Quiet for a whole week, I must try harder. Or I must try to find something more interesting to say….

Up to Bury St Edmunds last Friday for a weekend with the in-laws. Trains etc were all remarkably willing and we had a pretty good time. The weather wasn’t all that, so we didn’t get out much. I spent most of Saturday and a couple of hours on Sunday trying to sort out Vic’s dad’s internet connection which hasn’t worked for a while. The old internal modem had died completely, so I’d posted them an external one, but they weren’t having much luck with that. It wasn’t connecting reliably and was disconnecting randomly, as well as being tediously slow. Switching ISPs from Tiscali to BT Internet seemed to fix the speed thing. Is Tiscali always that slow? The reliablity seemed to improve when I switched the phone line connection to the other of the two unlabelled ports on the back of the modem. As far as I can tell, those two ports (one for phone line, one for phone) are usually connected in parallel so I can’t see why one would be better than another. It now connects first or second time and gives a decent speed. I’d forgotten how slow and unreliable modems are after a couple of years with ADSL. I’m just hoping that where ever I end up living when we get back from travelling has a decent ADSL connection.

On Sunday afternoon, while Vic’s dad and sister were watching the Spanish Grand Prix, her mum took us on a tour of likely places to find a campervan. We went out to Mildenhall, but after a couple of hours of searching, the only van we found was an already-sold Citroen Romahome, less then half a mile away from their house.

We spent some time studying Caravan and Motorhome Trader magazine, and called a whole load of likely entries, but every single one was sold. We’ve now lined up a few to see at the weekend, but I’m not saying where!

The Urban 75 folks have opted for the excellent Exonetric for their hosting. I’m sure the Exonetric guys will provide an great service, as they have for this site since the beginning of April.

Vic’s hired a treadmill from Gymhire for the next month until we move out. I had a go on it at lunchtime, and realised that I’m not very fit, verging on the “walking will make me break out in a sweat” level. We’re going to aim to have a go on the treadmill every day until they come to collect it.

Tonight we went out for a meal, and then on to the “Ritzy for Offline where we met Mike who runs Urban75 and Mr Ski, one of the users, as well as saying hello to a few other folks. A nice evening and the balcony at the Ritzy is a really pleasant place to have a drink (even if they only have Guinness and Kirin at £3 a pint on draught).