Peak

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Adrian

It’s so nice having a bit of sunshine recently, after a long, cold and damp winter.

May bank holiday season is upon us and we took a trip up to the Peak District. Nice to give Rosie a run out, nice to get out of the city, see some hills etc, and generally nice to have a long weekend.

The weather forecast for the weekend, however, was rain. Lots of rain. We were lucky though. Saturday was sunny and dry, Sunday a bit drippy during the day and Monday was mostly dry coming home. So we escaped the rain in London.

We stayed at the Lee Wood hotel in Buxton – a nice place off the Park, comfortable rooms, but slightly inept staff. To get service in the bar, you needed to ask at reception. It took the waiter a couple of attempts to bring us the correct breakfast, and the evening session was challenging to them too. Still, a nice place and quite relaxing.

Buxton itself is pretty, compact, a bit like Bath but a fraction the size. It has a park with water, an opera house, and lots of pubs.

We didn’t go there for walking in the hills, something that I suppose most people go the Peak District for, but it was nice to have a blast around the park. The Snake Road (A57) in the north is particular pleasing. The Pass was almost reminiscent of the San Bernadino Pass in Switzerland and a lot closer to home. It was only occasionally blighted by caravans.

Following on from my previous post, we chose to use only Rosie’s satnav for this trip. Worked extremely well, except for a time where she didn’t know where a village was. We had Kate as a backup, but she didn’t know where it was either. Fortunately, the iPhone did, so we could work around the problem. Not having to stick something to the windscreen has become a real bonus and will probably continue to use only Rosie for my navigation needs. Kate may well be destined for eBay.

So, this is the May bank holiday season, so where to go for the next long weekend? I’m thinking North Wales again – Rosie has never been there before and Lena and I really enjoyed it last time. The Llanberis pass beckons…. :-)

In the meantime, there’s an election tomorrow, and younger brotherly visits over the next two weekends.

Busy month!

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Rosie vs. New Kate

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Adrian

A sat nav comparison – New Kate is a TomTom 950 Live (old Kate was a 520) and Rosie refers to her built-in RNS-E device (Rosie being an Audi RS4).

Background

Old Kate was very good and served me well for the last (nearly) two years, but  shit software from TomTom meant that syncing and updating a device with an SD card installed was just too much grief and finally the whole thing became too much so I bought New Kate that had all the maps on the internal ‘drive.’ Much better and also had the cool LIVE services.

Rosie’s RNS-E is built in, but has maps circa 2006 and lacks a few features.

So, here’s a feature comparison:

Viewing experience

New Kate’s screen is smaller than Rosie’s but is higher resolution and brighter. Also, New Kate, being stuck to the windscreen, is more in line of site, so you get to keep your eyes on the road more. On the other hand, Rosie also puts turn information on the instrument cluster right in front of you.

Having driven a few hundred miles now with Rosie’s sat nav, I’d say there’s not really much in it.

Route accuracy

New Kate wins hands down here. Not only does she know the roads better (up todate maps), but knows about crap roads (and to avoid them) and can do eco routes and – here’s the winner – has live services so can route based on actual traffic conditions.

Rosie has TMC, but not very often. She doesn’t know about eco routes and is much slower at recalculating a route when you ignore her and go somewhere else.

Ease of programming

New Kate is very easy to program. On screen keyboard means you can type in names and places. Unfortunately, the responsiveness is crap, so you end up retyping and generally taking ages. On the other hand, you can pre-program routes from the comfort of home or hotel room, whereas with Rosie, you need to be in the car.

Rosie is a bit more fiddly to enter destinations (no keyboard) but surprisingly has many special destinations built in, eg, I couldn’t enter the postcode for a place I wanted in Margate, but she did have the place itself.

Ease of use when driving

It is very hard to do anything with New Kate when driving. Mainly because she’s just that much further away (stuck to the screen), and the touch screen requires a bit of accuracy of prodding, taking attention even more from the road. So basically, don’t.

Rosie is a bit easier. All controls are via the MMI interface which can be used without looking and is within reach.

