Barry's fell photos

Barry Moore gave me a CD of photos from the North Barrule Fell Race when I met him last night. I uploaded the photos this morning just before I left but I didn't get the chance to publish them before I left.

So here they are now:

http://fellrunning.fotopic.net/c1734092.html

Thanks to Barry for risking the damp in his camera to bring these to us.

Off to the big smoke

Marie and I only managed to get three nights off Island during the whole of last year, and one of them was not social. So we are definitely making up for it this year with 14 nights planned in five different breaks and with only two gone we have a lot to look forward to.

We are off to London in a couple of hours staying at the Ramada Hotel near to London City Airport where the picture was taken when we stayed there previously.

We are going to a party tonight with strong Manx athletics connections and I hope to have some pictures tomorrow.

A problem with communication in Newcastle

It seems likely that Eastern Airways will be pulling out of the Isle of Man to Newcastle air route making communication with the north east of England more difficult.

During the past 18 months we have been exploring the possibility of Robbie attending a specialist autism college in the north east which I why I have been there three times in just over a year. It would have involved spending three years at one of the sites in Newcastle or Sunderland starting in September, just before he reaches the upper age limit for entrants.

Robbie was finally made an offer with just two months to spare but with so many breaks in communication it was not enough time for him, or us, to make such a life changing decision and he will be staying here.

There are high hopes of improved facilities in the Isle of Man although without the educational facilities that can be provided at a bigger centre. The good news is that Robbie will continue to take part in local events and I'll be doing less travel than feared, although you might not believe that if you read some of my other stories.

Newcastle may have been a bridge too far but I've still got plenty of photos with stories to go with them from the north east.

Best weather; worst time

The weather was absolutely perfect for running tonight in the Bushy's Great South Run.

Although I had not run more than 3.75 miles for 6 weeks I was looking forward to pitching my skills against a different group of runners so couldn't take photos.

So I took Ben with me to do the camerawork, or rather he took me.

Most of his best photos were of the scenery rather than the race. The one above is an example. Pure beauty.

The event was well organised and well marshalled. Thanks everyone.

So many good things about the race. Except my time. 39.09 was a lifetime worst performance for me over 10km!

Park run results

Have just noticed that the results are available at:

http://www.iomnac.co.uk/

350 people visited the site today

Apart from the 10 days around the Parish Walk, that is the highest since the beginning of May.

Adam on his bike

I have had a frustrating evening trying to tick a few jobs off my list but only managing about half of those that planned.

My mood has changed a little in the last half hour when, looking for an old photograph that I need for something that we are going to this weekend, I found stacks of old photos that I had forgotten I had, many of which will be resurrected here in the fullness of time.

Adam Killip, one of the Parish Walk bloggers, has been making a lot of progress with his walking in recent months. But here is a photo of him, long before he went to Durham University, in the Scouts Mountain Bike Race of 2004. Double click the photo to see the full size.

Nigel's got taste

I left the North Barrule Fell Race without knowing the result last night. But Simon Skillicorn, Tom Cringle and Nigel Armstrong were all pretty close together and I wondered what the outcome was of an exciting finish.

As I was editing the video Nigel, a former Liverpool season ticket holder, called around the house

and I asked Robbie if he would make him a cup of team. He appeared with a massive Chelsea cup!

Nigel described the race as one of the most enjoyable he had taken part in for a long time. He was pleased to be so close in third and later told the story of the race:

"Simon and Tom went away early on and had around 8 seconds through the fields at the foot of the main climb. I slowly clawed it back and by the wall 3/4 of the way up we were together.
Tom then took a lower line ( which turned out to be the better as it held him in the lee of the wind ) and Simon and I went straight onto the ridge.

Tom came in and was 4secs clear at the cairn with Simon a little more behind me. All changed on the descent where it was hats off to them. Their speed was incredible leading to around a 200m gap at the bottom to myself. Simon stayed clear though I started to reign Tom in but only got to his shoulder at the line."

Have you herd this one?

Checking the weather forecasts

If its not too wet this evening I shall be at or near the top of North Barrule this evening with video and camera.

If it is too wet this evening I won't be at or near the top of North Barrule this evening with video and camera.

Good luck to everyone taking part.

For anyone who thinks that cycling is as hard to follow as cricket!

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/sport-headlines/british-guy-did-not-win-tour-de-france-200907271935/

Fotopic until January 2012

It might not always be perfect, but I was horrified a few months ago when Fotopic disappeared for a day.

