Riding to Odense, Denmark

In May 2011, my friend Niels Buus, is organising the next In Sickness and in Health Conference in Odense, Denmark. Its a kind of nursing and healthcare meets Foucault and friends. Its an opportunity to take Bertha onto mainland Europe again. You can take the DFDS ferry from Harwich to Esbjerg and ride less than 100 miles to Odense but the fare is over £300. This time my thought is maybe to take the much cheaper ferry to Hook of Holland and ride up there through northern Germany which I’ve never visited but which I’ve heard is uninteresting apart from Hamburg. Its about 340 miles from the Hoek to Hamburg. Here’s the route calculated by Motowhere. This part is 336 miles.

And here’s the route from Hamburg to Odense. This part is 187 miles.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-22

  • just picked up a nice light FW Evans cycle frame for £80 #
  • spent today wirewooling off the rust, red oxiding and mat blacking Evans frame. my fingers are raw. #
  • my new bicycle now has wheels and handlebars. Conspicuous by their absence are tyres and a saddle #
  • now I have brakes – from the original bike, hoping the can be adjusted for new 700c wheels. I'm nearly finished #

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Revit Air summer motorcycle Jacket review

Riding round southern France in my trusty Hiene Gerrike jacket last month caused me to sweat buckets – leading to dehydration perils. The proprietor of the ‘biker’ hotel I stayed in told me her husband wore a BMW Airflow jacket in the hot weather, so I turned to the source of advice and opinion, ukgser.com and then in turn dallied a while on the BMW clothing internet pages toying with the idea of splashing out over £800 on that strange BMW Rallye pro suit that makes you look like a Lego person while simultaneously emptying your wallet/bank account.

Luckily just one person on the UKGS owners’ site mentioned that he found such apparel unbearably hot in Morocco, and recommended another jacket made by a company I’d never heard of, Revit, so I headed to Bykebitz.co.uk and picked up the Revit air for 114 squids. Its such a light jacket, I could hardly believe it when it arrived. Today I took it for a short test this warm and slightly humid afternoon. It is actually cool. Unlike most motorcycle jackets, its designed to let the air in and it does it beautifully. Its comfortable and fits well and looks, well, ok.

It has CE approved armour at the elbows and shoulders and a back protector, though I wouldn’t mind upgrading this as soon as possible as this seems to be quite lightweight. So far I’d recommend it. I’m not sure how much abrasion protection it would supply but I’m quite prepared to believe that a hot jacket that causes you to lose fluid and feel uncomfortably hot is not entirely safe either.

Now the question is, can I find some good textile trousers that match. Trying to peel off my heavy leathers at the end of a hot day was something I refrained from writing about in my travel diary.