Will it ever stop?

What a week it's been - rain, rain and more rain. We thanked our lucky stars last month that we avoided all the bad weather and floods they had in Cumbria and the south of Scotland, but it seems like it's our turn now. Ever since Storm Frankie arrived last Wednesday, we've only had brief moments of respite, weather-wise. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday this week were definite indoors days - a pity because we had Luca here on 2 of those days and the only time he was out of the house was when Jo took him (in the car) down to Tesco.

Suffering badly from cabin fever, I donned my cycling gear first thing on Tuesday morning, ready and waiting for a break in the rain - but it never came. I repeated it on Wednesday and this time I was lucky - it was dry first thing so off I went as soon as there was enough daylight to make it safe.

I headed along the Deeside Way but it was blocked off by piles of debris halfway between the east end of Banchory and Milton of Crathes, so I turned round and went up through the Crathes Castle estate, where I took this photo using the timer on my camera - a lot easier than trying to take a selfie with my phone:

The back roads north of Crathes were fine and I managed to get 20 kms in.

One problem I've been having recently when out cycling has been numb thumbs - they always seem to get frozen and damp and I lose all feeling in them, no matter which combinations of gloves I wear. I decided to finally bite the bullet and go to our local outdoors shop and buy a pair of Sealskinz (http://www.sealskinz.com/UK/) gloves. Ridiculous price - and I also bought socks too - let's hope they both work.

We sampled my home brew last night and it was - I think the word is palatable - so I bottled it this morning - check this out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wt86qXq-D0. Now to sterilise everything ready to start the next batch when we return from Oz.

We're busy watching all the series that have built up on our Sky box to leave enough room on the disk for recording whilst we're away. Fargo is finished and we've got just 4 episodes of Homeland to watch. Some of the others I've now moved off the box and put on our network drive, so we can access them anywhere anytime.

I've also been doing some more digitising of my old vinyl albums. I've selected about 20 or so still to be done - no rush though.

As I write this blog posting, we're watching Wanted Down Under, which is from Adelaide today. Lots of places we know - McLaren Vale, Glenelg, Hahndorf etc - a nice reminder.