Account of some of my bike rides and cycle-touring experiences.
Saturday, 18th of July 2015 Stats:
Healthier, cheaper, almost as fast as by bus and much more fun…
The week before Easter 2015 I´ve spent 3 days riding to and around the Isle of Wight. These are the posts of my experience:
Still learning how to use WordPress. I think this is the best method to collate them together. If anyone has a better solution, I am all hears.
Hope this is useful to someone. Thank you for your visit!
Right then… created this video as a request from a family member who, after watching my previous video (with the camera mounted on the bike itself) asked me if I could produce a video of me riding it.
Keeping in mind we are all amateurs here, OK. Don´t go expecting Hollywood style production. Having said that, I think my friend Gyuszi did a rather good job with the camera. Thank you Gyuszi!
Here it is Rafa!
Few comments… after seeing me from an “outside” perspective, I noticed that I appeared to be too “cramped” in the bike. Believe me, that is not how it feels at all. Nevertheless, I noticed also a few improvements I can do, which I think will make the ride even more comfortable, such as reducing the size of the steering bar and trying somehow to change the position to a less reclined one. Not sure yet if this is possible at all on this bike, but I´ve managed to gain about 3 cm in hight just by pumping more air into the suspension.
Hope it can be useful to others as well. Thanks for watching!
(Disponivel em Português) (Auf Deustch verfügbar)
Hi folks,
I know, it’s been a while since my last post. It still will be a while longer until I have gathered all the visual material, my notes and everything else, put it all together and produced the posts I intend to.
To give you an idea I have collected about 90,000 (yeah, 90 thousand) pictures during the 3 weeks of pilgrimage (I simply left the camera rolling and taking pictures every 5 seconds) and have also several hours of video taken between me and my pilgrimage partner.
Just separating the exceptional from the trivial is a daunting task. After that comes a bit of storyboarding, video editing and creation (inc. all the time-lapse videos), YouTube uploads and the writing of the posts themselves (which I´ll try to keep to a minimum).
If you don´t know this already, this blog and my cycling activities are hobbies. They don´t pay the bills (in fact they cost me quite a bit of money), so as I came back from the Pilgrimage I had to devote myself to the boring stuff that pays the bills.
If that wasn´t enough I have also a backlog of post I want to finish and put behind me before I devote myself fully to sharing the experiences on the Camino with you. Excuses, excuses, excuses… (but good ones).
I am just adding the final touches on the post of my last day in the 3 day bike trip to the Isle of Wight the week before Easter (I had started it before I left on the Pilgrimage and did not want to leave it unfinished before devoting myself to posting about the Camino). I will also post a simple video of me riding my Recumbent bike as there was one request from a family member who is interested in these types of bicycles (might be useful for other people too, don´t know). So that is what´s is coming next.
In the mean time, if you are interested, there is a series of great videos recently produced by Cacá Strina, another bike pilgrim (narration is in Portuguese only though).
Her blog can be accessed here: http://www.cacastrina.com/?cat=38 (suggest you go from bottom up i.e. 1st episode on the bottom to 6th episode on the top).
Anyway, this post is just t
o let anyone coming to this site know that I am still here and I will, as promised, be posting about the Camino de Santiago bike pilgrimage.
Hang on in there! Don´t give up on me…
Hi there.
Typing this post on the small screen of a mobile phone. Not really the best way to run a blog perhaps ( wouldn”d know as this is my first and only) but not much choice right now.
I am currently in Leon having cycled 81 Km today. I am on the top bunk bed in a room with several dozen bunk beds and not even 1 power socket in sight. All part of the Camino.
I have been posting pictures to the EyeCycled Facebook page though. If you like to know of my progress, please like the page.
Just think this will be my last post for a while. When I get back to the UK I’ll work on producing a more detailed account of this trip.
I have been recording the entire trip on time-lapse photograph (my Sony action can takes 1 photo every 5 seconds) so you’ll have the benefit of watching an entire day’s of cycling in j st a few minutes.
If there are typos in this text, please excuse me in advance. Tiredness does not go well with smartphone screens.
Burn Camino!
Did about 62 Km today. The intention was to ride all the way to Logrono, but as we stopped in Viana just to look around (around 5pm) we decided to stay for the night.
We did a little stop at Irache where they have the famous wine fountain and I decided to part ways with my riding partner for a while and the the walkers route to Los Arcos, while my partner took the road. Needless to say he got there mucb earlier and what I got was my own experience to tell you there are parts of the camino there are definitely not suitable for biking, at least not for a loaded bike. There were moments I had literatelly lift my entire bike with all its load off the ground.
After a quick stop in Los Arcos for food we continued in the direction to Logrono stoping at Viana for the night.
Viana is such a great little town, high up in the hill. Albergue for the night was €8 and the pilgrims menu also €8 and food was great.
Please take a look at the EyeCycled Facebook page for some pictures.
Did 80 Km today, to compensate the 30 Km yesterday. We need to keep an average of 60 Km a day to have enough time to be back from Santiago to Saint Jean.
There were many highlights in today’s ride, but as I mentioned in my previous post, please go to the EyeCycled Facebook page for pictures and some details.
I will be adding everything together once I return to the UK.
Buen Camino!
Before you start reading, I wrote this post 2 days ago as I was already tucked in my bunk bed, but as I was ready to post, I found out WiFi did not reach there and I was without mobile phone signal. Yesterday the same thing, but frankly I wouldn’t have written anything anyway. Too tired.
I’ve been posting pictures in my EyeCycled Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/EyeCycled) and will leave that for later here as it is simply too complicated to move the pictures to the device I am using. Please like the page and keep checking if you want the visual experience.
