Oxford

[UPDATE - the photos are playing up on this post for some reason and the RH side is getting trimmed off, if you click on the photos you can see an enlarged view of the whole photo]

I have realised that I have been here in Oxford for about 2 months now and I haven't mentioned it at all on this blog!

Well, I'm living in a nice share house in the south of the city with 2 other guys and a cat. The place is nice and pretty cool but not overly exciting on the social front, those are the breaks I guess.

My work is working out really well, the company is really onto it and everyone is really cool. We're based in a small business park (or a petting zoo as Luke likes to call it) on the edge of a small village outside Oxford.

Here is a picture of my office:

and the view out the window:


Here are some pictures I took over the autumn:











I've met lots of cool people here now, I went to a pot luck dinner arranged through couchsurfing not long after I got here, now I know lots of people through that. We meet up fairly regularly for meals, drinks and the odd games evening. I've even found a few kiwis here too, they're everywhere!

That's about it really, I've been basically alternating weekends here and away lately, I could probably put more photos up but in reality I can't be bothered and you're probably not that interested!

I hope you are well wherever you are.

cheers,
Lucas

Trying on Tryfan

Last weekend Luke, Matt, Scott, Ricard & myself went to North Wales to climb Tryfan, one of the mountains - the first official event for PACMAN International.
Luke, Matt & I met in Bicester (where I work) and drove up to Manchester where we were staying at Luke's & met the other boys who arrived from Edinburgh & Bristol respectively.

After a relatively quiet Friday evening in (playing werewolf until 1am) we rose early and drove into Wales to climb Tryfan.
We were not quite sure what to expect - one of my workmates asked if we had ropes, a guy at a sports shop asked incredulously if Luke was planning on climbing with the brand new trainers under his arm (because "thank god - they are just not suitable"), to which Luke replied "no", which I think we all know was a lie.

The weather forecast however was good and we decided that we would climb within our abilities and if anyone thought it got too hard we would turn back.

Upon arriving at the base of the mountain - sorry "mountain" - we found it to be shrouded in cloud and distinctly not fine. After confirming that we were infact in the right place, we started up the hill at a sprightly pace, ignoring the jokes people were making about climbing in trainers as we powered past.

Scotty trying out his pensive pose

We made good time up the hill, picking some pretty good lines and only having to backtrack on a few occasions. The best thing about the mountain is you can basically make it as hard or easy a climb as you like depending on which way you go. We made it challenging.

Ricard got sick of Matt's posing and decided to push him off the mountain

Spot the goat

Ricard: "¿por dónde?
Matt & Luke: "That way"

We decided at this point to take a photo of us at "the top" just in case it got too difficult

After reaching the top we had some lunch, bantered with our Liverpudian climbing buddies, didn't jumping from Adam to Eve becuase of the wet & resisited the urge to scold the Czech guy who ditched his diabetic Mrs on the way up so he could go the hard way (we looked after her) we made our way back down the mountain. Oh, yeah, and we took some photos...

Luke celebtrating on Adam & Eve, well just Adam actually

Ricard living on the edge

After skirting a couple of bluffs and a few smelly billy goats we made our way to the bottom where we jumped into the PACCar (read: my Fiesta) which guided us back to Manchester, via a nice little pub with a lovely barmaid - who we taught how to play werewolf...

Back in Manc, we had a quick sauna at Luke & Sarahs before capping the weekend with a massive night out at a pretty darn good Manchester club.

All in all, I would have to say this was one of those perfect weekends, everything went like clockwork, there was good banter, good company & general good times. Long may it continue.