Mrs Annabel and Tom Brigman

One of the best things for us about living in London again has been the great chance to renew the friendships with some of my old mates from England from when I lived here over 10 years ago.

Last weekend we were able to go to one of my old friend Annabels wedding to Tom.

Annabel looking beautiful in her wedding dress.

It was a great wedding out in the country (Shropshire!) a good 200+ks north or london in an awesome old country manor.

Here are a few pics of the night and the action on the dancefloor:

Tom greeting the guests. Tom's also signed up for the Etape too!





Mr and Mrs Brigman working it on the dancefloor.





The old Enfield contingent. Gav, Paul, Paul W, Anna, Em, Kirst and Katie


Gav and Paul




The team on the dancefloor.

Ive got to get on of those "real" bow ties. Somehow the pre-tied bow-tie doesnt quite cut it!

We dont have a car in london so we decided to join up to this new car club called streetcar (http://www.mystreetcar.co.uk/) for the trip. Basically you pay a small one off membership fee and then u can hire a VW Golf for about 4 pound an hour. A whole lot cheaper than buying a car! The cars are scattered all over londons streets (there is about 5 within a km of our place) and all you do is book over the internet, rock up to the car with a special pin no and grab the keys out of the glovebox and you are away.


All went well and the wedding was great until we got in the car the next day to drive home only to realise that the car wouldnt start. At first i thought i had just left the lights on (classic GP) but further inspection suggested that i hadnt and the battery was fine. After a few calls to streetcar we discovered that there was a problem with their digital locking system, so all we needed was a mechanic to come out and fix it up. Easy if your in London, not so good your in the middle of nowhere.

Its never good when u are stuck with a broken down car a long way from home, surrounded by cows!

Em hangin out with the cows...

Not happy Jan

Despite the wait we still had an awesome weekend and wish Annabel and Tom all the best in their new adventure together as Mr and Mrs Brigman!

Etape 2008

The course has been released, stage 10 of the Tour, Pau to Hautacam in the Pyraneese. Ah no....thats one big hill in the middle!

http://www.letapedutour.com/2008/ETDT/presentation/us/parcours.htm

New challenge - Etape du Tour 2008

After watching the Tour de France this year both on the TV and when they came past us in stage 17 in the Dordogne, Ive officially caught the cycling bug. Anyway over a few beers at the pub with some mates i somehow convinced myself that i could give it a go and do a stage myself! (in case you couldnt guess this is Gav writing here rather than Em!)

The Etape du Tour is a stage of the Tour De France (typically done a week before the real riders take it on) and is open to the general public. Each year around 8500 people from all over the world take part. The Etape du Tour features roads closed to traffic, and free food and water stops and is organised by the Tour de France organisers.

Last yrs stage was one of the toughest of the whole tour de France. Covering around 2o0km and including five huge Pyrenean cols (mountain climbs) all in 35 degree heat. The tallest summit was over 1700m, while overall you had to climb 4000m of hills and the average rider took around 10 hrs to finish!

Anyway this yrs stage is being announced on thursday but as a result of excess demand you have to commit yourself before the stage is announced. So as of today I am officially locked in!

Good news is that a few friends (including Caius) have also fired up so there should be a few other people to share the pain with. Anyway in preperation im going to have to loose some serious KGs and put in a lot of kms on the bike to get ready so plan is to keep a bit of a running summary of how the training is going so i can look back on it after hopefuly completing the race in July next year. So stay tuned.... only 8.5 mths to go!

In the meantime if your into cycling, check out this guys blog of his experiences and lead up to doing the etape du tour this year...

http://etape2007.blogspot.com/