My air suspension is one of the best things on my wagon, it’s like driving cupped in a waterbed, makes cruising along a pleasure. I also have a posh airbed that pumps up in seconds using the 240 volts that fits snugly width ways into the van, so when I’m sleeping on an airbed with air underneath keeping the wagon up it’s like the double cheeseburger of rest, a double air nights sleep.
Continue reading Glide-Rite Air Suspension
One of my favourite places in the lakes to swim is the small, stone, Birks Bridge over the River Duddon in Dunnerdale.
Continue reading Lake District Week
It is a Mercedes 416 Sprinter with a 5 cylinder 2.7 litre turbo engine, I finished it to be a work, swim, sleep and travel vehicle so it has electricity, a lot of space, a very comfortable bed and speakers in the back for some good sounds.
Continue reading The Glambulance
There’s a little restaurant in the road opposite Streatham Hill railway Station that has been run by the same people for the last 40 years.
Continue reading The Dorchester
Many years ago I went up to Wastwater Youth Hostel with a friend of mine and fell in love with the place. It’s in a gorgeous valley that has Scafell Pike at one end, has the deepest lake in England on the doorstep and was built as someone’s fine country mansion, so I thought that it would be good to fill it with friends one day and make it our own country pile for a while.
Continue reading Wastwater YHA Birthday Weekend
Tis almost two years since my last post, so I took a look back over the years since I set-up Cyber Gypsy and had a few thoughts before heading back into the world of on-line personal biography writing.
My original reason for starting this site off was partly because I didn’t really want to. I was quite against the idea of typing into a screen at regular intervals to an audience of possibly zero, but I take note if my attitudes are ever negative such as tucking into Neighbours for a few years when Kylie Minogue was a mechanic because I used to dislike soap operas so much, so I did the same with blogging and went about turning my dislike around.
Continue reading Two Years of lido relaxation!
It hasn’t really felt like winter’s as I remember them, but then again I do remember some pretty grim winters. Miner’s strikes cutting power to damp cities, shoes that never seemed to dry out, England and I are in a better place now.
The thing that has really exorcised the ghost of winters past for me has been my daily swims in Tooting Bec Lido; the realisation that our bodies not only survive more extreme temperatures but can actually thrive, the support of people when they see you going through this process, almost religious but without the dogma, a healthy cult where the pay-off is seeing that light of realisation, of trust in oneself and the environment. How lovely, how truly and simply lovely.
Continue reading Cornwall
I missed the snowy antics at the lido last weekend and thought that it could have been the last chance this year. However as lady luck may have it not only did it start snowing again last night, but it was also Ian’s birthday hence the lido had a bit of the Sunday atmosphere about it this morning. Happy birthday Ian!
Continue reading Snow!
Whilst roasting in the Tooting Bec Lido sauna the other day someone referred to the current weather as a heat wave. The water, hovering at 5 degrees seems to some to be a balmy bath compared to what it could be at this time of year, so people wander about virtually naked but for a lick of cloth and occasionally a pair of Liz Taylor sunglasses, chit chatting as if we were in Benalmadena minus the palms. Anyone looking in through the security fence might see people who are locked in for their own good.
Continue reading What Winter
Tooting Bec Lido is situated in a South London park. It’s huge, is almost two Olympic length pools end to end (100 yards long) and the width of a normal swimming pool.
It’s also unheated.
The fact that it’s unheated doesn’t deter the good people of London from taking a dip in winter, which is something I have managed to avoid due to being away most winters. This year however I decided to stay and face the music, which is a frosty tune I must say.