New Kate can be controlled via voice, but only you prod the right places on the screen first. RNS-E also has voice control but not in Rosie (needs some phone preparation hardware).

Sexiness of voice

Rosie. Hands down. Although Kate is quite bossy :-)

Convenience

Well, Rosie is always there, so scores highly with convenience. No need to plug anything in, or stick to the screen. On the other hand, New Kate is convenient in that you can plan before you get in the car.

Miscellaneous

Rosie has a nice feature where on a motorway, she’ll list all the upcoming junctions and service stations. New Kate doesn’t do that.

New Kate knows where the nearest cheapest fuel can be had and can do Google lookups. Rosie cannot. Although I’m not sure it’s that useful in practice. The latter is also an expensive service which I may not want to pay for.

New Kate can show the map whilst Rosie shows info on the music I’m listening too. Rosie can’t do both at the same time… well she can a bit – the info cluster in front of you still shows next turn info.

New Kate can read road names, whereas Rosie can only read road numbers and major town and city names.

Summary

A tricky one. I think for most things, I’d use Rosie for navigation but if going on a longer trip, especially somewhere in Europe, I’d probably use New Kate. If nothing else New Kate would be a backup.

I’d really like to be able to say Rosie is perfect and New Kate is going on eBay, but I can’t. Even if I get the 2010 map updates, I’d still be torn between the two.

I think a revisit is required in six months.

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Rosie’s return

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Adrian

Rosie came home again on Friday after a night at the service centre. The battery was properly checked and proved to be ok, and she’s got new gaskets for the rear light clusters.

So a little blip for the first few days, but I’m impressed with the followup service.

On the way back from the service centre, we celebrated with a tankful of Shell V-Max and today she had a run out around Greenwich and down to Bluewater and back. This is only a 60 mile round trip, but that’s a quarter of the tank gone.

Rosie is one thirsty girl!

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Used cars

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Adrian

So is this what it feels like to own a used car?

Rosie, for me, is less than a week old, but she’s really almost three years old.

I collected her on Saturday, but on Sunday morning she wouldn’t start. I called the free Roadside Assistance people who said the battery was almost dead. OK, so twenty minutes later, the battery was recharged and Rosie and I went for a little blast, and all was well.

Well, almost.

Rosie’s boot was full of water. No, not the boot space, but the boot lid. The space where the light cluster lives. Not a good place for water.

I managed to drain it out, and called the dealer and said “Oi!” and Rosie is now going back in to have the seals checked and the battery looked at.

I don’t know, maybe I’m unlucky, but Herman was completely flawless for the almost two years we were together, and now I’m having my first issues.

On a positive note, any work done/parts supplied will be free, and if things do go really pear-shaped, I have a 30-day, no quibble replacement policy, but it’s still a bit disappointing.

I am happy, however, that the pre-sale checks yielded a slightly worn tyre, so Rosie was given four new boots. And a free service.

So things are maybe not so bad.

And like her siblings from last year, she puts a big smile on my face when I push the loud pedal :-)

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Rosie

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Adrian

Tomorrow, I’m scheduled to go and fetch my new car, Rosie.

But there is a snag, and a bit of a worry, namely, the weather.

Do I risk crashing Herman on the way, making Rosie unaffordable? And risk crashing Rosie on the way back? Neither outcome would be pleasing.

I’ll probably give it a try anyway, as I did manage to get up to Scotland and back without incident in much worse weather.

I’m reminded, however, of my dad buying a new car just before Christmas and ending up abandoning it in a snow drift. It was about a week before he finally got it parked outside his house…

Anyways, fingers crossed there will be no more snow tonight and a mini heatwave to melt the existing ice :-)

Update: Rosie arrived safely. The only potential hic-up was on a tricky bit outside my house where an Aston Martin and a Maserati were having some difficulty on the ice. Serves them right for not having 4WD!

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Three

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Adrian

This blog is three years old. Happy birthday blog :-)

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2009

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Adrian

About this time last year, I wrote this, a review of 2008. I did one for 2007 too, so might as well do one for 2009.

