Weekend schmeekend....

Hello everyone!

My main job this week was to announce the start of #flatmarley 2013.....regular readers of this blog will know all about Marley's annual game to raise "munee" for Dogs Trust and Terrier Rescue...but for new friends and old you can click HERE to see the launch announcement....we are trying to raise £1,000 to keep doggies in fur-ever homes......

....so, with all that work to do I only have time to give you a quick summary of what we did this weekend....

....naturally, there was our weekly cycling expedition...but this weekend we opted for a short ride up two of Surrey's biggest hills: Leith Hill and Box Hill. This is a 30-mile round trip and typist said he wanted to try and achieve personal best times up both hills....they are very steep so this was a tall order....

....we puffed and panted our way up Leith Hill.....it was a tough climb but we made it in the end....you can see my previous, more relaxed, visit to Leith Hill, just HERE....and the blog has other reports of Marley's visits here if you just search using the search bar on the right...

....the best bit was zooming down Leith Hill of course....but the road was quite bumpy and we had to be careful....and then we zoomed up Box Hill...where the whole of the cycling world congregates at the weekend. We passed and were passed by tens of other riders as we pounded up the hill....I shouted encouragement from my safety-pouch.....

...and afterwards we zoomed down to the Bike Beanz cafe in Ashtead for a restorative cup of tea and a bacon roll!....and then we went home and waited nervously for the data to download from our GPS device to see if we had beaten any of our records...and we had!! In fact, we set records on 49 separate stretches of the route...you can see them all here....some of the times are a bit misleading because the Garmin records resting time as well as moving time and the Strava app overlaps some sectors ...but we think that the clever computers were able to tell what was rest and what was cycling and give us our records accordingly....PHEW!

....and Sunday was such a sunny day that we decided to join Peter Tosh in the garden where he was catching up on his reading but remembering to protect his skin against the sun even though he has thick fur...

...Miss Lola found some shade to nap in.......

...and then helped herself to a generous lick of typist's face (she likes the taste of sun lotion) and ran off to a safe distance....or maybe to go and get a drink of water....

...and she even persuaded William to take a break from his revision to join in some sun-puddling....

...I hope you can join in #flatmarley again this year. We have already had two promises of a trip to Antarctica!! That is the only continent where #flatmarley has not been seen so far. Hurray!!

Clapton, Border Terrier HQ