Wow what a day!

10.5 miles Route around Pen Y Fan in the Brecon Beacons with one of me house mates, Emma Doyle.

This is an excellent route that we found on the BBC website and you can download the map shown below plus full details on the route to try yourself at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/nature/sites/walking/downloads/Pen_y_Fan.pdf

We started off from the car park as seen on the map above and followed the Roman road which today was also being used by what looked like some (alot maybe 100 or so) guys on what looked to be SAS selection.

While walking taking one step at a time it is very surprising to look down and see helicopters flying around below you.

and some times above!

The walk up towards Cribyn, the second of the two hills, is quite steep but mostly paved in stone so is a very easy path to follow.

soon we was at the top, and after a short break, began our way up towards the highest peak in Southern Britain, Pen Y Fan.

This was a far steeper and more challenging climb particularly at the very top.

as you can see from my slightly exhausted expression

At the top is a plaque with ‘Pen Y Fan 886 M’ written on just in case you are not to sure where you are!

That’s me B)

& Emma…

Here we stopped off for some lunch, took some photo’s and enjoyed the very impressive view. Some say you can even see as far as The Mumbles just past Swansea but sadly we couldn’t quite make it out on this day.

Luckily when we arrive at the peak it was pretty clear but half way through lunch we was enveloped in a cloud and it suddenly became very cold and windy so we made our way down towards the next peak Corn Du.

From the table topped hill Corn Du you can see the what remains of an ice age glacial lake

and take in, yet another amazing view…

By now time was getting on (about 3 hours in) so we decided to make a move up towards the ridge way.

From here you can see the reservoir we had passed at the beginning of the day and the old Roman road that we had been walking along.

The path up to the ridge way is very clear however once at the top it becomes quite boggy in places.

Here’s a pic of me and my mate ‘the Rock’

The walk along the ridge way is very long and you really don’t want to fall off as it is a shear cliff face and not to mention a very long way up! But it bends around to the right towards the end and you make you way down a small waterfall to get back down.

This last leg of the journey towards the reservoir is also quite boggy, but at least it is down hill…

Once we had made it back down to the reservoir there was time for one last look up at the days achievements before heading back to the car and back home for a shower and a curry.

Hope you enjoy giving this ago yourself sometime, if you have I would love to hear about your experiences in the comments below. We did it in just over 5 and a half hours, but we did take quite a few tea breaks! hehe…

This epic journey took me to the other side of the world to foreign lands, all to meet my future wife as appointed by God (Although she was unaware of this at the time!). Far from straight forward, this journey did not go completely to plan due to my own disobedience I ran into a couple of set backs along the way.

The plan was to fly from Manchester to Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi to Manilla and then stay the night in a cheap hotel before flying off down to Cagayan de Oro to meet up with Armarygay

I booked flights for Monday morning despite being advised to book the flights for Tuesday and after a brief stop of in the fantastic airport at Abu Dhabi

I finally arrived in Manila…
As it was getting late in the day and the weather looking far from summer like, I checked into the nearest hotel and got ripped off big time as they clearly must have seen me coming fresh off the plane!!

The room at the hotel was adequate but  but not great considering the price I had just paid, Although it was far better than being stuck out in the tropical storm that was brewing outside.
The storm was got quite rough, the electric went out and I thought it must me normal, however when I woke up I found a devastated Manila in ruins from one of the worst hurricanes to hit the Philippines that year!
The electricity was out everywhere including the airport, the roads were blocked by fallen trees and the streets were covered in broken glass. However never having been to Manila before I wasn’t sure if this was just normal so I proceeding to the airport to catch the flight to Cagayan de oro.

When I got the the airport the place was in chaos with thousands of people waiting around only to find their flights had been cancelled and as the day went on the number of people just grew and grew.

Not speaking the language and not having a clue how things work in the Philippines I decided to team up with another passenger heading to Cagayan and get our cancelled flight re-booked for the following day. This meant a short stop over in Manila had now turned into 3 days… I really should have listened and booked the initial flight to leave the UK on Tuesday instead of Monday!

Melanie was great company for the 23 hours sat around at Terminal 3 and introduced me to a food I had never even heard of before called Siopao which has now got to be one of my favourite foods.

Soon enough we were on our flight and flying over Cagayan de Oro airport, which was looking a little less modern than what I was used to…

I left the airport and met up with the super amazing girl herself Armarygay and her sister Ladymae.

