Month: June 2025

The Athens Acropolis

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A photo of the Parthenon at the Athens Acropolis

I’m back home now from my trip to Athens, having got home shortly after midnight this morning. Suffice to say, I’d booked today off work to recover.

Whilst the trip was primarily for work purposes, LanguageCert, our lovely hosts, also included a visit to the Acropolis on Sunday afternoon. Having travelled internationally for work before, this is something I really appreciated. When I went to Amman in 2015 for work, I didn’t get to see any of the nice bits of the city, and it was a shame to go all that way without seeing them. So, I made sure I packed some sturdy footwear and sun protection and off we went to tick another UNESCO World Heritage Site off my list.

The Acropolis

The city of Athens mostly sits within a basin, but with the Acropolis sitting on a raised rocky outcrop in the middle. The Acropolis itself contains several ruined buildings, including the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. We had a tour guide who showed us all of these, including the ongoing restoration work. This isn’t to recreate them as they were when they were built over 2000 years ago, but to ensure that they don’t degrade further. The buildings were damaged in the 17th century by the Venetians, and this is the state that they remain today. In their heyday, these buildings must have been even more impressive – we were shown some of the few remaining marble roof tiles. Some sculptures have survived and are still on show.

Further down the outcrop are two theatres – the Theatre of Dionysus which was built by the ancient Greeks and is now a ruin, and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus which was built by the Romans and is still in use for events today – there was a show there on the Sunday that we visited. You can look down onto these from the Acropolis, and you get great views across the whole city of Athens.

Nearby is the Acropolis Museum – this is close but separate, and we didn’t go in. The current museum opened in 2008, and famously has an empty room to host the Parthenon Sculptures. Also known as the Elgin Marbles, these are controversially on display in the British Museum in London, but may be permanently loaned back to Greece soon. That part of the British Museum is due to close for refurbishment soon so returning them to Athens would make even more sense.

Accessibility

I always try to include an accessibility section in my Days Out posts, but I nearly didn’t bother with the Acropolis. It’s a World Heritage Site on top of a hill, so if you want to visit, you need to be able to handle steep slopes, uneven surfaces and lots of steps. If this isn’t for you, maybe stick to the Acropolis Museum rather than the Acropolis itself.

The good news is that the Acropolis has long opening hours, from 8am until 8pm – my advice would be to visit early or late as there’s very little shade available. We got there at about 5:30pm, by which time there were some shady spots to wait in. Even then, it was still very busy. All the signage is in both Greek and English.

Hello from Athens!

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So, last weekend I teased that I would be travelling for work. Well, I flew out of Manchester very early yesterday morning – there should be a law against 6:30am flights on a Sunday morning – and have safely arrived in Athens in Greece.

I’m here to attend a Higher Education Summit by LanguageCert, who are very kindly paying for my flights and accommodation. LanguageCert are part of PeopleCert, and offer English language tests for non-native speakers wanting to live, work or study in English speaking countries. PeopleCert, meanwhile, offer professional certifications, including PRINCE2 which I achieved in 2018.

I’m only here for a relatively short time and will be flying back tomorrow.

Our journey towards an electric car – part II

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Time for a second post in this series about our journey towards an electric car – part one was last week. This time I’m going to focus on the ‘why’ and the ‘why now’.

Why an electric car?

In less than five years, unless something changes, it won’t be possible to buy a new car solely powered by an internal combustion engine in the UK. From 2030, sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be phased out; there will then be a five year period where new cars must be fully electric, or hybrids. Then, from 2035, sales of hybrid cars will end too – so in ten years time, if you want to buy a new car, it will need to be electric. Or some other form of zero emissions vehicle that isn’t yet on the market.

Last year, around 20% of new UK car registrations were for electric cars. And, more and more public chargers are becoming available for electric car owners to use.

