PeteandLauren.com

Hi All

We have left the dramatic coastline of the Orkneys behind us now and are in a port called Montrose on the East Coast of Scotland.  Today I had a chance to take a walk around the town and managed to snap a few pictures along the way too.

One thing I loved about the place was that everywhere was spotless.   There is no litter lying around, gardens for the most part are immaculate albeit it a little sparse and public areas like parks and things are very well maintained.

The town itself is small.  I walked pretty much everywhere today and it was probably only a 10 to 15 kilometer stroll.

So, Scotland, I take back all those terrible terrible things I said about you.  Montrose has lifted my opinion of your land greatly.

For the pictures of my walk look in the gallery under Montrose or click HERE.

Pete

P.S.  It hasn’t even rained since I have been here so that is some more brownie points for you.

Hi Folks

I am now back at work and we are up in the Orkney Islands.  The ship I am on is called the Sovereign and we are installing some enormous power cables.

There are two different areas in which we are working, the first is off an island called Eday and we were installing cables for a Tidal power generating system that utilise the strong tides in the area.  While on this site we notice rates of up to 6 knots at times.  So they certainly picked the right spot for it.  The second  site we worked on is a wave site off the west coast of the mainland in a place called Billia Croo, were wave power pushes against another contraption and also generates power.

For more info on how the projects work and what is being done check out the European Marine Energy Centre website.  There is loads of information here and a couple of really interesting videos showing the work being done and the area we are working in.

Our work started by running a cable to the shore.  We call this installing a shore-end.  For pictures of the process have a look at the gallery under work and then the Orkney Islands folder or click HERE.  Once the cable was floated safely ashore all the buoys were cut off and we moved the ship off laying the cable as we go.

More to follow on this topic.

Pete

As a PS to this story an article was run in the local paper featuring the Sovereign and our exploits.  Click here for the link.

On Wednesday two weeks ago I started building a bed for Kayden.   He and Kyra are now sharing a room and his little cot is just too small for him. So the build commenced. This was going to be a bunk bed type design.

When I built Kyra’s bed I had in the back of my mind that we might want the kids to share a room so I designed her bed to be square and modular so that I could add another on top of it at a later stage. Naturally design came first, most of the hard work was done during the build of Kyra’s bed so it was just a matter of sourcing wood and getting it cut to size.

First, I started off marking up all the pieces of wood. This is where the furniture screws and dowels would be placed to keep the whole thing together. I am a bit hopeless when it comes to this aspect of the build so everything had to be checked and then checked again. After about two or three hours I had all the pieces marked up and it was time to start drilling. A good few hours of work and I was ready to dry fit the frame together. By nightfall of day one I had most of the frame assembled.

The next thing to come was the ladder.  Strangely enough it took forever but by  the end of day two I had it all clamped together and glued.

The next two days were spent sanding all the pieces of the bed to a smooth, fine finish.  At night while the sanding was going on I started planning colour schemes.  First I took a picture of the beds in their stacked position and then used photoshop to see how the colours would look.

Once the colours were decided it was time for masking off the different parts with masking tape and then we started painting.  The paint we used was Plascon Double Velvet and had names like Granny Green, Nabula Red and Crazy Daisey Yellow and Greek Island blue

Eventually it was all done and the kids love it to bits.  Pictures can be seen in the Gallery under the Bloody sweat and tears folder in the Kayden Bed section.

We decided to have another family outing 2 weeks ago. This time our destination was Mitchell Park in Durban. We’d been there before, but only had a picnic and looked at the beautiful gardens and let the children ride on their bikes for a bit.

This time we decided to pay the “whopping” R4 (rand) entrance fee and decided to go and look at all the animals. I was most surprised to see how much further the park extended. The park comprises mostly of birds and of course the vervet monkeys running around loose, which I think will potentially become a problem, due to their numbers. But we were fortunate to see raccoons – a first for me. They also had tamarins, marmosets, meerkats, flamingos and as I’ve  said, an array of other birds too. The crocodiles they used to have are no longer their unfortunately. I looked up the history of Mitchell Park, which was named after Sir Charles Bullen Hugh Mitchell. It used to be an ostrich farm which is hard to believe, if you look at where it’s situated in a, now, densely populated residential area. The ostrich farm venture was unsuccessful and they converted it into a zoo. I’m told that there used to be a greater variety of animals than there are now, which included lions and leopards and of course the crocodiles that I mentioned earlier. The most famous animal, presented to the city council by the Maharajah of Mysore in 1928, was Nellie the elephant who would woo the crowds with her tricks & intelligence.

Today the magnificent gardens, rolling lawns, enormous trees that provide ample shade and the large play ground for the children attract many families to the park on weekends.

You may have to keep a watchful eye on your food, as the vervets have no  qualms about helping themselves to snacks left lying around unguarded. They’re harmless enough, but if you don’t like sharing, then keep your food close to you or hidden.

With so many people, these days, living in upstairs apartments or flats, or even a family just wanting a change of scenery, I would definitely recommend Mitchell Park as an ideal spot for any family to spend the day outdoors.

Hi Folks It has been a while since I have posted to our blog so I thought I would ease myself into it with a trusted favourite.  1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first photographs. It is hard to believe that this piece of kit is floating around us. Most of us don’t even have cars that old and yet it is still there sending back great pictures of places we will never go to.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh took off from New York to cross the Atlantic for Paris aboard his airplane the "Spirit of St. Louis." The trip took 33 1/2 hours. Obviously there was no ash cloud to worry about then.

 1506 – In Spain, Christopher Columbus died in poverty.

 As for Birthdays today, it is Cher’s . She was born in 1946 making her 64 years old today. Thus demonstrating that the bunny huggers are not wrong, plastic really does last forever. 

And last but not least, today two years ago the great Frank Sinatra died.  As it turns out Frank Sinatra died on the 14th of May 1998.  So he doesn’t belong in this post at all.  Ain’t that a bugger!!!