We stayed in the Lamar Hotel that was excellently cheap however the shower did not work, infact the only running water in my room was the cold tap, haha… and as for insects, well they were everywhere

I really loved the basic level of the hotel and enjoyed my short stay there before heading off to Armarygay’s home town of Kapatagan to meet the rest of the family.

I had an amazing time with the family however Ian was a bit quieter than I was expecting, apparently due to the fact he was too shocked by the length of my western style nose! haha…

We had a great time, especially at church and also our time at prayer mountain was amazing. So many great memories to look back on, but more importantly even more great times to look forward to together in the years yet to come!

Just check this video out, then read on:

It is true, I have never been fond of paying extortionate amounts of money each year for car insurance, despite never having an accident all the time I have been driving. It seems that as my no claims bonus goes up, so does their annual price rise for insurance, hehe…

Then one gloomy old rainy day, some young hoody yob came along and caused hundreds of pounds worth of damage to my car while breaking in to steal my stuff!!
And that was that! Good bye no claims bonus… Even though I never actually caused an accident! hmmm… I was left confused.com and a little miffed!

Soon came the good news from the insurance company as my insurance was due for renewal. Wow! They now wanted a small fortune. What they were expecting me to do is just grumble and pay what ever they ask, just like everyone else. But no, I ain’t into whinge culture these days.
So I decided to stick it to ‘um and get rid of my car!!

So I posted it on ebay

Check it out

No need to worry though as I have a cunning back up plan for transportation!

I decided to get a motorbike instead, nothing massive, just a cheap little 125cc would do me.

1. £15 a year for tax

1. About £80 for insurance

1. Fuel costs about a quarter of what it costs to run a car over the same mileage!

1. Plus cheap to buy

All in all, I thought I was on to a real winner with this idea. The only problem came when trying to find a half decent 125cc motorbike to buy. The classifieds are full of rust heaps and the local motorcycle dealers only sell big bikes or really expensive 125′s. I’m talking like £3-4000 for a Honda 125cc. Crazy money I thought, if only there was a decent supplier of low cost 125 motorcycle’s and mopeds. hmmm….

Well like I said I have given up whinging since it gets you nowhere. So instead I decided that as there was not a good supplier of low cost motorbikes in the area, then I would make one! hehehe…

A little over ambitious maybe?
but in the end that is exactly what I did!

And here it is today: Gears Motorbikes
Now located in:

• Manchester

• Swansea

• London

• Glasgow

• Cardiff

Thats the way to live life, don’t take any crap, just stick it to the man!

Like many people I have always loved the idea of living completely self sufficiently just like on the old TV show ‘The Good Life‘!
As a kid I always wanted to grow up to be just like Tom and Barbara on that show and grow all my own food. Unfortunately when you grow up ‘the real world’ takes a grip of you and you find it very hard to let go.
Recently while browsing the BBC iPlayer I came accross a program called ‘The Edible Garden‘, it is presented by Alys Fowler a presenter from Gardner’s world and is all about how she lives from her garden all year round just like Tom and Barbara only she makes it look so much cooler!

Ray Mears has been my all time most want to meet person ever since I was a kid and I saw him in his 5 minute part in ‘Tracks‘ each week (This was before he was ‘famous‘), however after a few episodes of The Edible Garden Alys Fowler has robbed him of that and has hands down become my person who I would most want to meet.

Alys’s Garden is not that much bigger than mine, but she has 2 chickens and just about every type of fruit and veg you can grow in the UK growing in it and mine, well take a look for yourself;

Inspired by her amazing garden and fantastic lifestyle I decided to take the plunge and dig up some of my scrapy lawn and make some room for some fruit and veg of my own. I popped down to the local supermarket and came back with a lovely smelling little Lavender plant, I was very pleased at first but soon realised I probably couldn’t eat it! hehe…

But how wrong I was… I then watched episode 5 of The Edible Garden and saw Alys making some really nice looking Lavender biscuits. Amazed by this exciting revelation  I searched Amazon to see if she had a book so that I could have some of her amazing wisdom for myself
And there it was, the book, The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler.
RRP £18.99 – Amazon’s price £8.99

£10 SAVING! I couldn’t refuse, hehe…
6 days later it arrived in the post and my first batch of summertime lavender biscuits were in the oven!

