My Mi-fi, Your Mi-fi or Our Mi-fi

When we are out on our adventures, if I couldn’t get a free campsite Wi-Fi connection, I would use a PAYG 3 Sim card in a dongle.

Top it up with £10 for 1 Gb of usage for 30 days, jobs a good un.

This has been ok, but a little hit or miss depending on the signal strength.

It also meant that although I could connect my Net book, the extreme knitter couldn’t have internet connection on her beloved Kindle.

The Extreme knitter bought me a Huawei mobile Mi-fi for my birthday which creates a Wi-Fi hot spot in the campervan using my PAYG 3 Sim card and allows up to 10 people to log on to my internet connection. Now you can see what’s transpiring here.

I get a birthday present that just by some happy coincidence benefits the E/Knitter.

I wonder if I could get away with buying her a Cordless drill for her birthday.

I have to say that the Mi-fi performance is a league ahead of using the dongle. It has a 6 hour battery life and copes well with the two of us connected. As long as the E/knitter doesn’t try to download the Shawn the Sheep movie we will be alright.

Tarts, Puddings and Peaks

October was upon us we still hadn’t been away since our Scottish trip. Cabin fever was driving us mad, so we set off for the Peak district grabbing a spare night out of a busy weekend to escape.

Ruby opted out of this trip and decided to have a sleepover at our daughter’s house.

A few miles along the A515 before reaching Buxton we were surprised to see that the Book Store Brierlow Bar was still there and as popular as ever despite the advent of the Kindle.

Buxton is a beautiful Spa town with a very similar feel to it like Harrogate.

Trying to find somewhere to park Puffin was proving to be a nightmare. I went to the Springs Shopping Centre pay and display car park and luckily spotted that the height barriers were across on the exit, but the entrance barriers were open meaning we would have been trapped if we had entered. We eventually found a space in the Market Place car park.

We ate in a bistro in Market Street called No 13. Nice food, but slow service.

The walk down the hill called the slope led us into the main shopping area.

The extreme knitter immediately found a wool shop (how does she do it?)

Buxton Baths now converted to shops were interesting particularly the tiling and glass stained roof.

The walk back up the slope was a struggle.

Our campsite of choice for the evening was Beech Croft Farm situated quite close to Buxton just off the A6. A quick phone call and we were booked in. It’s a superb campsite with excellent facilities and being a Saturday night the site was busy.

http://www.beechcroftfarm.co.uk/

Large hardstanding pitches with electric, water and TV point.

A late start to the Sunday morning with the usual Bacon baps for breakfast. Tidy up and we were off, headed south towards Bakewell.

The parking at Bakewell is good as it utilises the cattle market.

All the television travel shows that visit Bakewell hone in on the tart verse the pudding wars, a myth fostered by the crafty inhabitants of Bakewell. The supposed heated fight of what came first the Bakewell tart or the Bakewell pudding means that visitors have to buy at least one of each for a comparison. Vast quantises of both are sold each day. I’m sure that when the competing shops lock up at the end of the day, they meet up for a friendly beverage and discuss marketing tactics.

You don’t think that I was going to be drawn into by this sale ploy, by heck I was.

Armed with one Bakewell Tart and one Bakewell pudding.  I carried out an extensive taste test. Unfortunately the results were inconclusive, so further testing will need to be required on future visits.

I noticed three shops calling themselves “the Original Bakewell Pudding Shop” and only one called “the Bakewell Tart Shop”. Does that have any impact on the tart/pudding debate?

Feeling only slightly full we dragged ourselves to Puffin passing over the river bridge that is festooned with padlocks.