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Hands up if you've heard of Muckle Flugga!
To eliminate show-offs, could you also place St. Agnes, Soay or Ness Point on the map?

I certainly could not have managed this until recently, yet they are all in our country. They are the north, south, east and west extremes* of Great Britain**.

I always encourage people to cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats at some point in their lives to get a better understanding of the place we live in. Nick Hand went one step further in his exploration, cycling a full lap of Great Britain.

But even he didn't make it to the poetic-sounding Muckle Flugga. Our country is full of beautiful, surprising places and we should make the most of these long, lingering summer days to go somewhere we have never been. You don't even need to go far to do this: I bet there is somewhere interesting within 15 miles of your house that you have never been to.

I'm feeling particularly fervent about this at the moment. Here's why...

Years ago I stood at John O'Groats, tired but jubilant, and gazed out to sea (or, more accurately, into the fog). I had conquered Britain by bike and I could go no further.

I was wrong.

For last week I was in the Shetland Isles, more than 100 miles further north than "J O'G". This time, as I stood outside my tent in the soft solstice midnight light I looked at the lighthouse on Muckle Flugga and the tiny islet of Out Stack, I was at the top of Britain. And I realised that only now was I beginning to realise how little I know of my own country.

My tent was pitched on a patch of flat green grass like a billiard table. A metre away from the door was the cliff edge, swirling with puffins and scores of other seabirds swirling above the crashing turquoise waves far below. Not only was it one of the best camping spots I have enjoyed in Britain, it was one of the best in the world. You don't need much time or money or expertise to experience a night's camping like that. You just need to go do it.

I have not yet been to St. Agnes, Soay, Ness Point, Rockall, or any number of other super places. But I certainly will do. It's a lifetime's work to know your own country, and there's no better time to start than right now.

* - pedant alert: I have not included the Channel Islands because they are Crown Dependencies, not constituent parts of the United Kingdom and Rockall is not internationally recognised. There are a couple of other pedantic details too, but summer is not the time to be discussing stuff like this!
** - apologies to Scottish, Welsh, Shetland and Scillian separatists!

A few weeks ago Ruben posted about a few "Free Bikes" that were found in the bottom of the Frederiksholm’s Canal in Copenhagen.

Wonder if this is how they got there...?

Hugo and Pete from SAS came up to our Cardigan HQ to build a plan about us (that includes you) helping with their annual fund raising raffle.

howies are giving away the headline prize and we will be asking you our whole database to sell tickets to help hit their target of £20,000.  Last year they raise £12,000, so we have a mountain to climb this time.

As well as howies kit, there will also be hand made wooden boards,

These are some reasons to get involved;

90p in every pound raised goes to fighting their causes.

They directly lobby industry with solutions to the problems they are causing.

Their support comes from many other users of the coast. Walkers, runners, body boarders, kite surfers, sun bathers, swimmers and dog walkers.

They are working as hard to prevent marine pollution, climate change and litter as much as sewage.

They are have a network of reps all over the UK who give their time to campaign, raise money and awareness and get hand on help to beach clean.

So when the time comes all we ask of  you is to sell a few raffle tickets to your friends and send the cash to SAS and we will give you regular updates on where we are, Blue Peter style.

And if you can spread the word over your social network to spread the word, we have the potential to give them the cash to campaign the hardest they ever have done.

And you could win an amazing prize.

Dashed out the house in the the pouring rain on Saturday to the shed to get a drill and heard ducks quacking that quack where you know somethings not right.

Thought the fox might be chancing his tail with our chickens, and so did our terrier who shot off in that direction.

Worried he might eat the ducks if there were any I followed.  Looking up our river I spotted a big bird stood on the edge of the river and 4 ducks making haste downstream.

I went down to have a look and it turned out to be a big wet and very dishevelled Buzzard which just lay flat on the floor as I got close. Once I had picked it up I realised how big it's beak was and how long and sharp its talons.

I got it back to the shed, popped it into a cat basket where despite it's poor state it had managed to catch a duckling which it dropped. We took it and the deceased to the vets in Newcastle Emlyn.

Nothing was broken but it had a large scab above it's eye, it's 3rd eyelid was split, but the globe of the eye was fine.  We chatted about cutting some of the flappy scab off as it was obscuring the forward sight of the bird, but birds have poor circulation in their skin and if it bled it would take a long time to heal.

So with an injection of antibiotics to help the wound we headed home to nurse it through the bad weather with a little shelter and food.

It spent the night in the shed in the dogs cage eating duckling and chicken breast and shitting out the cage onto my bikes.

Sunday was fine weather, and after an hour outside in the sun it looked ready.

Blankets off, cage open, engines on, left flaps, right flaps..Then it flapped, flew, hopped, flew and bumped across the field to the woods where it was joined in a tree by another.

Cross fingers.

