On Saturday Neil and I got up at 5am and headed to Wales to meet Alex and watch some rally at the Wyedean Forest Rally. It was about a 2 hr drive in the M5 but we got there nice and early and saw all the cars run through on the first stage. The event was much more professional than the previous Tempest Rallies I’ve been too but there wasn’t too many risk takers so not a lot happened on the day. The highlight was the above video where a Metro 6R4 took out a fence and got stuck in a ditch – Neil ran off to help and I filmed the rescue.

Andy Burton and his famous Peugeot Cosworth

Number 211 - pink poker-dots

Alex said the rally was amazing in 3D!

Neil bleeds orange and blue in his 2 Sign-Up.to tees

Overall a great day and my first time to Wales (admittedly not very far in) however next time I’ll heed Neil’s advise and actually wear two pairs of socks because it was absolutely freezing in the Forest, in fact I’ll just double everything I wear next time.

Last Wednesday was Australia Day and instead of heading into London and going to a Walkabout like I did last year I thought I’d bring the festivities to Woking, Surrey.

Even though it was a balmy zero degrees on the walk to work I proudly wore my green and golds in the form of an Australian beach Cricket shirt my younger brother William gave me and my tacky green Australian $100 note board shorts, all topped off with my Aussie flag thongs.

I brought in a couple of other tops for the team and was pleasantly surprised to see a few had brought in their own.

I hooked up the office ghetto blaster and cranked out my Australian classic playlist reminding the English of Aussie greats such as AC/DC, Cold Chisel, Australian Crawl and even a little Regurgitator.

For lunch I’d organised a BBQ outside, Stuart brought in a couple of disposable BBQ’s, Neil some sausages and bread so I ducked down to the local Co-Op (Bottle-O) for a case of… Fosters!
Given the mercury had only lifted a single degree we installed the assistance of Mr Geogre Foreman to help pre-cook our sangaas.

That said we only lasted outside for about 25mins before it become clear that the BBQ’s weren’t going to light and everything seemed to be getting colder than then cooking. We took Mr Foreman back inside and finished off cooking in our office kitchen with a combination of microwave, toastie machine, and George Foreman.

Everyone appeared to enjoy the food and hopefully had an enjoyable first Australia Day.

Tonight we had the first snow of the decade here in Woking and although I spent all my time in the snow only a couple of weeks ago up at The Lakes District it’s still really exciting.

Below is a photo at about 1am after the snow had stopped, settled and actually started to fall back from the trees.

Some more information on the photo here on Flickr

The original size (post-Photoshop exposure) here on SmugMug

I’ve been back in Woking, UK for a couple of weeks now and settling back into routine nicely.
Everyone from work came out on the Friday I flew in and we all had a blinder, which despite the crazy hangover I had the next day was really nice.

I’ve had a massive couple of weeks at work, catching up on things, going to seminars and putting new features live. There’s so much happening lately so it’s really good to be back in the office with my team.

Planning another trip to France soon but still not sure what we’re doing for Xmas and NYE, I was thinking Thailand but we’re going to keep an eye out for packages.

Finally a couple of photos of English/European things that make me laugh.

Last night we went out for work drinks as it was Stuarts last day as he is heading off to London to work for Yahoo. After a few beers at a local pub Enzo’s Karen joined us as we were also celebrating her Birthday.

It didn’t take long before we all ended up at our favorite place in Woking, Bed Bar and that only means one thing …Jäger Bombs!