Blog

  • Scotland visit

    Finally on the move again after spending a few months in Cambridge sorting out the house etc. Honey wanted to see Scotland and I wanted to inspect my square foot of land at Laphroaig 😀

    With both of us now very slow on the bikes I finally decided to get the train to Edinburgh and then rent an Enterprise Car Club car to drive to Inverness via Balmoral and then across to Oban to get the ferry over to Islay islands.

    Our Edinburgh train was cancelled at Peterborough but fortunately LNER held back the earlier train so we could run and catch that. So only a small delay.

    Edinburgh is grey and overcast but not to cold. We had an excellent meal at the Whiski bar incredible service and decent food.

    Gyrosco.pe is not happy with my days eating though 😀

    Todays food input

    so now to sleep…

  • A decent walk for a 59 year old.

    Whilst rummaging around my blog’s history, I discovered my walk from Lake Geneva to Nice across the Alps, which I did in my 59th year. At my current age of 76 it would be nice to think I could still do it but alas, looking at the spreadsheet of that walk, I don’t think so!

    Especially since 5 months previous I had walked  431km along The Pennine Way!

    GR5 Data from Memory Map
    Date Place Ascent (m) Descent (m) Distance (km) Time  Av.Gradient
    02/09/06 Saint Gingolph
    03/09/06 La Chapelle 1929 1306 14.9 05:53 22%
    04/09/06 De Chesery 1750 764 17.5 06:04 14%
    05/09/06 Samoen 500 1700 19.8 11%
    06/09/06 Les Gets
    07/09/06 Moéde Anterne 1894 620 18.4 06:28 14%
    08/09/06 Les Houches 1043 2020 14.7 04:23 21%
    09/09/06 Chalet Nant Borrant 1447 962 19.3 05:52 12%
    10/09/06 Chalet de la Balme 2193 1683 23.4 10:40 17%
    11/09/06 Refuge de Rosuel 1369 1801 21.8 09:11 15%
    12/09/06 Val D’Isére 1401 1149 21.3 08:04 12%
    13/09/06 Lanslevillard 1361 1732 29.3 10:26 11%
    14/09/06 Modane 1005 1409 28.5 09:09 8%
    15/09/06 Refuge étroite 1558 830 16.2 06:53 15%
    16/09/06 Montgenévre 1800 1741 27.3 10:48 13%
    17/09/06 Chateau Queyras 2012 2462 33.6 13:30 13%
    18/09/06 Ceillac 1097 821 12.5 05:26 15%
    19/09/06 Fouillouze 1703 1474 21.9 09:13 15%
    20/09/06 Bousieyas 2201 2211 30.9 12:54 14%
    21/09/06 Auron 1652 1915 20.9 09:42 17%
    22/09/06 Roure 2299 2813 32.4 14:21 16%
    23/09/06 Dalmas-Valdeblore 1321 1105 13.8 06:32 18%
    24/09/06 Utelle 1737 2228 23.4 10:48 17%
    25/09/06 Nice 1640 2438 32.9 10:19 12%
    34912 35184 494.7
    Number of Everests 3.9

     

  • A Morning view

    The mornings here in Ban ThaRuea are so perfect. A cool breeze from the west that’s come over the Myanmar mountains and the lake with a air temperature of 22°C at 8am . OK we have a predicted high of 38°C at 2pm which means I will be ready for my cool swim in the lake at 5pm

    What a great place to live at 76.5 years old 🙂

    Here is the view from our balcony table.

    Balcony view looking west to the National Park

  • Shabushi lunch

    Shabushi offers an unlimited lunch in Phetchaburi 😀

    Lunch at Shabushi

    The gyrosco.pe app approves, its camera driven AI says

    Lunch at Shabushi
    Non stop food conveyor

    Not bad for ฿426 (£9.43) per person we have 1hr 30min before a surcharge is added.

  • Gyroscope

    I’ve restarted using the gyrosco.pe app on the IPhone. I thought I would check how long it thought I would live 🙂

    Not bad for a 76 year old!

    I’ve found it rather buggy and obviously it’s been designed by a 30 year old with very small fonts & low contrast text!

