my outdoor life

Every journey I make sees me crossing an Irish Bridge At the end of the lane that leads to my house. Although it is listed as a Ford, it is actually an Irish Bridge. The difference being a ford always has water running over it where an Irish Bridge is designed to allow water to flow under it until the river floods, then the water flows over it.

Now If you follow my blog, you will know I have a landrover Discovery, so naturally I get quite excited when the Ford floods and the river is in spate.

Last week we had an awful lot of rain, I think it went on for nearly 2 days. As expected the ford flooded so i jumped in the landrover to see how bad it was. When I got there it was only about a 8 inches deep, but flowing really fast. Naturally I went through it a few time just for fun. It was probably at the max depth I would take our VW Golf through but easy stuff for the Landrover.

I of course filmed it for all to see.

(Excuse the spelling mistake in the title)

The next morning after more heavy rain we woke up to the neigbours saying it was impassable! Great I thought a real test for the Landrover. When I got down there It definitely was worse, it was close to 15 inches and a torrent of water flowing. So Just to be cautious I raised to air suspension for maximum clearance and slipped it into low range gears. This makes it almost impossible to stall, very handy when going wading through a flood. Of course it went through without drama.This was all at 7.30am by 2.30pm it had risen a little further, So I decided to grab my camera and get some piccys.

And here they are.

At this point I realised I didn’t have my Iphone to film it So I decided to come back along with Bailey (my dog) and record a little of the action.

Over the next few days the rain stopped and the river subsided and went back to it’s usual state of tranquility.

So If you ever pass through Ulgham and see a strange man doing an Indian rain dance, it’s probably me! Bring on the rain I say!!

OK here is a quick easy and very cheap modification you can do on your Land Rover Discovery. L.E.D interior lighting. now if you own a Discovery like me then you are probably aware of it’s pretty dim overhead interior lights.

So here is how I solved that problem for less than £10!

I replaced the original festoon bulbs with direct replacement LED’s from Ebay.

these ones for the front two. click here

And this one for the back click here

I went for the more powerful one on the back as I wanted to really light the boot space well.

Ok here are some pics so you can see what I’m talking about.

This photo shows the two LED replacement bulbs, the smaller one is for the front and passenger lights and the larger one is for the boot light. You can see the smaller one is a direct replacement for the original festoon bulb the larger one has a sticky back so you can stick it in place with a cable extension to a festoon adapter.

The bottom image shows the two LED’s with the original festoon bulb and I also put my fingers in to give you an idea of scale.

Only tool needed is a small flat head driver to help pop open the plastic covers. Here you can see me doing the rear seat compartment.

Simply pull out the old bulb and replace with the new.

One minor problem though, the rear passenger light seems to have a slightly tighter gap between the connections, which means it wont sit properly. I found the it hold it good enough to make a connection though so no probs really. you can see from the photo below how it looks when it seats.

OK quick test to see it’s the right way round and BINGO!! we have light!

Now onto the boot light.

Again a super simple procedure. Just insert the festoon adapter, check its the correct way round ( you wont do any damage if it’s not) pull off the sticky back and stick the light panel to something within the housing. ( I used one of the nuts that hold the unit in place).

And that is it. 5 minutes of your time and your done.

Here is a quick before and after so you can see the difference. The camera exposure settings are identical so you can judge accurately how much brighter they are.

BEFORE

AFTER

Pretty cool eh?

So what do you think? worth wile modification?

OK those of you who follow my garden exploits, will know how much I enjoy growing my own fruit & veg. Recently though I made the decision I wanted to grow much more fruit.Until now I have only been growing blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. I have always liked the idea of my own mini orchard. The thing is The dwarf fruit trees are quite expensive, I mean anywhere between £15 to £25 each for a 2-3 year old tree. Now as I wanted to grow apples pears & plums that means I’m looking at £45 to £75 just for the trees alone! I could buy an awful lot of fruit from the green grocer for that much!

As luck would have it there was very little on TV last week and I found myself watching a cable channel selling gardening stuff. Oh my god I couldn’t believe it when they had a 15 minute advertorial selling Mini orchards dwarf fruit trees. At first I thought you had to ring up and buy there and then, now that’s not me. I like to do a little more research before I buy. So you can imagine how happy I was when I found their website selling for exactly the same price as the TV offer. These are definitely the best value you are going to find anywhere on the internet and super cheap too! click here to check it out. See I wasn’t lying.