That’s the wider context. For us personally, an electric car makes sense for the following reasons:

  1. We’ll be able to charge it at home. Being able to charge an electric car from your own electricity supply is pretty cheap – especially if you have a tariff that gives you cheaper overnight charging for example. Currently, I work at home 2-3 days per week, and so we can have our car plugged in for long periods to charge up if needed. And we generate our own electricity from our solar panels.
  2. Most of our usage is short distance. Whilst we occasionally drive longer distances, most of our usage is for short journeys, and so we don’t necessarily need a car with a massive fuel tank or battery.
  3. It’ll be better for the environment. Electric cars aren’t totally emissions free – you still get particulate matter from the brakes and tyres emitted into the air. But you’re not burning a fossil fuel, and the UK electricity grid is become more sustainable all the time.
  4. It’ll be better for air quality. Where we live, in Sowerby Bridge, is a hotspot for poor air quality due to being in a narrow valley. By driving an electric car, we’d be no longer contributing to this.
  5. It’ll be quieter. Traffic noise isn’t a major issue for us, but just imagine how much quieter the roads would be without noisy engines. Also, as I have issues with hearing loss, less noise inside the car should make it a nicer driving experience.
  6. It’ll cost less to service. Compared to cars with an international combustion engine (whether on its own or as a hybrid vehicle), electric cars have fewer moving parts and consequently require fewer repairs.
  7. We won’t have to pay the ULEZ. I’m not planning to drive in or near London any time soon, but our current car would incur a charge under the Ultra Low Emissions Zone. Whilst many petrol cars are exempt, an electric car is likely to remain so if the criteria change. It used to be that electric cars were also exempt from vehicle tax, but that’s no longer the case.
  8. No gear changes. Compared to other nations, especially the US, us Brits have a weird obsession with buying new cars with a manual transmission, rather than automatic, and that trickles down to the used car market. Meanwhile, almost all electric cars only have one gear – electric motors work differently and so don’t need to have gears. Therefore, no gear changes. I think Christine was a bit cheesed off when she found out that she could’ve learnt to drive in an automatic instead, but at least it means she can drive our current car until we change it.

Why now?

As for why now, the key reason is that we need a new car soon. Our current car has lots of minor niggles that are starting to get annoying, and are likely to be costly to repair.

But also, more electric cars are starting become available on the used car market. We can’t really afford to buy a new car, but there’s a reasonable number of electric cars available in our price range. Whilst the capacity of the batteries does go down over time, we’re still happy to consider a used electric car.

Which UK counties have I visited?

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A map of the UK with the counties I have visited highlighted

Something that seemed popular on Bluesky last week was Sophie Stone’s UK Travel Visualiser. There’s a map of the UK (plus the Isle of Man) showing each county, and you can select each one to mark whether you’ve lived there, stayed over, visited, stopped or passed through. I’ve uploaded an excerpt of mine above, and included the full image below (converted from SVG to PNG because I can’t be bothered amending the WordPress config file to enable SVG uploads).

Here’s a text based breakdown for the counties I have visited:

Counties I have lived in

Just two: North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. I was born in York, in North Yorkshire, and then moved to Bradford in West Yorkshire when I was 18. Then, when Christine and I decided to move in together in 2010, we moved to Sowerby Bridge, also in West Yorkshire, where we still live now. Christine meanwhile has also lived in Lancashire and Derbyshire.

Counties I have stayed in

I’ve interpreted this as ‘counties where I have stayed overnight for at least one night’. There are a lot more of these:

