Sold house, next chapter of life starts here.

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This year has had it's moments and I have finally moved out of the house and set off on our adventure. First stop, Scotland! Dumfries and Galloway to be exact. Finding temporary accommodation for me and the dogs seems like an impossible task so I figure the best bet is to live in the tent. Hopefully it's not going to be too cold! 

It was a bit of a rush to get everything sorted for the tent, however the hardest thing was selling and throwing away of things I have stored because "I'll use that when I have some spare time." Of which that spare time was never realised. Fortunately the elements did some of the work for me and old computers (Amiga A500, Commodore 64 etc) had become damp and beyond repair. Other things I had sold on eBay including the cage trailer and had swapped that for a roof box and roof rack. Which seem a good buy at the moment.

I bought a tarp for the front of the tent so me and the boys can sit outside in relative comfort and watch the world go by, and most of all look at all the stars. From what I read on-line the place where we are going is fantastic for seeing all the stars, and I have seen some wonderful pictures of the milkyway too.

As it's now winter I decided to buy a stove too, it sits inside the tent and even when on low it belts out some fantastic heat. With the additional side plate it's great for keeping things warm. The only issue with such a small stove is the size of the flue, apparently they do need cleaning out on a regular basis, although it's not very high and I am hoping that I can clean it out by some ingenious method without having to turn it off or remove things. One idea was to use cobalt magnets as they are good up to 300 degrees. However I have found that one on the inside of the flue and one on the outside was just very hard work. Firstly they are very strong and therefore hard to move, secondly the one inside didn't always move with the outer one. I know this is because of the flue but it was worth a try.

Life is quite cosy in the tent even though it is quite cold, night times get down to around 4 degrees and daytime temperature hovers around the 10 degree mark. With the fire on inside it does get quite warm and I do have an electric 2kW fan for backup.

I work from the tent too which was working out well at the beginning, after a few days the novelty soon wore off for the dogs and they soon became restless as they were in the tent all day whilst I worked. The wind and rain lashed down for a while and the winds became so strong that it would lift the tent up at night. 

As cathartic as it is I do miss home comforts and the security of a roof over my head. It is a means to an end though and I am grateful to have this chance. The area is beautiful and the people here are wonderful. Well, it's only a few weeks to Christmas, fingers crossed at finding a house soon before the snow comes!

Bell Tent Life - too many nic nacks and not enough time!

Following on from the first few nights and a few weeks before the tent's first official outing I decided to get some things for it. Nothing like a last minute shop to get the stress levels up. I took a lot of inspiration from the Bell Tent group on facebook, what a lovely group!!!

Firstly I had to keep it all secret as it was a big surprise for my girlfriend Cheryl, all she knew at this point was I had bought some things and a tent. So I spent my mornings on eBay and Facebook collecting bits and bobs for the tent. Unfortunately not everything came on time but as I write this I am about to pack-up to see Cheryl later this week and take the new things with me. We live a few hours apart so I travel down to see her when possible, hence the tent as my house has now sold (see pic) and I will stay in the tent for the interim period while we find a house together. Dogs aren't allowed where she lives so the tent seemed like a good idea.

The gathering of things was a massive success, people kept coming over and asking to have a look in the tent as I started to adorn it with bunting and fairy lights - as I explained about the surprise more and more people came over. It did make me smile when a few of the couples walked away and the ladies said to the men "you never do things like that for me" and I figured I owed the men of the camp a beer haha.

So here's the tent in all it's glory. I'll write a little on each thing as I did comment on the group's post that I would tell everyone how and where I got things from.

Flooring:

Coir Matting sounded a touch harsh on the ol' feet so bought some rag rugs and some sheepskins. I also went to Asda to pick-up a fire-pit and ended up buying a huge thin black throw and a rubber backed mat. 

