Visiting the Emirates Air Line in London

Some days it's just nice to be a tourist and my recent visit to London I did exactly that!
Living in Cornwall you can often get fed up with tourism as it feels like the only thing important in Cornwall. Like a spoilt only child, tourism, although a major source of income to Cornwall is also a major source of anger and annoyance. Crowded supermarkets, blocked roads, busy beaches people driving slowly to enjoy the view when your in a hurry to get to work then empty second homes for the rest of the year. I often forget how to relax and take in the local scenery during the height of the summer holidays. But on a recent week off out of the county it was my turn to be that annoying tourist, my turn to turn someones daily commute on the train into my excitement for the morning and turn a normal Friday in London into my holiday.

In true tourist style we headed to the train station and bought our daily travel cards giving us free reign to travel all over the city for the whole day and with a whole bunch of leaflets in our hands we headed into the big smoke. Both excited to be heading into London we had to take a cheeky selfie of our excitment amungst the daily commuters looking glumly out of the window of the train on their journeys into work, probably thinking the same about us as we do in Cornwall.

First stop on the itenary was the new Emirates Air Line over the river Thames. From Chelmsford train station we took the overground train to Stratford where to changed onto the docklands lite rail to the Royal Victoria train station. On arrival this was to be my first experience of seeing the millenium dome up close and in the flesh... ok so it's not even called the millenium dome any more and that was it's name now 15 years ago!!!!! Seriously where is the time going? We had a quick walk through the now named 'The O2' and were quite impressed by the sheer amount of bars, restaurants and size of the cinema on offer and would love to go to the dome again one day to experience a gig there.

Moving on from The O2 we walked over to the terminal for the Emirates Air Line which is a cable car that crosses the river Thames from the Emirates Royal Docks across the water to the Emirates Grennwich Peninsula. It was amazing to see the little cable carts going up and over the river and interesting to read that during rush hour the cable cars go at twice the speed to transport commuters over the river however during the day the 'flight' takes just 10 minutes to cross the water.

Arriving at the ticket booth there was barely any body there using the service and myself and my partner paid less than £10 for our two single tickets and as it was so quiet we had a cable car all to ourselves a priviledge that would normally cost an additional £88 for a private booth!

The views us we took off up and over the river were really impressive, the views over The O2 and the views towards the city. You could see the olympic park at stratford as well as the tower blocks of canary wharf.

Next on our agenda was to visit The Crystal a fairly new Eco building designed to explore how cities will move forwards in the future as we grow and grow and how we can do this whilst helping the environment. Read my next blog post all about the Crystal here.

Visiting Jimmy's Farm in Ipswich, Suffolk

Planning a staycation in the UK is always a gamble and the weather can often make or break your time off. With a midweek wedding on the Essex, Suffolk boarder and having many family and friends living in Essex we decided to take a whole weeks holiday in Essex.

After staying in Ipswich the night of the wedding we were in the area and looking for things to do. After a very brief walk around the town, which sadly is rather deserted and empty and run down we decided we would head back towards Essex and visit Colchester Zoo. What we hadn't realised was that it was already the afternoon by now and tickets to the zoo were over £20 an adult and that would be a rather expensive afternoon.

We had a brief detour to the Ipswich marina where we had a walk along the waterfront and a coffee whilst having a quick look on Trip Advisor for things to do locally. We stumbled across Jimmy's farm and thought that it looked quite good for an afternoon's entertainment.

On arrival at the farm we realised that this was more than a farm shop and a few animals, we paid our entrance fee's that were a lot less than Colchester Zoo and enjoyed a walk around the farm. We got to see goats, cows, horses, guinea pigs, geese, chickens, sheep and pigs. As we walked around the farm it dawned on us that not only was it the school holidays still but we were also the only ones walking around without children in tow. There's loads to do with the kids, giant jumping cushions, play areas and zip wires so it's definitely somewhere to tire the kids out.