Since then I have taken the opportunity to renew my annual subscription for the premium service twice using "half price Sunday" offers.

I have paid up until January 2012 now so I have all the more reason to hope that they survive.

"Next year I'll be able to suffer better"

I started the day with a bit of publicity for the busy programme of events in the next month and, with no events this weekend, that took the pressure off me to update the site for the rest of the day.

It has been a bit of a bumper day for sport on TV and it was the first day that I had managed to see more than 15 minutes of live action in the Tour de France. I was well aware of the expectation that Mark Cavendish was expected to win but got more and more nervous as the race progressed.

But what a stunning finish. I loved the interview with him which was shown on both channels when they asked him about his aims for next year. He described how he thought he would survive the tour better next year by saying that he would be better at suffering!

I can only imagine the pride that his family and friends have as I have never met him and I was so proud that he is from the Isle of Man. Our son Ben has just returned from a month of "inter railing" around Europe and he said that when he mentioned the Isle of Man to people he met the typical response was not about the TT, or tax havens, or Manx cats or the birch but "that's where Mark Cavendish comes from".

I doubt if the Isle of Man will produce such a famous sports person in my lifetime.

Its one of those times you have to enjoy the moment.

During the next 48 hours (until I cover the North Barrule fell race) my time of my home computer is going to be focused on business matters so any updates on the website until then will be minor.

I prefer to be the amateur cameraman

The picture above, which I forgot to condense and you can therefore see a very large photo of Gail Griffiths eating her ice cream if you double click it, was taken at the prize presentation for the HSBC Ramsey Town Commissioners Park runs last night.

I prefer to be a "snapper" than a serious photographer and at weddings and functions I have usually gone around behind the scenes and not taken responsibility for arranging group photographs.

I didn't realise how hard that was until I took that lead role last night. I was worried that would be no publicity for the prize winners so I suggested to Steve Kelly that I took a shot of the prize winners, a role normally performed by John Watterson, who was not there.

I know that you are supposed to get the group bunched up but when a gap between the two lines of runners appeared I said the wrong thing when I asked the "little ones" to step back a bit when of course the front row included some young athletes who no longer considered themselves to be "little ones". Then I made it worse when asking the "big ones" to step forward instead as most runners are proud of their physical shapes and don't care for that description.

Ramsey Park runs

Last night I was thinking about the run in Ramsey when i realised that with 5 a year it would the 50th one tonight.

I have attended all but five or six and I think I have run in more than 30.

The course is a great compromise between road and paths, flat sections and hills and best of all it is traffic free. The handicapping has always been consistent too. It can't cope with those that deliberately go slow in the opening round but you are always marked off your best time of the year and so a slow run (say) in round 4 will not give you a soft handicap in round 5.

Well done to everyone involved on reaching 50.

I wonder who has run in the most? Any suggestions?

all-athletics.com

I've been receiving numerous emails recently abouut the above site without enough time to study it but it looks good so I thought I would give an airing on the front page before I add it to the links page on a permanent basis.



http://www.all-athletics.com/

Book collection - free to first to contact me

One of the problems of living in fairly big houses for the past 24 hours is that it is easier to store things than throw them out. This was made worse when our parents downsized and we picked up more and more stuff.

In the past three years or so I have gradually started to reverse this trend. First went 20+ years of Athletics Weekly; last year my bumper vinyl collection and this year I have been scanning more and more documents.

Whilst spending another couple of hours scanning tonight I kept looking at a row of athletics books on the shelf and made another decision -they've got to go.

I've just photographed them - double click to see the full size picture. They are free to the first person to email me at murray@manxathletics.com

Hopefully we can move into a smaller house sometime (as long as there is plenty of room for computers) and I want my legacy to be on a few computer disks rather than attic fulls of things that my family have to sort out.

I'm not planning to go yet though. In fact, if I can ever get on top of all the things I have collected and have everything available electronically I can spend more time on the website. I must find another excuse then.

No photos like this on Friday

Here is a picture of Kevin Vondy in the third round of the Ramsey Park Runs which conclude this Friday.

Since the Belfast Marathon Kevin has been taking a break from training and just enjoying some of the summer races. He did mighty well in the Manx Trophy Rally the weekend before last though finishing in 8th place.

