Check yo' stuff

The relic of the rim below belongs to a rear Alex DH19 - the standard issue wheel on a Ridgeback Panorama.

Having had a gander at forums and the like, it seems that the DH19 has issues with metal fatigue similar to but not quite so dramatic as the DH Comet. I do not know how many fatalities have been the result of a catastrophic disintegration of a touring bike's back wheel.

This wheel, often carrying 110 kilos, has been up Ventoux, the two St Bernard Passes, Cols de la Madelaine and du Glandon and the Stelvio. More to the point, it has been down the other side of all those, hitting bumps and all manner of immovable objects at pace-ish. Then add a bunch of other stuff and Rimmy the Rim has probably knocked up well over 5,000 miles. There has been no catastrophe - though this is now the state of five of the 36 eyelets - and there was the early warning in the shape of readily warping wheel. In that time I haven't had a spoke snap and so, it could be the expected life span. These wheels are not, seemingly, easily obtainable and so I am checking out the alternatives.

Sassoon and the Somme

If you've been to my pages before you might have had a gander at my wee blog, The Somme. This was a quick trip undertaken last September. 'The Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' is the second book of a trilogy by Siegfried Sassoon, and is set during the horrors of the Somme during WW1. While featuring a fictional character, the account is as real as you'll ever read of WW1 as Sassoon is simply disguising his own experiences in the fictional 'Royal Flintshire Fusiliers'. Excusing the fact that he is an officer and has a few bad habits, it is a book that might inspire you to get out your map and visit the region - Amiens, Albert, the Ancre, Thiepval, Mametz Wood and so on. 

Menen Gate

Every evening at 8pm, beneath the dome of the Menen Gate in Ypres, a bugler sounds The Last Post. This ceremony has continued daily since 1927 when The Menen Gate Memorial to the Missing was unveiled - though during WW2 the service relocated to Surrey. Although it is 96 years since the end of WW1, this year's ceremony of 11/11/14 is likely to be very well attended. Ypres/Ieper itself will be packed around this time - as it is through the summer months - with tourists visiting Flanders and its battlefields and numerous cemeteries.

Ypres was raised to the ground during WW1 but every building in the old town has been rebuilt - including the huge Cloth Hall. The ruin of this magnificent building is an iconic image of WW1. The town's resurrection was funded by German reparations, the final bricks being laid in the mid 1960s. The Cloth Hall is now home to the Flanders Field Museum.

Like Albert in the Somme, Ypres is a base for Battlefield tours - especially from the UK. Passendael is not far away as is the spooky Messines Ridge and its picturesque lakes of gruesome origin. These are the water-filled craters left by the nineteen British mines that were detonated simultaneously at 3.10am on 7th June 1917 killing over 10,000 German soldiers.

Not far away are the trenches and piles of shell cases at Hill 62 - a ramshackle museum full of bizarre exhibits and a collection of occasionally stomach turning war photos.

Ypres is within easy reach of Calais and Dunkerque on a bike and, with the exception of the hill town of Cassel and its fantastic views, the route is very flat and can be done, in a large part, on canal tow-paths.

There is a campsite - Jeugdstadion, just to the south-east of the Menin Gate - with basic hikers huts bookable per night. There is another site a few miles south in Kemmel.

Cateye EL460RC 'road test'

After a quick, one-week residential covering flashing, blinking, constant, hyper, candela (I'm sure I once had some tablets for this), lumens, lux, rechargeables, USB, candlepower, I felt sufficiently empowered to make an educated choice on a blinding headlight for my bike.

There are lights to be seen with - all flashing blinking pulsing etc that are a must for the city roads. These rely upon good immediate visibility from streetlighting to see the rubbish and abysses in the road ahead. The batteries last a long time as the light is usually flashing.

Then there are the lights to see with - such as this one. These throw out a beam of light to show your way - handy for poorly lit roads and the countryside. The downside of these is that high powered beam drains the battery. The EL460RC is not the most powerful of these - it beam extends to about 15 metres according to Cateye's 'beam' chart: Headlight Chart. It is at the cheaper end around £37-£50. 

One added bonus of the Cateye Volt300 (El460RC) is that if you already have one of their more recent lights, odds-on is that this will use your existing fitting so that you can swap lights about or put them all on the baars and look like Truck of The Year.

The light arrived. I plugged it into a usb charging thingummyjig using a particularly short usb cable (you can charge from a computer as well). After four hours or so the red charging light went off and the light was ready. All I needed now was some darkness.

So, I sat around for waiting for the perfect conditions, like some unfortunate mariner awaiting any kind of breeze to escape the doldrums in his becalmed ketch or similar. And not before long, the day gradually became very dark, and it was soon night. Off I went.

