How many of you, reading this post, have kids? If you do, perhaps this post will resonate with you.
One of the most difficult things for me, when my kids are staying with me, is to get them outdoors. By that I mean, to get them to do an outdoor activity like going out for a bike ride. If it is not going out for shopping or for a nice meal, all they want to do is to stay home and interact with their “screens” (Tables, Smartphones, PlayStation, TV, etc.).
It had been a while since I had a bike ride with them and today was such a nice day that I had to “put the foot down” (whoever watched “Inside out” with their kids will remember this). Well, in my case, “put my foot down” was followed by a bribe… the promise of a nice meal in one of our local pubs, the Peacock Farm, which they love (food is really great).
I guess cyclist parents want their kids to like their sport of choice, as much as football or rugby parents want their kids to like theirs. The competition with the screen is tough though, but there is nothing that a bribe won‘t get you these days with them. We thought them, perhaps, too well to negotiate in their favour.
Nevertheless it was a great day out… sunny and colourful. Hope you enjoy the video.
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This is a follow-up post of my previous report about my bike ride from Bracknell to Bath on the National Cycle Route 4.
At the entrance to the Devonshire tunnelDevonshire Tunnel
As I mentioned before the reason I cycled to Bath was to experience the Bath Two Tunnels Greenway Circular Route. After two days of brilliant weather and sunshine the day of this ride was pouring down with rain. Unfortunately weather is something we still cannot control and unlike people who might be doing this for living, this is my hobby and as such I don´t have the luxury of choosing to ride and record only in good weather.
Despite the bad weather it was worth it.
Just a few notes before we proceed to the video:
The route I took didn´t follow exactly the Sustrans route (PDF), but is very close. In urban areas the Sustrans signage is very poor and I got a bit lost a few times. Google Maps helped a lot as well as passers-by to which I am very grateful (if you can recognize yourself in the video drop me a note).
If you are planning to do this with small children note there are portions of this route on busy urban roads
The Combe Down tunnel is said to be the longest cycling / walking tunnel only in the UK and possibly in Europe. It´s just over 1 mile long (or 1672 metres to be precise). It has some quite interesting light / music displays inside.
The Devonshire Tunnels is smaller at 409 m
On the cycle paths the surface is paved and smooth.
If you are not local and are staying at the YHA Bath, like I did, the closest point to the route appears to be the The Holburne Museum, which is where I started from and went back to.
Note to self 1: Next time I go out to cycle under heavy rain, need to remember to wipe the water of the camera lens more often.
Note to self 2: Find a better solution to protect my phone during rides under heavy rain. The phone pouch got completely wet inside.
Back to the hostel, soaking wet.
Planning my next cycling to be around this area as well, taking the route from Bath to Bristol which is only 13 miles long, completely paved over an old railway track and full of things to see.
Keep tuned!
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To save you time (?), this post is not really a typical product review. I prefer to leave this to specialists, such as Techmoan, who is my favourite reviewer for these things. This post is rather an account of my personal experiences and impressions with my current Sony camera and a few others I´ve owned over the years. So, if you are looking for a good product review or you don´t like reading, please watch Techmoan´s reviews on the Sony Action Cams or the many others he has on his site. Keep in mind the review below is really for the Sony HDR-AS10/15 models while mine is a newer AS30V, but they are almost identical:
He has also made a comparison video between the Sony AS10 and the GoPRO Hero3.
I´ve always been sort of a geek. Less so in more recent years, however, once a geek always a geek, it seems. And in my geeky interests one of the things that I have always been keen about was cameras (video recording). I acquired my first ever digital camera in 1998 (a Fujifilm DX-10) while on a trip to the US and it it´s max resolution was 0.8 megapixel (1024×768 pixel), could not record videos, had a 2 MB (not GB) SmartMedia card (later I bought 8 and 16 MB cards) and a RS232 serial interface for (slowly) transferring the pictures (this was before USB). This camera was stolen in Brazil in 2002 when the entire bus I was travelling in with everyone in it was kidnapped and held hostage by criminals for almost 3h (thankfully no one got hurt).
