Meet Uruvia

Matt: Some of you may have heard of a trilogy of books called "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman. A great read if you ever get a chance, in the world of Lyra, the main character from the books, everybody has a Daemon, A manifestation, if you like, of thier personality in the form of an animal companion..It's an interesting idea and one I'm sure many of us would like to be true.

Meet my Daemon...



They are making a film of the books, which I am very much looking forward to - you can find out who your Daemon is at the movies website Click Here You'll discover your Daemon by answering a series of questions about yourself.

Spooky thing is, I've always wanted a monkey companion!! Although Uruvia wouldn't have been my first choice of name.. :S

I got high...

Matt: It was a hot day in Dubai, with temperatures reaching 38 to 40 degrees, the humidity was right up there too and there was virtually no wind, normally no wind would have been a bad thing but today.. it's Good!!

It maybe 3 weeks late, but for my birthday treat from Cris, she let me drive north to Um Al Quwain...fun!! you might think.. but once there I donned my headset, clambered into the cockpit and took to the skies!! I flew a Utility FH9 prop, fixed wing!! Wicked!!

From entering the cockpit to climbing out at the end the pilot let me do just about everything.. I ruddered the plane during taxiing down the airfield and I even took off, as soon as we hit 80kph I pulled up on the stick and took us soaring in to the air. We climbed to around 1000 feet and cruised around the Ras Al Khaima skies. Cris was taken up in another craft shortly after I took off. We could chat to each other on the radios and we flew in tandem at one point.

The slightest movement of the control stick had a dramatic effect on these little craft, and the rudder would slew you also. Banking steeply was pretty awesome, my pilot took over at one point to perform a sharp maneuver that bought us round 180 to pull up to Cris's 6. You can really feel the Gs when pulling hard on the stick.

The noise was immense outside the headset, you really do need them that is until the pilot say things like, you're doing really well - you can attempt the landing!! What the???? I turn to look at him - he's serious! "Ok - if you're confident, I'm game!" I said, please bare in mind that I have only ever flown a plane in MS FlightSim 2004 - and i did that pretty badly. But what the hell, the dual control are right there - what can go wrong? right?...

Thankfully, nothing! My approach was a little erratic as the slightest correction sent me way off course, but as I suspected my instructor confidently had a grip on his controls just in case. Left to me - I'm sure I would have got us down on the tarmac, it just would have been a little messy and there would have been incident reports and transporting the body costs ya-de-yah-de-yahh. So thankfully he took most of 70% control and guided us in beautifully.. What a buzz...

Only had the mobile on me - but click here for the pics. :) Thanks Crissy - Next stop a boeing!!! x

Second Phase

Matt: Off I went with my negative buoyancy to Dubai country club for the next Scuba installment. We're being taught in a small group which is great and we all get on really well. Wendy, our instructor, knows her stuff and is very friendly and helpful. Cris and JQ have joined me on this underwater discovery adventure - which currently is confined to the pool and lectures - but we'll be in open water by the end of the month! Great!!

Look out fishies, here we come...

Underwater Golf

Matt: Golf is very popular in the Gulf, lots of people seem to play golf out here - and not just 50 year old businessmen as part of their corporate flirting ritual - younger people, girls too, even some of my friends.. So I figured that it was about time I donned my chequered pants and gave it a go.

Andrea, one of the Italian crew, has been playing now for a couple of years and is getting good, He and his lovely girlfriend Ruta, from 'bent over the front of a cop car' fame, play on a regular basis and they offered to take Cris and I out for a round. So off we went to Emirates golf course, host of the internationally renowned, Desert Classic Tournament, for a hit around.

We started off on the driving range, clubbing balls (pardon the pun) with little finesse and once we were in the swing of things (oops there's another), we progressed onto the Wadi course. It was a fun way to spend a couple of hours, ok we weren't great at it but we enjoyed it and it was our first time.

The only thing that did frustrate me more that my inability to find the hole, was the dress code, no t-shirts, collared shirts only, oh but not a fully buttoned collared shirt, god forbid you have more that 3 buttons! What are they afraid of? littering the course with pinged shirt buttons? And it must be tucked in, who these days tucks a shirt in unless their at a board meeting? it's not like it's a safety hazard to have your shirt untucked, when was the last time you heard of somebody getting injured on a golf course by a loose flapping shirt? or is it a distraction for other golfers when the wind picks up? do they mistake you for the flag on the 9th? ok ok.. I'll stop now!! But come on, move with the times Golf world..

