We have just visited portmeirion in Gwynedd North Wales, here are my thoughts on the visit, prices for adults are £8 children £4 and there are family deals as well that saves you a few pounds on entry. Parking is free and you can leave the village and re-enter again on the same day, the day we went it was open from 9:30am to 7:30pm. You can buy different guides on entrance or you can pick up a free map & guide.

Portmeirion is probably best know for the location of the village in the cult 60′s tv program the prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan as number six, which was filmed in the village in 1966-67. I have visited portmeirion before a few years ago as I am a fan of the tv show, and thought I would go again.

Here is a little information about the village, Clough Williams – Ellis Brought the land in 1925 and started work on his vision of a tightly grouped Village, the building he wanted to grow as building went on, he had some plans, but mostly they just grew as construction went on. Portmeirion was built in two stages the first being between 1925-1939 the second stage was between 1954 – 1976 were the gaps were filled in. Some of the building were salvaged, Clough once said the village was ” A home for fallen buildings”  Portmeirion is now owned by the charity “Clough Williams-Ellis Foundation and the grounds and village are managed by Portmeirion Ltd.

Once you enter portmeirion you pay at the Tollgate and then walk down past the Portmeirion pottery seconds warehouse, walk through the gate house towards the bridge house , these are walk through Arch ways ,the village is amazingly beautiful, all the building are very brightly coloured, the architecture is amazing, some of my favorites are the bell tower which was built in 1928, the round house, this is only a small building but has great charm. The pantheon this is a octagonal building with a dome at the top. The piazza is just the most relaxing place with a fountain pool in the centre with differnt building surrounding it including the gloriette,the bristol colonnade and the Gothic pavilion.

The gardens are all well kept with all sorts of different plant and flowers, these are all very colourful at the time we visited. Once you have looked around the centre you can walk down towards the beach area. Here there is the hotel & restaurant, this is by the boat which really isn’t a normal boat as made out of concrete, you can walk around this with great views of the village above you and the bay in front of you. We then walked towards the lighthouse.

We went on the one woodland walk, this one was from towards the top of the village, by the triumphal arch, There is a audio visual presentation within the playhouse building, this presentation lasts around 25mins, the film tells you about the history of the village etc. .

The woodland walk we walked on went to the viewpoint, this gives you great views of the bay / estuary and surrounding area’s, you can just sit there and relax with the great view infront of you, which you do need after the walking to this point we then walked to the ghost garden, we wasn’t too sure were this lead to, we thought the beach but unfortunately the paths at some point were so think to walk through we decided to head back to the village. Within the woodland there is a small play area though this is more for younger children. On this path you go past the Chinese bridge and pagoda, and from there you can walk upto the gazebo, this was built in 1983 to mark the centenary of Clough’s birth. from here you get amazing views above the village.

There are two main walks that are on the map each should take around 30 – 40mins.  We had taken our own lunch so I’m not sure of the prices of food onsite, but we did have some icecream and the prices were very reasonable. there are several place to eat within the village also there is Castell Deudrath hotel that is just the otherside of the car park that do serve food aswell.

Portmeirion is a very beautiful a relaxing place to visit, as being a fan of the prisoner, it was great for me to go back there and enjoy the views, and the day we went the weather was great so this made it even better for us. This is a place I would even visit again if I get the chance, there are so many great things about the Portmeirion the buildings aswell as just looking at the different sculptures around, there is more than I can describe on here, so I defiantly would recommend a visit to Portmeirion so you can see for yourselves why I like this place so much.

Have a look at some of my photos from the day by clicking the link below or clicking on the link to my photo albums at the top of the page.

Be seeing you

I am not a number i’m a free man.

On the way back from visiting Portmeirion, I had notice a waterfall in the atlas on the A470 which was on our way back by a village called Ganllwyd, which is located in and around the Coed Y Brenin Forest Park, Wales.  So we decided to go and have a look, there is a small car park in the village, you wouldn’t know there is a waterfall attraction there as no sign saying anything there. From the car park you walk across the road and you can hear the water flowing.

To access the path to the main waterfall you go through a gate that is next to a cafe, as you are walking you can see the water-flow to your left with small waterfall upto about 6 feet high, as the path turns to the right you need to go across the shrubbery following the water-flow, to get to the main waterfall, you will need some good footwear as parts very rocky, but is worth the walk.

As you are going up you see larger waterfall, remember parts of the walk are steep, but the views from of the waterfall are amazing and very beautiful. Cant tell you that much more about the waterfall as you need to visit to appreciate the beaty ofg the place. So if you are in or around this area, I would recommend you visit to Rhaeadr Ddu Nt Waterfall As you won’t be disappointed with the view.

See some of my pictures of the waterfall by clicking the link below or by clicking on my photo albums link at the top of the page.