Mini DV Camera
Not accounting for the many consumer photo/video cameras I had along the years, there have been those I bought specifically to record activities such as car trips and bike rides.
Keyring Camera
Years ago I bought a very cheap Mini DV camera such as this one. Few months later I bought a keyring camera like this. Their size was ideal, but they all had big drawbacks such as low image resolution and short battery life.
SJ1000 Action Camera
I later bought a SJ1000 which I have used to record bike rides until the Sony arrived and still use as a car trip recorder. I also had a Kodak ZX1 for a while, but that was quite disappointing. Given this is old stuff I´ll refrain from writing more about them, but you have the links, if interested, and you will still find them on sale.
Although a geek, I´ve been a rather “economic” one, never allowing myself to spend a lot of money on this “addiction” because of the other priorities of life (such as the kids´ University fund). The Sony HDR-AS30V was my first entry into a more sophisticated category of device.
Even though, at the time of purchase, the AS30V was not the entry level, it was also not the top Sony product in this category. Sony had already released the AS100V as their top of the range product. I did consider a GoPro, but their prices, even for the entry level version, were still a bit more than I was willing to pay at the time and, perhaps because of the way I am, I felt a bit annoyed with the “GoPRO Cult” many owners appear to belong to.
To start with, I do not recommend the Sony camera, even though there are many things I like about it. It may sound conflicting with what I wrote above, but for the price of this camera I´d recommend you actually spend a bit more and go for a GoPro or spend less and go for one of the Chinese made SJ series (with reservations given the lack of image stabilization).
Things I like about this camera:
The picture and sound quality are truly exceptional. I did quite a lot of comparing with the likes of GoPROs, the Garmin Virb and some cheaper Chinese clones and I believe it’s in a pair with the GoPRO (perhaps better) and beats the VIRB hands-down when it comes to picture quality.
The Image stabilization in video recording is great. It manages to eliminate most shaking even in very rough and uneven surfaces.
Who said TV killed the Radio Star? It has a lot of radios built in… GPS, WiFi and NFC. WiFi for live video streaming to a smartphone and NFC for quick connection with the phone (which would be good if it worked well, but I don´t know if the problem is in the camera or in my phone, so giving it the benefit of the doubt).
It has the ability to shoot stills at 11.9 MP (real pixel density, not interpolated), although the max resolution of time-lapsed pictures appears to be 1080p max.
It has an external MIC connector
It has several options of recording modes, even though I only ever used one.
It comes with a 5m waterproof casing which is more than enough for my bike rides and surprisingly lets a reasonable amount of sound get through, not that this wold be a major advantage when is raining anyway.
It can record while charging (although there appear to be some limitations, read below)
Easy to use interface (buttons, menu layout, etc)
Sufficient display for config and settings.
Reasonable battery life for this type of device.
It is not limited to 32GB MicroSD cards (with other limitations, see below)
Built quality of the device is very good… the Sony brand is very reliable in this category.
Things I don´t like:
First and foremost, the provided PC software is awful. Yes, it has a few interesting features,butonmyDellXPS 15 with Windows 8.1 it crashes all the time. So let me write a few more bullet points about the things I don´t like in the software…
It wants to organize your life for you. I like to be in charge and do certain things manually. Goes away and starts scanning everything every time it loads (there might be those that may like this, I don´t)
It can only use GPS information for videos, not stills. It can produce videos with map overlays and other trip information such as speed, distance, etc. Example below:
These are not very precise though. A positive here though (sorry to be mixed with the negatives) is that the software is also able to produce PiP videos where, for example, the Sony Camera records a forward facing video and another camera records a backwards facing video. You can then have the backwards video in a the corner of your forwarding facing one (never tested this though).
