a good nights sleep but what a pity to wake up to hear of the death of terry wogan who was certainly really something of a national treasure even if irish he was a giant of radio broad casting. we had a pint at the bogota beer compay pub last night but it wasnt a brillisnt stmosphere vrry yuppie young things in this best psrt of town so we dined in the armadillo restaurant and had first clsss melt in your mouth stesk. the clouds sre over this morning, lots of roads shut in the same was asmexico city where sundsy id given over to cyclists and pedestriand. mandy and sue are going to a shopping mall im going out on my oen to have another look st the buses staying in the safe area not too far from the hotel. tomorrow we rise early for the flight up to sants marta on the carrabeann coast where we stay clise to the taycons national park , there will be no internrt signsl there.

welcome to bogota caputal of colombia which is sadly so often the recipient of bad news stories about drugs. i mist admit that befire arriving we were a bit worried about things here but today we have slready completed a very full itnarary without mishap. we had a taxi for the day which works out at just £10 each and he spoke reasinable english. mandy and sue sat in one of the nationak parks first thing watchint the world go by while i went off inbthe taxi to get coverage of the brt system which we did fairly quickly plus plenty of other urban buses then we went back picked up the girls and did the monstserrat funiculst and got reasinable film plus the cable csr .it has been quite warm above average for this very ekevated city. then we explored the old town and fter afternoon cofee we leftmanfy having a rest while sue and i checkrd out pubs and restaurants for yinight..

I finally got to the end of copying all the Super8 cine film , its been a hard slog but I didn't really want to come back from Colombia and be faced with all that. We are eating out tonight with friends from St Oswalds at the Pheasant in Plumley getting the last of their half price January food. It's our evening for the pub any way, Sue arrived this afternoon. I've had a tidy up of all the 16mm films which I've accumulated since last copying them. I'll back peddle on acquisitions just sticking to documentary and transport subjects that will fit ion with other material.

We are going to run through all the documents now, an early start tomorrow and I'll blog each step of the journey when we have a sufficient signal although if its like Mexico it will be hard work, there was no way i could get the email to work whilst there. The knee has taken a bit of a bashing but 14 hours on the plane should give it a rest, my first flight since the knee replacement, so its over and out for tonight.

Its been a good week for readership on the blog with over 10k hits, we of course soared past the 20M mark on our Youtube site but as people use apps to avoid adverts the revenue has halved over the past month especially as people get back to school or work after Christmas / New Year. Remember please if you do watch our films click on an advert or even better two, there really are some interesting things out there among the dross.I was going to film in Wrexham today but the weather turned out worse than forecast so I decided to plod on with the Super8 films, I'm on the last leg now with mainly 200' reels and even a few 50' which are a lot more work as you can't really leave them alone as they need constant changes and rewinding. There has been a lot better selection of material and quality compared with the standard 8 but of course its the 16mm which has a lot of the gems and now I generally ignore private footage and concentrate on the documentaries and other commercial material. I'm not sure how things will end this spring, perhaps I'll be able to put some of the material together. Today i had the great pleasure of running off two Catalan films on road safety the first the older of the two was on road signs of which there were many around 1969 ish and although slightly pinked in places I should e able to squeeze out a good feature, I've never seen so many lorries in a film like this and as the commentary is bi lingual with Spanish / Catalan or vice versa! that means the shots last a bit longer. The other one from the 70s was on urban driving and not quite so tasty, a couple of Barcelona tram scenes and just one trolley.

The replacement bulb in the super8 sound projectore went today after just a few hours of use at £9 a throw I'm going to see if I can use a more common type of halogen lamp, the fitting seem to be the same. I've nowe fitted my second and last spare lamp. I'm chewing up the mini dv tapes but there will be enouigh for this batch of films. There have been quite a few other gems among them. Getting them on the computer and for sale takes a while. I shifted my old Manfrotto tripod on EBay it had been in the garden shed for years, still current though and saved a chap in France a few hundred Euros. We've just had our weekly Skype with Max and Tina in New Zealand, tomorrow friend Sue arrives ready for the trip. A meal out tomorrow at the Pheasant in Plumley then an early start. The reviews on the hotel in the jungle are better now, its not ideal as lots of steps and stairs and climbing but probably the best spot for Mandy to see the birds. I hope it goes off well, the news is full of the virus they have but i think we are safely not pregnant! Packing almost complete now. I've also got hundreds more photos trimmed up ready to file, the filing and loading to my Smugmug site will take some time, after all the requests for our photos hits on Smugmug don't even pay the site rent. I've ordered up some PMP branded hi viz vests. I've written to Peel Ports to try for an invite at the extended Liverpool docks when its ready ( their last news on the website was 2014 so guess its behind a little.

This morning i went to the bank and our Australian friend's cash came through so I could do the transfer to China for the May trip so thats making progress, it was a long struggle as exchanging cash sees it vanish in bank charges. I'm also looking ahead a little, not quite sure when our Spanish trip will happen so perhaps it will be a short break to see our friends there. The year seems to be filling up fast, good news on the rally front with some golden oldies confirmed and some new ones. We will miss Kelsall but return next year and will try to fit in Truckfest, Gaydon Trucks etc plus Llandudno which I skipped last year due to atrocious weather. Hmm no photos so its almost lucky dip how about worldwide trucks to get in the mood for the trip.

