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!!