Even though the camera can take photos at time intervals, the software does not have the option to produce time-lapsed videos with them.
If the card is full, when connected to the PC it takes ages (really… something like 10 min) for the software to show the pictures in its interface. Something is not right here, as when I connect the camera, I can open the card as a storage device in windows and am able to see the pictures immediately.
The transfer of the files from the camera to the PC is not as fast as it could be.
When transferring the files to the PC, the folder creation process uses a dd-mm-yyyy format, which might be OK for most, but I would rather prefer yyyy-mm-dd for easiness of sorting and I could not find a place to configure this in the software. It appears to pick the folder format from the configured Windows taskbar date format. I changed the taskbar Clock format to show the day of the week and it started to produce folders with the day of the week as well.
Video editing is very limited and not very intuitive. Of course, Sony wants you to buy Sony Vegas, or Movie Studio or some other PRO video editing suite. Greedy bastards.
My Dell XPS 15 has a Ultra high 4K resolution display. The software can´t handle this screen size very well and absolutely doesn´t know how to handle screens with different DPI scales (not only a problem for this software though). For example, interface text gets so small it´s unreadble and if I am using the notebook screen I have to guess while typing a title as the interface is all messed up in that field.
Things I don´t like in the camera itself…
Minimum interval for time-lapse pictures is 5 seconds. Too long in my opinion. Ideal would be if 1 and 3 seconds options existed also, which the hardware could check against the speed of the card inserted in the camera (I have a fast 64GB Samsung EVO card). It can also only shoot pictures at 1080p, which is sufficient for Full-HD time-lapse videos, but not enough to use as stills.
The camera does not give write access to the card when connected. This means you can´t delete files in the card, so you cannot free space deleting the pictures or videos you don´t like without taking the card out of the camera. You have to transfer all the files (even those you don´t want) and format the card to free space. I´ve heard the GoPro has the same limitation apparently (?).
NFC doesn´t work properly with my phone: I have a HTC One M8 phone with NFC and it rarely works for quick connection with the camera. Tried touching the phone to the NFC point in the camera in many spots and angles. Quicker to connect manually.
The WiFi connection is not stable. Disconnects often over time, even though I only use it to adjust the camera position. I have also purchased a DSC QX-10 camera that has the same (and perhaps even worse) problem.
The camera design: Its round on the bottom. It won´t stay upright without the waterproof casing. This is weakness that Sony has apparently recognized and fixed in later models.
Even more things I don´t like about Sony…
Although they answer reasonably quickly, Sony´s support is awful. They don´t know their own products very well and contacting them is generally a waste of time, unless you have hardware issues under warranty.
Sony´s overall post-sales attitude: They sent me an email asking to provide feedback. I provided respectful feedback (such as this one) and they said my feedback wasn´t acceptable and invited me to re-write it. I didn´t, because I didn´t want to spend another 20 min writing the same things to get rejected again, but I wouldn´t have included it here as a negative if they were receptive to negative feedback. Organizations should not ask for feedback if all they want to hear from their customers is the stuff that helps them sell more. It´s just unfair to those that have given their time to them and perhaps made them aware of things they could improve upon.
Now, a few practical things I found out about this camera while using it that I did not see in Techmoan’s review or anywhere else.
Number of files apparently limited to 40,000: While I was riding my bike from Santiago de Compostela to Finisterre the camera beeped and I could see it had stopped taking time-lapsed pictures. I stopped the bike to look what was going on and the display was showing “Max”. I immediately related that to storage space and started to curse Sony, because the 64 GB MicroSD card only half full. So I replaced the card in the camera with a 32 GB card and everything started working again. Only later I realised the “Max” message was not related to the amount of storage being used in the card, but the number of files. Because I was taking time-lapsed pictures with 5 seconds intervals that meant that, by the end of the day, the camera had taken between 2,000 and 4,000 pictures, or in other words, JPG files. When the number of files in the camera reached 40,000 the camera stopped working. While this doesn´t comply with FAT16 (you can have more than 65K files in each folder, except the root) it´s the best explanation I can provide as recording video the camera does fill the 64GB storage space of the card, but obviously with less files. So, if you are planning long periods taking time-lapse pictures keep this in mind.