All in all we both really enjoyed it. Arhhh you're wondering what the underwater part in the title has to do with this right? Well we also went for our introduction to Scuba diving and have signed up for the PADI course.. Our first lecture is this coming Wednesday, for me it's been a long time coming. I went on a try dive with Mark Dew about 7 years ago at some random school on the outskirts of Bristol, I may have sucked the tank dry in about 5 minutes, but I wanted to get qualified from that day, but we never got round to it.

Location Mos Eisley, UAE

Matt: A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

well, yesterday and about 20 minutes drive actually!....Having heard about a recluse outside of Dubai that is fast becoming a popular hang out for those wishing to escape the 7 stars of average Dubai, Cris and I decided to go check out the Jahzir Resort and Spa this weekend.

Having been given directions, by a fan and now member, Fiona, we arrived at the front gates of this haven some 30k outside of Dubai along the coast towards Abu Dhabi. After a rather confusing conversation with the female security guard whose English wasn't the best, but then our Sinhalease is worse, we managed to convince her we were guests of a Member and only had to pay 50aed (£7) for our 75aed entry ticket, we were met with a facade of strange 70's SciFi looking chalets, all facing the beach. If it wasn't for the palm trees and golf carts around the facilities it would have been akin to walking into Mos Eisley from Lucas' 77 Film Star wars: A new hope - minus a few moisture vaporators..

Once we were parked, we hit the beach, a half a kilometre stretch of white sand with a still bay of water defended by large sea breaks at either end. A barasti stands at one end of the beach serving drinks and snack and provisioning for the array of water sports on offer. There's a volley ball court, a small beach football area, a floating iceberg to climb (yes I got to the top), a collection of power boats and jet skis bobbing in the wake and a handful of people spread along the sand - it was very peaceful. We picked our spot and enjoyed the sun and sea. There is even a chilled pool and pool bar for when the water of the sea just won't refresh you in the summer.

We ate lunch at the pool bar, where there was the expected selection of bar meals, the food was decidedly average, but edible and not too expensive. Apparently you are free to take your own food and even a Bar-b-Que and you do feel like you are far from the bubble of Dubai and her traffic. A nice little retreat.

Weeding Days

Matt: I suppose a wedding is a little like weeding, after all, you've picked through all the rough to find the rose!! Anyhooo I've finally got round to uploading the photos from Julia and Tims wedding, I've uploaded them to facebook in 2 separate album, as there's quite a few.

Album 1 Album 2

Enjoy!!

Living it up as you're going down

Matt: Aerosmith continue the second leg of thier world tour tonight, here in Dubai and Steve and the boys invited me along.


Well I say invited me, they put tickets up for sale and I bought one, but I consider this a personal invite!! Let the music lead the way... see you on the other side!

Explain yourself...

Matt: So you may be a little confused by the last post, so I best explain what went on.

I arranged and planned a scavenger hunt with the main focus being capturing your team on camera doing a number of tasks.
for example: Driving a Hummer, In a Police car, at the top of something high, etc etc
The teams also had to collect items and bring them back, like a 5AED taxi reciept (that's about 70 pence), a randsom note, a cinema ticket from the night before - both list were quite long and the teams had 4 hours and 1 car per team to do it..

Fun and antics ensued.

The points were totaled and then in the evening at the Party and Bar-B we had a fun quiz hosted by the lovely AliB, where the teams could win additional points.

Was a great day and everyone had lots of fun.. Click Here for more photos .

Thanks to Everyone who made the effort, Special thanks to Ali for the MATT themed quiz, you all made the day very special and congratulations to the BLUE TEAM: Steve, Alessia, Cris, Christian and the additional help they had in the Quiz.

Birthday Madness

Matt: I reached the grand old age of 33 (see told you I'd make it Sir) and we celebrated in a different way..

with some good times..

with some challenging times..

with some laughs...

with some fear..

and with some tears...