For us adults the animals were all lovely and a highlight was the woodland walk were you could make dens amongst the trees. For my partner who works at an Eco architects making tree houses was just his cup of tea. Another enjoyable aspect was the butterfly house which was lovely and warm on a dull and breezy September day and was my first experience with some rather large butterflies up close and personal.

Sadly I can't completely sing 100% praise for Jimmy's farm, the giant piggy bank is looking rather sorry for itself covered in green mold and in need of a lick of paint with some new eyes.

Some of the wooden fencing around the children's play areas were damaged and several of the areas to wash your hands after petting animals were completely out of anti bacterial hand gel. It felt a little run down and forgotten about. We weren't sure if they were winding the place down for the end of summer and the end of the season would see some maintenance and repairs or it is always like this.

The farm shop was nice and the staff friendly however we didn't purchase anything in the store, for an afternoon out in the fresh air seeing some cute animals it is definitely worth a visit if your passing and it seems like a great place that children will love even if us adults are a little more worried about health and safety! Hopefully by next summer things will be rectified to their former glory and not left to deteriorate further.

Training for a half marathon in just 6 weeks!!!!!

Training for a half marathon in just six weeks seems like a totally crazy thing for anyone to do and as I'm not the fittest person on the planet it's even harder for me. Plus throw into the mix I only started running 9 months ago and I've been injured for 3 months it's all feeling very unlikely.

However I'm not going to let myself or anyone else down. I'm running my first half marathon in just three weeks time on the 4th of October at the second largest half marathon in the UK at the Cardiff Half and I'm doing this for the Panda.

Yes you can certainly say  'The Panda Made Me Do It' Things haven't quite gone to plan at all, Back in March several months before I turned 30 completing a half marathon was on my 'things to do before 30 list and so I signed up to only get injured a month later. Still feeling optimistic I printed out all the 12 week training guides and as the 12 week prior mark came and went I still wasn't able to train.

Now I finally feel fit enough to train, I'm running out of time to do it properly. I'm having to build up gently to avoid pulling the injured calf again and I'm doing this by doing a 1 mile warm up walk and 1 mile cool down walk either side of a run to avoid any injury and so far so good. When I say good I managed to cover 9 miles like this on Tuesday (only 7 miles of running) and was so slow and my legs wanted to die, but I still did it! How on earth I am going to cover 13.1 miles I have no idea! I'm just hoping the fitness will come to me over the next 3 weeks.....

So for those that believe, maybe even slightly more than me at the moment that I can do it and have sponsored me thank you very much. For those still to sponsor me, please dig deep and throw a few pennies in the pot to help save the environment for our future generations as I am raising money for WWF. You can find my Just Giving page here to make an on line donation that goes direct to the charity. https://www.justgiving.com/Amanda-Panda/

Thank you all again for your support and donations.

John Butler Trio play Lusty Glaze during the wettest night of summer!

Named as the Sundowner sessions the summer gigs held at Lusty Glaze beach during the summer months have been a favourite of mine since moving to Cornwall. I've watched the likes of Feeder and The Levellers and had many a good dance at the beach gigs with the sand between my toes, the waves rolling in behind and the sun setting over the sea.

However the summer of 2015 has other ideas, well to be honest there is no summer of 2015 just the empty shell of hope clinging on to the idea that maybe, just maybe we will get an Indian summer and once the kids go back to school we can enjoy some sunshine in Cornwall. To make matters worse last night there wasn't just another evening of unfavourable weather and the dread of not seeing a sunset at a sundowner session but much worse. We were on a severe weather warning for wet weather from 9pm onwards for the whole of Cornwall.

Well, what can I say! Us British folk aren't put off by a little, or rather in last nights case a lot of the wet stuff. Arriving to the beach to the sell out gig the crowds were already well fed and watered by the various BBQ and bars set up on the beach and with a lot of summer attire on display there were lots of people in flip flops and I began to wonder were people being optimistic about the forecast or did they simply not know?