Sony Skeleton Frame for the HDR-ASxxx Cameras
Little issues with bottom cap/lid: Another thing is the hinge that secures the bottom cap or lid in the camera tends to bent and break. Most of the time I use an accessory called “Skeleton Frame” (which was also included in Techmoan´s video review above). It´s a bit of an ugly and odd thing, but is the only mount that provides access to the bottom connectors, such as the USB and MIC. So while in the skeleton case the camera can continue to be charged while recording (for obvious reasons the waterproof case does not have any holes). With the constant opening and closing of the cap/lid to attach the USB charging cable the hinge on my camera is at the point of rupture now.
Foggy/misty lens: Now, this one I saw in Techmoan´s review to be honest, but also experienced it myself. In cold days condensation starts to build inside the waterproof camera case, because the camera, while recording, warms up and the exterior of the case is very cold. This tends to fog the lens from the inside. It seems Sony knew very well of this issue, but instead of “out-engineering” it so that it didn´t become an issue, they apparently saw the opportunity to sell little sachets of “anti-fog” materials that magically fit in a space right underneath the camera within the case. Greedy bastards, huh?
The camera can record while charging, but that depends on the charger´s power. If you plug the camera in a charger port that provides less the 1A of charging current the camera appears simply to ignore the charger and use battery power instead. Luckily the “PowerBar” (external battery) I use while riding has a 1.3A port and even a 2.1A port which provide more sufficient power for camera operation and charging.
Well, I think this is all I have to say about the Sony Action Camera
SJ M10 Action Camera
Few weeks before I left to Saint Jean Pied de Port for my pilgrimage, I bought also a SJ M10 based on the review I saw in Techmoan´s site. One of my latest videos, riding a recumbent bike, was filmed with this little camera. It doesn´t have WiFi or any of the fancy radios that the Sony does, but it does a brilliant job at its core which is recording videos. There is, however, no image stabilization on video recording which is a shame. You do get quite shaky videos with this camera if mounted on a handlebar, for example. Keep also in mind, this camera cannot handle MicroSD card sizes bigger than 32GB. It suffers from a few of the same issues I highlighted in the Sony such as the min interval for time-lapse photos is also 5 seconds, for example.
Despite these shortcomings, I really like this camera and it costs less than 1/2 of what I paid for the Sony (in promotional price), is very compact, comes with a lot of different cases and does a brilliant job in my opinion.
On the bright side it has a small 1.5″ display in the back to help frame the picture. If you are on a budget, but still want a good action cam that you can also use as a trip recorder in your car I totally recommend this one.
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I was wearing my “Gore Phanton 2.0” Softshell jacket and was able to touch and investigate both materials.
I accept that I am not an expert on things related to clothing, but to the touch I could not feel any difference on the material.
Of course, there are significant differences in design. My Gore jacket has removable “zip-off” sleeves which are an excellent feature if the day starts cold and warms up, something that the much cheaper Aldi jacket doesn’t have.
A more reliable way to compare them would be to wear them for a few days in a few rides, but I didn’t think a post was worth the expense.
Fact is, my Gore-Tex jacket costs 6x more than Aldi’s one and everything is a matter of cost x benefit these days.
Don’t take me wrong touch, I love my Gore jacket and for those that are willing to spend more than £100 on a piece of cycling clothing I do recommend it.
Anyone with experience on Aldi’s cycling jacket, feel free to leave your comments below. They will be most welcome.
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On the 31st of March I rode from Bracknell to Ryde… a “ride to Ryde” 🙂
I was initially planning to have someone drive me to the Hover Port in Porthsmouth, catch the Hovercraft to Ryde and then spend a few days cycling around the Island, but I felt a bit hypocritical and suddenly “Ride to Ryde” started to appeal to me.
