The Way Out West - A Blog about Pembrokeshire life, as written by an idiot

This is a picture of the recent volcanic eruptions in Chile. The particles of dust being spewed out contain charges of electricity and produce this insane looking picture. More info can be found here.
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I spent Saturday and Sunday with the Hodgeon family. The big fella got married in the amazing Picton castle and had a reception at the family home. The weather, the food, the booze and the entire occasion was amazing. Thanks for the day and good luck to the new Mr and Mrs in their new life together.
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A buddy of mine, Simon Cook has just started is epic walk along the continental divide trail. Whats that you say? Well, its only a 3000 miles walk through the USA from Mexico to Canada!

You can track his day to day progress on his blog and see where he is in the world here.
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This is a Manchester tart. These can be bought from Snowdrop Bakery, on snowdrop lane in Haverfordwest. This little beauty is the finest cake known to man and is the ultimate post surf snack. It houses everything that’s good in a cake, coconut, custard, jam, sugar and pastry. Whenever i go into the bakery they only ever have two for sale. There are usually three of us.
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Twice in two days! hit FW again last night. It was a bit smaller than Tuesday, about 3ft and still super clean. Took this snap after getting out, watched the sun disappear over the headland out back then caught one in.
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We got our first taste of summer this weekend and the surf was pretty bloody good too! I took this last night after having a beating down at fresh.
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I've just returned from a cycling trip to Italy. It was amazing and surreal. The trip was arranged in order to raise money for Prostate Cancer. The donations are still being counted, so we dont know the total yet, but we hope it to be in the region of 4000 pounds. If you would like to donate some money we have a justgiving account get up here. More photos to follow.
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Currently for sale in Fiji is an Island. It's about £3,000,000 and is sitting next to one of the finest and most consistent breaks in Fiji. Check out the surf and island information.
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The Pembs buoy peaked at 24 foot and 11 seconds yesterday. Basically it was massive, should the wind have been suitable for surfing, there wouldnt have been many breaks capeable of holding such a swell. Would have been good to have a go though!
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I finally took my camera out with us on a trip to Brechfa forest on Sunday. Heres a snap Jaime took of me, coming to the end of the Blue section.
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Stratacut is a form of stop frame animation that uses a series of paper sheets with cutouts. Its mind blowingly time consuming, but looks cool...Stratacut animation
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Theres a little known road in Bolivia called "Death Road". "Narrowing to only five or six feet in certain areas with a total elevation drop of 3000m in only 80km, Death Road has certainly earned its reputation. Fatalities can exceed over 100 annually."

