Greenbelt

Three, two, one

This year's Greenbelt is the third festival that I'm not a Trustee. It's the second that I'm having a take-away curry at home on the Thursday night instead of at the Everest, and the first year I don't get a credit in the Festival Guide. The slow disconnect continues.

It's also the first year in a long time that the large group of friends who always used to come to Greenbelt aren't heading over. That last thought is the saddest one.

The run-up to the festival's been rather stressful: in addition to the iOS Festival Guide app (which I've written for the past six years now), I've also developed a new Android app and users familiar with the old one aren't entirely happy with the change. This is curious since both apps seemed to go down well at Solas.

Still, at least the weather forecast looks significantly better than last year's.

Coastwalk

The Plan, update 2

Our walking year began badly, with no miles of coastline completed in the first three months of the year.

April through June fared much better, so that at the halfway point through the year with 282 miles under our belts we had pretty much regained our target of 50 miles a month.

Then the summer came.

Two months later we're still at 282 miles. Will we finish England by February? I hope so, but we'll have to be a bit more determined to do it.

The plan for the remainder of the calendar year is to complete the three west coast gaps that have been hanging over us since the first year of this three year plan, as well as push a bit further on the north-east.

With any luck we'll go into January with only 100 miles of Northumberland left.

We've some great walks ahead. I hope we can enjoy them rather than just focus on the goal of finishing England within fifteen years of starting.

[Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2011]