I was planning to film this week's race but having managed my third 3 mile run last night in my latest comeback I've decided to have a run myself. When I reach the point in this picture on the third lap and the lungs are bursting I will find the motivation by remembering how easy it will be after the race without video editing to face.

Safe to leave radio on

I usually try and switch off the local radio station after the 7 o'clock news to avoid the self promoted superstar. The alternative offering this week is such a change and makes you feel good in the morning - even when you know that you are not going to get much done on the website this morning.

Hope that YouTube might do a deal with Warner Music

I picked up this story this morning. It would certainly make life easier for me with my videos if Warner Music can reach an agreement.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE56J5EK20090720?feedType=nl&feedName=uktechnology&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10482

Another favourite place on the Island ...except for cross country

The top photo is of an oil painting by my late grandmother, Amy Crowe. It is one of several from her collection that I was lucky enough to inherit and it was painted at the ford on the Creg-y-Cowin road in east Baldwin. You can hardly call it a road as, apart from agricultural use by my cousin Graham Crowe who farms the area, very few vehicles ever travel on this road.

Thank goodness. It is one of the most unspoilt roads on the Island. I walked along it yesterday with Marie and Robbie on a beautiful day and took the photo which shows how little anything has changed since my grandmother painted the scene in the 1950s.

My grandmother was born on a long derelict farm called Ard Derry on the west side of the East Baldwin River about a mile from this scene. My Uncle, Kenyon Crowe and his son Graham have farmed the area from Ballachrink for many years.

The farm was used for generations by the motor cycle trials clubs and for three or four years at the end of the 1970s it was also the scene of the Boundary Harriers (and Island league) cross country.

It was a difficult course as one side of the course involved running on a sharp camber on field. But then, like yesterday, it reminded me of my playtime in the Baldwin valley as a child visiting my relatives. Actually, I had some reasonable results on that course and, apart from the camber, was a great course.

I learnt yesterday about another well known athletics family whose family descend from East Baldwin. A story for another day.

No sound, less to see

After the third attempt on Saturday to publish a video of the Dave Philips Road races I said that I was giving up.

After the fourth attempt on Sunday I did.

I was sure that some of the music I was using did not fall outside of the YouTube licensing agreements but the facts are that the audio was disabled each time.

I could have used the time on something visible.

Update on previous post

Unfortunately one of the tracks I used on the soundtrack wasn't licensed by YouTube so I have had to edit the file and add another track. The revised version is uploading and should be available in half on hour or so but I'm out of time. If you want to see the file before I update the site this evening, use the YouTube shortcut on the right of the home page.

The first copy with the audio disabled is also there with the same video.

Dave Philips Road Races

I didn't prioritise the coverage of the above sufficiently high last light to get the video done so I returned to it first thing this morning. It was the first video that I have done for four weeks I had forgotten how time consuming it is.

Its uploading now but I am competing against myself for bandwidth with the video, this blog and the website all uploading at the same time. I'm not started the photos until the video has finished.

Its going to be a struggle to get them all on before I leave for my Saturday job at 9.45.

Back to priorities I need to get my breakfast!

Manxathletics.com search

Something that I lost from the website a long time a go, I can't remember why, was a search engine.

I've finally reinstalled a Google custom search engine. Its currently at the top of the homepage (will be relocated to the bottom) or here.

It currently has 33 different sites within its database including all of the club sites. Give it a try.

Meshing about

I've been using one of the litttle publicised services provided by Microsoft for a few months.

If you go to http://www.mesh.com/ you can open a free account that allows you to save 5GB of files online at no cost whatsoever. But it does more than that.

Your account provides you with what Microsoft call a Live Desktop. This is a storage area on one of Microsoft's servers and you can synchronise folders on your PC or laptop with folders on your Live Desktop. But you can do more than that. You can also synchronise the folder with additional computers. Depending on the operating system, you can also keep an identical folder on two computers in different locations.

I first tried this for a work application but then set up my own accounts during the time I was doing a lunchtime session for the Parish Walk site.

Last night I created a website backup folder in an attempt to get my website backups even more secure. Only last week I started a new backup to copy all the files on the web servers back to a backup device at home. Now, through Mesh, these files are replicated back to the Live Desktop. So I should always have two complete backups in addition to the original files on my own PC.

The backup includes the http://www.manxharriers.com/ site run by Paul Jackson. I can't make the walks at St Johns tonight but if my system works then soon after Paul updates his site to cover the 10km walk at St Johns the files should be backed up in my house and somewhere on Microsoft's wall of servers.