I didn't like the idea of walking straight in the tent so I looked in our wood store (have wood burning stoves at home) and found some softwood planks in various sizes and some paracord, then tied them all together with one continuous thread. The idea being that I could transport them around as a load of planks and create it each time. Although I ended up using it as firewood in the end to save packing it up.

Links:

• Rag Rugs £26 & £7.50
• Black throw
• Door Mat
• Sheepskins £18.00 & £20.00
• Deer Skins £13.50 x 2

Seating:

It's a long story but I have three carved African chairs, all for less than £20 each. The really small one you see in the top picture is great for in the tent. I only had one delivered at the time but I have a matching one to take this week. The larger chair was so comfy and spent it's time by the fire pit. They are just two pieces of wood that slot together which means they fold away flat.

• Chair 1 - 99p
• Chair 2 - £25.00
• Chair 3 - £11.50

Cooking:

The firepit came from eBay and the cooking tripod was from eBay but I was too late so I called the guy and found out that he was 45 minutes from the camp site so I drove down to meet him in a car park. A bargain at £20! locally picked up.

Links: 

• Firepit - £25.00
• Cooking Tripod £25.00 (Call: 07906372003)

Storage:

A simple box found on eBay for £30, I did prefer some others but time was tight. Although it did it's job perfectly well.

Link: 

• Wooden Box £29.00

Lighting:

I have more than what is shown in the photos as you can see from the links. I wanted a chandelier but I also wanted to make something as Cheryl is VERY good at making things and I wanted to show that I could turn my hand to something creative. 

So the lights are suspended from the main pole ring using some jack chain (hanging baskets) which you can get for about £2 a length. Using pliers I bent the links in places and hung a round parasol candle holder from it. Then I put another two chains down and hung some tealight lamps from that. I also have another tealight holder which didn't come on time, I plan to do the same and have all three in there. I found that searching for 'parasol candle holder' gave some awesome results but mainly from USA.

The little LED lights around the tent pole and the bed are battery powered. However the external ones... I can't remember where it was, I went shopping with a friend on the first night camping, had a drink, bought a toy unicorn and the rest was a blur :-/

Links:

• Top holder £2.00
• Two Lamps - £14.00
• New one £2.20
• LED lights £3.95 ea
• Bulb lights (not in tent) £9.49

Bunting / Accessories:

I got the bunting because Cheryl loves Alice in Wonderland so I found these on eBay. The signs on the pole I tied to the pole using some string that I found on the labels of the mats and the outside bunting I tied on using the guy ropes. Although they ended up ruined because the morning dampness soon lifted the ink off, to be expected though.

Links:

• Signs £6.95
• Bunting £5.99
• Buddha £19.99

And now for all the piccies.

Bell Tent Life

This year has been manic to say the least, so manic that the house is now sold and I have no-where to live per-se. I have to wait for my partner to sell hers and we don't want to rush into a new one. I cannot move to where she is as it's no dogs allowed so I figure the next best thing was to buy a tent. Yes it's nearly October and yes it does sound mental but after months of research I found out that I'm not the only one!

I have slept in it in the garden for a bit and also been away at a game fair which went really well, they really are worlds apart from a nylon tent and I would never go back even after this short time.

After much hunting around I found what looked like a good company called Dusky Deer (https://duskydeer.co.uk/). They just seemed quite personable on the site and explained the benefits well. So I parted with £399 of my hard earned pennies and purchased a 4m Bell.

Before this and whilst I was waiting for it to be delivered I spent weeks buying little things for it but kept it as a secret from my partner Cheryl. I took lots of inspiration from a fantastic group on facebook where everybody was so helpful and lovely. More on the bits and bobs that are in and on the tent >>here<<.

The tent came within a few days and I decided to get it pitched up so it could at least have one night of rain on it to weather it before I went away. I was amazed at how quick and easy they are to put up! 20 minutes and I was done, including putting some wooden guy doobreyfirkins on to replace the plastic ones.