Having tried different version of linux on my netbook i had notice meego had been released for netbooks so thought i would give it a try,  here is my experience with the operating system.

Here is a quick breakdown of the layout of Meego v1, upon booting you are presented with a screen with a menu bar across the top each one is classed as a zone, they are My Zones – This has thumbnails of recent web-pages,images,tweets etc, Zones – Show your running programs, Applications – Sows all installed programs, Status – shows social website updates, People – show your contacts online chat,  Internet – with a thumbnails of your most visted sites, Media for access to your music, but not videos or photos, Devices – shows connect devices and hard drive, docs etc, you can also add the gadgets zone for google gadgets.

My netbook is a acer one 150 with 8gb ssd drive and 1.5gb ram. The image download is 800mb,  and using Win32Diskimager on my windows pc was easily transferred to a 1gb usb stick, when you boot from the live image usb you are given 3 choices including running from usb or installing to hard drive,  i would recommend you boot from usb to have a play around with the system first,  which i did and i was really happy with the way it ran.

Installation to the hard drive only took around 10mins or so,  so very quick on installing,  upon first reboot after installing I got an error saying INIT Id “x” respawning to fast: disabled for 5 minutes, I left for over 5mins but nothing, I rebooted and then booted up great with no problems, this does seem to be a common problem upon install. once installed i tried to install some programs from the garage (this is like the app store, market etc) there are only a few applications within there,  there is no openoffice at the moment (though you can get it but i haven’t tried yet to install as bit complicated at the moment)  but you do have abiwork & Gnumeric When i tried to install any program i got the error “there was a error resolving (ie abiword) click to try again. I then did a system update that is under the applications zone then system tools This took an age to install around 1hr 30mins and was only a few updates.

Setting up the wifi was very easy just click the wifi icon on the top bar, you can see your wifi networks and then just connect, it remembers you wifi key once put in, also if you connect through a network cable connects straight away, the one good thing for me as even though a basic operating system you can still get access to see your ip address, gateway address and status etc.

Doing the update solved the problem with installing programs, and i happily installed abiword, gimp, Gnumeric And tuxpaint (great drawing program for kids) to play mp3 music files and divx etc this isn’t supported direct, you have to install different components to get them to play, I found this website(  http://setupguides.blogspot.com/2010/06/playing-avi-mp3-divx-and-mp4-in-meego.html )to download & install the whole lot in one go (I take no responsibility for the link provided) this took around 2hrs to download and install all the components, so make sure your netbook is plugged into the mains. Once this was done all mp3′s and divx files I tried player perfect, to be honest videos played even better than either ubuntu or kubuntu that I had installed before. The media player uses a modified version of the banshee music player.

The version that I installed was with the google chrome web browser, this works perfectly and support all the extensions available. I love google chrome as a web browser anyway, i now use as my my browser on my windows 7 pc instead of firefox as default now, as really quick on loading webpages especially if the site is using alot of javascript. Flash support is built in so sites like youtube etc work perfect, again youtube on the video seemed to played better than the ubuntu i had installed before. The Empathy instant message client work flawlessly easily setup my facebook & msn live chat.

The only problem I have had is if you setup the gadgets page / screen, you can install a selection of gadgets but I had problems with some ie the weather app, there was no way to configure your location, and the facebook gadget you cannot login. Not sure wy these not working as meego uses the google gadgets desktop, though this maybe solved with a future update.

The status page only supports twitter & last.fm. I configured my twitter with no problems @kswebdesign, though there is no support for your facebook status and updates, which does seem unusual as facebook is as popular as twitter and really should be on there, not sure if facebook support will be added in the future.

Viewing photo’s and images is great, if you go to the devices zone, and you can then access your pictures directory, once you go into each directory you see the thumbnails of your images, the supplied images viewer is good and in full screen, now makes my netbook great for showing off my photos to friends etc. As I use my netbook for viewing my photos that are stored on a SD card in a reduced resolution, so makes a great portable digital photo frame.

All in all considering this is the first release for netbooks this operating system is great for what I need it for, ie boots and connects to the internet within 20 seconds, I have got basic word processing and spreadsheets, and the internet access through chrome is great. So I am sticking with meego for the moment on my acer one, as good enough for what I need, and hope the future releases do fix some of the problems and support facebook on the status page as this would make it perfect.

We had a day out at Drayton manor theme park on Friday 27th August, so here is a bit about the day and what we thought of it. First thing to mention is how we got the tickets through the tescos clubcard offer, you exchange £7.50 worth of clubcard vouchers (either online or by sending a form by post) for 1 free entry which for adults is normally £28 and children £24, so this works out better than a 2 for 1 entry offer. Once at the gate ticket windows you hand in your tesco free entry vouchers (mine was sent by post) and get your normal entry tickets.