I have opted for a very effective flashing light one on side of the handlebars and this hot number on the other. The light's button summons five different settings High, Normal and Low - these are all constant beams - plus Flashing and Hyper Constant. There is a noticeable difference between the High and Normal - and this will extend the charge from 3 hours on High to 8 on Normal. High provides a pool of very bright light about 3 metres wide by about 5-6m long. As I hurtled along in the darkness of The Regent's Park pedestrians, joggers and ne'erdowells shrunk away into hedges or hid behind trees to escape the War-of-the-Worlds style beam. I stepped down to the more humane Normal beam - I couldn't see a great deal of change from Normal to Low.

The button is a bit flighty and it took a while to get through the different settings before the light went off.

All in all a good buy for under £50 -worth it to feel that little bit more confident that you can be seen and can see as well. It is not just cars - pedestrians have a habit of walking out between cars while blabbing into mobile phones. This searchlight will dazzle them just enough to get their attention.

When the clocks have gone back its gloomy at 5pm so 

BRIGHTEN UP

More Bright Lights

More light stuff. Cateye do a very handy chart to show how bright their lights are.

Cateye headlight chart

Hi-viz

I'd always thought that 'high-viz' was limited to just the tasty orange/green sleeveless number - seems I was mistaken....

Some nifty high viz attire

High viz now mandatory for DJs...

..and out on the floor at the discotheque

If I were a soldier I'd probably not go for the high viz/camouflage fatigues combo - gives off mixed messages.

for those long in the leg

Whatever you fancy

BRIGHTEN UP!!

Serre Mappage

The imminent dash down to Picardie and the Somme region is being mapped by my mappiers, Dash4it - if you are buying don't forget to use code Cycle5 for a bit of extra discount. If they are no longer doing this discount please leave a comment here.

The particular necessaries:

For general navigation, the 100000s:

I have had it with the blasé, slap-dash offerings of Michelin and their approximations of roadage and hillage. After-all their maps are for cars so I guess it was my fault to expect any accuracy in providing for the needs of the self-propelled. The IGN on the other hand do not show WW1 cemeteries with the same gusto as Michelin - instead they just locate the main memorials.

For the close-up: The 25000 shows people sitting in their front gardens and is being used for the nitty gritty of trying to line up with the relic of WW1 that I found.

To Winslow

Five weeks after the Ride100 I had an itch that needed scratching. I had signed up for a 100 miles but, due to the abject weather, the route was cut down to a mere 84. Since then I've felt I've short-changed all my sponsors and so decided a crack at a ton of my own.
Whenever I head north it is gloomy and chilled. Struggling up to Barnet rain looked imminent and I could have baled at the first light molecule of water landing upon my brow but it never arrived.
The megalopolis of Northern London has little appeal to cyclists - no hills, impossible navigation, too many towns and rubbish scenery but, once out through Potters Bar and beyond WGC, the cycling gets very nice with plenty of cutesy scenic villages, quiet roads and the like. There are even lots of little hills to make you feel as if you have done something.
Getting beyond the M25 on anything but a busy main road - A5, A1000 - is a job but the delightfully named Dancers Lane is an alternative as it leads you to a tunnel under the Orbital.

This is the early stages of National Cycle Route 12, which, if you forget to stop cycling, will take you to Grimsby. For more on Route 12 click here: Sustrans Route 12

At WGC I left the route to head towards Milton Keynes.

In doing so I entered a world of bygone days; of poorly built buildings with the wood showing, crooked windows and dodgy roof tiles. 

Not before too long, the countryside opened out into broad fields of post harvest fallowness but, with me not being agricultural by any stretch, fallow may not be the right word. Before reaching Codicote, the tight, hedged roads passed through country where they still shoot things. Pops and cracks of big bore rifles rattled my cage for fear of my helmet looking like a tasty rabbit. Onto Kimpton, up to Whitwell then across to Lilley and Barton, the cycling is great with very little traffic. Other cyclists were few and far between. There are no big centrepieces or attractions such as the lung busters either side of the Mole Valley or Chilterns. 

Eventually I arrived at Woburn. Woburn Abbey is not a falling-down old church-style ruin but a massive private house, the seat of the Duke of Bedford, with its own estate within which lies not only said stately homey but also a safari park. Deer also roam free within the confines demarcated by the huge cattle grids sunk into the road cutting through the estate's lush lawns and meadows. Woburn Estate is part of a small chain of estates that includes the Bedford Estate in Bloomsbury and the London Estate, which I suspect is not the North Peckham Estate.

Had I been planning on sticking around I'd have enjoyed the following unmissable event:

Jane Watts is, it turns out, one of the country's leading concert organists. I had thought she may have been an actual celebrity - perhaps a TV chef or sports star. She is, all the same, celebrated in her domain and that's what counts.

Just around the corner there are signs that the blight that blights our urban areas is catching on out here:

The above went out of business just as this below did a century before. The Grand Union Canal is still a masterpiece of engineering but I am sure everyone was glad someone invented the train as those locks must have been a right old to-do, however picturesque.

"I'm just at the lock gates now"

Route 12's procrastinations through Hatfield and WGC put me off the maze of Milton Keynes. So at Little Brickhill I diverted westwards to Stewkley via Great Brickhill. So as to make up the miles, I took a further diversion to Winslow. Winslow is not to be confused with Wilmslow, which is near Madchester somewhere.