The first night it rained, oh boy did it rain! So much that it came in the tent a little. Not through the fabric but through the zip on the groundsheet which was directly attributable to my shocking pegging out of the guy ropes leading to water wicking up underneath the skirt. That said, after 8 hours of heavy rain there wasn't enough to wet a tea-towel. The following morning was nice and sunny but amazingly it wasn't like a Chinese sweat shop inside like the nylon tent was. I was sold!

After a few days the weather dried up and I managed to pack it away, quickly realising that even though it was in the garden I needed to put something under the groundsheet so I didn't have to brush it all down as I packed it away so much. So the first purchase was an £8 blue groundsheet from B&Q.

Fitting it in the car was another story altogether. I bought, and bought, and bought, to the point that I couldn't see out of the rear view mirror and I could just see my left wing mirror. So the drive down was spent in the slow lane of the motorway due to not being able to see my blind spot!

The drive down was eventful as I had to pick-up a wooden box on the way and some camping fire irons. When I picked the box up I realised that I couldn't fit in in the car and had to unpack it in the middle of a street in Nottingham so I could put some things into it and put it back in the car! It dawned on me at that point that the firepit I was supposed to be picking up in Telford later certainly would not fit!

Long story short, it just fit and the first outing was a massive success.... more to follow.

Nice large bag with plenty of room.
No more trying to squeeze a tent down.

Lots of really strong pegs and some nice touches with the wooden guy things.

Really simple to lay out, few pegs into the groundsheet and then it's in with the pole.

One pole in and just the A frame to go.

Not a bad first job I thought, Even frank was impressed.

A quick lie down to take in how large it really was and I was immediately covered in spaniel.

 

Freeletics - 1 year on, a new start.

Hi all,

Can't begin to thank everyone enough for all the lovely comments on you tube and the emails of support. It has been a year or so now since I started on the road to fitness and after a bump in the proverbial road of life, I am now about to get back on track - so I thought it a good idea to do a quick update.

My motivation for Freeletics became that of a charity photo-shoot to appear in a fieldsport's calendar,

and I am glad to say that although I didn't end up with the six pack I was hoping to display on the day - I did manage to at least look somewhat more toned that previous years! All done in the best possible taste and with some fantastic support from the other models, here is me as June.

Quite a few people have asked if I kept doing Freeletics or tried anything else. I'll be quite frank, I slipped back into finding every excuse not to. Everything always seems worse when you are in the thick of it. My relationship of 4 years hit the rocks last year which was a tough decision for us, after Christmas business became unbelievably busy and before I knew it I had slipped back into working late, waking up tired and battling through a day full of distractions at work. Meals would get missed, I'd take  endless calls, trying to do everything at once to satisfy everyone else and all the time neglecting the one thing in life that needed to be taken care of first, me.

December was the peak of my stress, I had virtually stopped doing any exercise and from late December up to present day I suffered bouts of cold, two chest infections and in May I began to black out for no apparent reason, the last time was at my best friend's stag party - just one hour into the night I felt cold and sweaty and then passed out with little warning. Even work started to suffer as I felt sleepy half way through the day.

After numerous tests at the doctors and an ambulance it was pointed out that I had suddenly stopped exercising, eating unhealthy foods and most importantly, not drinking enough water. So the following month has been a one of drinking plenty of water, attempting to watch what I eat and finishing the antibiotics for the last chest infection. The doctors say I have an issue with my liver but the readings aren't very high. I have tried a couple of exercises and felt better but with the wheezing of the chest infection it wasn't the easiest.

I've struggled getting back to Freeletics because I thought I had no motivation and every time I logged onto the coach I'd see that I was on hell days and I would switch the app off and do some work instead.

Life has changed massively just lately, the doctors have given me OK about the blackouts, I have become more organised at work, finished some large projects off and met the most wonderful girl. Life is good and I have just finished my first day of Freeletics. I decided to follow my first 15 weeks to ease me back in gently. Here's to a bright and healthy future!