More info and photo's to follow..

Down with the Muscat Massive..

Matt: I finally bit the bullet and took the long drive into Oman and down the coast to Muscat this past weekend!
Cris, Holly and I drove down on Thursday night, we left a little after 5:30pm and arrived at about midnight - trials and tribulations at the border held us up and hour or so. Boy was I moody after that..

We spent most of the weekend on yachts and boats or in the sea snorkeling. Was great we saw Dolphins, turles and all sorts of sea life. Swimming underwater with a Turtle within arms reach is pretty amazing.

Fun time Frankly

Matt: Going back home to the UK is always a little strange after being away for so long especially as I'm only visiting. I did have a fun week though and it was great to see everyone.

Congratulations to Tim and Julia, They did it!! They got married on the 5th May and it was a perfect day for it. Quaint village affair with great weather. Well done to everyone that added to the day with their help.


Aside from the wedding I went down to the Eden Project in Cornwall with Lesley, The Eden Project is a series of Biome conservatories containing plants from the rainforests and the warm temperate regions of the world, check here. We had a very cool day out. We didn't spend all day there, we also visited the beach at Fowley, the Jamaica Inn, a legendary coaching house which was immortalised in Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same name, it's stood high on Bodmin Moor for over four centuries and the Nobody Inn, a Free house that serves a billion different whiskeys and great food, I was there for the food obviously!! Navigating through the narrow Cornish country lanes can be rather amusing. Sadly Castle Drogo was closed when we got there - but it did lead to some interesting route choices!



I also went for a country stroll and roast dinner with Claire, Brain and Kalani - my Sister, Brother-In-Law and nephew. It was nice to be out in clement weather and greenery. The walk had impressive views of the somerset levels and was through an AONB!!


Thank to everyone for entertaining me, thanks to Mum and Dad for looking after me so well. I came back fed at least! Sorry for treating the place like a hotel.. (I'm sure I've said that before sometime ago..)

Homeward Bound

Matt: The flight is booked and I'm heading back to the UK for 10 days at the end of this week. My vacation will see the continuation of a saga that started here in Dubai. A year an a half ago Tim proposed to Julia at the unforgettable Burj Al Arab - Followed by champayne on the beach.. And now they are getting married. Should be a great day.

Second to that I wanted to congratulate my very good friends Garry and Michelle - and welcome Baby boy Turner to the World. A healthy lad was born on the 19th of April, 7lb 1oz - bang on time! I would have expected nothing less knowing Garry was involved.

Had a party weekend this weekend just gone. Naomi and I decided we hadn't been out dancing for a while, so we gathered the troops and hit the town, and the dodgy bars/clubs. Was a lot of fun - Rock Bottom was it's usual stick floored self.. It's not all posh hotels and valet parking you know??

Too Slack of late

Matt: Sorry!!! It's been a while as I've been busy. So here's the news in brief.

Week Past:
A group of us gathered together with growling engines eager to chew up the Dunes of the desert. Yep we went Dune bashing and camping again, it was an eventful trip. We had a couple of newbies so the going was slow, but after a few mishaps and a bit of training we were enjoying rolling through the desert in convoy. Sadly within 15 minutes of entering the dunes we had a casualty, One of the group was driving along a dune and lost traction, sliding sideways down the drift the tyre came of the rim. Arrgh! Ordinarily you can pump the tyre back up and force it to 'pop' back on, but this time the tyre was even off the valve, so no chance. Changing a wheel on sand is not the simplest task - but luckily I had a thick plank of wood for the camp fire which was perfect for the job. So we eventually carried on - much fun was had and all drivers did great. We set up camp at the back of eccles ridge, a high escarpment awkwardly jutting up from the dunes. The wind was high when we set down, making tent erection fun! But soon we had a fire blazing and food on the go...lovely!
Next morning we were up early and after cooking breakfast and breaking camp we headed to the dunes again to return back to Dubai. There few a few instances again where 4x4s were pushed, pulled or dragged free but we made good time.. until disaster stuck again - to avoid a collision on a sand ridge I had to pull my trust Paj into a severe ditch loosing the tyre in the process!! What rotten luck, this time not only was the Paj in a really difficult position but again the tyre was completely off the rim, there was a sand storm scouring us as we work and we didn't have a substantial plank of wood having burnt it all on the campfire.. (note to self, keep plank in car).
We finally managed to jack the car up and get out of there. Thanks to everyones efforts.