We arrived early at just before 9:30am which is when the gates open, but the rides don’t start for another hour at 10:30am, which gave us time to have a quick look around the park and the zoo, the zoo isn’t that bad since I went a few years ago they now have some meerkats, which again were cute, if you read my article about Birmingham nature centre you will notice that In the zoo part they have a dinosaur park called the Dinotrail this looks new and my daughter did enjoy looking at the models and doing the questions about the dinosaurs that are by each one, there is also a little play area there, we didn’t look at that but would be fun for the kids if they get bored of the rides in the theme park.

We then went to Excalibur, which was good you go around the lake in a boat, there is commentary telling you different things, at one point you go into Merlin’s cave with dragons, the last time I went a few years ago the dragons had flames coming out of them and some water was sprayed at the boat, this didn’t happen this time so either not fully working or there was a fault.

The buffalo coaster this one of the smaller roller coaster, but does go in 2 circles over the lake, and does go round twice so is pretty good, we went on this ride twice on the day as was fun for all ages.

We went on stormforce 10, now with this ride you can get very wet, you are in a cart lifeboat that seats 8 people 2 per row, now is doesn’t matter weather you sit at the front or back as you get equally wet as the cart goes backwards at one point, you can purchase the clear plastic rain ponchos at £2 each, but I don’t see the point in these as why go on a ride that involves getting wet if you don’t want to get wet, this ride I have to admit is great fun, we went on this ride 3 times in total on the day, so you can see we really did enjoy it.

Splash canyon which is the water rapids ride that we went on, again was fun and you can get wet, but this time on visiting drayton manor and going on this ride no one in your boat/ring or whatever you want to call it didn’t get wet, each boat seats 6. The last time we visited the park I got soaking wet on this one.

There is a new attraction for 2010 which is the happy feet 4D in the cinema, there was signs around the park and on entrance for the day we went saying due to technical difficulties some of the viewing experience wasn’t working, but didn’t say what. After we had sat down they said that they wouldn’t be giving out the 3D glasses as this part wasn’t working. Now I haven’t been to anything 4D, the showing was around 10-20mins of a cut down version of the film happy feet, in certain parts you feel the seats move, you have water splashed at you, and the wind blows in the direction of the action, at one point there are bubbles floating around, this was a part that is underwater. The bass of the music etc was more than in a normal cinema. All of this did immerse you into the action, though I think this would have been better if the 3D part was working. But in our case was still good, just slight disappointment no 3D.

Talking about things not working on the day we went, the cable cars were closed for maintenance, though they were testing them when we got there, the drunken barrels was also closed for maintenance. The little train that goes through the park wasn’t on, this one not be to confused with the train that starts within Thomasland.

Now for lunch we had taken our own food which we had left in the car, you can exit the park and re-enter as long as you get your hand stamped upon exit, so because we had taken our own lunch, I’m not sure of how expensive the food and drink prices are within the park.

The pirate-ship is still there, now this can be a fun ride and does go pretty high, we kind of enjoyed this but we had gone on this after having our lunch, so we didn’t feel brill after it, but that will teach us not to have lunch before going on this kind of ride

The Ferris wheel is a good ride as you do get the great views of the park you are high up at the top, now I’m not keen on heights, so I didn’t look fully down, but still fun each cabin seats around 8 people.

We went on the black revolver This is like the wirlisers but in the dark, now my daughter loved this, thou I didn’t really enjoy this, but then again I’m not one for these kind of rides, now though I remember this ride from years and years ago at drayon manor, but still a very popular ride people even keep re-queuing to go on it again including my daughter minus me lol.

We went on the golden nugget ride, this is where you are in a mine cart and have to shoot different targets around and get point for each target hit, its not a bad ride and is enjoyable for all ages. There is also the boat trip around the main lake, not really that exciting but fun all the same.

Thomasland is mainly for the kids, but the first thing I have to say about this part is the queas were massive compared to any of the other rides around the park, my daughter went on a few of the rides around Thomas land including the troublesome trucks runaway Roller coaster, the crankys drop tower And the rockin bulstrode, there was also a show on within thomasland, with dancing and singing this was just by the entrance to Thomas land, younger children would really enjoy this.

The day we went as you can see from the above we got to go on most rides and the ques wasn’t that bad for the larger rides. So we did have a great day out and great value with the way we had got the tickets, we thoroughly enjoyed the day and the best thing was the weather wasn’t too bad. We didn’t go on the main larger rides including G-Force, maelstrom, shockwave, apocalypse etc, As we wasn’t really into these kind of rides, but again most people like these, so I have only commented on some of the rides that we did go on. So all in all we did have a very nice and enjoyable day out at the park.

