biking

Dialing out the pain: mini review of Oxford Lidlock

One of enjoyments of regular – even though its annual, its still regular – motorcycle travel is the satisfaction of noticing the things that end up being annoying and sorting them out for the next trip. But sometimes noticing these annoyances and naming them is harder than you think. Its counter-intuitive but its true. For the first few years of camping in Europe I used the ACSI guidebook and always seemed to end up in campsites surrounded (literally) by Dutch families in large white motorhomes. Where were all the interesting travellers, I found myself wondering, feeling alienated in my little tent and crouched over my tiny stove? It took that long for the penny to drop that this was a result of using that particular guidebook. Then I discovered the Cool Camping guidebooks, though Cool Camping has been taken over by a US company HipCamp who are offering ever larger discounts to tempt me back. I also realised that I could search on the net for tent-only campsites or adult-only campsites. This realisation made a huge difference and I started finding myself in beautiful sites, with friendly and sometimes interesting neighbours, feeling relaxed and open rather than odd and conspicuous.

Another annoyance that I think I may be on the way to sorting is the following scenario, repeated many times. You park up in a small town to look for somewhere to eat, or you park outside a large supermarket intending to shop for dinner. It hot, possibly very hot. You can take off a heavy motorcycle jacket and sling it over you shoulder if you wish. But then you have your helmet, with its valuable, possibly very valuable, camera stuck on the side and bluetooth speaker system. Do you leave it on the ground next to the bike? Probably not. Do you get out your heavy chain and padlock and use that? Did you even, now that you are trying to travel light, add this item to your luggage? Enter the solution that was there all along, hidden in plain sight: the OxfordLidlock costing about £15.

You could thread the curly thing through the sleeve of a jacket if you dared

Its light and doesn’t require you to carry yet another key. But its tougher than it looks though. The curled up wire is designed to let you thread it through some clothing to also lock to the bike. Its a nice idea but the wire would be very easy to snip and, if you decided to use it to stash your jacket, you would need to empty the pockets of: your camera, wallet, documents, keys, sunglasses, cigarettes (if you smoke), Leatherman multi-tool…. so not much use for me.

I hope I use it for short stops. I can’t see why I woudln’t. It could be one of those small things that just makes a big difference.

How comfortable should we be camping? Mini review of Helinox Zero chair

Many travellers say they travel light, or ultralight. But they pack 10kgs of cameras. Others pack just a saucepan and leave plates and a mug at home. Everyone’s decisions are a bit crazy. So how comfortable should we be when camping and carrying everything on a motorcycle? A few years ago I realised that Touratech panniers make very comfortable seats at the camp – and useful tables to put your gas stove on, but then what do you sit on when you have decided to travel with soft bags? Crouching or kneeling or alternating between them gets excruciating after not too long. Camp chairs of course. And Helinox seems a favourite worth investigating. See here.

Since Thomas’ review, I think, a lighter more comfortable chair has appeared from Helinox, the Chair Zero. It weighs 525g and packs to a package about 300mm long. The Ground chair is far too low. The Zero is comfortable to lean back into but also easy to get out of without pushing up on the earth. Here it is in my back garden.

its easy to fold up and put together

Its coming to Portugal with me later in the summer. Last year I paired everything down because I didn’t have proper luggage. This year I seem to be adding things one by one…

A crazy ride back to Cambridge

Today was not a good day to be trying to travel north from London. The M11 was closed – but I knew that in advance and planned a sneaky route on the slightly nicer A10 but no one warned me that the A10 was closed at the M25 junction so many slow miles across country followed to that old-time route up the A1M to Cambridge. My city council garage is being demolished. Storm Eustace damaged the block – where I used to keep my Beamer on the top floor before they relocated me (luckily) to the ground floor.

Poorly built – just one brick thick

So now the whole building is being pulled down. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if the council sell this premium land to a developer to squeeze some flats onto it. Last week with the help of my son and Cambridge Car and Van Rental on Newmarket Road we emptied the artwork and furniture and relocated to Davy Road in a more residential part of the city. Today was my chance to take the bike back up there and sort out a few things like a ground anchor and some coat hooks – but everything about the garage is hard concrete so these things are either impossible with my battery operated tools or take hours. My drill got so hot I burnt myself on it.

It all looked so neat to start with
New home for a while

The clocks moved to British Summer Time today. When I left the garage for the short walk over the bridge to the station, the evening sun was shining, the playground opposite was full of families and small kids and a couple of guys were walking past with some loud soul music playing – a nice moment or two. Hardly anyone was speaking English.

My indirect route – about 85 miles and three hours riding

Ride to Epping Forest

The last few days have seen some of the year’s first predictably sunny days, though the temperature was a high of only 12 or so. I took a few hours today – Sunday – to follow a route around Epping and Ongar that I’d found on BestBiking Roads. Most of it was beautiful – though typically I missed some of the loop. This area right on the edge of London straddling the M25 is a little gem. Some of the old towns or villages, Epping for example, on the route are beautiful. Nicely there are quite a few car parks in the woods on different parts of the route. About the bike and a shakedown: I realised that the instruments on the tower needed to be readjusted downwards and the GPS mount needed to be revised as the GPS was rattling around wildly. Both these teething problems are sorted.

Still to sort – the highly distorted voicing from the GPS to the bluetooth helmet headset. Some instructions are just crackles – completely useless.

Total 54 miles over 3 hours
Pretty much finished now

Once I got home and it was dark I tried to adjust the headlights in the new Aurora tower. I’d made a chalk mark on the drive 5m from the garage doors and put some masking tape at the height of the headlamp. A dipped beam is meant to stop 5cms below this line – but it was a couple of feet. The adjustment on the Aurora tower did not seem to be designed to do this properly – and the full beam did not seem to have an aim at all and flooded everything in sight with light – no wonder it is not road legal. Perhaps I need to swap it for the proper lamp before MOT time.