interests ... so what "floats our boat" and "rings our bells"? well other than spending as much time on holiday as we can afford to or as much time with our grandkids and family as we possibly can, our main vice is our mountain biking. over the years we have worked our way up to two really nice bikes. hels currently rides a santa cruz juliana ... whilst i ride a scott genius mc50, truly the best bike i have ever ridden. i still haven't figured out how hels ended up with the more expensive bike of the two, but there again she is a woman (and as such she has expensive tastes!) ... oo-er contentious eh? our fave riding areas range from local haunts to cannock chase, hamsterley forest, coed y brenin and the lakes ... especially the lakes. we both prefer long cross country runs and lurve long flowing singletrack, though we're not adverse to throwing the bikes down a suitable hill now and again when the opportunity presents itself ... summer 2011/12 saw us enjoying the best trails the lake district has to offer, particularly enjoyed whinlatter and grizedale centres ... end

over the years we've also tried our hands at snowboarding and wakeboarding ... sometimes think we must be barmy (definitely old enough to know better!). wakeboarding was too wet and cold for my tastes, though hels is up for another attempt! snowboarding is a cool (can we still say that without sounding old?) if somewhat expensive and painful hobby! it has to be said that we haven't been down to the snowdome for a while, but when we do you can guarantee we will be spending most of our time either on our faces or our arses ... mostly on our arses methinks! hels and fraz are both keen runners and the two of them have done the great north run. fraz just the once! but for hels 2015 will be her sixth year ... she's missed out on the 2007, 2008 and the 2009 runs due to completely tearing her achilles tendon and the associated after effects (i won't embarrass her by telling you how she managed this ... well maybe one day!!!) ... ouch! hels has also completed the milton keynes 1/2 marathon too!

what of our other main passions? music mainly, particularly progressive rock. fave bands are the paul menel band, arena, iq, pallas, marillion, threshold, jadis, dream theater, queensryche and twelfth night among others. but really, our tastes are quite eclectic with likes ranging from gary numan, ultravox and sting through to prodigy, santana and eva cassidy! but prog rock has to be the mainstay of our collection. on the subject of music, 2007 & 2008 saw the reunion gigs of one of our fave bands ... twelfth night ... the first 24/11/07, and for a band that's not played together live for nigh on 20 years they were brilliant ... ney, totally awesome! and to top it off we saw them again 17/5/08 ... another fantastic night ... 2010 brought two further concerts for us (reading and wath-upon-dearne), both excellent nights ... and to top it all off they played a gig in london in august too ... brilliant! we've enjoyed several gigs since! unfortunately the boys have now decided to call it a day and we recently were invited to attend their farewll gig at the barbican in london and had a very emotional and enjoyable evening with the band and 250+ like minded people. bless 'em they will be doing a farewell farewell gig in may, deffo the last one we're told! we've enjoyed gigs by iq, pallas, it bites, francis dunnery, arena, pendragon, galahad, ark (reformaton gigs) of late. one major highlight of 2011 was the return to the live circuit of paul menel ... we had a great 2012 crewing with paul and his band and are are now looking forward to what could be a breakthrough year for him and his band, fingers crossed ...

another one of our favourite hobbies is underwater photography. we spend alot of time snorkelling whilst in greece and more recently in the maldives, and tend to take alot of photos underwater. see some of our underwater photos in our gallery by clicking on the above link. we took this to the next level in the maldives in 2008 and 2009... really stunning sealife, again see our gallery for lots of piccies from this visit and our recent trip back to paradise.

we also luv our footie: hels, the boys and i are all die hard "bluenoses" and faithful fans of the 'gers (glasgow rangers to you heathens) ... c'mon u 'gers ... championi championi 13/14 ... brilliant!!! all good things come to end as we know! politics, finance and cheats never should be involved in sport and our beloved team became victim to the ramifications of all this and found us being demoted to the third division, stripped of the majority of our squad as a result of "so called" rangers through and through players not wanting to lower themselves to playing at that level and kicked out of europe for 3 years ... but hey their loss eh? currently (as they should be) flying high having won leaugue 1 ... now on the long road back to the spl, hoping to pass some of the teams that stabbed us in the back on their way down too lol ... c'mon you 'gers ...

being a northen lad and an honourary northern lass we also luv our rugby league, c'mon the bradford bulls ... though we have to admit we have enjoyed better seasons than we have of late ... let's hope things get much better for the future ... although not much to show that things are improving as yet, oh well ... end