So quick and simple to make, just chuck some flour, sugar and butter together with an egg yoke then throw in some Lavender fresh from your garden and bung in the oven for 15 mins, done…

Fortunately Alys explains it all in a bit more detail in her book along with loads more cool ideas that I will be trying out as I grow more stuff this summer…

My garden still has a long way to go but I have big plans for it this summer and by next summer it should provide for me all year round, drastically reducing my weekly shopping bill!
I will be keeping you updated on how things are going and hopefully you can share some of your stories with me as well

Here is a link to the episode with Alys making the lavender biscuits:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

Last week I went to delivery a couple of pizza’s which actually turned out to be a prank order. No big deal it does happen every now and then in Domino’s. I really wasn’t expecting it to make front page news a week later in the Evening Post!

What follows is the news report from todays Swansea Evening Post – 27th April…

Cruel hoax of pizza delivered to family in name of son’s car crash killer

THE distraught family of a car crash victim has been sent a pizza with the name of the man who caused his death on the order sheet.

It is not known who ordered the pizza, but the incident has shocked the family of Andrew Corbett, who died in June 2004.

Mr Corbett, aged 19, was one of three innocent victims killed when the taxi minibus they were travelling in was struck at 70mph in Fabian Way, at the junction of Port Tennant Road, by a BMW M3. A split-second later the BMW was struck at 60mph by a Volvo C70 car.

Christopher Antonio, then aged 20, of Dinas Street, Plasmarl, was in the BMW and was jailed for four-and- a-half years for causing death by dangerous driving. Co-defendant, 28-year-old Christopher Churchill, of Redditch, Worcestershire, who was in the Volvo, was jailed for seven years for the same offence.

Antonio has since been released from jail.

Mystified

Derek Lee Martin, Andrew Corbett’s father, described how a Domino’s Pizza delivery man [thats me ] appeared without warning at his Swansea home with pizzas worth £32.

Mystified by the delivery man’s appearance, Mr Martin checked with his children to see if they had ordered the food, which had not been paid for. His wife was at work at the time and none of his children had placed the order.

Mr Martin said he checked with Domino’s and found that the name on the order was given as Christopher Antonio.

Stunned by this, Mr Martin said they had informed the police who were now investigating.

Mr Martin stressed Domino’s had not done anything wrong.

But he said he and his wife Karen and their children were horrified by what they believed to be a vindictive act.

He said the family were still struggling to come to terms with Andrew’s death.

Brilliant

The two other victims in the crash were Neil Jenkins, a 24-year-old football coach from Llansamlet, and his fiancee Lesley-Ann Morgan, aged 21.

Mr Martin, of Eppynt Road, Penlan, said Andrew had worked in a care home — the same one as his mum — before taking up a post at a special needs centre in Gowerton.

“He was brilliant,” said Mr Martin.

“I sit down and watch videos and DVDs of him. “But my wife can’t look at them. She likes to look at photos — she breaks down when she hears his voice. I find it comforting.”

A spokesman for South Wales Police said: “We are aware of the incident.

“Inquiries are ongoing to establish who ordered the pizza.”

The Post attempted to contact Mr Antonio but was unsuccessful.
_______________________________________________________

This just goes to show, you just never know what is going to happen when you step outside your front door!

- Ben Gillott (Part time deliverer of delicious Domino’s Pizza’s )

We are proud to announce that Celtic Quest Coasteering,

a cool outdoor pursuits business in Pembrokeshire is now the official sponsors of this years Rough Ride event.

At the time of updating this blog today, the Rough Ride event is just 7 days away. You can check the count down timer at www.RoughRide.org.uk any time.

The video above is the first in a string of videos that will be arriving on this blog over the next month or so. The 170 Manchester to Swansea Rough Ride event will be filmed all the way down, capturing all the best bits and also the worst

If you enjoy a bit of Twitter action,

you may want to follow my tweets at twitter.com/bengillott as I will be tweeting all the way down to Swansea, plus also tweeting the odd picture along the way to make things more interesting.

One question I seem to get asked a lot is, is this Rough Ride thingy just going to be a one off event?
I just can’t keep quiet any longer… No, this aint going to be a one off! I have massive plans for the future of Rough Ride and next years event is going to be truely epic. Plus I may be inviting a couple of extra fundraising bikers along with me, so if you know any one that may be interested make sure you keep Rough Ride in mind for next year.