2009 started with some uncertain ill health, that turned out to be gall stones. I had my cholecystectomy in February and have been a reasonably good health ever since. My weight has slowly crept up toward my pre-illness weight, but thankfully still about 5kg down.

There was quite a lot of travel in 2009, starting with a long weekend in Dubai in February for wife’s birthday. Amazing place.

At Easter, we had a long weekend in Cornwall/Devon, giving Herman a mini road trip.

In June we had a much longer road trip; two weeks through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, taking in the Alps, Italian Lakes, French Riviera, Black Forest and generally some of the Best Driving Roads in the World.

We were to return to Belgium in August – Antwerp this time for a minibreak, and another chance for Herman to play with the trains.

In September, we left Herman at home and travelled to Turkey for a week and met up with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and niece, and a very nice time it was too.

We would have gone to Belgium (Brussels) again a couple of weeks ago if it wasn’t for the wrong kind of snow in Calais :(

Finally, for travel, I took Herman up to Aberdeen for Christmas, visiting my dad and stepmum. A bit of drama on Britain’s roads, but generally OK.

Work wise, this year started out very well, rebuilding business with Nomura and generally things were good.

By the middle of the year, long hours and weekends were ramping up my stress levels and I began to look for an exit strategy. This culminated in a move to Barclays Capital in October, where stress and work levels have dropped to the floor, so much so, that I’m seriously craving challenges for this year.

Family life took a bit of a dent toward the end of the year, and apparently there was a credit crisis too.

So, for 2010, I will try to strike a better balance of work, personal and family life, reverse the weight gain trend and generally stay healthy.

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Winter travel in UK

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Adrian

2009 sees another winter where the UK seemingly can’t cope.

For us, it started with an aborted attempt to spend the weekend in Brussels before Christmas. We were to take Herman on Le Shuttle and across through France and Belgium.

We got as far as Junction 8 on the M20 before Operation Stack kicked in and kept us there for several hours.

In this case, the snow had closed the ferry port in Dover (M20 feeds this) and in addition, the French weren’t letting trucks off the boats/shuttles onto their motorway system out of Calais.

Further, Eurostar’s trains encountered the wrong kind of snow and so Eurotunnel had to use Les Shuttles to rescue passengers.

The prospect of waiting up to a day to get to Brussels (which was in a blizzard) just for two nights stay was looking grim, so we bailed out and went back home.

My next journey was a few days later, driving up to Aberdeen.

This was surprisingly easy. M11, M25, M1, A50, M6 – completely fine. Stopped overnight in Preston, then onward the next day to Aberdeen.

This started out OK, but due to black ice and trucks jack knifing on the motorways, I was diverted across country (B roads then A71) and this was a bit hairy, with about 40 miles of untreated twisty country roads. Herman became a snow plough in places and nearly ended up in a ditch a couple of times – very slippery – but got through OK.

Aberdeenshire was supposed to be under 3 miles of snow, but the last leg up the east coast was actually fine, only thwarted by the last 100 metres by the slippery and steep untreated road up to my dad’s house.

Compared to a friend’s attempt to fly up to Edinburgh from Luton, my journey was really easy.

On the way home now. Last night I drove down from Aberdeen to South York, via Newcastle. Again, mostly easy, with only one scary high speed black ice bit on the A697 where Herman fortunately kept going in the same direction :-)

Side note – Coldstream is a very nice little town to stop for a break, as the parking was free and the toilets immaculately kept.

Just had breakfast and waiting for the sun to come up a bit for heading off for the final 3.5 hours.

Finger crossed it doesn’t all end in doom!

Update: arrived safely, and typically, it was just raining heavily for the last 20 miles to London.

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Lodger

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Adrian

We’ve got a lodger! Only for about a month, but my sister has come to stay.

This will probably mean weight loss for me, as we’ll probably have the same amount of food and drink in the house, but with an extra mouth to feed.

Bonus!

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Sudden urge

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Adrian

I had a sudden urge to re-theme the blog.

Nothing else to say at the moment.

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