Microsoft are not all bad after after all!

I wonder how many people have "pre-ordered" Windows 7. This is a term that lots of retailers use but in plain English you order something or you don't order - you can't pre-order it. What they mean of course is that you are ordering something that is not yet available. But pre-ordering makes no sense.

Records thawing out

When I was a kid we had a fridge before every family had one. In those (old) days they used to freeze up a lot more than today's easy maintenance versions. When we defrosted it my mother would always insist that we never left it that long again and that the fridge would be defrosted every week, although it never was.

The point is that nearly everything in life is easier if you stay on top of the job. For some years the list of Manx records has not been published and potential new records have not been ratified.

Bernie Shimell, who together with his wife Di, produced the lastest list of the Manx records after it had been unavailable for several years recognises that there is still a lot of work to be done but is grateful for the flood of responses to the publication of the list on Monday evening.

David and Cheryl Pryke are going to produce the new website for the Isle of Man Athletics Association and the database of records across all ages will be one of the main features.

I'm sure that, just like the old fridge, there will be occasions when (through people not communicating, human error and other committments) the lists will not always be 100% perfect. But I'm also sure that with the use of the internet and a good database the ice will never accumulate as in the past few years.

Well done to everyone who has moved this long overdue project forward. Now its up to the athletes to produce the goods and add their names to the records as Keith Gerrard did yet again last Friday.

This morning I have added links to some of the best stories from the other local websites. Find out who met with Kelly Holmes by following the links. I can't find the results from the Park Runs (last Friday) yet.

The news from 2001

I just stumbled upon some old files that I had forgotten were still available:

http://uk.geocities.com/murraylambden/

I used to be far more limited in the amount of webspace I could use so I archived the news pages from 2001 and 2002 to this site. I just read a few bits and pieces and it is quite fun looking back.

Pragmatic and philosophical

I got up this morning thinking of all sorts of things that I would start writing about on the website and on this blog.

I had a quick tidy up of the front page to highlight an amazing number of events to be held locally in a month with the first one on Thursday. But I quickly realised that I have so many unanswered emails to attend to this week and that on Thursday evening I have an important meeting involving family matters that I would have to balance my priorities. So Friday will be the first event that I cover rather than Thursday. I've got a few other things to catch up with during the next couple of evenings so my pragmatic approach to the website this week will be determined by events at work and whether I have time at lunchtimes this week (even there I have a lunch out tomorrow).

Over breakfast this morning I read an article by Paul Kimmage in the Sunday Times (from two weeks ago) about David Millar the professional cyclist currently riding in the Tour de France. He was banned for two years after being tested positive for drugs but is now a reformed character. He has written the forward to an updated version of a book about Tommy Simpson who died in the Tour de France 40 years ago after also abusing his body with drugs. Millar's point was that, although a tragedy, it is so important that we remember Simpson's death and all the bad events of history or we will make the same mistakes all over again.

I couldn't agree more. But after listening to Graham Nash's singing on Friday, Military Madness and Chicago (We Can Change the World), its hard to see much change from when those songs were written in his hippier days.

These are things that are worth thinking about though as we carry out our daily and weekly chores.

Life has been good to me so far

We were at the Eagles concert at the MEN Arena last night. Its the fourth time that I have seen them since they regrouped in 2001 with the current 10 man backing band and the fifth time in all (1977 Stafford being the other).

So many people associate them with Hotel California that I am always relieved when they play that early in their set because it stops the morons who shout out for a particular song. As it they are going to change their set.

In fact the Eagles are so varied. From the early country sound, through the harmonies and the ballads to Joe Walsh's heavy rock.

The highlight of the show is usually two or three songs from the end when Joe Walsh blasts out "Life's Been Good to Me so Far". There is a heavy irony here as he is extremely lucky to still make the stage after years of drug addiction. A reformed character he may be but he was brilliant when he appeared on the 1 Show 18 months ago and they asked him if he had made any provision for his pension and after a moment of silence he said: "I didn't think I would live this long".

24 hours earlier David Crosby had occupied exactly the same point on the stage. And he has a similar story to Joe Walsh. Quite how he makes the stage (or the high notes), after nearly dying from drug and alcohol abuse and getting a liver transplant just in the nick of time, I don't know. He is 68 next month.