See some of my photos of the day from the link below or the link to my photo albums at the top of the page, and you can see a little video snippit of the day, including the rollercoaster rides, by the link on this page.

We visited the Shrewsbury Flower show on Saturday 14th August, this was the last day of the show, as also was on the Friday aswell. We decided to go for entrance after 4pm as was slightly cheaper, entrance was £12 after 4pm if before 4pm was £20 per adult (prices for Saturday, Friday prices slightly different), children are free with a accompanying paying adult.  We parked on the a temporary car park on the other-side of the river, the price for parking was £4.50.

There was loads of stalls selling all different types of things from garden furniture to beds etc. there was several marques some with crafts in and flower displays. We went to see the different displays of the flowers etc, and wasn’t disappointed at some where really amazing with so much colour and must have taken the competitors ages to create some of them. I was a bit disappointed that there where no outside garden design as not really into going to flower shows but went to the Tatton park flower show a few years ago and was really interesting to see the garden designs. But the inside displays were very good, so kind of made up for that. See some of my pictures for the displays, we did enjoy looking at the yogurt pot garden’s by school children.

The marques like I have said had different crafts in as well, in the one there was the bee keepers with two different displays of the bees, we had a very good chat with one of the bee keepers and this was very informative, Now im not keen on bees myself but glad they was in the little cabinets

There was also loads going on at different times in the main arena, not long after we had arrived there was the show jumping competitions, the weather at this point did spoil it a little as had a really heavy rain show, but only lasted about ten minutes, so wasn’t to bad.

While walking around the show there was a man dressed in a kilt,  he had a costume on that made him around 8ft + tall,  he had a man dress as a dog with him,  this was hilarious as the dog costume could even spray water like was having a wee, the dog kept chasing people around,  my daughter loved this and so did everyone,  as even i was in fits of laughter,  i even had the tall man stoke my head i don’t know the name of the act but they was really brilliant and fun.

The parachutist’s were good aswell there was four of them jump from a small aircraft,  and they landed in the arena with great precision  It was amazing to see them come down to the ground so quick.

In the main arena at around 7pm there was a kids show on,  this was really great for the kids,  i cant remember the name of the act,  but was two men one acting like a criminal stealing a car anfd the other trying to stop him,  the car had doors falling of aswell as smoke, if standing by the barrier to the arena you did get wet from them driving the car,  was really fun and enjoyable and had us in fit of laughter sometimes

The Household Cavalry Musical Ride was a great show, the horses and riders where amazing there rode in time with all different types of music. It was such a great sight to see, as we was sitting up the front we got a great view. This was the most amazing show I have seen., the horses were so controlled and very graceful. see the video above.

The choir and singing was really good,  especially with the national anthem,  as everyone stood up as they sang this, the brass band was really good,  with some good music the kids even did enjoy this.

To end the evening at around 9:45pm there was a very amazing fireworks display, that lasted around 20 minutes, all the fireworks were timed to different types of music, this is one of the best fireworks displays I have seen in a while and must have cost of lot of money in fireworks, see the video below for a snapshot of the display.

I would definitely be going to the event next year, and we will probably be going for the full day as didn’t get to sewed all the flower displays and all the events going on, the only criticism with the day is that unless you purchased the event programs on the gate, you wasn’t to sure of t5he times of the events etc as they wasn’t fully published on the official website.

To see some of the photos of the day click the link below or the link to my photo albums above. Also click on the videos link in the post to see my youtube videos in HD

We visited the Walsall town show on Sunday 15th August which was held at the Walsall Arboretum. The price of entry was £3 per adult / child, we parked on the broadway, so not sure if you had to pay for parking on the site. I have to admit there really wasn’t any signs on entrance to Walsall town centre saying which way to go or anything about parking. Also no signs even from the entrance to the park play area on the Broadway.

There was the main arena, where the monster trucks and bike shows were being held. There was a lot of rides for the kids, the average price was £2.50, so could have worked out a expensive day if the kids went on all the rides. Though my daughter did enjoy the crooked cottage, this was only £1.50. There was also a kind of sand pit are for the kids to play in.

Because it most of the rides was by Pat Collins, they had a few of there old trucks on display. Also was some steam engines on display. There was also some charity stalls selling different things including books etc. The one marque had model in these included models of fairground rides, these were very detailed and I especially enjoyed looking at them

There was a marque with different rabbits in most in cages, but there were two that the kids could stroke, the kids did enjoy seeing and touching the rabbits, which I have to admit some of them were very cute.

We did enjoy the motor bikes jumping over the ramps, the shows were on each hour alternating between the monster trucks and the bikes. The first show of the monster trucks was at 1pm, this was the one monster truck going around the arena then over some scrap cars  about for times. It was very noisy but good. The display wasn’t that long, but still nice to see the truck. The main event was at 3pm, but we left before that, as not that much else to do there other than the rides, but like I say they could have worked out expensive.

