Quite a bit’s happened in the last few weeks, so I thought I’d better do a quick catch up and write about some of them… I’m manically busy with Preview stuff at the moment – got to try and get it all done for Monday because they need it for a presentation in New York, so that should be fun!

In my last post I mentioned that I had a ‘possibly interesting weekend ahead’… well I ended up in Wales at Cefn Lea for the Reach weekend away, which I suppose was interesting in a way! The last time I went on it was back in 2004, and there were quite a few people there who I hadn’t seen for ages, which was quite strange, but I guess in a way, I am glad I went on it, though it was pretty tough at times. I’m not sure what I was really expecting from it all, but maybe that’s something I need to reflect on over the coming weeks.

One cool thing about the weekend was that I managed to catch up with Russ (from uni and who I used to share a house with in Birmingham) on the Saturday night – he lives a few miles from Cefn Lea so popped over to say ‘hello’. We had a really good chat, and I can’t believe it’s about 3 years since we last met!

I may write some more about the Reach stuff in the future because I know I’ve been a bit vague – (or I may not!) – but I think I’ll leave it there at the moment, except to say that I’ve put the photos that I took here.

Then last Friday, I met up with Jamie who just wanted to get out of the city for the evening so we planned to go for a walk in the evening up by Kinder reservoir in Hayfield. But we got stuck in traffic going into Glossop and by the time we parked up the car to walk up to the reservoir it was already pitch black! We’d taken torches because we’d expected it to get dark whilst we were walking, but I wasn’t expecting there to be no light from the start! We did an hour walk, up to Kinder reservoir, where we could see a big house lit up on Kinder Scout (Jamie reckoned they were just showing off ‘cos they’d really gone over the top with the floodlights!), then we headed off west over some moorland to get ourselves heading back towards the village. It was great actually – being out in the middle of no-where (without even a phone signal!) and seeing the countryside only lit by the moon and stars was cool.

We made our way back down towards the village, and the original plan was to get a meal in the pub there, but they’d just stopped serving food which was a bit annoying! So we grabbed a pint and crisps before heading back here for takeaway (which was a bit grim – Jamie’s kebab was particularly rough!) Had a great night though – I’d love to do more stuff like that… it can get so boring just working all the time – although I usually end up feeling knackered after going anywhere with Jamie!! He’s much more active than me!

And finally, last weekend was both James’ and Helen’s birthdays, and I went along to a pub meal they arranged on Sunday afternoon in Didsbury. The plan changed twice because it’s quite difficult to find somewhere to eat for so many on a Sunday lunchtime! But we ended up at the Old Cock Inn and it was actually a pretty nice pub – I always had the impression that it was a bit of a smoky old-man’s pub, but I think they must have done it up recently, because I’d definitely go there again.

There were about 15 of us there altogether, and again it was nice spending time with some of the guys I don’t see all that often really. I took some photos on my phone and they’re now here.