Apart from the first song when the harmonies were a little lacking and I thought their performance might flop as they had at Glastonbury, Crosby Stills and Nash were superb. It was a special occasion for Graham Nash (originally of the Hollies) returning to his home town and it is now 40 years since (along with Neil Young) CSN&Y starred in front of 500,000 hippies at Woodstock.

The preview of the in the MEN for the two big concerts was "Many Hippy Returns".

PS At the interval last night we recognised a Manx accent from the people immediately behind us in the 12,000 strong crowd. When we asked if they were from the Isle of Man, they confirmed they were and even knew us by name. John and Juliet Kneale from Laxey are going to the second Eagles concert tonight and he had also seen them in Belfast last week.

PPS Amongst the emails I received last night was one from Steve Cain with the picture from France of Steve Brennan cooking. Mark Cavendish may have lost the green jersey but life is good for most of us.

Laptop locked up

I felt as if my hands had been chopped off last night at 5.30 pm until I got them back at 11.00 am this morning.

We are staying in a hotel in Manchester and I thought it would be best to put my laptop in the room safe before we went out for a meal and onwards to a concert at the MEN Arena. The safe door jammed and so I was unable to access anything in it until a short time ago.

I hate websites that refer to an upcoming event which has already taken place and I was worrying about the references to the Manx athletes taking part in Birmingham "tonight" rather than "last night".

It was just as well that my hands had not really been cut off as I did lots of clapping last night at the concert.

And I wanted to clap again as soon as I saw the Manx performances in Birmingham last night.

Scanning takes the time

In December we booked to go to Manchester at 11.55 today. I thought I would be training for the Manx Marathon and so wanted to ensure I had time to get a long run in before the weekend away. I expect I also thought I would fit an hour or so in for the website.

Well, I got up at 5 am this morning and, I've not participated in either of the aforementioned activities and yet I've run out of time. Much of it goes back to spending every spare minute on the Parish Walk website the week before and after the event. I've got a month of newspapers to read and I have cleared all the Manx ones this morning and scanned loads of sporting articles which I will add to my archives.

I'm getting shouted at as i said that we would leave at 10.30.

Backing up is the best thing to do

I've been a bit concerned about my back up procedures lately to ensure that all my files would be secure if my main hard disk broke. I've just about got everything covered now but tonight I have tackled something even more important.

A year or two ago one of my websites was hacked and I lost all the content on www.murrayandmarie.com (our holiday business). Whilst I was able to quickly restore the main site (and change the password) I couldn't rebuild all the athletics stuff I used to host there before I set up a separate account for www.manxathletics.com Although I have all the original files somewhere on my computer. they are not all in one place and can't be quickly restored.

I now have a backup procedure for backing up my files on three separate servers (the other being the www.parishwalk.com site. It means that if if something went wrong in the future I could fairly quickly restore the files (or move everything to a completely new service provider which I have never been able to do before).

The backup (among other things) will include the content that Paul Jackson has on the www.manxharriers.com and www.easterfestival.info sites.

I can't see the forum either

I've just discovered that I have been blocked from my own forum again -its not happened to me for a while. If my theory is correct (only Manx IP addresses getting blocked) then I will be ok when I am off Island at the weekend.

It does frustrate me although, perhaps because I receive the content by email in my role as moderator, I am not quite as tearful as some. As I have said previously, I am not willing to move to another provider at this stage as i want to maintain the whole history and it will be a big job to transfer the whole data to a new site although I have had offers of help and i will consider it again later in the year.

Taxi drivers and Parish Walk

Just picked up this link at Manx Forums:

http://www.manxforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=33806


What could be a sensible discussion that could possibly save a life is really taking place at a deplorable level.

Does anyone want to bring a bit of sense to the discussion?

The most demanding things are the most rewarding

Most athletes will tell you that the more you put into preparing for a specific event the more that you are likely to get out of it.

During the winter months, my biggest challenge on the websites was to do the monthly "Featured Walker" page on the www.parishwalk.com site. But because they presented a challenge (to find the time and to take a slightly different angle each time) they were also the most rewarding.

I've been to a few funerals in the past few months and so often you hear things about the deceased that you had never heard during their life time. Writing about people in their lifetime is a lot easier than writing obituaries and so I have decided to start an occasional series, of about the same length as the Parish Walk features, about some of the officials in the sport.

I'm not saying when I will start or how many I will do. Like the other series it will be modelled upon, they will not be in any order of importance, age or any other criteria. Just interesting people. They will be demanding but I'm sure they will also be rewarding. Just like the things that the featured officials have achieved.