So I ordered my very own dwarf fruit trees, one conference pear tree, one braeburn apple tree, one victoria plum tree and one morrelo cherry tree. I also decided to buy 4 of the 30Lr pots to plant them in.( in case we ever move I want to take them with me).

Took delivery of my dwarf fruit trees today

Take a look at the first picture this is how they come. Oh and delivery took about 12 days.

That’s Bailey, My black lab in the background, he’s got green paws too!

As you can see they are well wrapped with extra protection around the roots.

This is how they look when they are all unwrapped. As you can see they come as bare root.

So my first job was to get them separated and get the dry roots into a bucket of water. Apparently this brings them back to life quite quickly.

Next I filled my pots a quarter full with an all round neutral ph compost.

From here I just positioned each tree nice and straight with the root ball approx 3 inches above the top of the pot and filled them up with a mixture of soil,compost and a little blood fish & bone fertilizer. You can see from the picture that I have filled to about 2 inches from the top of the pot.

OK last thing to do is water them in thoroughly. Plenty of water to give them a good soaking.

And that’s it, four dwarf fruit trees that will give me lovely fresh fruit for the next 40 years!

So there you have it, my own mini orchard of dwarf fruit trees I just can’t wait now until the summer so I can start picking my very first orchard harvest.

Don’t forget for the best price anywhere on the internet ( and believe me when I say I have researched this)

Here is their own video explaining it all. To go to their website

click here

____________________________CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW

And here is the BBC’s guide to growing fruit trees. BBC GUIDES

For the first time in years I actually had a Saturday off work and it was glorious weather so I thought I would lace up the old hiking boots and get out into the hills.

So after a quick phone call to my bezzy mate Mark (yep that’s the same Mark that regularly writes guest posts on here) to ask if he wanted to join me, a super quick response of ” I’ll be there for 2 O’clock” and that was my afternoon sorted.

Taken from forest car park on my Iphone 4

So we decided to have a run over to Rothbury and take a walk up Simoneside crags. Parking in the forest car park ( not the one out in the open) we set off up the trail to the immediate left. It is fairly easy going at this point but as you enter into the denser part of the forest you start to climb, you also have to really pick your foot steps here because there are a lot of exposed roots and it would be easy to catch one and fall.

Once you are up the first climb you come to the forestry commission access road, here you turn left. This part is really quite easy as it is a steady climb for maybe a mile or so.

You can also see Simonside on you left all the way up.

Once you get to the highest part of the road there are 3 benches so you can take a well earned rest and sample the views.

Now if your feeling brave you can turn off the track and head up the Simonside crags. I wasn’t to sure about doing it as I had my dog Bailey with me, going up isn’t a problem but when your trying to gently make your way down the steep and treacherous crags a 6 stone bundle of fun pulling you down at his pace  is not great.

Never the less I had come this far so I was going up.

It is pretty hard going scrambling up the crags but well worth it for the view once your up there.

Mark and Bailey on the crags

The view from here is breath taking you can easily see  the Alcan blast furnace on the Northumberland coast near Ashington (about an hours drive) and to the North the Cheviot hills are in plain sight.

As we made are descent we heard the loudest bang, like thunder only 10 times more powerful, a split second later the whole hillside shook like an earthquake. This sent Bailey into a frenzy and of course we were a bit taken back.

We still don’t know what it was but decided it must have been a sonic boom from the near by Otturburn ranges.

Did any one else hear or feel this? It is quite a strange thing to experience I can tell you.

After a short break for a drink and an energy bar we headed back of down the hillside.

All in I think it probably took about an hour and a half to walk but might have been quicker if it wasn’t for Bailey stopping for a sniff every two minutes along the way.

I can definitely recommend this walk if are looking for a short venture into the countryside.

I have been wanting one of these for ages and decided to bite the bullet. The Land Rover Discovery series 2 comes with a standard tow ball which is great if you tow trailers and caravans. I don’t do either. What I do want is a super strong recovery point. A lot of people think it is OK to use the two eyelets which attach to the tow bar fixings. They are not recovery points!! They are lashing points to secure the vehicle in transit. I’m sure they would be OK to tow a car along the road with but anything more taxing and your asking for trouble.

I also know a lot of people wrap a tow rope around the standard tow ball. This is really dangerous as it is not un common for the tow ball to snap when under heavy strain. You really wouldn’t want to be in the path of that thing when it’s coming at you at speed!

So One cheap and easy way to gain a really strong and secure recovery point is with a tow jaw like the one I have just purchased. A solid proven bit of kit For heavy duty recovery and all for under £40! bargain.