All in all was a nice few hours out, but not enough there really to keep the kids occupied, unless you wanted to keep paying for the rides. We took a packed lunch instead of having to pay sometimes inflated prices for the food on offer. The one good thing is you could get your hand stamped to get back in throughout the day. So was worth going but if on next year I probably wont bother going. I have been to the Wolverhampton’s town show and to be honest this is a better town show than the walsall one and last time I went was even free.

Click the link below or the link to my photo albums at the top of the page to see more photos from the day.

We went to the Birmingham nature centre for a visit,  so thought i would share my experience of the attraction,  the entrance price is a very reasonable £3.50 for adults and just £1 for children up-to the age of 15 & children under 5 are free. The centre is on the pershore road just outside of Birmingham city centre.

From the entrance it does look like a small site,  but is pretty large,  the centre is set in over 6 acres, there is a small play ares for the under 5′s known as Lilliput village, the centre is set out with separate areas for the different enclosures,  there are various animals there including meerkats, reptiles, sheep etc. The centre says they are moving away from just having a collection of various animals to start to focus on housing endangered species.All the enclosures and in good condition and each enclosure does have good facilities for each of the types of animals.

There is also a small natural wooded area that you can see different birds, the Bourne Brooke (which floes into the river Rea) runs through the centre with two bridges goin over it. There are also various sculptures on the walk ways around the centre. You can walk which ever way you want as all the paths lead to each other.

We did really enjoy looking at the animals especially the meerkats and even the guinea pigs,  as they were very cute,  they were in an enclosure with little houses,  have a look at my photos.  The snakes and spiders were nice to look at aswell. We also liked the monkeys & lemurs. Really all of them especially when some of then were playing with each other as some are pretty funny to watch, though like visiting any nature centre or zoo sometimes you don’t see all the animals as some are asleep or hiding away so you have to be patient sometimes to see them in there enclosures.

There is also a cafe onsite, We didn’t try the food as we had taken a picnic as there are various seating and tables around the site

For the price of entrance I would really recommend a visit,  especially if you have children as they will love it. We finished the day having a bike ride around cannonhill park, as the park is just behind the nature centre. Within cannonhill park you also have the Birmingham arts centre (MAC) with does have different exhibitions on.

See some of my photos from the day out by clicking on the link below or clicking on my photo albums link above.

On Friday 16th July we went to a ghost search / hunt evening at Tamworth castle, the price was £32 per person.  The evening starts at 8pm and ends at approx 12:30am, I went as I have been a fan of Most Haunted, I even went to one of the live ones a few years ago in York. Here are my personal thoughts on this very interesting evening. (sorry for being a long article but did want to go into as much detail as possible about the evening.

There was a group of four of us that went, the total amount of people there was 19, on arrival we was all in the great hall with a talk about the way the evening was going to go and being introduced to the mediums and guides for the evening. We didn’t realise that we could take our own cameras / camcorders, luckily I had left my camera in the car, so I went and got my camera out of the car & also one other person in our group had got his compact camera on him.

After the talk in the main hall we all was guided around the castle, being told about the history of the castle and told about some of the paranormal experiences  that people have had around the castle, once the tour was over we all was in the great hall again, then we was split up into three groups, in our group there was the four of us and couple. We was given two different types of equipment a EMF meter and a laser temperature sensor that we could use.

Our first part was to go to the one side of the castle, being guided by the same lady that had shown us around the whole castle, we went to different room and even a very small corridor that was very claustrophobic. We was mainly in two different rooms, the lady was telling us about thing that had gone on in the castle, now because was dark was a bit spooky especially where the suit of amour is in one room, we moved on to the one room that is set out like a nursery now again this is spooky and unnerving in the dark especially the pram, as walking into one of the rooms I did go abit light headed (not sure of the room but has got a old bathroom in, but other than that we didn’t experience anything else really.

We then had a tea and coffee break in the cafe /shop, both me and one of our group brought some small wind up torches from the gift shop, and to be honest they did come in useful, so if you go to this kind of evening it is a good idea to bring a torch, as parts are very dark.

After the tea break we then moved to the town hall, which is just by the castle, this time we was with two mediums, first we went down into the cellar in the town hall, we all sat down and the mediums started talking about what they could sense, the one said she could feel the presence of either a man or boy under the ground, the boy she could sense was playing with some kind of wooden ball, like a marble, they called out if anyone was there, someone said they heard a noise, though I didn’t hear anything, because not that much happening in the cellar, we moved up to the meeting room.