  • Berkshire – last visited in 2021 when we stayed in Slough, ahead of a trip to Legoland Windsor.
  • Bristol – I last visited for work in 2014, which involved a couple of overnight stays.
  • Cheshire – an overnight stay in Chester in 2012 with Christine, marking a year since we got engaged.
  • Cumbria – lots of hiking trips to the Lake District, but I think our most recent stay was with a friend from university who has now settled in Kirkby Lonsdale.
  • Derbyshire – another hiking trip, this time to Dovedale in 2009.
  • Durham – we stayed overnight to attend a wedding in 2016.
  • East Riding of Yorkshire – my grandparents lived in the East Riding and so stayed over many times in the past.
  • East Sussex – on holiday in 2021.
  • Greater London – I last stayed over last year, however Christine has been more recently.
  • Greater Manchester – before I could drive, we used to stay over in Manchester after various music gigs. The last time was in 2014, when we saw Delain and Within Temptation at the O2 Apollo. Also spent a couple of nights there for a stag do in 2015.
  • Hampshire – we’ve stayed over at the Travelodge by Portsmouth Ferry Terminal a few times on the way back from France, most recently in 2023. Also that year, we spent an afternoon in Southsea.
  • Herefordshire – way back in the late 1990s, I went on a week-long PGL holiday near Ross-on-Wye.
  • Hertfordshire – another overnight stay for a wedding, this time in 2013, in Stevenage.
  • Kent – though we visited Kent in 2021, we stayed in East Sussex. The last time I stayed overnight in Kent was in 2000, on a short break ahead of a few days in the Pas-de-Calais region of France.
  • Lancashire – Christine lived here when I met her, and so I stayed overnight a few times during 2009 and 2010 before we moved in together.
  • Leicestershire – another overnight stay for a wedding, this time in 2018. The wedding was at the National Space Centre in Leicester, incidentally.
  • Lincolnshire – I had a few days in Lincoln with my parents in 2001.
  • Merseyside – shortly before the lockdown in 2020, we had a couple of nights in Runcorn as it was handy for Chester Zoo. Before that, we had an overnight stay in 2016, and our last visit was a day trip to Wirral and Liverpool last year.
  • Norfolk – last visited in March for Sci-Fi Weekender.
  • Northumberland – last year’s holiday.
  • Nottinghamshire – my grandparents used to have a canal boat based out of Nottingham marina, and we stayed overnight on it a few times in the 1990s.
  • Oxfordshire – most recently in 2018, on the way back from our holiday. We have family there, and will be back there later this summer.
  • South Yorkshire – stayed overnight in Sheffield in 2019 when attending a previous Sci-Fi Weekender.
  • Staffordshire – again, I have relatives here but our last overnight stay was in 2015 – once again, for a wedding.
  • Surrey – stayed overnight as part of our 2023 holiday.
  • Tyne and Wear – our most recent trip away was last weekend, when we stayed overnight in Gateshead to visit Beamish. Even though Beamish itself is in County Durham.
  • Warwickshire – spent a night in a hotel in 2019, so we could visit Warwick Castle.
  • West Midlands – not a wedding, but a stag do in 2013.
  • Worcestershire – my ex-girlfriend Hari had family on Worcestershire, so spent some time there up until 2008.
  • Edinburgh – last visited in 2011 when we stayed for a few nights. Well overdue for another visit.
  • Clwyd – another hiking trip, this time in 2009. We’ll be back there for our summer holiday next month. Also passed through in 2018 on the way to…
  • Gwynedd – our first Sci-Fi Weekender was near Pwllheli in 2018, which was the last one to be hosted there.
  • Isle of Man – technically the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency and not officially part of the United Kingdom, but it’s on the map. Christine and I had our first holiday as a couple there in 2010.
  • Fife – one of my mum’s university friends lives in Fife and so I’ve been a few times. Our most recent visit was in 2015, and, in what is becoming a theme, it was for a wedding.
  • Perth and Kinross – very early in our relationship, Christine and I joined two other couples on a long weekend near Callander in Perthshire, in early 2010.

Counties I have visited

This is a much smaller list of places where I have intentionally gone to on a day trip:

  • Cambridgeshire – I’ve been to Cambridge once, for a meetup with other editors at the Open Directory Project, back in 2003.
  • Shropshire and Powys – as mentioned, I have family in Staffordshire and so I’ve been to Shropshire and Powys before on day trips – just not very recently.
  • South Glamorgan – I went on a demonstration against tuition fees in Cardiff in 2004. To date, it’s still my one and only visit to the Welsh capital.
  • Lanarkshire – I’ve also only made it to Glasgow once, in November 2009. I met up with several people in my World of Warcraft guild, including Hari – we had split up earlier that year and this was the first time we’d seen each other since. I’d first met Christine a few weeks before.

Counties I have stopped off in

  • Essex – literally just at Birchanger Green services on the M11.
  • East Sussex – part of Gatwick Airport is in East Sussex and so I would have been there very briefly in 1999.

Counties I have passed through

  • Devon, Somerset and Dorset – in the 1990s, when on holiday with my parents, we came back via Poole and Plymouth on occasion and so will have passed through these counties. But I haven’t visited them properly.
  • Gwent – on the way to Cardiff in 2004.
  • Rutland, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire – these are places I have driven through, but never visited. Christine has recently reconnected with some of her family in Milton Keynes, so Buckinghamshire may rise up the list in future.
  • Berwickshire, West Lothian, Midlothian, East Lothian. These are all counties that we passed through on our way to Fife in 2015.
  • Dumfries, Dumbartonshire, Stirling & Falkirk. Similarly, we passed through these in 2010 on the way to Callander.

