EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

EssexHebridean

Morning al - thanks for all the visits, it's always lovely to see you all dropping in! 

We got engaged in Edinburgh (A LOT of years ago!) so it's a really special place to us - we were delighted when our pal said he wanted his birthday weekend there! The friends we met up with are part of a larger group of us that emerged from the Great British Beer Festival as close friends after many years working there - it's the thing we all had in common originally, but the friendships go so far beyond that now, it's fab. We do try to plan adventures through the year too - sometimes stuff comes along naturally like the weekend just gone, there's usually some sort of proper week's holiday (which sometimes we can do, and sometimes we can't) organised for the group as well - we're all off to Lundy again in a few months time which will be ace! During lockdown 1 we had weekly zoom calls with the group too - not necessarily everyone but as many as fancied joining in each week. the only issue is that we're mostly quite scattered across the country - from Lancashire across to North Yorkshire, down to where we are in East Anglia and across to Oxfordshire - plus a fair few places in between, so meeting up often does require some organisation. 

Rosa - I literally struggle to drive by the Angel without stopping - it fascinates me for photos as there always seems to be a slightly different angle or type of light - it's wonderful! This time round it was the sky that grabbed my attention...



In the spirit of more adventuring - I headed into London after work last night to meet MrEH for his Christmas Present "Mail Rail" tour and tunnel walk - absolutely fascinating - and surprisingly different to the London Underground stuff we've done before - not least of course because the tunnels are FAR smaller - it felt really odd being in a narrow gauge railways set up after so many trips around abandoned tube stations!  Really interesting hearing about the history and the sheer scale of the thing too - at it's height it had 60 trains, 8 stations and ran 22 hours a day, 6 days a week! 



I do have one more adventure planned this week as well when I head back into London on Friday to do a site visit with some of my Beer Festival working group colleagues to our festival venue for the summer - it all seems to be happening at once!

In "annoying stuff" I realised yesterday that my bank card for the Sant-And-Er account was missing from my purse. Initially I was convinced that for some reason I must have taken it out of my purse and put it into the pocket in my bag - but it wasn't there either so irritatingly it's now had to be stopped. Meant I had to put the Oyster card top-up last night on the CC  but it's not the end of the world as easily transferred. I literally have no idea where on earth it can have gone - but once I thought about it I realised it wasn't in my purse on Monday either. Annoyingly though I do have a sort of shadow of a memory in my head of having had it "somewhere" but I can't recall where - it's clearly not been nicked with nefarious intent as nobody has tried to use it!  Oh well - fingers crossed the new one will have arrived by the time I next need diesel.

What else - hmmm....I'm still using the "transfer it immediately" approach for specifics on the CC account - so have transferred over the gym membership money (Which I managed to take from a surplus in my "fun" account plus my short-term savings which I will now rebuild over the next couple of months pay, rather than having to raid my longer-term savings) and a friend's birthday present.  Oh - and I cashed out OnePoll again last night so need to keep an eye for £25 landing by BACS - mind you knowing them it'll be a while arriving!  I need to get my "gym neutral" account set up so I can start transferring survey earnings to that as well - I'll probably use an account I already have for that rather than opening a new one though - just need to decide which/where as I have a handful of disused savings accounts. 

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, mail tunnel is interesting! And how annoying on the card - i had one sneakily go missing like that a while ago, I never did figure out what I'd done with it, most vexing. Hope the new one turns up soon!

RelievedSheff

Lovely pictures.

Sounds like you have had a full week so far  

CRANKY40

We forgot our Oyster cards last month in the mad dash to get out of the house for the earlier train as ours was cancelled. We asked in the tube station about buying a one day travel card and we didn't need to. It's done now so that your debit card is treated as an oyster card. You just use it exactly the same way and the daily travel cap is applied. I'm going to top up my son's card as he is eligible for the half price 16-18 travel but I won't bother with mine any more. 

The mail tunnel info is fascinating thanks and I really like seeing all of your photos. 

milann

The angel phot is stunning with the sky behind it. You are ver talented.
My Dh would absolutely love the tunnel tour. 