My sabbatical continues

There is plenty to keep you up to date with the sport on the front page with detailed Island Games coverage, principally by David Griffiths, the results of the Glen Mona Fell Race on the Manx Fell Runners website plus links to all the upcoming fixtures.

One that jumps out is having a round of the Dave Philips series just 2 days before the Marathon & Half Marathon (and a whole series of events the following week).

With my recent commitments I would not have had time to train to defend my Manx Marathon title. So its just as well that I decided on the Parish Walk weekend that I would take a break from training and competing. I was in discomfort every time I got in or out of the van and decided that, if I am ever going to run a marathon again, I needed to take a break. I was so fortunate to get through London but had I been objective I would not have run.

I've spent three hours trying to clear paperwork and emails tonight as I won't have much time in the next few days. Work commitments will occupy me through the whole of tomorrow including the evening, and I have other things to do on Thursday night before Marie and I finally get a couple of days together at the weekend. That has also taken a lot of organising for Robbie and our holiday propeties. More funerals today too.

I'll continue to update here until I am ready to resume something like normal service soon.

He wins so often you think you are reading old news

I couldn't believe it today when I came in and checked the local news sites to find that Mark Cavendish has won again.

The Cycling News website goes so far as to say that, not only is he the greatest sprinter in the world at present, he is possibly the greatest sprinter of all time.

His brilliance is so overwhelming that it overshadows just about everything else that anyone from the Isle of Man has ever achieved. But he is surely nowhere near his peak yet.

I bet that no Manxman would want to change Tynwald Day

Its a strange this about Manxness. Other cultures are so proud of their traditions but I reckon far more Manx people went through the door of B & Q than near the hill in St Johns today.

Like most young people I used to get bored at Tynwald when I was a kid but I've not missed the July 5 celebrations for at least 20 years as I have tried to support a great tradition. I've also used as a way to renew old friendships.

My involvement has changed a little and this year I have been helping Marie and her colleagues to entertain the Tynwald guests, which has kept me away from the website again for a couple of days.

But I can't help noticing that, although numbers go up a little on the years when there are royal guests, in general there has been a steady decline in visitors.

But if anyone suggested changing it....suddenly everyone would claim to go every year!

I'm off to rejoin the fray.

Very short John Crellin film

I've spent the latter part of the evening tidying up some of my files and almost deleted half my video collection in error.

The exercise started off when I suddenly had a thought this afternoon as to whether I had many clips of John Crellin among film which didn't make the cut.

In the end, the two little clips that I have found were from existing film.

The first is from the Winter League in October 2007 and the second from the Barrule race in July 2008.




I'll add the film to the tribute page tomorrow.

A year of fell running videos

I won't be covering the Glen Mona Fell Race tomorrow. But before you email me to tell me that I am favour one branch of the sport and don't cover fell running enough (yes, I've had emails in the past), I'll say that there is nothing sinister about the decision tomorrow its purely that I will be in the middle of a number of committments supporting my wife with her involvement around Tynwald.

So I hope to get to some more of the fell races this year and I'll probably take more photos, run some features and do some more videos. Whether I'll do quite as many as I have in the past year I'm not too sure. Here is a review of the past 12 months where I have featured the vast majority of events (the soundtrack has been muted on a couple following the ending of the copyright agreement between Warner Brothers Music and YouTube):

Belmont Hill will never be the same again

Since I started training with Paul Curphey in the winter of 1992, hill repetitions on Belmont Hill have been a regular feature of winter training, although I have not managed to finish a session on there the last couple of winters since exercise induced asthma (or is it just my age?) got hold of me.

But that part of Douglas has always been special to me as my Uncle and Aunt, John and Kathryn Crowe, lived at Belmont House, at the top of Belmont Road, the road that turns off to the right as you climb Belmont Hill.

We always spent our Christmas days there as children with our extended family. John Crowe passed away in April and Kathryn has now rejoined him just 9 weeks after their 61 year old marriage was broken. It was her funeral today.

The picture was taken outside Belmont on Christmas Day in 1969. Kathryn and John are pictured on the right. My parents are at the back of the photo behind my grandmother Amy Crowe. The sole surviving member of the group is Kenyon Crowe on the left next to his late wife Ruby.