Oddle enough its also an awesome mountain biking in the area too. Check it out
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We cycled round Llys Y fran today (Gary, Jase, Jaime, Me, Chinser). John Chin made his second outing in twenty years on his new bike. The big guy did good, with his Pulse watch recording bpms of over 180 at times. Didnt manage to get any shots, so here is one of some snopdrops instead.
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I visited Ty Canol this weekend also, the Bronze-Age burial chamber of Pentre Ifan, can you believe these stones have been here for over 6,000 years! Thats mental! more info on Pentre Ifan here
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After surfing in the morning, i took to the hills with Emma. We walked round Ty Canol woods and came across some friendly horses.
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With some hefty swell and light Easteries, the surf looked promosing. Newgale was pretty much maxed out, the paddle out was very hard (20 minutes worth!), once out back i was met with some overhead faces.
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I've wanted to design some t-shirts for ages. Tonight seemed like a good time to have a crack as I’m knackered from last nights beers and surfing today. I came up with the 'brand' SouthWest as well, that’s the part of Wales i live in. I drew the font myself using doctored curved boxes. The designs above are to reflect the sports I like to get involved in, top one is biking, 2nd is surfing and the bottom one is a more abstract design of a abseil rope setup, the texture is meant to reflect the ropes weave.
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Here is the current scene in my dads shed. Three boards are under the knife, being repaired after months of neglect. The one on the big white bag is Yvonnes, it has 11 dings in it after a nasty car crash last year.
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Fair do's to the Ordinance Survey folks, they do an awesome job but the one thing they don’t produce is a map of Pembrokeshire. They do an explorer map (25,000:1) which covers Pembs in two maps (North and South), but they dont do all Pembs in one map. I have figured a way of producing one. Using the Memory-Map software i an produce a large bitmapped image of Pembrokeshire which large scale printers can print on four foot wide paper. Hey presto, a map of Pembs for my wall. Ideal for bike, surf and pub crawl planning!
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A few of us hit the Afan Argoed mountain bike centre on Sunday. We decided the only trail to do, to really test the place out was the Skyline . 28 miles of Single-track, Fire-trail and especially made descents. Epic and Awesome! Here’s a snap of us in action, I’m the one looking mad for it, bike aloft.
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I bought some Hope lights at the start of the winter to allow me to bike at night. They’re amazingly good lights and last for just under 3 hours on one charge so are ideal for winter outings. I recently wrecked them on the ‘bank of destiny’ in Canaston woods, they got smashed from the frame when my handlebar spun round 360 (with me still on the bike). They looked pretty screwed. I sent them off thinking this is going to cost big - here’s the return note I had from Hope. Legends.
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I have mixed feelings about the building work which is going on at the summit of Snowdon, I’m not sure there should be a building there at all. You climb the highest point in Wales with the most amazing scenery and your met with the smell of burgers and coca-cola signs which is in stark contrast to the nature of the environment. However… its not a bad view for your coffee break! Blog link here
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This website is genius... what happens when rappers use excel.
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...are filtering through, heres one of Emma dress as a Bobby, looking posessed.
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...is just one of the installations of the crazy artist Maurizio Cattelan, showing is warez in a gallery is Austria. More info and snaps here
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This may the most mellow hotel on earth, its still a concept but it looks amazing. More infor here.
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The surfer and the booger rarely see eye to eye, but in the instance of these headers from Cornwall i have nothing but respect. More details here.
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Im a huge fan of Monkeys and Tea, so when i spotted this amazing product i nearly wet myself. Read more here...
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Adam Buxton, of Adam & Joe fame, directed Radioheads but also put together this great promo video for their new box-set.
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In contrast with the previous entry, heres a snap of us in at Freshwater West last summer. Blue skies, blue seas and warm water...
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Having been on every beach in Pembrokeshire many times, its not very often that you discover a new break, but on patrol in North Pembs today i discovered that this beach actually holds a wave in bigger swell. Good news!
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The 3ft we scored on Sunday seems a little small compared with the 8ft Devon was having. Snap from croyde-surf-cam.com/
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As i am suffering from the mother of all colds, i cant cycle. I followed Jaime into the woods earlier in the week and took some snaps of some of piste jumping.
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Thank good for that, we're summer bound. The Winter solstice was on the 22nd of December. We'll be living the summer dream before we know it! Heres a snap of from my parents farm in Narberth last summer. Click here for more info on why we have sesons and such like.
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I’ convinced this may be the stupidest bike gadget I’ve ever seen. What’s wrong with mirrors! Anyhoo, more info here
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Trees are complicated. The top images is from the web, I took the bottom photo in the summer.
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There has been plenty of swell around recently. Some off-the-beaten-track breaks have been working. Some of these are only surfable once or twice a year. Heres one such break in south Pembs.
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Well, last nights outing down the Cynin valley...was a nightmare! Pictured here is the map... the Red bit is where we actually went (GPS plotted) and the turquoise is where we should have been. The Last two miles were 'cycled' through a bog!
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Im into anything surfy or bikey... so imagine my delight when i spotted this little gem. A bike with a surfboard rack! Come on! More info here
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Well it came!. The swell peaked out at 27ft and 11seconds. That’s the biggest swell I’ve ever seen. For those not sure what these figures mean (and if you care!)... take a look here .

The swell was so big, lines could be seen rolling into Saundersfoot and towards Pendine. There were breaks all along from Tenby North Beach towards Amroth and beyond. The biggest holdback for us Surfers was the wind, but there were sheltered spots to be found!

