Strong Island

Isle of Wight

Miles Davis at the Isle of Wight Festival

Nope, he won’t be playing a posthumous show at this year’s festival, the title refers to the 1970 festival. Although not quite Portsmouth (well, maybe he came through to get the ferry) but I’ve been listening to the live recording of Miles Davis and band from this festival. Despite it being a little before my time I can’t begin to imagine how incredible it must have been to see him play in the flesh (let alone The Doors, Hendrix, etc!) with a crowd of 600,000!

Did anyone here go? Please post your memories. If you didn’t go or were too young have a watch below, the other parts of the performance are also on YouTube too.

25th Isle of Wight RANDONNEE – 100km Bike Ride

Last Sunday Myself, Jill, Rory, Nick, Danny & Greg met up at the Fastcat at some ungodly hour to take the short trip over to the Isle of Wight to take part in the 25th Isle of Wight 100km RANDONNEE.

2156 cyclists took part this year, up from 1644 in 2008. Of the 2156 riders, 1851 took part in the 100km ride and 305 in the 55km ride. Needless to say we got involved and smashed the 100km and chucked on a few extra miles to make it a round 115km.

A much harder and way hillier ride than any of us expected but we all finished, got our certificates, collapsed and all with a ride time of just over 4.5 hours.

Pop over to my Flickr to see all the photos from the day.

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Wayfarers Isle of Wight RANDONNEE Bike Ride

The Wayfarers was founded in 1983 by several like minded individuals who enjoyed the gentle pursuit of cycle touring. Not for these people the hurly burly of road racing or the perilous dangers of Himalayan exploration but rather the enjoyment of a pleasant ride through fine countryside, convivial company and the delights of the ‘tea stop’

I’m really hoping to get involved with this and nail the 100km. It’s my birthday weekend so it could be the ultimate hangover cure, or quite the opposite. We’ll see…

Check out all the info on the Cycle Island Website.

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Photo from Le Tour De Wight last year.

Bestival 2009 – The year of the Spectacular

Those of you that know me know that I live for the Bestival. I’ve already got tickets for me and Liz. In fact I bought them only 4 days after the last one finished. I always save a little extra so I can get in there for the earlybird tickets.

Despite the terrible weather last year I don’t know anyone that went that was disheartened and is having second thoughts about this year. Just a shame I broke my digital camera within the first hours of being there. Just a few 35mm fisheyes.

Imagine my joy when my newsletter contained some initial line ups. Kraftwerk, Massive Attack, MGMT, Seasick Steve & Bat For Lashes. Just some of my favorites right there. You’ve got to see Seasick Steve, the man’s a genius.

Southsea is always in full effect at the Bestival. Can’t wait. Anyway, I’m ranting because I’m excited. Click read more to see more acts.

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Features

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage

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