Christmas decorations are going up, town is too busy, and for the 4th year running Yell have announced redundancies in the I.T department.

Well, it's my first proper outing with the new laptop. When I decided to change over from the more traditional gaming tower to a laptop the plan was for better portability, so as a suitable test I brought it along to Throne of Skulls (hereafter referred to as ToS...it's Games Workshops big event they run at their headquarters).

As is tradition (or will quickly become one), in the off-season I tend to start painting en masse, as the weather and lack of daylight keeps me from training.

On Saturday morning I bought and installed Minecraft, mainly to see what all the fuss was about.

I spent far too long this weekend not really understanding Civ 5. While it downloaded I attempted to read the manual (all 230+ pages of it), and got a basic idea of combat, play mechanics etc etc. Did the basic tutorial, and won it in about 10 minutes.

It's been a long, long race season for me this year. Certainly a tough one, and one that finished on a great high with Reading Triathlon, which pretty much goes thrgouh my village.

On a whim I've decided to enter Spiky Clubs yearly Blood Bowl tournament...6 games over 2 days.

It's been about a month since I got back from Lands End...a fairly banal train journey from Penzance, and Gill met me at Reading station (still dragging that damn bag!)

The 3rd part of the notes on my cycle ride from John O'Groats to Lands End. The previously, and fairly un-exciting, episodes can be found here and here.

2nd part of the recap of my protracted cycle from John O'Groats to Lands End. The rivetting (and fairly cycling-based) installment can be found Here!

Day 4 - East Renfrewshire to Ullswater

Distance - 210km