It is a really easy conversion too.

Top pic shows original tow ball that is going to be removed. It is simply two nuts and bolts that need loosened. So to make it a little easier I sprayed them with WD40 about an hour before I started the job.

Now you can see the tow ball removed.

Next you simply offer up the new tow jaw and using the same nuts, bolts and spacer you just tighten them up to 220 N·m using a torque wrench.

And that is it fitted Simples.

What I have found though is my heavy duty tow strap Is to big to fit straight on. It is supposed to be a quick fit shackle but the tow jaw is to wide to allow it to quickly fit around it. As you can see in the first picture.

No problem though, it just means using it as a normal shackle, so pull the heavy duty cir-clip out (pic 2 and 3)

An simply remove the jaw pin like in the photos below. ( more WD40 helps here).

Finally place the straps “shackle” within the jaw, replace the pin and re insert the cir-clip.

And there you have it safe strong and effective all for £40!

What do you reckon? have you got a better way to do this on a disco 2? If so let me know.

Mention running to me and I immediately thing of lone individuals pounding the pavements, passing the housing estates and occasionally going “off road” and crossing the grass of the local park. Now I know all about fell runners and cross country running too. But It has never really inspired me to go out running myself.

I now stand corrected! Whilst scouring the internet for subjects that interest me I stumbled across a guy named Killian Jornet.

This guy puts a new perspective to running. Take a look at this video I found, it will  both blow you away and inspire you to want to do something exciting!

Well it has been one year since i bought my dwarf fruit trees from here. they certainly had a good year of flowering and growing thicker and stronger roots but i have to be honest only the Braeburn apple tree bore any fruit! That to me is absolutely fine though as although they say you should get fruit the first year i never really believed they would produce a substantial yield.

Anyway It is spring again and they are all starting to produce some decent size buds so I’m hoping for good things from them this year. I will try and take some pics throughout the summer season and add them to this post so I can give you an idea of how mine are doing and what you could expect from yours if you buy the same ones.

Oh here is a link to the original post http://myoutdoorlife.co.uk/dwarf-fruit-trees

And here are the first pics from this year. (this is the dwarf fruit trees second year!)

conference pear tree

victoria plum tree

braeburn apple tree

morrello cherry tree

Come the end of the summer of 2011, we were starting to get a lot of reports about the forth coming winter of 2011/12. Meterologists were predicting another severe winter, in fact they thought it would be worse than the last two! Now if you remember our last two winters, we did have some pretty severe snow fall and long periods of minus temperatures meant it stayed for months.
Now if you follow my blog you may have noticed a slight pattern to how I feel about bad weather. For me the worse it it the happier I am. I don’t know why that is, I just seem to love to hear a weather warning has been issued. Of course I’m only talking about snow. I’m not sitting here praying for rain or wind! but when it comes to snow the more the merrier.
Why? I hear you ask, I mean it’s not like I’m going to get the day off school to make snow men or go sledging. I’m not out there making ice slides and having snowball fights with the neighbours!
I can’t really put my finger on it, but I’m guessing I just love how the countryside looks when it’s covered in the white stuff, it creates a whole new world to see. I also love the feeling of discovering virgin snow and knowing I’m the first to a location that day.

For some bizarre reason I seem to enjoy the chaos it creates. I suppose I just like the idea that my Land Rover Discovery will pretty much take me anywhere and will rarely get stuck on a snow covered road.
So Here we are February 2012 And it has been one of the mildest winters for years! We did have a light dusting Around Rothbury in December but I walked up Simon Side (biggish hill near me) that day and it was gone by the time I had made my descent.
So you could imagine how happy I was when weather forecasters on Sunday said the snow is on its way. Yay I thought, a nice cold front coming in from Siberia, that normally brings the snow.
So here we are three days into the “cold snap” and have my prayers been answered? Have they h*ll! Im sitting here at work looking out the window as I type thinking ”it looks like it might snow” but it probably won’t.
I know there is still plenty of time, but before we know it spring will be upon us and my dreams of a winter wonderland will be scuppered for another year.
I think we were just spoilt with the last two winters and I prey for a return, others probably think I’m nuts! and pray it never returns!
What do you think? Do you love it or hate it? leave a comment and let me know.

I don’t watch a lot of television! by the time my day ends and I am sitting down to relax is usually about 9.30 pm. Thats fine, as I never feel deprived of lazing around in front of “the box” .
The problem with living this way is you tend to miss certain newsworthy information, for example last night I just happened to catch the 6.30pm regional news. They were reporting multiple sightings of the Aurora Borealis, more commonly known as “the Northern lights”.