It is now 04:30am and I will be catching the train to Manchester in 4 hours! Not sure if I will get any sleep tonight, hehe… But I had better have a go.
Can always sleep on the train tomorrow anyway!

Spent Sunday morning rocking out at Kings church and then got home to quickly get changed and throw on a 16 KG backpack ready for the second attempt at reaching the summit. I have no idea what the hill is called, but it is the big one in Swansea with the 2 TV masts on it…

As you can see in the picture below I managed to rope Mr Popham into coming along with me. Although to be honest his arm did not really need much twisting.

The walk from the house to the bottom of the hill seemed quite easy, I think because if you have someone to talk to it distracts your mind from the walking and weight on your back.

The weather today was really hot and sunny, which made climbing this hill very thirsty work. Luckily Mr Popham soon spotted a valuable water supply!

Hehe… however the water was not looking too tasty so we decided not to drink it after all.

The views on the way up the hill were amazing. If anyone reading this lives anywhere near Swansea and has never taken this walk I strongly recommend you do this this summer, although I wouldn’t recommend doing it with a 16KG backpack!
Just incase you are confused as to why I am doing this with a 16KG backpack or infact confused as to why I am doing this at all. It is because I am training fo the 170 Mile Rough Ride Charity cycle fundraiser for the homeless. It is from Manchester to Swansea over 3 days starting on 1st April. No fancy hotels, just sleeping rough as the homeless do, hence the back pack and the name – Rough Ride.

You can get more detals here

To be honest I am not as fit as I should be at this stage, and about 3 quarters of the way up the step hill my legs were really starting to struggle with lactic acid burns and every other type of ache and pain. Eventually I had had enough and took a flash 2 minutes…

This was not really enough though as when I got back up  I was still stopping every 10 feet to give my legs a rest, so I decided the best thing would be to ask Jesus to take over for a while and help me get to the top of the hill. Pretty much instantly I felt no pain in my legs at all and they just motored on up the hill for me chugging along like a little choo choo train. It was an awesome feeling and one I will probably not forget.

My legs went so fast I even caught up with Mr Popham, who was only carrying a  pack of Fosters and spare tshirt btw, And before I new it we were at the top!
If you do not know Jesus I serious recommend you get that sorted asap… I remember hearing Colin Jackson the British Olympic long jumper guy saying in an interview about how his relationship with God had helped him achieve success in athletics. The interviewer seemed to dismiss what he had said, but I think it is great, and sort of weird as unlike with taking performance inhancing drugs, with God you cant get blamed for cheating, BONUS!

Once at the top we cracked open a couple of cans of Fosters and took in the amazing views. You can see all of Swansea from here as well as Port Talbot and Swansea docks actually looks quite cool. Although I’m guessing from the ground it is probably quite the opposite.

After 20 minutes or so we decided to head back down as we intended on cooking a nice Sunday roast once we got back home.

Unsurprisingly, going down the hill was a lot more enjoyable than going up. Although I had got myself a couple of little ‘girly’ blisters on my heels by this point. however despite the blisters I was well glad I had worn the boots rather than making the mistake of wearing trainers again…

Mr Popham found himself a strange looking sculpture that he enjoyed imensely.

And before you knew it we were back down the bottom of the hill!

I had remembered to take along my heart rate monitor today and as you can see in the pic below I had an average heart rate of 66% Excellent for fat burning!
So now you have the answer to shedding those extra pounds, just strap on a heavy rucksack and go for a long walk Probably not the answer most people want to hear, but I think those people that are waiting for a magic diet pill are only in for dissapointment! Get out there and enjoy being alive!!

Once we had walked the rest of the way back home we got showered, changed, then sacked the idea of cooking a Sunday dinner and opted for going down the Taybarn for a cheap all you can eat dinner instead… Lovely

As always comments are welcomed by everyone and I look forward to seeing what cool things you have all been getting up to.

Ben

Not having measured the distance on a map I had no idea how long it may take, but I thought I would just give it a go as its all good training for the Rough Ride fundraising event in April.

I started off well enough carrying a backpack weighing about 16KG. This is great fat burning excercise if you ever want to give it a go!

