt and that roman soldiers used to be paid in salt.

Anyway, the rest of the crew of my boat decided it was a bit hot by the time they got into town and went for beer instead. I joined them!

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Michal

Our fantastic skipper showing off his boat. This trip has certainly been a lot more relaxed than other voyages I’ve been on. All thanks to this very good friend of mine

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Setting Sail

Having been in Dubrovnik for three days I was pretty ready to get out of the place. Beautiful buildings, excellent restaurants and lots of stuff to do and see but there were so many tourists it became a little annoying, and this was in the quiet season.

We had a final lunch and a few beers on the main street and headed out to ACI Marina Dubrovnik to collect our 45ft Catamaran Tuvalu.

Berthed in ACI Dubrovnik
Sunj Beach. We all got a bit wet getting out of the tender and we managed to get a line stuck around the propellor and Josh fell over and submerged dragging the dinghy onto the beach. Other than that it all went smoothly.

Ston. Fantastic walls and fort. Excellent hike. Photos in the next post
Okuklje. This is where we did the e-foiling and got a “free” mooring as long as we ate in the restaurant. We should have just paid the 50 euros mooring fee rather than dropping 250 euros in the restaurant. Especially given that we have a boat absolutely full of food.
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Dubrovnik

I got invited to go on a bit of a sail around Croatia. I was unsure for a while but at the last minute decided it sounded like a stellar idea. Unfortunately we were picking the boats up on the Saturday but the only flight I could get would put me in Dubrovnik on the Wednesday before. So a few days in Dubrovnik it was.

Walking the walls of Dubrovnik, with the obligatory early morning livener.

After the pretty tiring walk around the walls [ steps soooooo many steps ] I opted for some breakfast and it was served with black olives. This is my kind of country.

Pretty sure the rest of that day was spent snoozing and hanging out with the two Josh’s and Amber.

The following day I decided to have lunch at the top of the mountain overlooking the city. It was a little expensive to get up there [ 25 euros for a 3 minute journey ] but the sights were stunning and the meal wasn’t actually that expensive for Dubrovnik.

Due to me being a complete idiot I only booked my apartment until Friday morning. I kinda messed up my dates. So I had to pack up all my stuff and check in to a new apartment for a night. In doing so I left my razor and body wash in the first apartment and I now haven’t had a shave in four days.

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Basil

My new passion is growing Basil plants. No way do we need this much Basil but I’ve been cultivating new plants from cuttings and then giving them away as presents. Who in the world does not need a fresh Basil plant on the window sill? Seriously…who?

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The mammoth roof paint begins

I hate to raise this again but a couple of years ago we had an extension built. Yes, this saga rumbles on!

Well, the lazy bastard roofer never came back and finished the job. So after two years of looking at it and not knowing what to do I watched a couple of youTube videos and now apparently I’m a roofer.

Step one, jet wash and brush away all the crap that has built up over the years.

Done

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The finished driveway

Eight bulk bags of 20mm and 10mm Gold Coast gravel and we have a driveway. Quite happy with the way it’s turned out although the new neighbours friends keep mistaking it for a car park and parking their cars on it!

It won’t look quite so big when we put some more cars on it

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Finally, we got a Tesla

Many years ago I pre-ordered a Tesla Model 3 when they were first announced. I didn’t go through with the purchase in the end and now that I finally have one I massively regret that decision. Best car I’ve ever had.

So this post is serving three purposes really.

Purpose 1 : Yes, we finally have a model 3. Long Range AWD

Purpose 2 : You can see the oil patch left behind by the Porsche that I was going to keep but ended up trading it in to get rid of the oil leak problem.

Purpose 3 : You can see what my “driveway” was like yesterday. Today it looks like this…

Hopefully tomorrow it will look a lot better and next week it should be done. Due to a possible “breakdown in communications” between me and the builders they dug up a bit too much of my garden which I’m a little sad about. It’s my fault, I should have got off my arse, bought a tin of that spray paint to mark out the ground and drawn a line exactly where I wanted it. It’ll be fine. I’ll work something out.

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Fire!

Anybody that knows me even slightly will know that I like a good fire. Nearly burned my parents’ house down when I was about 6 but that’s a whole different story. You may also remember I accidentally burned down my woodstore too, but that was in a previous post

Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong. I was out with Mr Simkiss a while ago and he mentioned that he’d been having a near constant fire in a 55 gallon drum. I had a 55 gallon drum sitting about doing nothing so I put some air holes in the bottom, filled it with wood and a little petrol and off we went.

So now I can reseed that bit of ground next to my oil drum and I only have to worry about a small bit of ground getting wrecked when I have a fire. Genius. Should have done it years ago…I’d still have a wood store.

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Jet washing

We had new paving laid at the back and it seemed like quite a good idea at the time to have quite a light Indian stone. Turns out it properly shows up dirty dog footprints, dirty boot marks, everything really. We put some “Wet and Forget” on it last year and it took away all the green algae that grows on there but after a cold wet winter it definitely needed a jet wash, which we did the other day, and another dose of “Wet and Forget” that I’ll get around to soon.