This is a quick video I found from last night. ( not by me)

For those un aware of the phenomenon, it is best described as beautiful curtains of light created when fast electrons from the solar winds hit the rarefied gas of the upper atmosphere.
Now This is pretty rare in my part of the word, apparently it is more common on the tip of North Scotland but that’s nearly 400 miles north of me. So when I saw the news report I was stunned to see beautiful displays in our Northumberland skies, and apparently as far south as North Yorkshire.
Needless to say I was gutted I had not witnessed this for myself. It is one of those life long ambitions to see them. My partner Helen and I have discussed many times the possibility of arranging a trip to Iceland for the sole purpose of seeing the Aurora Borealis!
Never mind, the weather forecaster predicted clear skies for the next night and apparently the Aurora Borealis will be visible for the next few days.
So armed with this information I was on sky watch! I live in a great location in the Northumberland countryside with Pretty much zero light pollution, it’s a stargazers dream.
So I had a great chance of finally witnessing it for myself.
Every Five minutes I would go to the bedroom window for un interrupted views of the north skies, if I were to see them my plan was to run out the back garden gate and up the hill with my camera. From here the view stretches  across the Simonside hills up to the Cheviots and east across the Northumberland coastline. A spectacular photo in the making!
By 11.30pm there hadn’t been any sign of the Aurora Borealis, once again disappointment, but I’m keeping my hopes up as the forecasters are saying it may be visible for a few more nights yet.
Here’s hoping!

P.s here is a link to the report.

Mark Horner finishing race

You don’t get anything for nothing nowadays. True or False?
As you probably guessed by now, I am a keen runner and have been for some years now, however the thought of heading out alone on those long cold winter nights with nothing to keep me occupied but the patter of rain as it relentlessly strikes the face is enough for me to hang up my shorts and retire to the sofa. I was once told that running is one of the loneliest sports one could wish be partake in and to be honest, I happen to agree; this is one of the reason I decided to join Claremont Road Runners based at Northumbria university in Newcastle upon Tyne. I first started running in an attempt to increase my physical fitness, but the drive behind running took a somewhat unexpected turn.

Maintaining some level of fitness is relatively easy, increase that level is when things become a little tougher; especially for those brave enough to enter the world of competitive running, by the term competitive I’m not referring to presenting one’s self as an Olympian you understand. Regional races throughout British summer time saturates the diaries of those wishing to compete at an intermediate level, this in my opinion is the perfect opportunity to train harder and focus the mind on a specific objective such that PB’s become a regular occurrences. During my time as a club runner I’m continually taken aback from the wealth of knowledge and advice which is passed on from those who can only be described as sporting veterans, being a novice in this game it is important to welcome advice and embrace the challenges that are presented to me in the form of club handicaps and training sessions. This level of personalized coaching comes at no cost, in most fitness disciplines, personal coaching at this level comes at a significant premium.

Competing is an effective way of measuring ones progression and comparing oneself against other runners in the region. This is a motivational exercise in itself, and if you’re as competitive as i am you’ll soon find yourself striving to beat personal course records and the time of those whom you are familiar with. Of course most races cost money and these fees can soon mount up when you’re as keen as I am at competing. Having said this, Park Run is one such race that is held weekly (typically on a Saturday morning) and is entirely free. What is offered here is a 5km course set out throughout the country in local parks such as that of Exhibition Park in Newcastle upon Tyne; the course is professionally laid out and overseen by race marshals, pacers, and first aid personal. Each runner is asked to register online and download a barcode which contains the person details of each runner such that age, name, gender and club can be recorded. The course timing is achieved by scanner each individual barcode at the finish line as well as an addition chip which contains the finishing time of each runner. My understanding of the ranking may not be entirely accurate but this is how I understand it to work.
Your results come in two parts, firstly you are ranked with respect to the other runners on the day in accordance with you finishing position and time and secondly, you are ranked against other runners throughout the region which fall into your age category of the same gender, the score/ranking system is given as a percentage, one hundred percent being the fastest time recorded over the duration which Park Run has operated over; therefore the higher the percentage, the better the runner.

The exciting thing about Park Run is that it has been operational of some time now and still continues to break attendance records on a weekly basis, this unique training facility is free and all that asked in return is that you marshal 3 times over a 12 month period i.e. stand and hold open the gate. So, I only need ask one question…………………… You don’t get anything for nothing nowadays, true or false?

Guest Post By

Mark Horner