After a few songs in the dry suddenly the heavens opened but it didn't seem to have an impact on the evening what so ever. Suddenly the summeresque dressed British Public pulled out pac a macs, ponchos and coats and simply just carried on as if nothing was happening. We had rain water pouring and pouring down from the sky, the water was running down in gully's onto the beach, the puddles were beginning to form but still we carried on, rain dripped off my nose and down my face I was soaked!

The camaraderie amongst the crowd was fantastic and not a single person was going to let a bit of rain spoil their evening and it was simply a case to drink more, dance harder and party on.

The gig continued to get better and better and the rain continued to pour and pour and friends were starting to look more and more soaked through yet not a single one of them cared. I have to say, respect to each and every person on the beach last night that proved that even in the worst of weather we still know how to have a good time and a good party.

Check out my quick video from last night with the crowd singing and dancing along despite the diabolical weather.

Please help me raise £500 for WWF

I'm sure people are asked for sponsorship money all the time and it is hard to give money constantly to friends and family that are doing events all the time but if possible can I have 5 minutes of your time to read why I'm asking for your help?

Look outside, it's raining (It is in Cornwall right now) or at least it has been raining for pretty much the whole of summer. This is partly due to climate change, and WWF want to fund research and invest in ways to protect our environment and help us to combat climate change.

What about your favourite animal? As everyone will know I'm slightly obsessed with Pandas, I have been since I was very young. Amanda the Panda being a nickname of mine. But imagine a world without Panda's. OK so that's probably not that bad for most people in the UK, most people have probably never seen a real panda bear. I myself was fortunate enough to see London Zoos second Panda Ming Ming that was at the Zoo from 1991-1994. But for most people seeing a real live panda bear could become a similar story to seeing a real life dodo.

If your not interested in Pandas, what about Tigers, African Elephants, African Lions, Jaguars, Marine Dolphins, Mountain Gorillas and even Polar bears all of these are helped to breed, and survive and to be understood by the work that the WWF do, and without the WWF all these could die out.

I'm trying to raise just £500 and it sounds like a lot of money but If every one of my twitter followers donates just £1 I will smash that target or just £2 from each Facebook like, I'm asking for less than a cost of a pint! We all saw what happened to Cecil the Lion recently and it's not just the Lions that need our help. If I can raise just £25 this can pay a Rhino Protection Unit ranger's salary for 10 days to help protect the African Rhino's from poachers.

If you care for animals or the environment you'll know about the work that the WWF already do and understand why it is vital to keep supporting them even if it is only by donating just a few pounds each.

Then there's me, I'm asking for you not just to donate money to the charity but I'm asking you to sponsor me. Yes the sponsorship is for the WWF but by sponsoring me you are saying that you believe that I can do it. That I can get around a half Marathon, That I can complete 13.1 gruelling miles of exercise. That's 21.097494 kilometres of running, over 2 hours of plodding pavements, burning over 1000 calories. And that's just on the day, I've also been doing training runs, I had built up over 200 miles of practise, building up my strength and stamina. I've even had to deal with an injury and enjoured nearly 2 months off with a painful calf injury. Now I've started training again I have less than six weeks until the event and in every practise run that I do and every bit of training, knowing I have the support and sponsorship from my friends and family helps me plod on through.

So what I'm asking is please sponsor me, please believe that I can run/walk/crawl my way around 13.1 miles and in doing so feel proud that you are also helping to save the planet and the pandas.

You can sponsor me on my just giving page here https://www.justgiving.com/Amanda-Panda/ 
If you can't afford to sponsor me but fancy helping me out by running with me then just let me know as having a running buddy on the lengthy runs is always appreciated.

Thank you again
Mandi

Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge Week 2, Paul Hollywood Arlettes

Yesterday I found myself with enough time and enthusiasm to attempt week 2 of the Great British Bake Off Technical Challenges, this was making eight Arlette biscuits a recipe from Paul Hollywood.

There's a part of me that wants to do all of the technical challenges this year but I'm sure there will become a stage where I don't own the correct utensils, tools, tins etc to be able to join in but so far so good. Week 1 saw me making Mary Berry's Walnut layer cake and although It was a success it didn't feel that much of a challenge and worst still my partner didn't particularly like the cake!!! Seriously I think there is something wrong with him when he said it was too sweet!