Don’t pay too much attention to the black stuff, that’s just crap that’s been washed down by the jet washer…but just look at the colour difference between the washed stone and the unwashed!
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Usual April 1st Post

Three years since I stopped working [ mainly due to the Conservative governments ridiculous introduction of IR35 ] at Sky and this time I definitely can’t say I’m still retired. I’ve been doing some bits and pieces for Jason Coope which has been on the whole quite good fun. Ignition is a great tool, Docker and Traefik are excellent fun and Liquibase is quite a good bit of code but does have a few quirks that have been giving me sleepless nights.

Anyway, in keeping with April 1st being the day that I kinda retired I’ll continue making something not particularly healthy for breakfast.

A simple fried egg on white toast with ketchup.
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Merseyrail robbing bastards

Paul, Jason and I decided to go for a few drinks in Liverpool. We decided to catch the train – turns out we could have gone in a limo for less money.

The problems began at Ormskirk train station where there was an absolutely massive queue for the ticket office and the train was just sitting on the platform waiting to go. We decided to hop on the train and buy a ticket online. Turns out you can’t do this on Merseyrail. You can do it on pretty much every other train operator in the country but Merseyrail are a bunch of robbing bastards who would rather take the income from fining their customers rather than fixing their systems to accept e-tickets.

We all received a fine of £107.90 which is reduced to £57.90 if paid within 21 days. So it cost £173.70 for the three of us to do a 30 minute journey. But at least we got some nice receipts and a blog post!

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Commemorative Plaque

Whilst I was laying the bricks for my workshop in a spectacularly bad manner, Oliver came along to “give me a hand”. He laid one brick. One! It was this one.

He didn’t lay it badly really. Quite proud of him

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Zelda

Had my first real life Zelda BoTW or ToTK if you prefer, moment. In an otherwise barren and boggy wood I found a single flower. Kinda made me wanna grab it and see what happened next, but I didn’t, because I’m not yet quite that bonkers.

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SoLo

One of our local Michelin starred restaurants does a rather fabulous lunch taster menu with wine pairing. It’s a trifle expensive, especially when you start with cocktails, finish with cocktails add the cheese course and two rounds of plum sake to go with the cheese…but it’s worth it. Probably wouldn’t do it every weekend though

The fallow deer course
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Water problems

The front of our house where we park the cars has always been prone to a little dampness since it’s the lowest point of our little enclave of houses. This Winter has been spectacularly bad since it feels like it’s rained non stop. This has been our reality for a few weeks.

However, in the past few days the builders that are planning to build on the “swamp” that is behind the far trees in the above photo have found a blocked land drain. They unblocked the land drain and hooked it into their drainage system and for the first time in possibly two years we’re all seeing the water levels fall in the “swamp”. The ducks are moving out and my car parking spot has now dried up. My back garden no longer squelches underfoot and all seems good. Admittedly we’ve had a few days of dry-ish weather but I’m still quietly optimistic that removing several hundred thousands of litres from the field next to us will solve our problems. Fingers crossed.

As an aside – rumour has it that my elderly neighbour blocked the land drains deliberately a few years ago for some unknown reason. The same guy that promised he wouldn’t sell the land to the builders until after his death. He’s still alive but the builders moved in a year ago so hey-ho.

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Scroll Saw

When we did the extension the builder installed some Oak skirting boards. He did the joins using a butt joint. I moaned about it here [ https://junglefreedomfighters.com/?p=2017 ] in the past.

Well I’ve just been bought a scroll saw [ thanks Mum ] to have another crack at all this. The scroll saw is essentially a powered version of the coping saw I mention in the post above.

Turns out I’m still a bit rubbish at it.

Shiny!

The skirting board joint you see above is my first attempt. I’ll persevere with my scroll saw with a bit more practice and then hopefully I’ll finally have the skirting boards I’ve dreamt of.

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Holly Dog

Jac and Mark and the kids all went out to celebrate one of their children’s birthdays…yeah I should really know which one but I’m rubbish at things like that and I was totally distracted by us getting Holly for the day.

We absolutely loved having her. Yeah, there were a few puddles. Yeah, she did nearly break the patio doors by running head first into them. Yeah, she did have a bit of a chew on my hat. But it was brilliant to have such an excited bundle of energy in the house. Violet enjoyed it for the first hour or two but then she wanted a sleep…and Holly didn’t.

As a side note I also popped around to Jac and Mark’s yesterday and Holly came running and jumping at me and was so excited that a bit of wee came out onto my foot. Her wee, not mine.

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Baking like Nana Molly

When I was young and at Primary School my Mum was a Schoolteacher and so couldn’t pick me up. Fortunately Nana Molly lived a few hundred metres away from my school and so after I finished school I’d walk over to Nanas and she’d make me my “tea”. Dinner was often “Lobbies”. Meat, potatoes, onions and other veg in a gravy. Some call it potato hash, some call it scouse. We called it lobbies. Anyway, quite often Nana Molly would also make jam tarts. They were amazing. Highlight of my day even though it was just shortcrust pastry with some jam in it.

I recently had some pre-rolled shortcrust pastry that was past the use by date so I had to do something quick. So I picked up some sausage meat from the local butcher and made some posh sausage rolls. I had some left over pastry and we had some jam in the fridge that had been there a while and this is the end result.

The third from the right was made without using a pastry cutter. Dunno what I was thinking