I knew my aunt as one of the warmest and most caring people you could ever meet. The Crowe family had many good times together and with Michael, Janice (Corlett) and Ruth (Sutherland) their own families are equally good members of Manx society. Kathryn's long years of entertaining so many friends and family in times of plenty followed the war years when she served as a nurse in Iraq and other places and like all others of her generation could not be sure of living to 33 never mind 93.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to provide a background to why sometimes I cannot maintain the momentum of the previous times on the manxathetics.com website.

Family bereavements are always a time of reflection and inevitably of meeting family and friends that you have not seen for a while. I learnt today just how many of them look here for these sort of features. I am therefore quite happy to write for them as much as the regular visitors to the athletics site. Why not?

Its been another long day with a couple of other important matters to deal with, not least cramming work into a morning session before attending a family meeting in Douglas before the funeral.

And so my day ends thinking less about those exhausting runs up Belmont Hill but thinking back to Christmas Turkey and Top of the Pops on Christmas Day, and to my Auntie Kathryn and her little red Hillman Minx.

Kathryn Crowe with brother-in-law Kenyon during his 80th birthday celebrations in 2002

John Watterson's fantastic Island Games coverage

I know that I have said it many times before, but the coverage of local sport provided by Isle of Man Newspapers must certainly beat anything that anyone else provides around the British Isles. And I doubt if there is any other island covering the Island Games in Aland so well.

It really is staggering to see the depth of coverage from Aland. And there is no magic to the method. Just dedication and hard work added to no little skill.

The quality of the print has been by evolution rather than revolution. At first we got the occasional colour photo but now the Manx Independent is full of colour. 30 years ago, although most of the local events were covered, it tended to be the same photos used week after week from a library.

Where have the last 11 weeks gone to?

The picture above is of our self catering holiday property on the Old Castletown Road in Port Soderick. It was one of a number that I took the week before the London Marathon. I was going to start a blog to display to our visitors and potential visitors just how much the Manx landscape changes through the seasons.

I was going to take photos every week. I have done so most times but I have not used them for anything. In the short term our properties don't need the extra promotion because they are booked very virtually the whole year. But in the long term it is only the continued promotion that will continue to fill them.

But most of my spare time in the past 11 weeks has been consumed with the website and visiting events to get the content for the website. I've referred to the many other tasks that have suffered during this period and I've only really dealt with time critical emails.

Tonight I have spent more than four hours dealing with outstanding emails and planning the arrivals over the next few months. So the blank screen may not be what you are used to but it will give me the ability to do some more work on the website in the months ahead.

For every successful venture there is planning.

No less so than for the Island Games. The athletes and the organisers are reaping the rewards of the planning so for another few days I commend the David Griffiths Aland Blog here:

http://aland2009.blogspot.com/

Old cross country photo

Before leaving for Aland, Andy Fox sent me a photo which has been published in the Islee of Man Examiner this week.

There was a full report on the people included in the Examiner but you can add more stories here or on the forum if you would like to.

Dave Philips Road Races

Tuesday night was the first event on the new course at St Johns that I had not attended. Robbie kept the family involvement up and has now run all three rounds with very consistent times. Some other runners have made very large improvements since the scratch race.

I've found the results of the Tuesday race on the Western AC website:

http://www.westernac.org/#/results/4527772270

Island Games flight

After work on Friday I drove out through the Balthane Industrial Estate to see if I could get a picture of the plane that was due to take the Island Games team to Aland a short time later. I was too far away and ended up taking the picture above from the new car park at the airport.

I had also thought about making a video of the takeoff. I'm glad that I didn't as I have just read in the newspaper that it was two hours late leaving.

Back online

Refreshments for workers and students at Munich airport on Tuesday

With the number of commitments I have in the next couple of weeks, my websites are going to have to take a back seat but at least I have got this far.

I left my hotel at Gatwick just before 5.30 am on Tuesday and after a day in Munich to attend a business meeting got back to the hotel at 11 pm. I couldn't get my laptop to connect through the hotel system so gave up plans to do anything with the site.

I did, however, manage to spend a pleasant hour and a bit with son Ben at Munich Airport. I hadn't seen him since he went back to university on 17 April (he has longer terms that most students seem to these days) and he set off on an Inter-Rail holiday last week. He has been to Paris and Brussels before travelling down to Munich where we agreed to meet up for a short time after my meeting.

I've been almost as short of sleep this week as after the Parish Walk so last night I was asleep almost as quickly as people can send me an email to tell me they can't see the forum.