After watching the latest technical challenge I couldn't help think it seemed like a lot of effort for eight biscuits but not wanting to quit at week two I persevered and started by watching the technical challenge section on the BBC Iplayer. Watching as some contestants got in sticky messes, others mixed by hand and others used electric mixers. I was confused at what best to do, after reading the recipe instructions I was clear on what I needed to do, and that involved A LOT of chilling and the use of bread flour and some kneading. All in all an odd recipe to make a biscuit.

The recipe was similar to making a flaky or a rough puff pastry mixing layers of butter and layers of pastry dough. The only difference was that you wrapped the pastry in a layer of butter rather than the other way around. All in all the recipe so far was actually really quite simple, once you had the basic ingredients it was just a case of fold and chill then repeat. After a few hours I was ready to add a layer of sugar and Cinnamon and roll and chill again. Although not a major issue the first problem I had was that I lost some of my dry sugar mix out of each end of the roll of pastry.

Once the dough was chilled again it was time to cut into eight equal sections and roll flat with a rolling pin before baking. Again the dry ingredients caused a slight issue and once I had started to roll the biscuits flat some of them were unravelling and not staying as a tight pinwheel.

Placing the rolled biscuits out onto the baking tray It was time to bake. On the television episode there were lots of comments about the high butter content and how these biscuits could burn easily however I think I was over cautious. After the first 5 minutes of baking the instructions state to flip the biscuits over and cook for a further 3-4 minutes. Another slight issue was that the biscuits were fairly stuck to the baking paper but with a little shuffling they were free and flipped over. However the 8-9 minutes baking time turned into 10-12 to avoid the centres of my biscuits still looking doughy and raw. I'm not sure If my Arlettes weren't rolled thin enough or it was due to my oven. Either way the additional baking time wasn't an issue and I now had eight little Arlette biscuits.

Once cooled with a cup of tea the first two biscuits were devoured in seconds. They taste a little like the flaky pastry and sugar coated edges of an apple strudel. They had the snap, a little flaky crunch and a delicious buttery flavour. All in all very very yummy but you need to be in the house for several hours to keep attending to your chilling and rolling of the pastry so unless I have several hours to spare I'm not sure I will be making them again in a hurry.

Next it's bread week and I've only ever made bread once so this could be an interesting technical challenge. Roll on Wednesday for episode three. I can't wait.

I just did a baby run :@)

After 8 weeks off running and rather a lot of pain my last course of acupuncture and ultrasound seems to have helped. Not wanting to run before I can walk I decided that I would start the week with a walk and see how things went.

On Tuesday I took to the local streets and managed to walk just over 4 miles fairly trouble free. When I say fairly, I managed to walk nearly all four miles without a twinge or a hint of pain however around three and a half miles in I started to get a twinging in the muscle in my calf. But after a change of pace, the pain completely went? I'm not sure what is causing the pain and whether I will do more damage using it rather than resting it but the following day after the four mile walk there was still no pain.

With the excitement of walking 4 miles without to much bother I decided I wanted to increase the distance yet again before attempting to go for my first run in eight weeks. My next walk was along the camel trail in Wadebridge. I didn't want to start taking massive hikes up hilly coastal paths just yet and want to ease myself in fairly gently on flat routes and there isn't anywhere in Cornwall flatter than the tranquil camel trail that follows the side of the river.

Starting at Wadebridge I walked three miles up the trail before turning around and walking another three miles back. Again all was well whilst walking until I hit the four mile mark where again the same twinging started to appear in my calf. I tried changing pace but this time it didn't work. I decided to stop and give my calf a massage and carry on. The pain didn't stop completely but it didn't hurt as much and was on and off for the rest of the walk. I felt deflated that just 6 miles and I was struggling with this niggling in my calf but after reaching the car and sitting down the pain was completely gone again.

