the newts.net

JORDMONSTERS 245pts
ELEVEN JAUN KERRS 225
DAVE’S DAZZLERS 217
THE MYSTERY MACHINE 210
COCK ALMIGHTY 195
TNN/ATHLETICO_FANNIES _433 195
TNN/REAL_FANNIES_442 194
C.J.D.S. 194
CHINA TOWN 193
SHARP SHOOTER 193

As you can see Scott never won this time he ended up finishing joint 5th, which was a shame:lol:
because he was in 1st place for the last 2 weeks in the month, which I must say he did my head in because he was telling me he was looking forward to spending his winnings for 1st place & getting the highest points in one week, but as Scott say’s….UNLUCKY!
As for me, well I have given up because I’am BOTTOM:sad:, which I must say Scott had great delight in letting me know. :lol:

Sunny (& windy) Scarborough.

Just back from a week touring Scarborough and the North East Coast with Rach & Ben and Ben’s Nan & Gramps. Had a fantastic time and staying at a lovely private cottage in Cayton just outside Scarborough. The cottage was about 1/2 a mile down a private farmtrack so it was really quiet and private. It was gorgeous inside, fully equipped, mature gardens, but best of all was the Hot Tub!

It was a nice mix of chilling out and exploring. Most of the chilling took place in the hot tub, and the exploring…

First trip was out to Cayton Bay, bit of a surfers paradise apparently. Ben was eager to test the water and as proved to be the case all holiday, was first to wet a toe. A natural water babe, it wasn’t long before Ben was on his knees in the rock pools for a spot of crabbing.

Next it was on to the picturesque town of Whitby.

Where in the harbour we were welcomed by the Grand Turk. [Hornblower. It is a replica of a 22 gun frigate.

After a brief sojourn down to the end of the harbour, with it’s wonderful views of Whitby Abbey and the houses overlooking the harbour entrance, we had a trip up the windy hill for a closer look at the Abbey. You can read more on the history of Whitby Abbey here.
There’s definitely an aura to the whole place. Perched high on the cliffs overlooking the harbour entrance with a monastic history dating back to 657AD, you can only begin to imagine what’s gone on there over 1,400 years. You approach the Abbey from the east, walk on the grass through the colonnades and then admire the ruins from the west.

After seeing the Abbey and the new visitors centre, no trip to Whitby would be complete without visiting Robin Hood’s Bay, where Ben tested his sea legs on one of the local fishing boats ‘Stephanie‘. More on Robin Hood’s Bay.

Next it was on to the wonderful North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

Sir Nigel Gresley A4 60007

Wonderful indeed! beautiful scenery complimented with the sights and smells of wonderful steam engines.
We boarded the train at Pickering and headed off for our first stop of Levisham. We didn’t get off the train here, instead we stayed on until the next stop of Goathland… or Aidensfield as anyone who watches Heart Beat will know it. Can’t say I do watch Heart Beat, but for those of you who do you may recognise the garage, the shop, and the Aidensfield Arms or Goathland Hotel as it’s really called. You may also recognise this teethy little monster after filling his face at the Aidensfield tea & bun shop, after which Steve totted up the number of times he had to get his wallet out in the past 24 hours. A new record according to Trish!

Even without it’s tv fame, it’s a beautiful little village on the end of a steam train journey that’s well worth a visit. On the way back to the station to pick up the next train to the end of the line Grossmont, we found the lovely little river Esk. Ben, ever the water babe was mesmerised by the little waterfall.
We caught the final train to Grossmont where Ben filled his boots (and his nappy) in the Thomas the Tank Engine shop, then we hitched a ride with a different engine, through the valley, 18 miles back to pickering. Just in time to stock up…

Very handy!

Next day we were off to Castle Howard.

Click for BIGGY.

I could write pages on our trip here, but best not, however you can find out more detail on this magnificent place here.
I loved the giant fountain in the grounds, and the ‘friends‘ shot just for good measure. The view of the castle from the end of the garden was rather spectacular too.
Water plays a big part in the grounds of the castle with a number of pools, feeding each other via waterfalls, and at the front of the castle is another series of lakes that look imminently fishable.
I’d like to know what’s in here, but I won’t be hanging round for 2,000 years to find out!
We toured the castle which was fascinating. But as it is still habbited by the Howard family, who were walking around while we were there, cameras are not allowed in the castle, understandably enough, for privacy reasons. So no pics of the lavish interior and the wealth of artwork on the walls.

After our visit to Castle Howard we drove across the North York Moors, taking very much a similar course as the steam train, up to Staithes. Another gorgeous little fishing village very similar to Robin Hoods Bay.

One thing we did notice as we crossed the moors, or didn’t notice as the case may be was the famous ‘Golf Balls’ at RAF Fylingdales early warning station. Remember these?…

Well they aren’t there any more! Instead they’ve been replaced by what, according to the train conductor, seems to have attained the name ‘The Giant Sandcastle’…

Slightly further down the coast we had a look at Runswick Bay, similar again to Staithes & Co. where Ben tried out his new, and slightly large, froggy wellies. They lasted long enough to undergo a quick paddle in the sea, but not long enough to walk back up the hill in.

It was a busy day that lead to one tired little boy. Still after he woke up from his ‘bad hair day‘ nightmare, he mustered the energy for an evening in Scarbrough on the slots and the dodgems.

Next day saw us down at the Sea Life centre.

Sea Life Centres.

A rather impressive one at that. I’ve been to them at Hunstanton, Blackpool, Great Yarmouth and Windermere, but the Scarborough one seems to have a lot more there including outdoor exhibits of penguins, otters and rescued seals. I was most impressed with the hypnotic Lion fish. I could have watched them for hours.