Counties I’ve never been to

I’m not going to list them all, but this includes large parts of Scotland, mid Wales, and the whole of Northern Ireland. We’d like to go to Cornwall at some point, but it’s a very long way from where we are in Northern England. There’s a reason why there’s still a sleeper train from London to Penzance. Our nine-year-old has also expressed an interest in seeing the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland at some point.

How many points?

The UK Travel Visualiser also awards points – the longer you’ve spent in a county, the more points you get. I managed 184 points – not bad, but it would have been higher if I had lived in more places. Diamond Geezer managed 241, by virtue of having lived in more places, and being 19 years my senior.

Tuya Zigbee Window Sensors

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A photo of a Zigbee window sensor

I recently picked up a pair of these Tuya Zigbee Window Sensors from AliExpress. At £7.50 for two (plus VAT and shipping), they’re an absolute bargain; on Amazon (sponsored link), expect to pay more than double that for just one. The sensors detect when a window or door is opened or closed, and can both report the current status of the window or door, and be used to trigger actions when the window or door is opened or closed.

Wait, didn’t you rant about Tuya in February?

Why yes, I did rant about Tuya Wi-Fi devices, and I stand by what I wrote. However, you can get many Tuya-compatible Zigbee devices, which can be used with Zigbee2MQTT without having all your data go to servers operated by a Chinese company. So yes, I wouldn’t be keen to buy any new Tuya Wi-Fi devices in future, but I see little issue with Tuya Zigbee devices.

Installing the window sensors

The sensors come in two parts. One holds the batteries (two AAA batteries, not included) along with the circuitry, and the other, smaller part is what detects whether the door or window has opened. Each part comes with an appropriately sized piece of sticky foam, so you can just stick the small part to your window, and the larger part to the frame. You need to ensure that, when closed, the two parts touch.

To test whether they work, open and close the window or door – if you see a little red light flashing when this happens, then you’re good.

Zigbee devices need to be paired to your Zigbee mesh network. Once you’ve enabled pairing on your Zigbee controller (in my case, Zigbee2MQTT), you need to press and hold the reset button on the window sensor for five seconds. It comes with a little metal pointy thing to help with this – a bit like the pointy things for ejecting SIM cards on a iPhone. Once it has joined your network, you should be good to go.

Using the window sensors with Home Assistant

Any new devices in Zigbee2MQTT automagically appear as new MQTT devices in Home Assistant. Right now, I just have dashboard badges for the two window sensors, so I can see at a glance whether those windows are open. I’m planning to add an automation which switches the heating off when one or both of the windows are open, and potentially a notification at bedtime to remind me if I’ve left a window open as it’s getting dark.

You could add them to a door, so that when you open it, a light comes on, and then turns off when the door is closed, or after a certain time delay.

For now, I’ve only bought two of these. As mentioned, each one requires a pair of AAA batteries, and whilst I could fit them to every opening window, that’s potentially a lot of batteries to replace. At least they take standard AAA batteries which can be easily recharged. I’ve only had them a couple of weeks, and so I can’t yet give an estimate of how long the batteries will last, but they’re both still showing 100%.

Jooooooooooooon

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I haven’t done one of these ‘looking at the month ahead’ posts in a while (March being the last one). It’s usually a sign that I feel the need to write something and I’m running out of ideas. And that’s sort of the case here; I normally write blog posts in bulk at the weekend, and next weekend I’m unlikely to have time.

This month will see both Christine and I travel away for work. Christine’s off to London for a conference; meanwhile, I get to go somewhat further afield. It’ll be the first time I’ve travelled for work where I’ve needed to stay overnight since a trip to Canterbury in 2019, and the first time I’ve travelled abroad for work since my Middle East trip in 2015. Indeed, it’ll also be the first time in a decade that I’ve been on an aeroplane. I’ll write more about it nearer the time.

The weather seems to have become more unsettled than it has been of late, although I’m hoping we’ll get the chance to have some nice days out as a family as well. We’ll see what happens.

There’ll also be one or two more posts in our journey towards an electric car to come this month. I don’t think we’ll end up actually buying an electric car this month, but I’m planning a couple of posts about it pre-purchase.