It’s taken a few blustery autumnal days at The Cottage to unpack, clean the bikes and settle into home life, where we’ve been enjoying our creature comforts and social connections after a week ‘on the road’.

I’ve had a few good social days, meeting up with old friends Andy and Lorraine, who I’d not seen in 20 or so years! Yesterday, I took a trip over to Manchester to visit a new climbing wall called the ‘Big Depot’, in preparation for taking a group there later in the year. It’s massive!

I was there during the afternoon, so after a look around, I was able to have a boulder in the quiet of ‘off-peak’. The facilities are quite incredible – an amazing fact is that of the thousands of people who visit here weekly, only 5% have ever climbed outside on a real cliff. It’s a completely different sport to the ‘climbing’ I have grown up with – you even need to have your phone with you to scan a QR code at the base of the route to find out what grade it is!

I met with my old pal Pete for a cuppa at his nearby flat after a quick bouldering session, then ventured into the city for some live music…

I’d gone to see one of my favourite bands, Reef, but was delighted to fine a couple of other musicians that I liked, doing the warm-up support acts. Ben Ottewell from the band ‘Gomez’ opened up the show and was fantastic.

The main act played through their first album – one of the first CDs I had from over 30 years ago! Good times! It was really great to see them having a great time playing the songs and the crowd were in good voice too. A fun night.

Made it back to The Cottage, utterly exhausted after driving home through a pretty wild storm. Crawled into bed in the early hours of the next day…