This snap was sent to me by a mate, I think it piked it off a climbing site.
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Big Sunday is coming!!!
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Spotted this graphic online. It didn’t have an author to credit. I like the sentiment.
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These dudes in Queens, New York, have taken to pimping their bikes with huge sound systems. some of them have extra support from stablisers. Some of their systems put out 5000 watts at 150 decibels.

More snaps of their bikes here
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Just as we were surfing the 3ft of Amroth, this insane wave was being surfed in Ireland.

Ireland is building a big reputation for big surf with a few Hawaians coming over for a look.

Check out orcasurf.co.uk for more snaps (click on the next arrow at the bottom right).
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Well at last some autumn swell has hit! Its taken long enough but the large swells pushing through from the Atlantic allowed some ‘twice a year’ beaches to be surfed. This beach, believe it or not, is Amroth! Skilfully taken by Yvonne, the top snap shows the two Tims in action and the bottom one of Jaime getting swamped in.

We later moved on to a secret spot to surf until it got dark.

Plenty of swell out to sea at the moment, so looks like next weekend could be just as good with 20ft swell predicted for next Saturday.
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Visited the big smoke this weekend, in the words of Max Boyce - "A long weekend in London aye, without a bit of kip"

Had an awesome time. Met up with some big smoke buddies, Simon Cook and Ali McBeal , good to see you both (Si, im already in the prototype stage for the gingerbread ball kicking machine). Also big thanks to Cow for letting us stay in his pad - send marvo the bill for the stains.

It was great to be back in London (I lived there for a year), I do miss the buzz of the place. Pembs is a good palce to be this weekend , the surf is looking cranking, with predicted 4.5 metre swells pushing through. Hand on to your hats though, cos the wind is gusting up to 40mph. Should be good in the sheltered spots!
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Spotted this image on one of the artsy blogs i use. All the planes leaving heathrow in a day.
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Aside from this weekend the Autumn swell this year has been poor, autumn is usually the best time of year for swell. There seems to be far less storms out to sea this year so no lows and no swell.

At least the colours of the trees are just as good as always. Here’s the starting point of our local bike trail at Canaston woods.
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A few of us took on the lumpy lumps at Fresh on sunday morning. In the water by 7:30. It was a bit of a battle getting out but once out there were some overhead sets to contend with.

We moved over to BHS for our gower exile Andy Begjew to have a crack at the wedgy offerings. Heres a snap I took watching Andy from the weird hut thats been built out of driftwood on the dunes.
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During this time of shit swell (particularly bad for the Autumn), heres a snap of the surf a month ago. Clean and Fresh!
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New Irish big surf DVD coming out soon, looks awesome. Reminds me of Fresh about a month ago... well not quite but it was big. Anyhoo... Heres SeaFever
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Heres a snap of my leg after Wednesdays bike ride. Guess where the top of my boots were.
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This crazy bike is made from Kevlar and Carbon fibre. It weighs 2.75lbs. It cost £4000 just for the frame Click here for some video action
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A few people have questioned how we got lost last night when i had a GPS system. Let me explain...

The GPS system I have relies on pre-plotting a series of points on the map which you aim for, once you reach one you go onto the next one. This relies on...

a) There being a pre-arranged route (which there NEVER is on Mongo tours) and ...

2) There being a chance that we'd stick to pre-planned route.

"Im not going uphill again, stick the GPS up your arse" - Griff.
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Another edition of 'Mongo tours' last night as we did our first (and possibly last) ride around a forest near Templeton. We were supposed to do a big loop of the area but we got lost! Here’s a plot from my GPS of the ride.
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Good news! We can all stop ignoring the parking machine at Newgale because its no longer in use! We'll have to start ignoring it again on April the 1st next year. How come we dont have to pay in the winter? Less tourists to fleece i guess...
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Griffster, Horse and myself took on a small stretch of the Pembs coastal path yesterday. After a heavy night in Carmarthen the night before we didnt fancy an epic. Nice 9 mile loop (bikes are not allowed on the path)
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First post! Bang! Just so you know the quality of info you can expect on this site, heres a snap of WOW friend and Pembs excile Mouse having a natter with the big man!
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