Last weekend:
Cris and I threw supplies in the Paj and headed for Fujierah, we hunted for a spot on the beach where we could set up the tent and chilled in the sun. It was an interesting site we found, amongst old ruined shacks just off the beach. The sun woke us early on saturday morning and I managed to snap some cool photos. Enjoy the pics.

Real Food, Real Time

Matt: Dante has launched.... Cris has spent 3 years planning and developing the idea and business plan of Dante - A healthy food delivery company, providing good quality, tasty sandwiches, salad and lunches to working professional - And the company is now live - with 12 staff the initial progress goes very well. I just wanted to congratulate her and tell everyone how proud I am that she has made this work - it's not been an easy road. Well done Cris -and the Dante team..

Check out the website for more information... www.dante.ae

Climbing Crane

Matt: Being my own boss as a designer creates a varied working week, admittedly most of the time I'm sat in front of this computer churning out work, but the work can be quite varied and interesting. This week however I had a spot at being a photographer.

DP World, one of my clients, needed some photos of one of their dock cranes in action. So I headed port side at Jebel Ali to see what I could capture.


Not the type of thing you'd hang on your wall, but it was a lot of fun and we got to climb to the top of the working crane too. These impressive yellow behemoths of the port loom far above you, perched on the dockside like a herd of wildebeest lined up drinking at the waterhole - with a travel arm that zips over head at frightening speeds hauling 40 foot containers around like they were empty cardboard boxes you can't help but be in awe of these machines and mans accomplishments.


Climbing these monsters was great, open metal stairs led us up 50 feet or so before we climbed into a very claustrophobic lift, barely big enough for 3 and ascended to conquer the beast. It was thrilling to be so high without a static structure beneath you, these huge cranes are on tracks that allow them to roll up and down the length of the container ships. And boy you could feel them move, they shake as the massive crane craddle trundles along the arm to collect another batch of containers.





Was great fun...

Made it

Matt: Amanda's Back!! yep Miss Darby has returned to sunny Dubai for a holiday. It's great to see her and no doubt, with the twosome reunited (Naomi and Amanda) they'll be causing trouble around town.

Well I finally managed to get a crew together to attempt the Jungle Book Hike again, We left Dubai at 8:30 on Friday morning and drove to Ras Al Khaimah, met a few other in RAK and then headed for the intrepid Wadi Bih. After rallying the cars around so that we didn't have to walk back down the Wadi - we set off.
It was a tough walk, again clambering over huge boulders or up scree. But it was good - there were a few walls on the route, but nothing too tricky. They most difficult part was a 3 metre face of very smooth rock. A knotted rope was left here, but due to the smoothness of the rock even with this is was very difficult. So we set about making a harness form my rope and taking some of the climber weight with that. Everyone got up without event.

The last 45 minutes was exhausting, climbing a 45-60 degree scree slope top the summit. Everyone did brilliantly though and are keen for the next adventure. A few of us camped at a spot Cris and I discovered a few weeks back. Though not much sleep was had, the wind was ferocious. But it was a great trip.
Thanks to all who come along and made it worthwhile.

Cris conquers the wall... the drop behind her is about 20 feet, I'm on a ledge below.

Melissa's turn..

The Crew - Well done all.
From left to right: John, Emily, Justin, Matt, Melissa, Julia, Fiona, Cris
Mike, Rene and Ahmed are the wrong side of the camera...

Can't wait to arrange the next one, maybe this weekend.

Rocked out!

Matt: Yesterday saw the start of the Dubai Desert Rock Festival, obviously having an aural preference on the heavier side of music, I went along to pay tribute! I had a great time rocking to Mastodon, In Flames, Stone Sour, Prodigy and Iron Maiden - I was only really going to see Prodigy, who were excellent. I've been waiting for an opportunity to see them for a long time. My companion for the day was Sarah, thanks Sarah - glad ya came along.

