Month: July 2024

The trip for 2024 – North Wales

Tomorrow I head off for a short five-night trip to North Wales, via Ludlow where I have a lunch appointment with my old PhD supervisor who is approaching ninety.

Its one night in an inn in Tenbury Wells followed by four nights under canvas in two campsites, booked on PitchUp which I had never heard of until this trip. I have some Best Bike Routes to try to follow and a map of the Snowdonia route. This is my first time in north Wales and first time on a bike in that country. After the ACT in Portugal in 2022 and the arctic circle in Norway last summer, this is a rather muted trip, mainly for some domestic, animal related, reasons. But if the weather is fine, then I will be happy.

On the bike, I have just installed a Puig screen extender. It looks pretty unattractive fixed to a rally style windscreen but I am hoping for a quieter journey on the long stretches of motorway and trunk road. I also have reinstated the connection for my old Garmin Zumo XT and I’ve taken the time to learn a few things about how it can be properly connected to my mobile phone. I also have a new bit of Mosko Moto luggage to try out and a newer much more robust Leatherman Wave+ multitool – although it doesn’t include a corkscrew. I am also not taking a camera for the first time and using an iPhone 15 Pro to take pictures probably better quality than my old Sony. (In fact I am on the waiting list for a Fujifilm X100VI). I am taking a Rollei lightweight tripod which I think I took to Norway but never used. These are the only new bits of kit I am trying out.

Thork Racing DMD T865 – its going

DMD is now de-installed. The last time I tried to use it, I decided that it had to go. The signal via the iPhone kept dropping, and once it has you need to restart tethering and then connect the phone again. So basically you have to wait till you stop to go through all that. Other bluetooth connections would also keep dropping. Occasionally the device would just shut down, and whenever I was riding with the sun behind me, shining on the screen, it was totally invisible. And voice instructions were almost inaudible at high speed or with wind noise. So everything is now disconnected, de-installed, back in its boxes and ready to be put onto eBay – once I delete my data from the tablet. My old Garmin mount is back on the bike and I am uploading the routes and POIs for my upcoming trip to north Wales. Garmin have released an XT2 and hopefully my sale of the DMD might fund that update.

The DMD seemed such a promising bit of kit. The DMD control centre – the launcher – seemed so clever, with ability to start other apps, receive alerts, monitor engine stats via OBD2 and then function as an internet device in the evening and even use the Kindle app. The screenshots look so well thought out. But for me it just didn’t deliver. Perhaps as a mainly road rider there just isn’t enough going for this device which seems mainly attractive to off-roaders. Enough said.