A great break that we all thoroughly enjoyed. After all the things he saw and did Ben seemed most enamoured with this simple pine cone he found. Small things hey! Still, it all led to one happy baby.

Top 5 for the last 3 weeks.

week 1

1 DAVE’S DAZZLERS. 53pts
2 JORDMONSTERS. 52
3 ELEVEN JAUN KERRS. 51
4 THE MYSTERY MACHINE. 47
5 IT’S NOT BUTTERFIELD. 43

week 2

1 DAVE’S DAZZLERS. 123
2 JORDMONSTERS. 122
3 TNN/REAL_FANNIES_442. 117
4 CHINA TOWN. 116
5 TNN/ATHLETICO_FANNIES _433. 115

week 3

1 TNN/REAL_FANNIES_442. 156
2 SHARP SHOOTER. 151
3 JORDMONSTERS. 151
4 DAVE’S DAZZLERS. 150
5 ELEVEN JAUN KERRS. 143

The team that is holding everybody up is FARTARSINABOUT. 59pts

Results for week 4 will be posted soon.
As you can see Scott is leading, but will he win the first months prize money.

Thanks to the sun, nuclear fusion powers our planet. Now scientists are ready to build a new fusion reactor that will prove whether human beings can mimic the interior life of the sun to deliver cheap, clean, abundant energy and transform the way we live.

I read this fascinating article about the possibility of producing nigh on limitless power from just sea water and a bit of lithium (like the batteries you find in your mobile phone!) It all sounds too good to be true, let’s hope not!…

Read more

Yes folks we’re back up and running here at the newts.net with absolutely no thanks whatsoever to my previous (non) service providers ukhost4u. The site simply disappeared over a week ago with no notice. I emailed service tickets to ukhost4u and they couldn’t even be arsed to reply. Cnuts. Absolutely no reply to 3 seperate service requests as to what the hell was going on. I’ve had trouble with them before when they were having problems with their servers and latterly a hacker screwed them over (probably a customer of theirs who received the same level of service as me. Serves them right I say). They’ve now ‘lost’ my website and all it’s data on 4 seperate occasions. What a bunch of fcuking witless cowboys. I should have learnt my lesson on the third occasion but you can rest assured I’ve learnt it now. I’ve bought new hosting with what I hope is a much more reputable, knowledgeable and secure company - Data Flame. It would seem that I’m not the only one having problems with ukhost4u judging by the several lengthy threads in Web Hosting Talk Forums full of far from happy customers. The piss take is that the head of ukhost4u Paul Hughes has obviously got wind of this and has started replying in the same forum. Shame he can’t reply to his paying customers emails. Tosser. The amusing thing is that ukhost4u had their own forum, which after one of many of thier service outages, filled up with numerous threads from irate customers. These threads mysteriously disappeared and not long after the forum went alltogether. That says a lot about the company to me. The funny thing being they are now being slated in an independent forum, for all to see, over which they have no control nor the ability to delete :0) I’m surprised they are still in business after some of the things I’ve read there, so lets hope that no one else falls in to the same trap as me and many others and you all have the good sense to give Paul Hughes and ukhost4u a VERY wide berth. That coupled with the fast migration of customers like me should hopefully see them where they belong —> shutdown and bankrupted.

You can see what I mean and have a read of one of the many threads I’m on about by clicking here.

One lesson I did learn from the monkeys at ukhost4u, at first the hard way, was the absolute necessity for regular backups. Especially my database. So luckily enough, even though ukhost4u has lost everything for a 4th time, including my business this time, I have several backups of the site and more importantly the years worth of data in my database.

There’s a few updates yet to be sorted to get the site looking and working as it did before, I’ve also got a few new features to install and test as and when I can to improve the usability and aesthetics of the site yet further :0) So apologies to any viewers who’ve been met by an error page over the last week or so, I’ve now got Data Flame on a trial period to see how they perform, and I trust normal service will resume. In the mean time if you find any faults or broken links on the site I’d appreciate you letting me know and I’ll get them sorted.

Thanks for reading, peace to you all, the newts.

We had a little bit of a Barbeque garden party for Ben today. A few of his little mates popped round including Ellie, Jarrod, Isaac and lil baby Jenna. It was a lovely fun day for the kids and Ben got some great prezzies. Later on the big kids had a game or 2 of garden Badminton. Gaz proved to be the daddy at baddy and thanks go to him for overseeing the bbq, a job he’s becoming very adept at just lately. I took a load of video of the day which I’m yet to process and edit, but here’s a couple of pics of Ben, Mummy & Baby Jenna.

Wow! Is it really a year today since this?

Today we took Ben to Elsham Hall so he Dad could feed the Carp. They are fantastic, well worth the trip just to feed the fish! Ben had a great day too, he particularly liked sticking his fingers up the pony’s nose in the childrens farm. He was more fascinated by the doves flying around the eves of the animals stables than the animals themselves. He had some fun on the multi coloured climbing tubes and slides too.

After Elsham Hall we had to pay a visit to Toys’r'us in Hull. Ben loved it. We must have spent nearly 2 hours in there it was great! He specifically loved…

…But gorgeous as it was and as much as I’d love to have bought it for him, it was way too big for him. If he sat on the seat he couldn’t reach the floor let alone the pedals! He did love it though, he must have spent 10 minutes stood in it shifting the gear lever back and forwards! So amongst other stuff I bought him a mini quad version. He took to it straight away and can motor up and down the front room and garden at a cool 3mph!

Reckon you can tell a FEMALE from a SHEMALE?

Well you are just a dozen clicks away from finding out on the newts’ new quiz NADIA or NOT featuring Nadia Almada of Big Brother fame.

Check it out, then test your mates to see if they’re safe to go out on the pull after a couple of pints!