Weekend Away

This weekend I had initially planned to go on a ride with the London Brompton Club to Hove (starting at Richmond). However, a text from my parents meant that I ended up changing my plans, and headed out instead to Dorset for the weekend.

Complete change of plans and I something I hadn’t planned for at all (I got the text at 15:00 on Friday afternoon, so I bought my train tickets online and headed to Waterloo at 17:00 when I finished!) Nothing like being a bit spontaneous I guess!

Getting the train down was easy enough - brief cycle from Kings Cross to Waterloo and then jump on a direct train. However, one thing I noted was that South West trains don’t have a lot of luggage space (practically none - sort it out South West!) so I was concerned with where I was going to get to leave my Brompton. I needn’t have worried to much.

Plenty of room in the disabled section (for bike and legs!) - obviously if it needed to be used, I’d have moved. However, it meant that I could keep an eye on the bike all the way down.

Saturday

Most of the day was spent with the family at a food festival but I managed to get out and about in the afternoon and head to the coast. We were staying not far from the coast, so it wasn’t a particularly strenuous ride. However, there was a bike hill separating me from the coast which was easy to get up one way, less so the other!

It gave a good view before descending into Lulworth though.

Then Lulworth Cove was a nice place to sit and visit for a while.

I got a few looks for turning up on the Brompton but I wouldn’t change my trusty steed! Not many other bikes I could have just nipped on the train at rush hour with from London!

Played around with the Microsoft Photosynth app on my new Nokia Lumia 920.

Seems to work reasonably well, but does seem to lose some details if you look closely. Not sure if that that’s the camera, the app or the photographer!

The way back, I ended up cycling a bit further - I added on a loop. I wasn’t quite finished riding and wanted to look around the area a bit. Nearby is the Winfrith nuclear research site, which is currently being decommissioned. There’s something that’s always intrigued me about nuclear power and I enjoyed the adaption of STALKER - both the game and film (which are loosely based on the book Roadside Picnic which isn’t set in Chernobyl, the film and book are). So I couldn’t resist a slightly closer look. The surrounding area was fairly desolate and I couldn’t help but imagine similar scenes to STALKER itself (though, hopefully there was less radiation around me than in the game and Chernobyl/Pripyat itself!)

I stopped to get a picture at the top of a short, steep hill before heading onwards.

Sunday

Sunday saw the family head over to Weymouth for breakfast and a brief walk along the sea.

Turns out that we had arrived in time for the Veterans Day parade. I managed to get a few pictures, however, not many of them came out particularly well.

Not sure whether that’s the case of the camera or the photographer as it was my new phone - the camera does have a dedicated button and I’m trying to decide if that’s the cause of it not focussing on the parts that I want. I’ll just have to take more photos to find out!

Anyhow, it was a pleasant weekend and not one I would have expected to do!