Gareth Jones

On Saturday 5th, my father and I once again departed to Holyhead for the ferry to Ireland for this year’s American and Kit Car show. We went in the Detomaso, which is an awesome car with an impressive road presence, made most apparent when everyone gets out of the way when they see it in their rear-view mirror.

Despite forecasts of rain over the weekend (with the heaviest rain destined to be right over Kilbeggan – great), we were hopeful. As we got closer to Holyhead the weather wasn’t great and the signs said that the crossing would be mildly rough. Neither of us were particularly bothered by that as we can both travel well on a boat.

We got onto the boat, got some lunch and sat back for the ride. The crossing turned out to be very smooth which was unexpected but pleasant nonetheless. An hour and a half later we were in Dublin, where we disembarked to find the sun was out and surprisingly hot.

We found our way out of Dublin’s port and took the M50 ring-road to get to the other side of Dublin, where we could then get onto the N4 and travel pretty much due West for most of the way to Tullamore. Throughout the hour-and-a-half journey the sun was shining brightly in the sky. We got to the hotel – the same one we used last year – and checked in before getting a quick shower and change and heading into town for some beers.

At this point I should point out that in Ireland, a general rule is that everything is at least 1.5x as expensive as it is in the UK, and in some cases this is closer to 2x.

We had a good few beers in our 6 hours out before getting a taxi back to the hotel.

The next morning we awoke to the sound of rain, and indeed outside was grey, wet and windy. Disappointing, but we hadn’t gone all that way to be put off by some condensation! We arrived at the field to find that the grass was already starting to get muddy and cars were already wheel-spinning while trying to park. Vehicles continued to arrive as the rain fell but it was obvious that there weren’t going to be as many attendees as last year.

Eventually we decided to brave the rain and go for a walk around the field to look at what was there. There were some cars that were there last year but also a lot of new stuff. There were more trucks this year. There was also more entertainment, with a simulator and a fairground ride (the Yankee) in the centre of the field as well as some line dancing (no thanks!).

I took photos of everything that looked interesting before going back to the car totally soaked, and every so often went for another walk around the field to catch any late arrivals. Last year people were still arriving at 4pm; this year people had stopped arriving by around 1pm. At around 2.30 we decided to call it a day – both soaked – and head into Tullamore to get some lunch and then get ready to go out again for some more £4.50 beers.

The next day as we got up around 8am to start our journey back to Wales, the sun was shining and the skies were blue – as you’ll see in the photos of the speed boat at the port in Dun Laoghaire. Bloody typical!

Last Wednesday I left for the Nürburgring in Germany with my father. We stayed in Dover that night and got a 7am ferry over to Calais the next morning, then drove down to Nürburg.

We got there around 4pm on the Thursday evening to find the place totally packed with people from all over the world. The track was open from 6 to anyone who wanted to take their car – whatever it was – around the famous course. We opted not to go round at that point having just spent a day travelling down, and we’d go the next day.

The next day the course was closed to the public because it was host to some real races. I took loads of photos and videos – and in most of them you can get a good sense of how hot it was there.

Saturday morning the track was due to be open to the public again, but dense fog kept it closed for a couple of hours. Thousands of people had turned up for the weekend as the lower track was also hosting the OldTimer Grand Prix at the same time. Eventually we got on there and did a couple of laps before being pulled off again due to the bad weather.

I managed to record the second lap around the circuit despite having been told to put the camera in the boot when I was spotted while trying to film the first one…

The fog never really lifted at all during the day and so the course remained closed to the public, though the Grand Prix on the lower circuit went ahead anyway. We were due to come home on Sunday and so had no time to use the remaining laps on our card before leaving, so we managed to sell them to some locals who would use them another day when the weather was better.

You could sit in the Aston in the photo while a professional driver took you round the course at maximum speed for just under 300 euros. I never went as over 250 quid for 5 minutes of entertainment is well steep, but I imagine it must be a fantastic ride. Surprisingly it went out with a new customer every half hour or so…!

The food was fantastic and we did’t have a bad meal once. To think that France is famous for having the best chefs, the food in France is crap compared to what we had in Germany. The French could certainly learn a thing or two there.

As part of the tour that we were on we were supposed to stay in Koblenz which is about 35 miles east of Nürburg, but as this meant we’d be 35 miles in the wrong direction on Sunday morning we opted to check out a day early after finding some available accommodation in Wiesemscheid. This village is too small to offer any proper entertainment but so close to the track – and more importantly west of the track for Sunday morning – that it didn’t matter. Once again we had a fantastic meal here – made all the nicer since they forgot to add it to the bill the next day!

We started back at about 8.30 on Sunday morning, again in thick fog. We travelled for about 100 miles before finally making it out of the fog in the Netherlands. In Belgium it was sunnier and in France we saw a return to the hot weather that we’d seen on the way down.

The twitter feed came in handy as I managed to keep certain people updated on our progress through Europe, though now that I’m back in the UK it’s not that easy to see how I’ll use it again until next time I’m off somewhere!

I think it would be good to stay in Koblenz for a night or two again next year despite the distance, because it’s the closest city to Nürburg and has the most choice of places to go out at night. It would be good to have a night or two in Nürburg itself too though so that we can be close to the track all day and be able to drink without having to worry about how to get back to the hotel later.

All in all a fantastic trip and I’m already looking forward to the next one.  :)

Photos and videos are available to view in the usual way.

Around a year ago now I was working at my computer one night. Suddenly it made a few clicking sounds and immediately I knew that this was bad news. Unfortunately, while I considered my immediate backup options and tried to decide how best to save all of my files before my computer finally died, it blue-screened on me and refused to start up again. Yep, catastrophic disk failure. It hadn’t even given me enough time to make some essential last-minute backups.

I spent the next hour or so researching the best way to get my data off a broken hard drive and found a forum where one guy had frozen his drive in the freezer, arguing that the extreme cold would slightly shrink the parts inside and bring any contacts closer together. Why not try that? The disk had already refused to yield anything to the six different bootable recovery disks that I had tried so I felt that I had nothing to lose.

I wrapped the drive in a plastic bag to prevent moisture from getting inside it and placed it in the freezer. The next morning I removed the drive and found it to be so cold that my fingers stuck to the metal. I connected the drive to my computer and turned it on, not really knowing what to expect. Amazingly, it booted into Windows. I managed to move everything of any importance off the drive onto a second drive before the disk finally warmed back up to room temperature and failed again.

After buying a new drive and re-installing Windows and all of my other software, the first thing I did was look for a backup solution. I found one in Carbonite. Carbonite automatically and securely backs up the contents of your hard drives for roughly £30/year and offers unlimited storage. It’s continuous and automatic, secure and encrypted. It’s also available for Mac. The peace of mind that I get from knowing that even if my flat was to burn down to the ground, all of my music, my photos, my work – everything – is all backed up off-site on secure servers.

As a happy customer I’d recommend it to anyone.