EssexHebridean

Thanks all - Milann, both of those photos were literally point-and-shoot with my phone!  Cranky - yep, we've used debit cards as payment on the tube at various times but the Oysters work far better in terms of keeping the "real time spends" down to less often - when MrEH is back in the office that would otherwise be daily transactions to plough through when I check the banking - no thanks! This way he tops up once every couple of weeks which works far better for us. Also if we were using the CC it would be a problem if we were both travelling as essentially the cards are identical!  I do like being able to use my bank card for contactless on public transport elsewhere though - we both used our own cards in Edinburgh over the weekend for the buses! 

I'm still bewildered by the missing card - but it's cancelled now in any event. The only place I've not checked is the pocket of the coat I had on over the weekend although I really can't imagine I'd have put it there, goodness it would have been a complete brain f@rt moment if I had! 

Honestly - my legs really are quite ludicrously sore after that gym session on Monday - that'll teach me not to go for a month and then not wind back on the loads enough! Decided that cycling this morning was a no-go again and thankfully got in to London in time to be able to walk from the car to the office - I'll be waiting for MrEH this evening so not an issue at that end of the day. I'll get out for my usual lunchtime walk today which should help. 

As mentioned on another diary I've downloaded the Too Good To Go app so I'm trying to keep an eye on that, but also trying to be mindful about the stuff that might actually be useful. I think part of it will be getting used to which stores have availability at what times, and when they put that availability up. It's going to be striking a balance between stuff that is going to be useful to us and the places that sound nice, but will just end up being "as well as" usual spending rather than "instead of". 

beanielou

How interesting on the mail tunnels.
I had no idea such a thing existed 

starnac

beanielou said:

How interesting on the mail tunnels.
I had no idea such a thing existed 

Me neither. They look so interesting. 

Sun_Addict

Both photos are so atmospheric. I bet you find your card somewhere daft. I sometimes get mine out of my purse to pay for something then pop it into a drawer or a pocket with a view to putting it back in my purse, then forget. 

EssexHebridean

SA I was convinced I'd find that wretched card directly I requested it to be cancelled - but it's not appeared yet so maybe it really IS lost! 

Beanie, Starnac - it was a really fascinating tour. There's a full "Postal Museum" there too as well as the separate little Mail Rail bit that we were in, I'd like to go back to that at some point too. 

Well I've just enjoyed a lovely C0st@ bacon bap for breakfast courtesy of a Too Good To Go bag I picked up yesterday. First time I'd used the app and I was impressed at how easy it was - my £3 got me a bacon bap each which we've had for breakfast, a mozzarella and tomato panini which I'm having for lunch, and a cake each which we had after tea last night. Very tasty and made a nice change/treat in the middle of the week. I'll certainly keep an eye on the app and see if there's stuff I can use in the future. (I can see it will be all too easy to slip into a loop of just nabbing stuff because I fancy it and then wondering what the heck to do with it though!)

Surveys: 
Prolific has slowed to a trickle - I'm still where I was at the start of the week
OnePoll though is ticking along nicely - having cashed out a few days back I'm now at 160 points again. 
I've got a YouGov one pending - must get that done. 

Legs finally stopped aching by this morning to a level where I felt happy to get back on my bike again to get from the car to the office - honestly, how ridiculous! I fear the start of next week will be every bit as bad too as I'm aiming to get to the gym again on Saturday - oh dear! 

I feel like I've achieved nothing financial this week at all in spite of having a list of stuff that needs doing! As a prompt:
- Get the regular transfer to the new Flex Regular set up
- Get the regular transfer to the new Coventry Reg Saver set up
- Transfer the final £500 out of the old Coventry account > PBs
- Set an old savings account up as my "gym Neutral" fund
- Cash out what's payable in TCB ready to transfer to MrEH's 0% card.
- Get a current balance on MrEH's 0% card from him
- Transfer the joint account remaining surplus to the Marcus account
(I'm sure I listed most of these out earlier in the week too - shamefully it's not prompted me to actually DO any of them though!) 

How annoying is it that the final day of the month is a Monday - means MrEH is unlikely to get paid until then. Not an issue from a purely "money" point of view but easier if I can get all the shuffling done over a weekend! 

In other "annoying stuff" I STILL don't have access to my "new" Sant-And-Er current account via my app. Might try logging in to the main online banking thing in a sec and see if it appears there now, but otherwise it'll need a further trip into a branch.