It was a good fun walk which took me around the lake in Llansamlet and then all the way up through the forestry.
I managed to avoid walking along the road as the forestry seemed to be way bigger than I had expected.

However dispite my best efforts my off the cuff route selection had me just about half the way up the hill at the hour point. I did think about just going all the way on my first attempt anyway, but the weather looked like rain and I thought I may enjoy giving it another go on Sunday instead…

The walk home seemed a lot quicker, however actually took 55 minutes. I think if I do give it another go on Sunday after church I will just have to go with no time limit and see how long it takes…

Oh yeah, and I shall be wearing boots next time, I don’t think my old trianers will ast another day out like that, hehe…

I hope this will inspire others to get out and explore their local areas, I was really supprised at how close I lived to all this cool stuff. I look forward to hearing from your stories soon… Ben

This is a bit of a random blog post, hehe… but it was a lot of fun so thought it was worth sharing with you all…

I recently had an idea to move bedrooms in my house from a double into a single room as I wanted to rent the double room out as it would fetch a better rent than the single.
Problem is I have way too much stuff for a single bedroom!

Luckily I am not the sort of person who will let these sort of things get in the way of a good idea.
While I was poking around up in the attic (looking at boarding it out so I could chuck some stuff up here) I came accross a bunch of old wooden planks and it gave me an idea. I thought I could make some sort of custom built bed so the double bed would not take up any of the valuable floor space in the smaller bedroom.

So as I had the following day off work I got started, and eight hours and a few screws later the master piece was completed!

This has to be the best bed I have ever had, and I made it out of scrap wood! genius…

LATEST Rough Ride News…

If you are not yet familar with Rough ride it is a fundraiser to help the homeless off the streets and back into work.
This year I shall be cycling from Manchester to Swansea (170 miles!) with no comfy hotels just sleeping rough all the way.

http://www.heydays.org.uk/rough-ride

Last weekend I went for a jog and came to the sad conclusion that I think I will have to definately do some training for this event. To be honest I will find it hard to cover the distance in 3days, but as long as I don’t collapse and die on route who cares if I’m a day late, or three hehe…

Great news looks like we got a cool sponsor in the pipeline! A coasteering company up in Pembrokeshire, I’m just hoping to negotiate a free days coasteering in Pembroke as part of the deal All adds to the training ofcourse!
more on that laters…

Keep in touch and don’t forget to join our Facebook group to help raise awareness of homelessness in the UK, here is the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=245930268745&ref=mf

Back in 2007 I had been looking through different franchise opportunities and found an interesting little franchise called The Nuts Poker League. After some basic research on the company and checking out the excellent performance by the franchise owner Steve Bellis in the Dragons Den, I decided to take the leap into my first franchise business. There were many reasons why I chose The Nuts Poker League over all the other good franchise opportunities but I do believe the extremely cheap price tilted my opinion.

Being my first venture into the franchise world it was an exciting time and although I was not looking to make a fortune but rather just to get an inside glipse of what being a franchisee was all about. It was a fun experience organising the regional finals and taking on new staff to run the tournaments during the weeks, however you may have noticed that The Nuts Poker League has not become a nationally recognised brand in pub poker.
Although Steve Bellis may well have struck a great deal in the Dragons Den, that deal never actually went through and Steve made the decision to go it alone and build The Nuts Poker League by himself.
Despite getting off to a great start with company branded equipment a new look web site, by the end of my first year as a franchisee the cracks in the business systems were beginning to show. Problems with equipment suppliers, franchisees, venues and complaints from many about the shoddy national finals.

In late 2008 I made a move back to South Wales, my regional manager had broken her leg and that meant me travelling up and down the M4 to cover venues and responsibilities until a new manager could be found. Although this may not be a problem if the franchise was a McDonalds or Dominos Pizza that brought in £10,000′s per week, this was just The Nuts Poker League and after they had taken their franchise fees there was very little left to go around.

Monthly Profit = Income – (Tournament directors cut, Franchise fees, equipment costs, Regional Final/Prize Fund)

Basically, although the franchise did manage to make money, it just didn’t really make all that much. So when an opportunity came to get rid of it I dropped it as soon as possible. In summary, it was all good fun but really not the sort of franchise I would be interested in getting involved with in the future. Having learnt some valuable lessons I shall now share these with you to help you choose a good business venture should yo ever wish to.

Tips for Finding a Good Franchise –>