One Ton Class

At long last some decent weather here. I was forced in the morning to be at the barn near our property which the parish council bought last year along with the adjoining field which our horses use, We can at least for the foreseeable future use the field and probably indefinitely the barn. The parish council is always buying up fields as they need them to have as a reserve for their "environment" accounts. If they sign off any new green field industrial or housing estate s, they have to put an equivalent amount of land in to a no-build protected zone. One day they may well turn the field in to wet field flower conservation area - it is no good for agricultural use but the barn is of no real use to them.

The former owner from who we had rented the field and barn has at long last (a year) said he will remove the last remaining items, a pile of sawn timber planks which have been preventing us from using it fully. And today was the day.

When loaded he then pronounced we could arrange the disposal of all the remaining rubbish he had left. I did insist he took the four foot tall crucifix with his mother's nameplate which had been on her grave until the gravestone was made. Her funeral in 2013 was the only time I have ever been to a service in our local church.

After they had gone. spent the whole of the day until darkness trying to sort it out. Much of it is old sawn timber which I have sawn up and will keep us warm this winter. Also spent a lot of time with a generator and electric chainsaw-on-a-pole attempting to cut back tree branches threatening to damage the roof. Had to give up as most of the branches are large beech branches on the adjoining land belonging to the Bavarian State Forestry Authority. Luckily we get on well with the forester responsible, so should be able to sort out.

During the entire day, I had tried to get information about my son J and his mates doing today's London to Brighton Off Road Bike Ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation. Nominally 75 miles starting near Richmond.

Did get a 5:45am photo of the bike at Goring by Sea train station where J and his mates Dean, Dave and Sean took the train to London Bridge and from there set their pedometers or whatever one has nowadays to measure distance. Then uphill past Big Ben to the official start at Richmond and then downhill all the way to Brighton. Then a few pub crawling laps between Brighton and Worthing and they managed to clock up 162.1km or 101.3 miles

I can't find out how many thousands took part but the boys seem to have enjoyed themselves. Poor Sean had major gear problems but this team has a strict code of conduct "We are not in the Marines so we left him for dust" . Not quite clear from the garbled (beer on the mobile screen)  text messages whether Sean made it all the way eventually. Regardless, great effort by all of you guys and well done.

I suspect the 5233 calories J burnt off today were put back on by midnight but that he slept well.