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Today was different and that is good.
I am typing this using a tablet computer and I”ve never been very good with virtual keyboards,so will try to keep it short. To anyone that might be following this, I’ll do a complete makeover of this posts adding video and writting a more elaborate post. WiFi is also practically non existant and mobile signal is very weak, so no pictures today I’m afraid. I’ve added some in the EyeCycled Facebook while on the way though (click on the right)
we left Saint Jean late, around 10:30am. After having watched some videos of people struggling to push their bikes up on the walkers route, we decided to stick to the road. Perhaps I’ll do the camino again by foot one day and then take the walkers route.
Having taken the road was the right decision. It was perhaps easier, but that is not to say it was easy. Something like 90% iofthe 30 Km that separate Saint Jean from Roncesvales is s up hill, the famous Pyrinees Mountains.
We also had light rain on the way which would make the walkers route even more challenging.
We arrived in Roncesvales at 4:00pm and stopped for a coffee. The top of the mountain was very windy and cold. During the coffee we decided to stay at the “Albergue”. The cost is 12 Euros and the Pilgrims mealis 10. Today’s menu was pasta, then fish with potatoes and the desert was some white cream. All with wine and water. Not bad.
Ha a shower and then went to see the Catholic mass in the chapel.
Tomorrow the plan is to ride to Pamplona or further. The is another big hill on the way, not as high but with a high incline.
It was a long drive, following a sleepless night, so I am nacket. We had to drop our 2 car sharers in Biarritz and arrived in Saint Jean around 9:30pm having to rush to find some place to eat as the hostel closes at 10pm.
We are tucked in our beds and coincidently one of our room sharers is also Brazilian, from Rio.
Tomorrow the ride begins.
(Disponível em Português) (Auf Deutsch verfügbar)
The 3rd and last day of my short Isle of Wight tour started rainy and grey. You can see by the pictures in the time-lapse video below.
I knew the day was going to be like that and was expecting it to be much worse than it actually was. About 1.5 hours into the ride the skies cleared and the rain stopped. Still very cloudy, but at least dry.
I had a non-water proof camera mount on the handlebar and the water proof camera casing was mounted on my helmet. Unfortunately I didn´t notice that somehow the camera was bending to the left as you can see at the beginning of the time-lapse video. Once the rain stopped I moved the camera to the handlebar mount as the open casing also enabled the camera to be charged while recording the trip.
The ride started with a climb straight away. Ventnor is very “hilly” and when I planned my route using Google Maps it suggested a more inland route than I had taken in a previous visit to the island (Sustrans Regional Route 67). So, I didn´t get to see much of the village, but I did ride through it during a nice sunny day in August 2014 and the video below I took during that ride.
The coastal route is nicer, but it has climbs of up to 12% incline in places that were challenging enough for an “empty” bike, let alone a fully loaded one.
The route traced by Google Maps took me along Wroxall, Newchurch and when I got to a place known as the Garlic Farm, which is exactly what the title indicates, a garlic farm, but you can
visit the farm and know everything about garlic (something like a Garlic Museum), I realised Google was taking me to a direct route to Ryde, which is not what I wanted. My intention was to bypass the
coastal hills, as I had already done them last year, but to go back to the coast shortly after, so I turned back to Newchurch and entered what is known as the Red Squirrel Trail or Sustrans National Cycle Route 23. I really recommend a ride on this route. It´s a pedestrian shared cycle path, but horses are not allowed and it runs alongside the river Yar. Very peaceful and you´ll find a number of people riding it as well.
I met a nice couple and had a quick chat with them. The man was a native of the Isle, but they both lived in California and were there to visit his family.
The destination was Sandown and I got a bit lost after the cycle path ended, so you see in the GPS data a bit a back and forth until I found my way.
Sandown is a nice part of the Island with great sandy beaches and a fun pier with all sorts of entertainments (game machines, bump cars, etc). If you have children they will love it (it reminds Brighton pier).
Riding along the promenade at Sandown beach is fun, but on sunny days you’ll find it full of people and need to be careful.
After Sandown I made my way to
Bembridge where the new Lifeboat Station is located. At a cost of £7
million it’s a state of the art facility where they can launch sea worthy rescue boats over a ramp in a matter of minutes.
After Bembridge I crossed Saint Helens and the grounds of the Priory Bay Hotel and Golf camp (very nice to stay if you have the money) in the direction to the village of Seaview. In Seaview you have a clear view of Portsmouth on the other side of the channel.
From Seaview it´s a short trip to Ryde alongside the beach. Having done the trip in this direction (counter clockwise), if you ever go to the Isle of Wight to ride I would recommend that you go the other direction (clockwise). From Ryde to Seaview, Bembridge, Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor and so on. I think it would be a more scenic route.
This post now concludes the series of posts about my 3 days trip to and around the Isle of Wight. If you have any questions, don´t hesitate to ask. Thank you for your visit!
I´ve added a few more pictures and videos below.
The video below was taken as I was about the leave the Isle of Wight after a 3 days cycling tour to and around the Island.
Bicycles and Hovercrafts… two very interesting vehicles.
Bicycles are carried free of charge in the Hovercraft and you don’t need to disassemble anything, just remove your bags/luggage from the bike (and item lose item, although I left the water bootles in places and they arrived fine). On the way back my bike´s rear view mirror got broken though. Keep in mind the cargo can only carry 2 bikes at once, but during summer the service runs every 15 minutes.
The next video was shot inside the Hovercraft while “flying” over water to Portsmouth.
