The ten to two club

That was that then. A weekend mountain biking in the Peak District followed by a week being Dad - looking after the kids while Liz was off on a jolly.

The Peak District is great for cycling and yet shamefully ignored by myself. It's only 90 minutes by car and there's some great routes, all of which are very hilly and contain much technical stuff: marvellous.

Rich Eatough came up to meet me and Jo J from the North Leeds biking crew 'gatecrashed' in on the Saturday night for the Sunday ride. The drinking was all her fault I'm sure.

It was the first camping of the year as well which was fun, and the weekend also included my first hangover for what I've calulated as 6 years. On white blinking wine too - something we thought was 'safe' to drink at will. Mind you given that three of us downed a 3 litre box plus another bottle at the tents and then more in the pub afterwards - what did we expect? Duh.

But (as we are so dedicated) we got out as promised on Sunday albeit on a foreshortened excursion after having spent most of the morning asleep and then in a cafe trying to get ride of the nausea. Yep - we all suffering from Richter scale hangovers and we eventually made a start on the bikes "at the crack of ten to two". We valiantly managed some cruel climbs at the start and kept going. Our pay off was the wondrous complete traverse of Rushup Edge, in glorious sunshine and with the wind behind us. Fabulous. Mountain biking rocks.

The kids were as ever brilliant for the week. It's an odd place inside the bubble of being a full time parent. Just concentrating wholly on keeping the kids entertained and nothing else being a priority. Good fun really. We all enjoyed ourselves anyway. It was a week of parks and more parks; plane and train museums in York and the Play Barn (inevitably). Also we did an excellent visit to Five Locks Rise near Bingley and the kids were fascinated by the locks on the canal watching boats go through.

So, back to it. The summer's here though, eh?