A fourteen-up-six-down in Winslow

Heading back, finally, I passed this rather lovely thatched bungalow.

Somewhere towards Chorelywood and the modern train that would whisk me home, I passed an unusual looking thingumabob. I guess it is a water tower.

From Whitchurch via Cublington, atop of a energy-draining hill, down to Aston Abbotts and Wingrave, I made it to Tring for the last leg of this Olde Worlde loop. There are some tough little hills lurking on the fringes of the Chilterns. White Hill, which topped out at 19%, reduced me to 3 mph - and tears almost. I was concerned that I would not hit the 100-mile mark, in spite of my extras to Winslow. Bovingdon around to Chenies, and up and over to Chorleywood took care of the mileage. I also spotted a spooky thingamajig that might have been a modern version of the water thing above - as if to herald my return from the past to the now.

I have no idea what it was but it was buzzing.

ToB TT

New Bag

Had enough of feeling trapped, claustrophobic?
Are you fed up of feeling constrained and unable to move?
Do you feel stuck, as if your feet have been immobilised?
Do you feel something is encircling you, as if you are being wrapped up like a cadaver?
Do you feel that you are...suffocating?

Sounds like you've got a mummy bag then!
So, if you can't hack mummy bags try something like this: Summit 250 £25.00 at Mountain Warehouse though I suspect it was the last one. Tesco, of all places, sell them too.

It weighs a ton (1.58kg) and you need a wheelbarra to cart it about (35cm x 21cm pack size) BUT is it square, giving those footsies and tootsies some elbow room - and it opens out to a quilt/cricket square cover.

James Brown got one like it too - he was so made up, he wrote a song about it!

Force Ten Helium...for one

Enjoy the freedom of getting away from it all when camping

Force Ten Helium is not a Charles Bronson film – it is a lightweight, all-weather tent from Vango. 

It knocks out at between £160-240, weighs in at 1.2kg and packs down to about so big.

This tent is light and compact – definite pluses for cyclo touring.

As always, I never read the instructions. This provides added excitement to the already breathtaking adrenalin rushes one experiences when putting up your brand new tent for the first time. Better still: for that ultimate thrill - do it at night.

Putting up the Force Ten Helium 1 at night

Tenting seminar

The fabrics and zips – after using a rugged relative of the Helium, the Banshee – seem delicate. I pitched the new tent on soft grass using the bike bag as an extra layer – which was fine. But on one of those pitches towards the Med where the grass gives way to gravel mixed up with knobbly sharp bits that have dropped of the ubiquitous pine tree, I would worry about a bit about rippage. I was careful with the zips on the inner and outer as they often rode over the fabric – nothing to do with me being hamfisted or not reading the instructions!

Setting up the fly is straightforward though there seemed to be nowhere snug on the fly for the two end-poles to go. The few guys are nifty – they are insubstantial as I presumed the aerodynamics of the rounded tent would perform well in strong winds. The two end-poles need to be pulled tight or the outer will get quite intimate with the inner during any rain.

The snag with the tent are the inner’s attachments to the outer. The banshee had cigar-shaped, very miniature duffle coat style ‘toggles’ that were easy to attach and detach from loops in the fly, but the Helium has an awkward set of connectors and hangers. The idea is that you just erect the whole caboose with the inner already attached so as not to have to fiddle about with these bits’n’bobs. But, in wet conditions, this is not bright, as the otherwise dry inner gets wet too. I like to stash the inner and outer separately in small front panniers – to save time on all that faffing about with folding it up like a Downton Abbey napkin. There is knack to attaching the inner, which I am sure I’ll pick up.

Once up the tent is cosy and long. The use of space indoors needs some planning as the porch and up-the-side spaces are limited.

It was a bit unclear which end was which given the position of the door. There was just enough room for me to kneel, albeit with my head bent forward and so I was able to perform the crucial wet weather pack up of sleeping bag, mat etc.

The rain was torrential on our second night. My compadre’s daft dome tent turned into a Center Parc with its own water sports facility. The Helium ignored the wasser – not a drop inside. However, I had the bike bag beneath the tent and so I was not able to test the upward seepage from a saturated pitch.

The wind picked up a few times and the tent felt sturdy but it was hardly a howling gale up on the top of a mountain.

Returning the tent, poles and pegs into the bag is a pain and so the metal stuff ended up in a pannier - fitting OK into my Alturas.

My bigger tent's cooking area

Overall it is a good tent but if you are cycling with a lot of gear it will be tough to keep it all under cover. In that respect it may be more of a hiker's tent. 
It is suited for travelling light – and shorter breaks when you are able to make do with a simple wardrobe rather than different evening dress for several nights. It certianly seems fit for purpose, though it is not what I would call a lounge tent – no space for an impromptu bar/dancing area, or even for just spreading out as a cool breeze breezes around inside while the crickets cricket and the warblers warble outside.