In the meeting room we was being told they could sense someone in the room, maybe with a bell or something similar, we than all held hands in circle, again the mediums could sense someone with us, at this point the one medium started swaying backward and forward, the other medium got in front of her, the medium that was swaying was saying no, as the other medium asked questions and the lady swaying was saying different things in a deeper voice than her own, this went on for a few minutes, then the lady that was swaying and seemed to be under the influence of someone. She then came around and had to go out of the room as she seemed shaken. Now to be honest and this is just my personal opinion I didn’t really believe that she was being controlled by someone, two other people of our group also thought the same, again this is my opinion but really you would need to be their to make up your own mind.

After coming back from the town hall, we then went with the other medium to the other side of the Castle, We went into the one bedroom that is known as the haunted bedroom, we all sat to the one side of the room with the display of the bedroom in front of us, me and my friend has sat on what could be described as a little puffett / bench. The medium was telling us about different things that had gone on in this room, I had kept checking the temperature with the sensor I had but no change around the room, then my friend just moved her hand and touched me the next thing we knew the bench we was sitting on collapsed, she jumped up screaming, so did everyone else, everyone was a bit shaken, now my friend that was sitting by me had the EMF meter and after she jumped up we did all hear it drop to the floor.

Both my self and the medium checked out the bench that had collapsed and it did just look like it had broke, while we was looking at that we tried to find the EMF Meter, it wasn’t by the bench where we was sitting, both me and the other person with the torch was looking for it all around the room, but couldn’t see it anywhere, we did this for approx 5mins.

While searching for the EMF meter, I was by the door (as in the photo below), as I moved the floor did creak under my foot, but the I heard a few creaks on the wooden stairs as if someone was walking up the stairs, I shone my torch into the stairwell, expecting to see someone coming up as thinking some had heard the screams and was coming up to check, but nothing or no one there. at that same time, my hole body shivered and i did feel very nervous I stayed still for a few moments and looked again in the stairs and used the temperature sensor, but no change in temperature, I then had to move to the other side of the bedroom very quickly as did feel very nervous, and to be honest this really did freak me out, as the noise wasn’t from anyone else in our group as they were a few metres away behind me, so they were further away from the door. So I have no explanation about this as I am sure the creaks where coming from the stairs and no where else.

At this point we still couldn’t find the EMF meter, the medium was saying that she could feel someone basically having a good laugh, so we decided to move to another room, as we was going out of the room, one of our group put in hand in his front full length jacket pocket and pulled out the EMF Meter, He said he hadn’t put it there and non of us had put it in his pocket, now he was the other one with the torch and mainly me and him had been looking for the EMF meter, so we wasn’t sure what had happened. Now this person doesn’t really believe in this kind of thing, but he was really shocked and freaked out that the EMF meter that we had both been looking for and that we all heard drop on the floor was in his pocket, so again with this part we have no explanation to how it got in his pocket.

We then went upto the guard room, we all sat on the benches. the medium was saying she could feel a presence, now after a few minutes of being in this room I did feel really tearful for no reason, I could even feel myself starting to well up at some points, I hadn’t said anything about this and the medium was saying that she could feel a presence of someone that was sorrowful, so that is weird that i felt like that and she was saying about this person, she couldn’t also go toward the one end of the room, now both me and another person both after we had left the room had said that we thought we could see the outline of someone sitting at that same end of the room.

It was now around 12:15am, so went back to the main hall, and the two mediums that we was with in the town hall was going to let the spirits move a glass on a table they had their figures on the glass and as they was asking a presence to move the glass it was moving, at one point they asked if anyone would like to have a go, so my friend got up, but the glass didn’t move with her. Now again my personal opinion is that the glass moving wasn’t believable, but this is just my personal opinion.

I have uploaded most of the photos that I had taken that evening these are unedited so not the best quality as some were taken without the flash in dark environments, I have only re-sized them for upload, there are a few orbs on some of the photos, will leave it up to you to decide if they are just dust or something else, click the link below to see the photos.

All in all was a very enjoyable evening and I would recommend going if you are interested in the paranormal or even if you are unsure, as does open your eyes, Like myself I couldn’t explain about the creaking on the stairs and also that lost EMF meter, but other parts I didn’t believe. But was still a great evening and I would do another one again. I think if you go to one of these evening you do need to go with a open mind & you will enjoy it. For more details on these events held at the Castle goto the official website www.tamworthcastle.co.uk

Most Haunted at Tamworth Castle.

