Birds, planes and automobiles... boyo!

A three hundred and thirty two miles round trip to Colwyn Bay in North Wales today to go to a meeting was a pleasant distraction. Three and a half hours each way, a four and a half hour meeting which was very informative and professionally useful was not at all boring for me. I've been travelling to such meetings and for other things for years and although I don't do it too often, I actually enjoy it - sad I know.

My hire care was a Vauxhall Zafira which was comfortable enough if not a little noisy but the day didn't start well when I couldn't get the sat nav to accept the post code or the address of the place I was going to. I must have tried every combination in the book, but it wasn't having it until it suddenly dawned on me that my destination wasn't in England. When I specifically chose 'Wales' as the country instead of the default England, it found it immediately.

Getting up at stupid o'clock isn't fun but it was pleasant enough this morning with a chilly clear blue sky and glorious sun and I hope the long day will make me sleep tonight. Road works and rush hour traffic around Manchester and Liverpool was a pain, but otherwise the trip was uneventful. There was drizzle about for a short time in North wales when I arrived there, but even at 10.30am when the sun came out there, the car temperature clock showed it as 6 degrees Celsius which was still mighty chilly.

The vista across the sea was interesting with several wind farms containing what seemed like many dozen wind turbines dotted the horizon off-shore. A folly Victorian castle adorned the hillside on the approach to Colwyn Bay. I'm not a stranger to North Wales, we had our honeymoon there in Barmouth 31 years ago. It's a lovely part of the world, green, hilly and not over populated in the main. I hadn't been to Colwyn Bay itself before and it seemed very nice, but sadly, I never got chance to take any photographs at all, there were no parking spots or laybys on the A55.

Impressively, during the journey, I spotted three very large birds of prey within a few miles, two high up and one coming in to land in a forest next to the road. This was a wonderful sight even though I have no idea what they were. The feathered edges of the wing tips, what looked like a white flash underneath two of the birds distinguished them, but I am no twitcher and haven't got a clue of the species.

Less impressively, I saw a number of vapour trails as the larger silver birds in the sky began their dominance of the skies and the air transport system starts to swing into full flow again.

Hope the week is going well for you.

Thanks to here for today's topical joke with a (tenuous) Welsh theme.

After Dai Jones got elected to the Council, he insisted on everyone calling him Councillor Jones.

Coming back late from the pub after celebrating his election he made a great noise trying to get into his house.

"Is that you Dai?" shouted his wife down the stairs.

"Certainly not", he replied drunkenly, "it's Councillor Jones."

"Well, come on up quick then, we've only got a few minutes before Dai comes back from the pub."

Chat soon

ta-ra.