Had a look in Google Maps and it suggested a 65 miles or just under 100 Km route. I knew I could easily do that in a day and I was right.
I planned to leave early in the morning, but these plans never seem to work. I packed the panniers the day before, but a number of small things contribute to leaving only at around 11am.
According to Garmin it was a 7h and 53 min ride to Porthsmouth, but I did stop a few times for water and food.
Had just left home. Nice day for a ride.
Weather conditions were not ideal. It was sunny when I left, but in the middle of the afternoon the weather changed and, in addition to the cold wind, I had to face rain and even a 20 min period of hail storm on the bike, which wasn´t much fun. If conditions were better and I was in a hurry I could probably do it under 7 hours even with a few short stops.
I did not weigh the load on the bike, but I estimate it must have been about 20 Kg all together, between contents in both panniers, camping equipment and front bag.
The first part of the ride I was already very familiar with. Down to Crowthorne, then Sandhurst in the direction of Farnborough on the Blackwater Valley Path which is a ride I do recommend for everyone. You ride alongside the Blackwater river and the many lakes and ponds often with vegetation on both sides. Very suitable to families riding together with Children, however, you have to consider it is for the most part not a paved cycled way, so it can get muddy after rain.
Half way there
As I approached Farnham, the Blackwater river turns north ways and as I was riding south I had to leave the cycle path to urban roads, which initially are low traffic, but after Farham Google Maps guided me to the A325 which had an intense traffic of cars and heavy load vehicles. If you are taking this route, please be careful and make sure you have good mirrors in your bike. You will need to be aware of what’s coming behind you because the A325 is not a major A road, so there isn’t much space on its sides and some vehicles approach at very high speed at times. Definitely not a place to take your children for a bike ride.
Traffic remained intense and with no cycle paths until I got close to the A3, which I rode along for just a few miles, eventually crossing it and taking some rural lanes as per Google´s guidance.
As I entered the A3 I realized that I had forgotten to start the camera, so a bit to my disappointment I wouldn´t be able to produce a time lapsed video of the entire ride as I intended.
The video below is from that point all the way to the Porthsmouth´s Hover Port and it does give an idea how the ride was. By then the worst weather conditions had already happen.
One of the issues you get when you start to rely exclusively on technology for navigation is that when there is no phone signal, there is also no access to the internet if you have not cached the map on your phone.
As I was riding on those small lanes, letting tractors and a few vehicles pass (in places there was not even enough space for a car and a bicycle side by side), I lost the signal and realized that I did not know where I was and which path to take in the next crossing. Obviously, per Murphy´s law, I took the wrong path, but thankfully it wasn´t long before I realized I was going the wrong way and the signal eventually returned as I climbed up a little hill. If you zoom up the map above you can see the little “bump” about a mile after I crossed the A3.
Feet are about to become muddy
To correct the mistake Google suggested taking some bridal paths that were quite muddy, which is not fun when you are pulling about 20Kg of stuff on the bike. Lucky me, only a few meters were really bad, the rest were dry and rideable.
By then I was starting to get a bit tired and at the point I quickly appear in the video I wasn´t really looking forward to climbing the hill in front of me. I initially pushed the bike on foot, but luckly, the wind, which was strong all day, helped on that climb for a change and I was able to complete most of it riding.
Several Cycleways around Portsmouth
Once the hill was behind there was a long descent and at the end the surroundings started to turn very urban again. I found that the urban areas on the outskirts of Porthsmouth and Porthsmouth itself have quite a good number of cycle lanes with cycling permitted bus lanes as well.
Sunset in Portsmouth
As I approach Porthsmouth in an area called Cosham, the sun was setting and there is a nice cycle lane alongside some of Porthsmouth´s water channels and the scenery was really nice, despite the strong and cold wind.
