Friday I cycled cross-county to B'hole. One of the great (possibly the greatest) things about UK-land is the vast network of rights of way we have across private land. We have footpaths (which you can walk along), bridleways (which you can ride a horse or bicycle along), byways (which you can drive any vehicle along, but in practice will get stuck if you use anything other than a 4x4, and sometimes even then), and restricted byways (anything that doesn't have a motor). Most of my route was along byways and restricted byways (and one path that swaps between the two depending on the season).

Cycling off-road is different to cycling on-road. For a start it is bumpier and slower. It's also more slippery and muddy – at least, it was on Friday after heavy thunderstorms on Thursday. Sometimes the route is heavily rutted, which means you have to decide whether to cycle along the rut or along the raised bit in between. Neither of which is necessarily as easy as it sounds. Let me 'splain …

When you cycle, you weave the front wheel from side to side to keep your balance. The slower you go, the wider the undulations have to be. It therefore follows that if the path you are following is narrow, you need to travel quickly. But this isn't so easy on a rough path when you are also watching out for holes and obstacles and such like. Consequently I often slipped from the raised bit into the rut or hit the sides of the rut. At one point the bike came to a complete stop and I fell into the verge, among the stinging nettles. Another time the bike dropped but I athletically leapt from the saddle as it fell to the ground and manged to stay on my feet – a rather skilful example of agility for someone of my age, I thought.

I managed to collect a good deal of mud – on both the bike and me. One of my purposes for cycling to B'hole was to take the bike for its six-week check. But when I got to the bike store I looked at how dirty the bike was and decided it would be too embarrassing to take it in.

My second purpose was to look at bathroom fittings, as another small step towards completing my five-year old "renovate the bathroom" project. But the DIY store I chose didn't have a great deal on display; they had only one shower cubicle – which I didn't like. So I left somewhat unaccomplished, but with a feeling that maybe I'm not grown-up enough to make decisions on bathroom fittings.

So having failed in both my objectives, I headed for home. Of course, it could be that my primary objective was to go out on the bike and the others were just reasons to do it.

Friday evening we had our first dose of culture of the weekend; we went to a wind band concert – a different band to the one we usually see (though one of the conductors and some of the players were the same). It was a really good concert – an entertaining programme of music, expertly played and well presented.

Our second dose of culture was a trip to the theatre to see Mary Poppins. This was a last minute decision and we'd only bought the tickets earlier that week. Consequently we were sat right at the back top of the theatre where the only spaces had been. Didn't matter; we had a good view of the stage and had taken binoculars to zoom in on the actors (trouble is, you then miss what is happening elsewhere on the stage).

It was brilliant – some great choreography, music and theatrics. At one point Bert walked around the stage – by which I mean up one curtain, across (upside-down) the top and back down the other side. The final scene saw Mary Poppins fly across the stage, then out through the auditorium and up to the balcony (84 steps up – we know, we counted them). I did wonder whether she would get back to the stage in time for the curtain call, but she made it.

Saturday afternoon I was doing some not-dad duties and CS3 and I walked into Eastleigh to get some stuff for dinner.

When we finished in Tesco I asked "OK, where now – ice-cream parlour or coffee shop?” I thought that would be a no-brainer to a sprog, but she replied "I don't know". I think maybe she was grappling with the dilemma of "I'd prefer ice-cream but think Ruby would prefer me to choose coffee shop". In the end we went to the coffee shop – which CS3 agreed was the better option as it wasn't quite warm enough for ice cream. I thought it was the better option because, if CS3 couldn’t decide between two options, we'd have been there all afternoon if she had to choose between the plethora of offerings at the ice-cream parlour. The choice at the coffee shop is limited to tea or coffee, and about four or five cakes. We both had carrot cake. I was tempted by the pecan nut cheesecake but vaguely remembered that it had been a bit too sweet when I'd tried it before.

The aforementioned dinner, btw, was another Ruby experimental creation – vegan cottage pie. It turned out well, which is lucky as I made loads – about ten portions (six more than were strictly needed). But this time I remembered to spread it across two oven dishes rather than cram it into one.

And why did I make vegan cottage pie? Because I can.