Not sure where all those goth rockers came from, you never see them around Dubai - the must have been let out for the weekend, a sea of black clad young delinquents bouncing off each other in a sweaty throng. It was actually nice to see such a mix of people, nothing brings such a variety of races, ages and backgrounds together like music. You had Indians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, British, American, Canadian, Europeans, UAE nationals, South African - the list goes on... all enjoying the music and forgetting the racial boundaries that society generally forces upon us..
and in the current climate that is heart warming. If only we could all get along and appreciate each others differences normally. Think on..


Also just wanted to say a quick hello to Lorna, Linda, Bethany and Rhianna - Naomi's sister, mum and nieces who have just been to stay with us. It was great to meet them and a lot of fun having them around. You're so welcome anytime. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. Lots of love from Naomi and Me.

There it was....gone!!

Matt: Well we've beaten back the trials of another week already, it seems like life is on fast forward at the moment!! You turn around and another week has gone.

My week started on a strong, healthy note - took a crew hiking up Jebel Sumayni. We made it to the summit in a little over 3 hours, rested for 40 minutes, basked in the sun and then returned. The whole hike was about 6 and a half hours. A great hike and really hard work at times.

Other news, I've been working in a publishing company this week - putting together a news paper style publication, takes me back to my days working at the Mercury and Admag is Weston. Arhhh like wearing an old comfortable pair of shoes again for the first time in years!!

Actually made it to the gym this week too, once!! But I did achieve an 8k run with a full backpack aside from the gym, ran over to visit James on mixed terrain of, road, grass and sand - was a really good run!

This weekend: Celebrating Morwenna's birthday and Hitting Desert Rock

Return to his mountain domain

Matt: Having had many foiled attempts to return to Ras Al Khaimah and Wadi Bih to re-try the Jungle Book Hike (60 Metres of Rope Hike) for a multitude of reasons, I have finally managed to get back to the area this past weekend - this was a recon mission and camping trip - not a hike though.

We found a good spot to camp off the mountain track, over rugged rocks the ru... yeah I won't go on. Suffice to say the terrain was rocky. We pitched the tent with an amazing view of the surrounding mountain's - We could even see the point we reached on the original hike - miles away over a few deep gorges.

We did have a slightly scary moment up in the mountains camping though, it was late, Cris and I were sat by the fire chatting and listening to music, pitch black all around and nothing for miles.. When we heard a strange noise across the fire from us.. we switched the music off and I called out to see if someone was approaching, no response, but we could hear movement - I grabbed the torch and stepped out of the fire light so I could see better, Cris stayed close by the fire. I shone the torch around and there, a little way off into the rocks was a pair of glowing green eyes staring back at me.. then another pair and another.. there must have been 6 to 8 dark shapes with glowing eyes out there - I could make out movement, as we watched them move it became clear that they weren't goats as we thought they may have been - but wild dogs or Arabian wolves of some kind.. they moved on, skirting around our camp and passed on by slowly - We still don't' actually know what they were for sure but they never came back to investigate what food we had - thankfully.

Apart from this it was a lovely weekend trip.

The High Point: Our Campsite with an amazing view

Cris making a nice cup of tea.

The trusty Paj, enjoying the sunset

No need for words...

New Blood

Matt: Whilst still planning to return to Ras Ak Khaimah to find out where the '60 Metres of Rope' Hike went wrong, I took some new hikers a little closer to home on a nice climb this weekend. JQ, Lucy and Steve joined me to explore what Jebel Sumayni had to offer (Jebel = Mountain).

It only took an hour to get to the start of the hike and we basically carved our own path to see if we could reach the summit - again the instructions we had were too vague. We had a great hike though - Although I'm starting to think that 'hike' just isn't the right terminology for the terrain we are actually encountering - Adventure Trekking - that sounds more like it!

We never made it to the intended summit, but we followed an exciting cyclic route which took us 6 hour, with scrambling up steep scree slopes and bouldering over ginormous boulders on the way down the wadi.

Well done crew, see you all on the next hike.

Some pics...

On the way up!

Our Summit: When you reach places like this, you really do wonder if anyone has ever set foot here before: When are you giving Sharapova her hat back Steve?JQ and Lucy attempt the steep descent on the opposite side of the summit

In the bowl between the summits at the base of a huge col there was life!!