Walk Near Goyt Valley

Today we managed to go out for a walk. This is the first walk we have done for quite a few weeks, so we was really looking forward to it. We went with Neil and Caroline, but they have done a lot more walks recently as they went on holiday to the Lake District a few weeks ago.




We was planning to do a walk near Kinder Scout, but as we drove closer to it, the weather started looking as if it would get quite bad, and we didn't want to be up there if the weather turned. So we went and done a walk near Goyt Valley in Buxton instead.

By the time we got started on the walk it was about 11.30am. A little later than we would normally start, but not really a problem. The weather was a little miserable and windy, but nothing we couldn't handle. About half way around the walk the weather turned for the worse and it rain really hard for a good couple of hours.

The rain was unrelenting. Luckily we took full water proofs, but it still was not pleasant :-) Great British weather eh!! The total walk was around 7.5 miles and we were all really tired afterwards. But it is all good exercise. There was quite a lot of ascent on this walk, especially near the end.

We got back to Neil and Carolines about 4.30 for a well deserved cup of coffee and some chocolate :-) We don't intend on doing much tonight, except lazing in front of the TV. Back to work tomorrow, but I have a kick boxing lesson at lunch time so I am looking forward to that.

Creature Interview On ChainDLK.Com

A couple of months ago I did an interview for chainDLK.com, an online independent music magazine. That interview has finally been published. You can read it HERE.

The photo was taken by Neil of NeilDuffinPhotography last year sometime, although I now weigh 3 stone less than in that photo. lol

Interesting Business Books

I recently read a couple of interesting business books that I thought I would mention here. The first is called 'The Long Tail' by Chris Anderson. This is essentially a popular economics books that discusses how the internet has changed the face of product distribution. These days, you no longer need a "hit" to survive in a market place. This book discusses all those niche products that are not hits, but can still generate lots of revenue because we no longer need limited shelf space in a shop. Instead we have the Internet, and long with the Internet we have generated unlimited demand. This book is relevant for all sorts of products. So if you sell music, self published books, photos, paintings etc, I recommend reading this book, it was certainly very interesting.



Next up we have a book called 'Buzz Marketing' by Mark Hughes. This is a book about marketing funnily enough. The book talks about how you don't actually need a huge marketing budget to make you products and company known. It discusses using creativity to generate buzz around a product. The author used to be the marketing director for half.com. One of the case studies is how they generated buzz in the press, by renaming a town in America to half.com. This book has certainly given me lots of ideas for the marketing of 'Electronic Critters'.

Both books are quite short so don't take too long to read. I highly recommend them though, they give you a different perspective on running small Internet businesses.

Holiday In Portugal

Me and Amanda got back from a nice holiday in Portugal on Saturday. It's taken a few days to get the photo's sorted out as I am lazy :-). Like our holiday to Portugal last year, we returned to Albufeira. Last year we stayed in the new town section which is quite clubby. We was so busy when there, that we never got around to visiting the old town.



This year Amanda booked a hotel in the old town. It's a real shame we didn't visit the old town last year as it is really nice and cosmopolitan. Our hotel, the Casa Michell Apartments, where a 5 minute walk from the main square. Our apartment was a self catering apartment. We decided to cook on alternative nights to eating out, so that helped control costs :-)

The weather was really nice. The only slightly dodgy day was the Tuesday. It was cloudy with a breeze, but it was still warm. The rest of the week it was about 27 degrees, so nice tans all around.

One thing we really wanted to do on this holiday was go quad biking again. We never got to do it last year, so Amanda found a company that runs it in albufeira.

The company Amanda found was called Quad Ventura. This company was run by a British couple (Claire and Rory) who moved out to Portugal to take over the company in February. We booked their top excursion, which is a 4 hour tour into the country.

You need to take your driving license though as parts of the tour involves driving on the road, although these roads are not busy. But the law is the law :-) The Bikes have limiters on them also, so you can't go above 55kph. But believe me this is fast enough when you are that close to the ground.

On the Wednesday we booked a boat trip. This was around the coast and stopped at a nice beach in the afternoon for a BBQ. One of the things on offer was BBQ'd sardines. I thought they were really nice although Amanda has a thing about cooked fish with their heads on, so she had the chicken instead :-)

The night life in the Albufeura old town is different to the new town. Instead of loud clubs and teenagers puking their guts up all over the place, the old town was full of chilled out bars and restaurant's around a square. The ambiance here was really nice and chilled out.

The final trip we booked was a Jeep Safari. We did one of these last year and really enjoyed it. One word of warning though. If you book it though First Choice / Thompson, the jeep is likely to be closed top and the trip would be crap. We booked through a tour agent in town and got a nice open top jeep.

This means when the driver goes off road you can stand up in the back. This is a great experience. The driver doesn't really go that fast so it is easy to hold on. Well, kind of, it did get fast at some points, but it was all part of the enjoyment.

All in all a great week away and very relaxing. We both have nice tans to show for the week. It's a shame it is over. 1 week isn't really enough, but there you go. I have been back at work a few days now, so crashed back down to reality :-)