After going to the ghost search, I found the episode of most haunted from 2003 and their visit to Tamworth Castle, I watched this 2 day after going and was a very interesting watch, as in the programme Derek Acorah says could sense a woman just a few steps down on the stairs and she goes up and down these stairs and stops just at the top of the stairs (now these are the stairs that I got freaked out with)  Derek Acorah had got the Name Editha,   There was also was also a door that slammed shut at the bottom of the same stairs and when they was doing a vigil the camera mounted at the bottom of the stairs had moved while they had heard creaks on the stairs. The programme finished as when they were in the same haunted bedroom they called out and the fire alarm went off, and there was no reason for it. I have only said the parts of the programme that are could be relevant to our visit.

Now I had seen this episode when broadcast in 2003, but I have been round the castle before, so there is no way I would have remembered this for me to think about that same staircase, so this did make me think about what I had heard, but again its down to each person to believe what they want. All I can say from my personal experience this was very similar to what I heard and thought.

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http://www.kevinsimon.co.uk/?p=725 http://www.kevinsimon.co.uk/?p=725#comments Sat, 03 Jul 2010 16:04:01 +0000 Kevin Simon http://www.kevinsimon.co.uk/?p=725

We have installed a large above ground swimming pool, so thought I would share the best way to get it setup and some tips we learnt along the way.

The swimming pool is by home leisure it is a 18ft circular pool that is 42′ deep, the top is made up of a inflatable ring, the sides are made of a tough 3-ply laminate made of 2 sheets of heavy PVC Laminate with a inner grid sheet made of nylon & polyester, it is very solid, it has to be to take the amount of water in it at over 4000 gallons. It came complete with a external filter pump, pool cover, ladder and a maintenance kit, This pool has a RRP of £299.  The picture above is from the advertising from the retailer we brought from. This is classed as a easy up pool, the box shows 5 simple steps, but isn’t as easy as makes out if your ground isn’t perfectly level.

Where I was installing it the ground wasn’t by no means level and not really good solid grass, so the first thing that had to be done is to mark out the area needed and take up the turf. This was done by measuring the to the centre of where the pool was going to go and putting a stick into the centre with rope measured out to half the diameter ie 9ft in this case and painting a line by rotating the string to give a 18ft diameter circle shape, Then the hard work started of taking up the turf. On this ground was harder than i expected as in some major parts there was a lot of large stones/bricks under the turf.

Once all the turf was up, it is then the job of leveling out as much as the soil as possible, the best way I found to do this was to but some stakes around and then some string across, think of slicing up a pizza, once the string was attached I leveled the string with a spirit level. the string was approx 2 inch of the soil level, so you could see the level. Then you remove the larger bumps in the soil and fill in the low points. This doesn’t have to be perfect as we was putting sand on top of the soil to make perfectly level. But the more you can get this level the better as you wouldn’t need as much sand.

Once we had leveled the soil as much as possible and taken all of the stones of the surface and that are protruding out of the soil, This is particularly important that all sharp objects are removed. It was then time to put the sand down, now because we did this over the bank holiday weekend, didn’t have time to get sand delivered, so we got bags of sand from a local supplier, now we used approx 35 bags of building sand. If would have thought in advance definitely would have got the sand delivered as would have been cheaper and easier.

I started putting the sand down and leveling off, this is best done by starting one side, putting sand down as you go and with a large spirit level pulling the sand and checking the level as you go. And making sure the level was correct from left to right and top to bottom. This is very important that this is level as this is the last base for the pool to sit on.

Now the sand was level was the time to start getting the pool setup, the pool comes with a ground sheet to go underneath the pool, so once the we was happy the sand was level the ground sheet goes down over the sand and then the pool on the top.  We started to set the pool on on not really a warm day, but still was ok to stretch it out.  I would Recommend doing this on a warm day so that the pool liner is more flexible. We stretched out the pool and flattened the base of the pool as much as possible. Once this was done the top need inflating with approx 75% of air. Then the water started to go in, at this point we had to try and get the bottom of the pool as flat as possible, by gently kicking the liner to the sides by getting in the pool without shoes and socks on.

Then we just had to leave it filling up for the start of filling up approx 10hrs we put some plastic garden chairs inside to the pool to hold up the inflatable ring, this was just until the pool gained its shape and to make sure water wouldn’t run over the ring. It took around 2 days to fill up to a good level of water. Once most of the water was in we then fully inflated the top ring.

The external pump filter attached to two pipes that connect to valves on the side of the pool. Be warned that the cable on this pump / filter has only a 1.5mtr lead, so we had to get electrics down by the pool, I had to use 25mtrs of electric cable that was feed through a solid plastic pipe and buried into the found with 2 eternal sockets around 3mtrs away from the pool.  This was then connected to a RCD circuit breaker into the existing outdoor electrics.

This was all the hard work done and then all we had to do is treat the pool water with the chemicals that we had brought to get the chlorine and pH levels correct, this is easily done with a water kit that contains all the chemical treatments you need and test strips to keep checking the water. We found that it is worth running the filter for around 2hrs before you are going to use the pool Don’t use the filter while you are in the pool. Cleaning the pool of debris is easy with the supplied net and water vacuum to clean the bottom of the pool.

