There's something nasty in the laundry

 Used to finding aquatic animals in the laundry room..damp anyone? ...MBAOSPW detected a hissing sound coming from behind the fridge freezer that should have been sold 18 months ago and is just in the way. One huge clearout later revealed the horror lurking behind it.

 Without repeating the saga of the useless bunch of cowboys who didn't fit the bathroom and had to be taken to court to get our money back. They also fitted prior to not fitting the bathroom a new central heating boiler and a water pressure pump to make sure the shower they didn't fit would actually work.

Considering the whole system is water in pipe, water in pipe feed to pump, pump water in pipe to filters, filter, filtered water to go to house, they seem to have made a right meal of it. The blue pipe at the bottom is the water supply. The complex maze of corners, isolation valves, joints, funny angles, ups, downs, behinds and ptfe tape would be, if it worked without leaking, a thing of wonder. As is, its a messy, leaky, unnecessary cobble that should be an afront to all professional trades. Currently, despite my best efforts at solving the problem, it is leaking 4 gallons every 12 hours and this is being collected by means of a tin foil ramp and a plastic toy drawer. Something must be done.

Finally the French are arriving

 My inner nerd

 has been unleashed

on the French Currassiers. The first of many...hopefully...time permitting....

Metamorphis

 The most photographed mountain bike ever has come to the end of its life with yours truly. As the ideal number of bikes is N+1 I did think about keeping the oft abused steed (bike shop man....they don't normally look like this). But as the brakes failed again causing yours truly to think he was so humongously fat and unfit that he couldn't ride for toffee (actually that might be an incentive..)

 because the front wheel was locked something had to be done. Nice bike shop man sent a link to a nice new steed, a carbon everything except the titanium pedals steed, a steed so ludicrously specced up it would be forever past my price range and ability. However, this steed had been hand carved by a nice man who wanted the best for himself but then when he rode it for the first time fell off it and broke his ankle. This made him realise that he like building bikes not riding them. Hence for sale sign.

 Which is how yours truly ended up with a new steed that costs about as much a car for a handful of magic beans.

Talking of for sale....The boys now ride their own so I sold the trailer, no more cries of faster daddy or its too muddy daddy while I try not have a heart attack.

Back by popular demand....

 A curious sight from the kitchen window.

 Horses are not normally prone to rock climbing but as any reader will tell you, Apollo is anything but normal for a pony so quite why he decided to scale the cliff at the back of HQ while his pint sized minder Trevor keeps a wary watch is known only to themselves.

 Seeing that he was not going to give up and not wanting to encourage this sort of unruly equine behaviour yours truly braved the cold and took a blue bucket of allure which worked better than gravity at getting him down.

All good things must come to an end

 Despite the protestations of a certain Berner, Booboo, the Christmas tree had to go. Booboo did mount an all night vigil in an attempt to prevent the removal of the festive decorations but in the end he overcame his objections and allowed work to commence when distracted by a large chewy stick and a bouncy ball.

The beginning of the end...or something like that

 With a break in the weather which until yours truly had stepped out of Stan was hoffific it was all systems go for a end of year bike ride. Now regular reader might have noticed a distinct lack of cycling of late, and since the epic 480 mile blah blah 71 hours 56 minutes blah blah 3 mountains blah blah the idea of spending anytime on a bike has not really endeared.

 But with 2018 being the year I am in a 200 mile road race and in the same week thanks to brilliant planning doing 9 mountains in a  3x3 peaks challenge something had to be done about my obsession with cheese and lack of exercise. The days of 50 miles on the bike before breakfast are distant memories, in fact its only about 50 miles the annual total. Well today was going to change that as Darren and I were going off road.

 To go off road you have to go on road to the right place to get off road.

 Darren being ex army is totally brilliant at not map reading which is why we were on the wrong road before we went off road in the wrong place.

 Not that this bothered us, it was only hailing at this point.

 Yours truly needs to sharpen up his stream crossing skills and learn how to focus a camera in a hurricane.

 Finally we were on a real bit of not road

 which was still not the off road we were supposed to be on

 but it was pretty decent

 and we had a bit of fun

 but more importantly

 convinced ourselves that this bit of off road whilst not the right bit would in fact lead us to the place we were supposed to be.

 Needless to say it didn't. As it led us to a cafe that sold us bacon sandwiches and cups of tea we decided it was a good idea to stay here a while and hope the hurricane force winds subsided to allow us to ride along the road to get to the real bit of off road that we should have been on some 9 miles north.

 Inevitably we headed back along a road we knew led to a car park

 where we had left our cars and after another compulsory selfie we headed off promising to return in 2 weeks to do it properly and this time I would be in charge of the map.

Is this camera working?

As if by magic...

Then naughty ponies spent another freezing night out in the wilderness and dutifully yours truly rose at crack of dawn, which is around 8am now, and set off back up the Bonsai Mountain. As I progressed along the forzen track a mighty pile of horse pooh was in front of me. Normally I am not too pleased to see the deposits made by equines who have busily converted my money into dung, but  given the current situation it did gladden my heart somewhat as it might be an indicator that the naughty ponies were still alive and not whisked away for lasagna mix. As I mused the dimensions of the pile and wondered if it had fallen from a non missing shitland I discovered fresh horse prints. Some large equine had walked this route only hours, maybe minutes before me. Suddenly, as if by magic both appeared out of the murky morning sunrise and we were reunited. 

Same time, same place........

So yesterday I was out looking for naughty ponies in springlike sunshine, 24 hours later it was a bit, read lot, different.

 This is the same pond...

 same trig point....

 I did detour to the monkey puzzle trees

 Mrs Bear was better suited to the arctic temperatures than yours truly

 and while its all picturesque the video at the top shows how difficult the conditions were, especially if you have the volume turned up!

 Despite looking no sign of the naughty ponies, in fact no sign of life apart from a mad dog and an Englishman.

But then again....these were fresh hoof prints....with a small companion hoofing it close by....could these be our missing equines?  Much following later the prints ran out into a jumbled mess of sheep prints. I would have to return tomorrow and begin the search again, today I had reached the cold weather limit and besides lego and beers awaited at home.