Alton Towers

Me and Amanda decided to go to Alton Towers today as it was a nice sunny day, and we also had a spare 2 for 1 voucher :-) We did the usual of buying passes that allowed jump the queues on certain rides, which we kept for the afternoon when it got busier. We rushed straight to the Forbidden Valley and went on Nemesis, then on rip saw where we got soaked. This was good as it was very hot.


In all we went on 11 rides, Nemesis we did twice. The best experience of the day was when we went on Rita, the roller coaster that propells you forward between 0 - 100kph in 2.5 seconds. We have done this ride before, but this time we decided to queue for the front row. This was a totally different experience, a terrifying one, as you can see from the photo above. That thing was bloody fast. I would definately do it again though :-)

This is probaby the last time we will go to tha park this year, so I hope they have some new rides for next year. They have closed down the black hole ride, so hopefully something will go there in it's place.

A walk near Calke Abbey

Today, seeing as the weather was really nice and sunny, Me and Amanda decided to go for a short country walk. We looked in our AA walking guide for the area and picked a walk around Calke Abbey near Melbourne, not far from Burton Upon Trent. This walk sounded ideal as it wasn't that long, about 3 and 3/4 miles.


We set of about 10.30am and headed for Calke Abbey. We actually got the start of the walk wrong, we was supposed to drive to a pub car park in a near by village, but we didn't read the instructions properly and ended up driving to the car park of the abbey. This didn't really matter too much, it just meant we had to start the walk a little further around.



The walk took us next to a pond, and up into a forest. We then headed through some farmers fields that were full of wheat crops.


As we got to the end of the forest part, we had to walk along the road, back down to the village and then into the entrance of the Calke Abbey grounds. As we walked up the long driveway we was walking through an area that was shaded by the tree's, this would have been great if it wasn't for the masses of flys and insects around that seemed to be very hungry.



When we got back to the carpark, we got a drink and then headed back to Derby. We stopped off at Costco to get a snack and buy some beer, as we are going to a BBQ around Neil and Carolines house tonight.


Today is the perfect BBQ weather, nice hot sun, no couds in sight, yet a gentle breeze. Just have to try and not get too drunk as we are going to Alton Towers again tomorrow :-)

First week at Egg

Well my first week at the online bank Egg is now finished. I was very nervous when I started on Monday, probably a fear of the unknown, but everything went very well. I am all set up and have even completed my first coding task and have been assigned something else to start on Monday, although I won't be writign about any of that here :-)

I wasn't really sure what it would be like working for a large company like a bank as I have only every worked for video games development companies, but from what I have experienced over the last week it feels very similar. Just lots of people good at what they do, getting on with it. I think you can normally get a good feel for a company within the first week, and I have come out of the first week with a good feeling about the place.

Derby summer beer festival

This evening Me and Neil went to the Derby CAMRA summer beer festival at the Assembly Rooms in Derby. We had a great time here trying out lots of different real ales. Non of that weak lager nonsence here ;-)
A lot of the beers this year had a football theme. The ones we tried were, World Cup, Western Front, and Svengal Tiger. We also tried a really nice Belgium beer called Piraat which was a whopping 10.5% in strength, but it tasted really nice. We also had an export Guiness that was 8.5%
There was a couple of decent bands on in the evening also. One of them was a really good band called Wam Bam Soul Band, and the other was called Gate crasher, who were a rock covers band. Both bands were good. Well they sounded good, but we were very drunk at that point.


The above is a poster for the Svengal Tiger beer that we tried. Neil liked it so much he took a picture. That reminds me, the pictures in this post were taken by Neil and are therefor his property, so they are not covered under the Creative Commons lisence on this site. That means if you want to copy the photos for any reason, you will need to contact neil and get his permission first.

Darrens Redundancy Party

I went around Darrens house early yesterday afternoon for a BBQ and party. Darren threw the party because the company he worked for (who I worked for before Full Fat) has just closed it's doors and made everyone redundant, so Darren got everyone around for a 'Happy Redundancy Party'. As per usual Darren filled half the garden with a huge bouncy castle. Great fun after 5 or 6 beers.

Greg and his son onthe bouncy castle.

Loads of people turned up, including my old boss Greg (above photo). Was quite strange to see my old boss jumping around on a bouncy castle :-) Also Elly, Rob, Mike, Neil, Simon, Leeanne , Mitch, Becky and paul from the old office were there. We started the afternoon off fairly relaxed with a load of beers, then as everyone got more drunk, the sillyness started on the bouncy castle.

Leeanne and elly

The BBQ was fired up about 5pm and we had loads of sausages, burgers and chicken. I was stuffed afterwards.

Mike, Mitch and Becky

Mitch thought it great fun to run into the living room every now and again and turn off the pump for the bouncy castle whilst people were on it. On one occasion Darren decided to mount the top part of the castle and try to ride it rodeo style :-)

Darren sitting on top of the bouncy castle.

Everyone was knackered after messing around on the bouncy castle. Forget gym memberships, just get a castle for the garden, probably much more effective, and certainly more fun.


Late in the evening, a few people decided to take a group photo with a little message for the company that just made them redundant. In true artistic fashion, the photo is named 'F*** You'. Wasn't me idea, honest ;-)

Me and Neil left around 9.30 as Caroline came to give us a lift home which was good as Ilkeston is quite far from Belper so would have been quite expensive in a taxi.

Mitch prooving he really is queer as folk with the pink hat, what will Becky think.