The ramblings of Keane Ingram

So after a wet first half of the summer comes a scorchingly hot second half. The last few nights have been really uncomfortable, and the kids haven't been coping well with it - Kitty in particular doesn't like the heat. I think I had less than 4 hours sleep last night due to kids waking up and the heat. Thankfully it seems a bit cooler tonight so fingers crossed I can recover.

I went out for my first ride in the dark on Friday evening, leaving just before sunset and getting back when it was dark 50 minutes later. I hadn't been out with my lights on before and felt a little nervous, but the breeze from cycling helped with the heat and I took an extra bottle of water with me which definitely helped! Unfortunately my pump broke yesterday (that'll teach me to buy a cheap one - or for letting Nicky play with it!) but I got a new one today from Halfords. My British Cycling membership is almost paying for itself - I paid £24 for basic membership, I get £12 cashback from Quidco. I did this mainly for the third party insurance, but one of the benefits is getting 10% discount off anything from Halfords. You can also use Quidco on purchases from Halfords so the pump I bought today only cost me £20 rather than £28 after all the discounts. Would be good to buy an expensive bike and get that 10% off but I won't be buying a new bike for a while!

We had a fairly quiet weekend. I took the kids to the woods on Saturday morning where it was nice and cool, but yesterday we went to a boot sale in the morning - big mistake as it was scorchingly hot by 10am so we had to leave fairly early.

We've got a holiday in the caravan booked for a couple of weeks time which we're all desparately in need of I think!