2025 In Review
By Mike Street
Like 2024, 2025 passed without major incident or upheaval. All in all, it was an enjoyable year - seeing some firsts for us all.
Life
Plenty of goings-on with the Street family this year. Ruby, our youngest, started school which meant another shift in routines and schedules. Alfie moved up to Beavers and Ruby started Squirrels, which now means I'm the only one of our family to not be currently invested in a scouting section.
Alfie has become a classic "kid" and discovered Minecraft. He'd been talking about it at school and we finally gave in and bought a copy for the XBOX. I've also enjoyed playing it, trying to actually build things and thinking about layout (although it's still enjoyable to build a tower of TNT and blog it up).
There were some small home improvements - I redecorated the garden office and painted the "TV corner" of the lounge with matching bookcases. The biggest change was the demolition of the back garden patio and building of a deck - carried out by my dad and me.
To finish off the year, our car decided to give us a Christmas present of breaking. We couldn't get it booked in until the 5th Jan, however my mother-in-law leant us her car for the festive period which meant Christmas was saved.
Trip and Holidays
For our main holiday this year we took the kids to Disneyland Paris. It was a first for me - going on the channel tunnel and driving on foreign soil in my own car. Disneyland was hectic and expensive and fun and chaos. We went with my wife's family which did mean we had the opportunity to leave the kids with each other and head off to the big rides.
Little trips included taking Ruby to London for the first time, a boat trip out to the Rampion Wind Farm and a visit to Brooklands Museum in Weybridge.
We also spent a week in a static caravan in the New Forest - it was a classic "caravan park" style holiday, with on-site swimming, golf and evening entertainment. We sprinkled in some day trips to Paultons Park and a miniature steam railway. We also found a pub round the corner with an incredible outdoor play area for the kids (while Chilly and I kicked back with a book and a beer).
My attendance to gigs sky-rocketed this year as I got the taste for it last year. This year saw a few shows with the kids along with seeing OneRepublic (my first trip to the 02 since it was the millennium dome), Nizlopi (a birthday present), Self Esteem and it seems I can't go through a year without seeing Bastille. The last gig of the year was with my mum and family to see Stereophonics at the 02 again.
Stats Analysis
Cycling was a big part this year - recording the highest ever number of miles done in a year since I started recording. A big part of this was the turbo trainer I purchased at the end of last year, with just 85 miles separating virtual and real-world bike rides (and I rode more virtual miles then I did on an eBike)!
I also hit a few big rides this year, doing the London to Brighton bike ride (for the third time), a 65 mile bike ride in August and 70 miles around the Isel of Wight in October. I was pretty happy that I was able to pull these out the bag without much concious training. It seems cycling to and from work combined with the turbo proved to be a pretty effective training plan. I'd like to hit 4000 miles again in 2026.
My Geocaching suffered this year - only finding 2 at the beginning of the year. I need to get some caching days booked in in 2026 to get those numbers back up. I feel like 75 Geocaches is a good target.
Everything else, such as blog posts, steps and music streams stayed steady.
