Making Hay ...

Tuesday was another quiet day and I found time for a little woodwork …

… let me explain; as we are  about to have the bedroom decorated it is time to think about décor and it was most definitely a case of “that mirror has to go”. It is a rather 80’s number with a white frame and doesn’t really go with the look of the room now that the wardrobes have been built and the cupboards and doors have been sanded, oiled and polished.

The mirror itself was a rather fine bevelled piece of glass so all it needed was a new frame to regain it’s place in the room, time for a bit of recycling I think. I have a large amount of very old elm floor boards that were lifted from the landing during the extension build and with a bit of care these will make a most excellent mirror frame. I knocked one up about 18 months ago for the downstairs loo and was really pleased with the result so it is time for another.

As you can image a 250 year old floor board is somewhat beaten up and the first stage is to identify a few lengths that are robust enough for the job. Then it is a case of dealing with the nail holes where they have been previously fixed to the joists. That is what I managed to do this morning. The method was to drill each nail hole with a 10mm drill and then use corresponding sized plugs that had been bored from a scrap of elm board. These are simply glued in to the holes and will be trimmed once dry,  more on this later in the week.

The evening saw another ride out with Chippy Ian and Mick. This time it was out through Evesham towards Cheltenham, out through Shurdington and up Birdlip Hill on to the escarpment. From there it was a fast run along the A417 to the outskirts of Cirencester and a stop for a coffee before taking the A429 towards Stow on the Wold. Before we reached Bourton on the Water we cut off the main road and took the lanes toward Snowshill where we dropped down off the hill and joined the A44 at Broadway for a run back in to the Vale.

I remember when I first started driving that we used to try to freewheel from the top of Snowshill all the way in to Broadway. We never quite made it but it was amazing just how far we could get using the limited power of a VW Beetle and the steep gradient to best effect.

It was a good run but it was unnerving to see a Fallow Deer leap out in to the road in front of Ian in the fading light. The last thing I wanted to do was to hit one of those as they are most definitely not traffic savvy and my bike TP and me are most definitely not designed for skidding down the road.