We used to the pool for the first time a few weeks after it was all up and running and because we had amazing weather the pool was really warm all through out the day. It is a great pool and once all the effort is done getting it right will give you loads of pleasure throughout the summer, that is as long as we have good weather throughout the summer

TIP

We had the pool up for a good few weeks and used it a few times, but we then hadn’t used it for a week or so and the water was completely pea green. It went like this for a few reasons : we hadn’t topped up the chlorine levels (hadn’t done this as the level was bit low but because we wasn’t using it I didnt think it mattered) We had a good down pour of rain over a few days, so introduced fresh water and another reason we hadn’t put in the algaecide chemical.

Now because was so green, the water couldn’t be cleared up using chemicals, so the best thing to do was to empty it fully and clean, now the outlet valve at the bottom is there to drain the pool, you would attach a hosepipe and let it drain using gravity to your drain, but because I service fish pools for a living, I put one of my powerful pumps in so could empty quicker, then using pressure wash cleaned it fully out then filled back up again.

So as you can see from the above, it is very important to keep up with the chemical levels even if you think you arn’t going to use it for a few weeks, as if you don’t you have the hassle of cleaning it fully.

Hope anyone reading this find this information informative and helpful, if you have any comments please leave them.

We went to llangollen for a special day trip the other Sunday, From where we are was around a 1hr 30min drive, Llangollen is a small town in North Wales, the river Dee runs through the town, it is a very Beautiful place, the view of the river dee from the Llangollen bridge is spectacular, on the one side of the bridge is the train station, you can take a stream train trip through the Dee valley, we didn’t go on this as was £11 each and would have took around 2hours.

We decided to go on the horse drawn canal boat ride. this leaves from the Canal wharf, this takes around 45mins on a trip down the canal, because it is pulled by a horse the ride is very smooth and very quite, the price was £6 each adult. It is a very nice relaxing trip, but can be a bit boring as the trip is I would say about a mile, but you see the same scenery.  There is also another trip that leaves from the canal wharf that goes over the Llangollen Aqueduct, not sure of the price of this but the journey is approx 2.5hrs.

We then spent some time looking around the shop, I have to admit it is a lovely town, We then took a trip up the horseshoe pass, It is great driving up there with great views, we stopped at a layby just near the top, the view from the top is just spectactular you can see the whole valley and all the surronding areas for miles. Going towards trhe horseshoe pass there is also the ruins of a Abbey, sorry not sure of the name at time of writing.

Just outside of the town there is the horseshoe falls, it took us a few attempts to find this, it is just off the A5 towards Berwyn and behind a little hotel / pub, the river runs behind the hotel, if you walk for approx 10mins to the right of the hotel then you come to the man made horseshoe fall this is a large semi circle waterfall, approx 2-4ft high, this would be a great place just to relax as loads of open grassland to just sit and relax.

Llangollen is a great place to visit for the day or even a few days, my only critism is that there are no road or street signs directing you to all the different attractions.

From Llangollen we decided to visit another waterfall that was close by, I had seen a picture on a postcard from one of the shops, so look on the net on my phone (that’s when i could get a signal and found the website, the place was called Pistyll Rhaeadr, on the website it said was in a town called Llanrhaeadr, so i had copied and pasted this name into the googlemaps on my phone, and gave me directions, but this is where a few problems started, as the googlemaps said it was north of Llangollen approx 15miles, so again over the horseshoe pass and we eventually after all the winding roads got to Llanrhaeadr, but unfortunately after speaking to a few people in this very small village we was in the wrong Llanrhaeadr, as there are two places of the same name by Llangollen.

Eventually after going back over the horseshoe pass, back trough Llangollen, and back on the A5, went trough Oswestry and then onto the correct village of Llanrhaeadr, it is at the end of a very tight windy road at times we wasn’t sure if heading in the right direction, but when we pulled up was really worth the wait, The Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall is a amazing sight it is approx 80 mtrs high and is just spectacular to look up from the bottom of the waterfall to the top, there is a little bridge that runs across the bottom the the waterfall stream.

Three of the four of us decided to walk to the top, if you are going to visit and want to walk to the top be warned is a very long and tiring walk, and would recommend good footwear and having a drink. It is well worth going to the top as the views of the surrounding Berwyn Mountains, and even some more smaller waterfalls at the top that you cannot see from the bottom.

See my photos from the day out by clicking the link below.

All in all was a great day out, but a very long day out.  I would definitely recommend anyone looking for a day out or if passing in the area. to have a visit to Llangollen and even more the Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall as you wont be disappointed with the amazing views.