The next day when I woke up I was worried about those first few steps in the morning feeling that the calf would once again be tight and painful. However to my delight there was nothing, no pain and so I decided that after another days rest just in case I would now attempt a little walk, tiny run and little walk to ease my calf back into running.

Sunday arrived and It was time to put my leg to the test and see how it would fair with a little run and not wanting to go off to hard too soon I decided on a little route close to home. I started with a one mile walk to warm up followed by a gentle 1 mile run followed by half a mile walk to finish and I am pleased to say that I survived pain free. I was wearing my compression socks and took it really easily plus gently stretched when I got home and iced my calf for 30 minutes once home and so far so good.

The only negative is that I found running for just one mile really hard work and got out of breath VERY quickly. It seems that my 8 week absence from running has really seen my fitness deteriorate and although I've tried to keep fit with light walking, yoga and a bit of surfing there has been a lot of resting and not a lot of activity so I've now got a long way to go to be ready to run a half marathon in just 5 weeks!!!

It sounds like an impossible challenge and I thought I was going to struggle to run a half with a full training regime but I will deal with what I've got and I'd prefer to walk it than pull out so that is where I am today. Keeping my fingers and toes crossed and staying hopeful that the pain doesn't return and I'm able to carefully increase my training enough to get through the Cardiff Half.

Joining the Great British Bake Off Technical Challenges

After the first episode of the Great British Bake Off I decided it would be a great idea to make each of the technical challenges each week.

Sunday's would become the day to stay indoors and bake with my partner. The summer hasn't been particularly great this year and with lots of soggy Sundays to entertain ourselves this seemed to be a fantastic idea.

The first weeks episode was cake, My favourite thing to bake and our favourite thing to eat and so off to the store I went to purchase the ingredients to make week ones technical challenge Mary's Frosted Walnut Layer Cake.

The first challenge was that the cake was made using three equal sized cake tins and I only had two of the same size and one larger. But with the cake mixture evenly shared out It was a case of cutting down the larger cake to match the other two and I was still on track to making an acceptable bake.

The great thing about making one cake slightly bigger is that there were offcuts for the tasting before the rest of the cake was finished.

Once the cakes were cool it was onto the final stage of decorating. The cake required 10 walnuts to decorate the cake all coated in caramel so the first thing to do was make some caramel. This however, was easier said than done. With my sugar in the pan and the heat rather low my sugar slowly started to melt and bubble and started to colour but I didn't realise how quickly the sugar turned from a light golden brown to a sticky black mess of burnt caramel! 

With attempt number two more successful there were 10 perfect little walnuts covered in caramel cooling and ready to decorate the cake. 

Next it was to make up a butter cream to sandwich between the cakes and finally to finish with a boiled icing. I've got to be honest I've never heard of boiled icing before but it was a mix between royal icing and meringue. 

Once the icing had set over the cake it resembled the texture of snow. It had a texture that was light and fluffy and made a slight crunch when cut and compressed. I'm not sure if it was suppose to be like this but this is how ours turned out. 

All in all I found the cake delicious, however my partner with a sweet tooth declared that the cake was too sweet! Can a cake be too sweet? It did have A LOT of icing in between the layers, a lot of icing around the cake and then the sugary sweet nuts on top so yes it was very sweet but I loved it. 

Next it's time to make Paul's Arlettes which i'm not very confident about making, the recipe for wafer thing rolled biscuits uses simple ingredients however looks like a much more technical challenge.

What's wrong with my calf?

This is the question that's been on my lips for several months now, "What's wrong with my calf?" After pulling my left calf muscle several months ago I stupidly didn't think much of it and carried on running through the injury. It didn't hurt too much whilst I was physically running it was just after the run, the day after that would cause pain.

After running through the pain for several weeks and with only 5 months until running my half marathon for the WWF in Cardiff in October I decided I would go and seek some medical advice from my GP.