Not the most pleasant of days so i did some catching up with hundreds of photos trimmed up ready to file, covers done for the latest DVDs and all DVDs loaded to both our Amazon and EBay shops. The orders have already started coming through for the latest releases. We are now on the run down before our trip to Colombia. Mandy is trying to get her blood pressure down otherwise they will want to put off the procedure for the drainage from her left eye at Leighton. I've also been running off more of the Super8 film and loaded the remainder of that already copied to both the Youtube site and the cine reels to EBay. The case for my new Canon G16 has arrived but as the old G12 seems to be going ok at the moment I think I'll take that to Colombia, if anything goes wrong Mandy has a good quality compact job.

We are supposed to be starting the packing but I think that will happen tomorrow. I'm going to try and have one last trip out before we leave but I'll check destinations and wind speeds before I decide. Before you know it I'll be planning our next trips, there will be a few short hops into Europe although the diary is already filling up. I've decided to give you a couple of links to clips on my You Tube site which I've only loaded in past days and thus I can have a relaxing evening.

Visiting Wakefield then there is a handy tourist information shop right in the epicenter of town. I got up at 6.30am this morning and then faced the grueling slog over the M62 through rush hour which all turned into the usual crawl thanks to a car broken down in the outside lane right over the tops so after sailing by the miles of queues heading in Manchester direction we had one of our own. I went down the M1 to Wakefield first passing the 41 distribution centres where I'll be filming trucks again a little later in the year. I was soon in Wakefield but the car park situation looked a little different but looking back it was near enough where I've parked in the past when Mandy hasn't been with me. Mandy had a pre op session at the hospital unfortunately its Crewe Leighton  the one with the Harold Shipman memorial ward where they bumped off excess patients to get the figures looking better. Its tea time and no sign of her yet, fingers crossed. Anyway in the tropic of south Yorkshire I needn't have wrapped up quite so warm as most of the day it peaked at 15C, another degree and we'd have been in the balmy 60'sF. On a week day there seems to be an amazing variety of 'other' operators working into Wakefield and its become quite a hot spot for the smaller outfits. Very friendly all round, a family gave me their car park ticket which had a long time to run on it and did me, I popped into the tourist office and commented on how friendly the drivers on the buses were and how much I'd enjoyed my visit, the place is gradually creeping out of the serwe inhabited by so much of the towns in this region. Could be the next Harrogate perhaps , its already got a cathedral which I suppose makes it a city.

I then sauntered back to the car and with a couple of minutes to spare set the satnav to Sheffield, it was further than I thought, they must have moved it perhaps. Anyway when I got there I realised I didn't want the hassle of finding a parking spot so used the park ans ride tram, if you are an oap like me you can use your bus pass on the trams so just needed to pay for parking although they don't tell you that until you were in the city, the parking place loios a bit threatening, no real info, other people were struggling to understand the ticking. I think the trams had been off earlier in the morning but all seemed to be running again. There is constant weekend closures, I'll do my tram catch up after March when its all over. The usual spot I use for the majority of shots is next to a building site with a lot of the old 60s buildings knocked down by the market, anyway it gave a different perspective and there was certainly plenty to see since my last visit and the overcast but quite light sky was spot on for the job in hand. Down by the bus station, I'd never seen this before, there were zillions of kids, seems that is where the kindergarden for delinquents is and had hassle off a couple of then, posh white kids, hope they get loads of uni debt little sods. Enjoyed the visit though and I'm now editing Pontefract Castleford and Wakefield in one volume and Sheffield buses another. Mandy has just rung, she has finally escaped the hell that is Leighton.

We went out last night to see our friend Sue up at her sisters in Culceth near Warrington, we had a fairly late night and thus enjoyed a leisurely lay in past 8am . There were however plenty of jobs to get on with and during the course of the day I've made the cover for the Hull bus DVD, listed it on EBay, put clips from it on Youtube and on our shop. I've been out in the garden, dug out a lot of the species geraniums which are worse than weeds. A tidy up along the side of the house, its still very wet under foot, we need a dry spell before we can clean off the paths. The lawn has been scarified and aerated which adds to the mess. Next door the work on their front parking space ( aka garden) carries on even on a Sunday with terram going down and scalping scattered for the surface. The apple tree which overhangs and is perilously near the wall and our car is coming down soon we are told.

I've got the DVD done for Hull, all the cine and DVD orders are in the post bags. The cases are indoors ready for packing for the Colombia trip Friday. The weather for the coming week looks changeable, at first glance it looks as if I'll finish off over in Yorkshire with Wakefield which will fit nicely with the Pontefract and Castleford footage yesterday. If I have time perhaps I'll make it to Sheffield, lots of new buses there. I was hoping to creep further afield to Reading or Bristol but those will have to wait until February now. The slide show is more from our trip over the Pennines on Saturday. Tuesday and Wednesday will be indoor jobs of which there are plenty, thousands of photos to file. I'm still wading through the super8 cine and waiting for projector bulbs, must chase the cine ship at Cleethorpes.