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Picked up the iQ2 last night from Inchcape Toyota of Basingstoke.  So far so good, the automatic gearbox is light years ahead of that in the Aygo or the smarts we owned.  Updates to follow……

Was digging through some photos recently and found one of my first car.

It was a 1978 Mercedes 230 in ‘English Red’.  A lovely car and built when Mercedes over-engineered everything on their cars.  I haven’t come across any other car that was as solid as this one.  I ran it for a couple of years and sold it on at a small profit.  This was followed by a 1984 Mercedes 190E which was just as good.  Unfortunately the 190 was written off in 1999 when I was rear-ended at 50mph by a Hyundai.

We pick up our new iQ on the 2nd March.  Ordered an iQ2 with CVT automatic gearbox in white.   I won’t be that sorry to see the Aygo return to the dealer, it’s a mode of transport rather than a car that has a personality.  I’m sure the iQ will be treated differently!

The Fiat 500 didn’t cut it in the end, nicely built and a fun drive but I just can’t get past the fact that it looks like a Nissan Micra from the back.

For the last few years our second car has tended to be something small and funky.  We ran several smarts including a couple of cabrios and the cars were great fun.  They were however mechanically suspect as we had 3 engine failures in 3 different cars, all under 10k miles but that’s another story.

The final straw came when the cabrio roof failed and smart wanted close to £2.5k to fix it.  A smart independent dealer sorted it out and the car was subsequently sold.  Our needs had changed somewhat and we needed something slightly bigger than a smart so ended up with a Toyota Aygo Blue which is cheap as chips to run and has been utterly reliable.  It is a cheap car and built to a price so the interior is a bit ‘plastic’, it’s noisy on the motorway and there is very visible evidence of cost cutting.

I’ve been tracking the launch of the new Toyota iQ and last weekend we finally had a test drive courtesy of Inchcape Toyota at Sandhurst.  What a fantastic little car!  Yes it is pricey but you get toys that are normally the reserve of much bigger cars; heated and folding mirrors, automatic xenon lights, auto wipers, keyless go etc etc.

On the road it was fine, the little 3 cylinder 1.0 engine was more than adequate, the wide body with a wheel at each corner gave it a stability that the smart just can’t compete with and it was very refined for such a small car.  It coped very well at motorway speeds and wasn’t noisy at all.  It is in a different league to the Aygo altogether.

Our Aygo goes back to the leasing company in a few months and I’m seriously tempted by the iQ but we do have a test drive of Fiat 500 lined up.  It’s going to be close……….

For 6 or 7 years I’ve used a Philips Pronto RU940 remote control for all our gadgets.  At the time it was pretty good but it was a right PITA to program and setup.  It also needed constant tweaking as you invariably found something that didn’t work quite right.  As more and more devices came with remotes that had a ‘joystick’ type arrangement it became easier to use that than the touchscreen of the Philips.

A few new purchases before Christmas meant our remote collection grew to 7 and I was getting sick of finding them down the back of the sofa and under magazines so I started looking for a replacement for the pronto.  The trusty AV Forums threw up the Logitech Harmony range and it quickly became clear that the ‘One‘ was the pick of the bunch.

Harmony One

Amazon had it for £88 and 2 days later it was in my sweaty paw.  What a fantastic device, it couldn’t be easier to get going, you just tell it what devices you have and it tells you what activities you might like (Watch TV, Watch DVD, Listen to CD etc) and off you go.  A bit of tweaking later and the addition of some fancy TV Channel graphics from Icon Harmony and the job was a good ‘un.

I was worried it wouldn’t recognise some of my devices but Logitech’s database is constantly updated and it had no problems with my Cyrus gear or my aging Yamaha DSP-E800 AV processor.  I thoroughly recommend this bit of kit.

Most summers we spend some time in the Ypres Salient.  We both have an interest in the First World War and have now covered most of the Salient and many of the cemeteries it contains.  Naturally we always attend the Last Post at the Menin Gate at least once whilst we are there.

If you are planning a visit to Ypres and the surrounding area, the following are well worth a visit and what we would consider ‘must do’;

• In Flanders Fields Museum, located in the Cloth Hall in Ypres.  This is one of the finest WWI museums anywhere and should be first on your list when you arrive.
• The Last Post, every evening at 8pm at the Menin Gate.
• Tyne Cot cemetery, the largest Commonwealth Cemetery.
• Langemarck Cemetery, the largest German cemetery in the Salient.
• Hooge Crater museum and cemetery.
• Passchendaele Museum, but note it is in Zonnebeke not the village of Passchendaele.
• Hill 62 Trench Museum.  Quite pricey to get in but worth it, especially for the large collection of WWI photographs displayed in old period ‘viewfinders’.
• The Brooding Soldier, the Canadian memorial to those killed in the first gas attacks.
• Yorkshire Trench, a recently discovered deep dugout near Boesinghe.

Further afield we would recommend a vist to Poperinge to see the cell where deserters were held and the shooting post.  There is also Toc H in Poperinge which has a good new museum and if you’re lucky you’ll get a free cup of tea from the Wardens in the house.  Other areas worth visiting are Kemmel, Hill 60, Messines, Island of Ireland Peace park, the various craters (e.g. Spanbroekmolen, Kruisstraat) from the massive mines that were blown on Messines Ridge, and the Ploegsteert Memorial.

If you are planning on staying in Ypres we highly recommend the Hotel Ariane which has excellent facilities, a decent sized carpark, fantastic beers and only a 5-10 minute walk into the centre of Ypres.

Our only real holiday in 2008 due to pressures of work. We decided we wanted a relaxing holiday so booked a gite near to Doue-La-Fontaine in the Loire Valley. The gite was a lovely old farmhouse with a private pool and the weather was great. Our first visit to this area and I doubt it will be our last.

Our first vist to Interlaken for 11 years. We flew into Geneva and trained it to Interlaken for a week late in August 2007. We stayed in the Hotel Rossli, a small family run hotel that we had last used in August 1995. We can still recommend the hotel, it’s within easy walking distance of the Hoheweg and Interlaken West station. Interlaken has changed a lot and not all of it for the better, there are too many ‘chains’ present on the Hoheweg with McDonalds, Tchibo and others forcing out the traditional Swiss restaurants and cafes. The scenery is still as stunning as ever……….

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We had October half-term 2007 in Boston, USA. This was our second visit to Boston and we stayed at The Lenox Hotel in the Back Bay area. Good hotel and a great location.  Our visit happened to coincide with the Boston Redsox making it to the Worldseries (yeh – right) baseball finals against the Colorado Rockies.  We really tried to get into baseball but failed miserably.

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