The GP told me that there was a 16 week waiting list for NHS Physio and If I wanted a quicker path to recovery I should go privately. With that in mind I decided that I would seek out a local physiotherapist and pay for treatment. However after several appointments with the Physiotherapist the outcome wasn't good and the treatment was failing to work and week after week has gone by and stretches and strengthening exercises and massage is not helping at all.

After speaking with a fellow runner I was recommended to go and see a chiropractor rather than a physio and see if they could help. I was told that I was rather knotted up through the calf and also knotted through the spine which was effectively making one leg longer than the other. After a few sessions of being straightened out clicked and crunched the pain is still niggling. Every morning when I wake up and first walk on the leg the muscle feels like it is bulging and pulsing out of the leg. With an electric type pain running through the calf.

Several more weeks later and several hundreds of pounds of my own money spent I have now had so many types of treatment that there doesn't seem to be any thing else out their available for me to try. I've had deep tissue massage, I've had acupuncture and I've had ultra sound on my calf and although I have good and bad days, some days with no pain at all and others where my calf is as tight as when I first injured it months ago.

The next step unfortunately is being referred back to the local GP and potentially to an osteopath to hopefully find out what's wrong with me and how to fix me.

Sadly my first half marathon attempt is now very much looking to be in jeopardy and I'm gutted as I really want to do this not just for me but for the WWF too. As the date is getting closer and no training under my belt it's looking less and less likely but If I suddenly recover I will push myself and get myself around those 13.1 miles and "do it for the pandas" As for now, it's a waiting game and just trying to stay optimistic that I am doing the right thing with Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation...... I just might need to work on the ice part a little more!

My journey into running my first half marathon now in jeopardy

Having started running in December everything was going well, I was enjoying getting fitter, faster and doing further distances than ever.

I had joined the local Newquay Road Runners group as well as regularly attending Park Run as well as doing a few runs on my own during the week. Everything was going well I was entering races and really thriving and enjoying my running.

I had managed to go from couch potato to regularly running up to 5 miles 3 times a week and even managed a top distance of 8 miles. I might have been a bit slow but I was loving it and so decided to enter my first ever half marathon. Maybe I was a little optimistic to go from complete beginner to a half marathon in less than 12 months but I really wanted to do it, and especially as I was doing it to raise money for the WWF. 

However, things took a turn for the worse whilst running and I found myself in a lot of pain in my calf. However this was during a Park Run event and I didn't want to stop and I kept running through the pain and didn't think much of it. My calf was stiff the next day and the day after but then it felt ok, so I went running again. This time everything felt fine whilst running but for the following two days walking was painful and my calf was incredibly tight. Getting out of bed the morning after my runs was becoming excruciating but as the day went on everything eased and the same process was gone through.

I continued to run and suffer the next few days and decided that with my half marathon looming in October I decided that I should probably get my injury looked at rather than continue to push on with an injury.

Attending a local physio in Newquay I was told that there was a lot of knotting in my calf and this was worked on and although it made the pain flare up I was hopeful that with my armour of exercises and stretches I would be soon back running. But as the weeks have passed the injury is still lingering. I've left the physiotherapist scratching his head as to what is causing the pain and gone through a process of stretches, massages and exercises and still the calf is niggling.

I'm now wearing compression socks full time, even through the night and have started yoga as well as seen a chiropractor and had acupuncture and although there is less pain and things are feeling much better the niggle is still in there and my calf still tight and tender especially after a walk. (No major hiking expeditions but a noticeable twinge after a walk through the local town and I'm still yet to attempt running)

I'm now starting to worry that this injury isn't going to clear in time to start training and attend my first ever half marathon and now need to make the decision whether I will need to defer my place or not.

I'm feeling deflated and pretty gutted that things aren't going as I want them to and that there's even now mentions of scans and x-rays on my calf to find out what's going on. I'm trying to keep optimistic and keeping my fingers and toes crossed that after 6 weeks with absolutely no running and hundreds of pounds spent on private treatment that I will not only be back running but also be able to complete my half marathon and raise money for WWF.

Fingers toes and panda paws crossed that I will be back running soon..... but for now it's compression socks and slippers time!!!