    My favourite thing is the AI calculations from my food photos

    A days food intake

    Will continue with it for a while and see if anything happens to my weight so far not so good 🙁

    Last weeks weight chart from the Weight Diary iphone app
  • The countdown begins!

    The countdown begins!

    [wpdevart_countdown text_for_day=”Days” text_for_hour=”Hours” text_for_minut=”Minutes” text_for_second=”Seconds” countdown_end_type=”time” font_color=”#000000″ hide_on_mobile=”show” redirect_url=”https://rtrt.me/ulink/CCTA/CC-2023/tracker/RH4PGYUS/focus” end_date=”13-08-2023 23:59″ start_time=”1691943437″ end_time=”7,1,0″ action_end_time=”hide” content_position=”center” top_ditance=”10″ bottom_distance=”10″ ]On the PBP[/wpdevart_countdown]
    It’s one week beforeToday I start my first Paris Brest Paris Audax something I always said I would never attempt 🙂 but I succumbed and now we are in Rambouillet

     

    I’m rider O195 with a start time of 19:30 on Sunday 20th August with a finish time 90 hours later on Thursday 24 August at 13:30.

    You can check my progress at this link. Honey’s progress can be checked at this link she starts 30 minutes before me at 19:00.

    Our progress is automatically updated at the control towns:

    The times are my official closing times at each control, I can exceed one or two but the overtime has to be corrected by the next one. So my sleep is going to suffer, according to Autosleep my Sleepbank currently has over 9 hours of credit 🙂

     

  • Geoff’s Tour of France

    Tomorrow as the Tour de France cycle race ends we depart to do our own little tour, interestingly back to the origins from which TdF was born!

    Our proposed route for 2023 French tour

    The first stage is from Luxembourg Airport to Pont Au Mousson to take part in the Federal Semane cycling week.

    The next stage a week or so later is to ride to Rambouillet for the start of the Paris-Brest Paris Audax, the oldest cycle event in the world!  That is 1219km in 90 hours with a huge 10,618 meters of climbing spread out over the course 🙁

    If we survive that then the idea is to ride to Chamonix to cheer on my son doing his second UTMB 100 mile run around Mont Blanc!

    I suspect the French rail network will get involved at some point or two since all that adds up to 2,569km of riding and 21,000m of ascent!

  • The Paris Brest Paris (PBP) Audax

    PBP Course 2023We have both qualified & received our places for our first Paris-Brest -Paris ride. We completed our 200km, 300km, 400km & 600km qualifying rides in Thailand. The 2023 PBP for me starts on Sunday 20th August at 19:30 and Honey at 19:00. We have 90 hours to ride the 1219km (757 miles) which makes my finishing time on Thursday 24th August at 13:30, although obviously, it can be sooner hahaha. Stop laughing I did the Isan 2020km ride with a few hours to spare!

    June 23 StravaWe have spent June training in the UK, The PBP course is hilly with 11,750m (38,550 feet) of ascent, or roughly 1%. Checking my Strava it looks like in June I cycled 1923km and climbed 13044m which is 0.7% so getting close. However, my average moving speed was 16.6kph obviously I need to speed up a fair bit if I want to sleep on PBP.

    I managed to get some sort of lurgy in the past few days which has had me shivering like crazy and non-stop peeing. But it seems to be clearing up fast now so hopefully training will resume tomorrow.

    More to

  • Checking out my blog with ChatGPT

    I gave it this question – can you summarise geoffjones.com

    Geoffjones.com is a personal travel blog that documents the author’s travel experiences and adventures around the world. The blog features a variety of travel-related content, including trip reports, photos, videos, and travel tips. The author has traveled extensively to various countries, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, and shares his insights and observations on different cultures, cuisines, and lifestyles. The blog also covers other topics such as technology, health, and fitness, as well as personal musings and reflections. Overall, Geoffjones.com provides an engaging and informative read for anyone interested in travel and adventure.

    So pretty reasonable on its second attempt so I asked this.

    can you be more specific on countries visited?
    As an AI language model, I don’t have access to the specific information on the number of countries visited by Geoff Jones or his website. However, based on the travel-related content available on the blog, it appears that the author has traveled to many countries across different continents. Some of the countries mentioned in his blog include India, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, Nepal, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Peru, Brazil, and many others. However, the complete list of countries visited may not be available on the website.