Atten-shun troops.

This is the most important Doh Boy Army Mission of Real Bread Maker Week 2011.

One in ten children starting primary school in Britain are now regarded as alarmingly overweight, and parents could soon begin to outlive their children because of this epidemic of obesity afflicting the younger generation…that's crazy.

So in the words of George Benson: "The children are our future, teach them well and let them show the way…"

Mission:

Make real bread with your children or a young family member:

http://www.howies.co.uk/dohboy/recipe.php ** please note though that you should only use 20g salt...not the 30g stated....bad doh boy!

Location:

Your kitchen.

Date & Time:

14–15 May 2011.

...Good luck...!

For today's Final Mission, Doh Boy joined Sarah Galloway and Laura Gallagher from the Lost in the Forest Institute (http://www.litfi.ac) and baker Aurelia Doyotte for a Real Bread Making Class with a lively class of Year 5 pupils at Greenside Primary School in Droylsden, Manchester.

Be sure to email your results too - info@howies.co.uk or even pop them up on our facebook page

__________________________________________

I've had reports that yesterday's Doh Boy picnic in Bristol was a big hit, here are some photos that Stuart at Thoughtful sent over to us - see if you can spot yourself!

nice one guys.

Good morning troops

Here is your second Real Bread Maker Week Mission…

Mission:

Tell someone you know about the Doh Boy Picnic...use this hashtag: #DohBoyPicnic

Location:

Queens Square, Bristol.

Date & Time:

12-2, Thursday 12 May 2011...that's tomorrow.

There will be a FREE real bread sandwich (made by Bristol's very own FRISKA http://www.friskafood.com) and an innocent smoothie (supplied by the kind folks at innocent http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk) for the first 150 civilians who attend.

Over and out.

______________

An update to yesterday's Mission #1 - David & James sent these photos in last night of their Dohboys successfully guarding supermarket bread - good work guys!

...oh the irony!

It's a slight change from the wintery pictures you have been seeing of late but here is my April blog.

Me and beatrice set off on an adventure to explore some of wales on my parent's bikes with plenty of luggage including camping gear, in total nearly 20kg on each bike.

We saw some amazing views, riding from Haverfordwest all along the coast line until Cardigan and stopped there for 3 days on the howies photoshoot then continued on....

Tenby has the best food spots.

Aberaeron has the best fresh fish.

Aberystwyth the most students in drag on friday night.

Elan valley, just lots of ruins and never-ending windy hills on which the time passes faster by wheeleing the bike, looking at rivers and playing games like guessing the number of ruins or trying not to say 'nice' for the duration of the day.

The road before elan valley has the most random post box next to some woods in the middle of nowhere.

Devils bridge, some lovely waterfalls.

Rhaeder has the best quiche lunch!

And home is home :)

We had pretty sore legs and some well tested merino from howies at the end of the last day after riding 50miles on mountainbikes and luggage over the elan valley hills and back home but it was well worth it.

Here are just a few of the pictures we took. hope you enjoy them

www.danyeomans.com

www.danyeomans-art.com

Atten-shun Doh Boys!

All this week we'll be celebrating Real Bread Makers week, and every day Doh Boy (with the help of the good folks at thoughtful) will use the howies blog to task the DB-army to help spread the good word.

We've just received today's instructions from the man himself:-

"Doh Boys.

Your first mission is to stand guard and make sure no-one eats any supermarket bread this week…

tell them to make, try or buy some real, fat free bread.

Download the PDF and wear your Real Bread Day uniform with pride.

Take a picture of yourself guarding the bread and send it in to the guys at howies - info@howies.co.uk

…you lovely boys"

So there we have it, go spread the word

If you fancy making something a little bit more daring than a white loaf then here's the River Cottage's recipe for Perfect Brown Bread - sounds gooooood.

The other weekend, we ran a little photo comp called 'Wish You Were There'

We were really happy to see so many of you getting involved and posting photos of what you got up to on the weekend.

It's been pretty hard to pick out just 30 winners - but as promised below are the lucky 30 shots which have won a free t-shirt each. They feature fun, bikes, surf, hills, family, food, sun, adventure, relaxation & freedom.

Huge thanks to everyone who took part - We're hoping to do more stuff like this before too long.

Oh, and you can always check out loads of other great entries on our facebook wall here if you're looking for a little inspiration for your next weekend of adventure.

In no order, here are our winners:

From @MrPowellish

From @jonfresh

From @FastFarrell

From Denise

From Mark

From Brian

From David

From James

From Simon

From Emma K

From Emma P

From Helen

From Nadia

From James

From Mark

From Stephane

From Paul

From Chris

From Huw

From Stuart

From Nerys

From Phil

From Chris

From Jane

From Nick

From @petestuart

From Christine

From @mudandgears

From Beth

From @grafichouse