The rest of the ride towards the Hover Port practically crossed the centre of Porthsmouth, but most of the path is cycleable in safety, with only a few stretches on streets with high traffic. By then night was falling and thankfully I had just missed the Porthsmouth rush hour.
There is a Hovercraft service to Ryde every 15 or 30 minutes so I did not have to wait long to be able to board and had to remove all panniers and bags from the bike, but the bike was loaded safely and everything arrived in Ryde in good order.
Took me a while to find the B&B I was staying, even though it was very close, because by mistake I started Google Maps with the route planned for a car, so it took me a long way around the place and the street of the hotel is single way, contrary to my direction.
It was a challenging ride for me, because of the less than ideal weather conditions. Very windy, it rained for about 1/4 of the way and even had to endure a hail storm on the bike for about 30 min, but it was fun nevertheless.
This is not a ride I would recommend to the uninitiated.
Thanks for reading. Few more pictures…
There is always a light at the end of the tunnel.Hovercraft
Transfer from Portsmouth to Ryde aboard the Hovercraft.
After reading Aurelio Magalhaes book “Noruega by Bike” (Norway by bike) I decided I wanted to buy a Gore-Tex jacket. In the high latitudes, above the arctic circle, weather is apparently quite unstable and even in Summer it can get quite cold, quite quickly. Doesn’t sound like from different from in the UK.
In his book he mentioned how glad he was to have bought a Gore-Tex jacket and got me curious as I have at times in winter I felt cold with my Lidl Cycling Jacket.
As per Wikipedia’s description, “Gore-Tex is able to repel liquid water while allowing water vapor to pass through, and is designed to be a lightweight, waterproof fabric for all-weather use”.
The fact that the fabric was able to prevent rain and wind to get in, but allow sweat to get out, intrigued me. I started to search for options and quickly realized they came with a price tag I was not accustomed to pay for my cycling clothing.
Nevertheless as soon as price came down a little I decided to go for a Gore Phantom 2.0 softshell jacket. I added a few other options to my Amazon wish list, but one aspect of this jacket I liked was the fact that it had removable “Zip off” sleeves, so if the day starts cold, but turns out warm, you can quickly and easily take the sleeves off.
I really like this Jacket, but in my recent 3 days ride to and around the Isle of Wight I realized that this jacket alone was not enough to keep me warm. Yes, the jacket is water and wind proof, but there is no thermal insulation inside to prevent you from losing warmth (probably the reason why is called a “softshell”).
As I was riding I remembered what Antonio Olinto had written in his books (in Portuguese only) about what he called “the 3 layers technique” to keep warm on a bicycle. He prefers this technique over wearing a single piece of clothing, like a thick winter jacket, because of the versatility it offers in taking any of the layers off quickly and therefore having more control over your body’s temperature while riding a bicycle. The base layer could be something like a breathable long sleeve t-shirt, while the middle layer could be something like a wool sweater with the top exterior layer would have to be made of a material the prevents wind from taking away body warmth.
Despite the price tag the Gore Jacket works, but that alone is not an effective method to keep warm on a cold, windy and wet day bike ride
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If you go to work on a bike or if you do long distance bike touring, bike panniers are a must. You only start paying more attention to the quality of bike panniers when you are unfortunate to have to ride under rain and you get to your destination with the contents of your panniers all wet.
That is what happened to me. I´ve have several cheap panniers over the years. The panniers I did my Bracknell to Paris ride were purchased in Aldi for, I think, £15 or less. I still have them, but after that ride they took a beating and I would not use them again for such a long ride.
Ortlieb Panniers are among the best money can buy. It may look like they are very simple as they are basically just one big compartment with a little side compartment on the back inside the pannier.
What is so good about them is, of course, the quality of the material they are made off, the easy rack attachment system and the fact they are extremely water proof.
During my last tour in the Isle of Wight I had to endure quite a bit of rain and even a hail storm along the way. I had not only clothes in them, but also sensitive electronic equipment that didn´t like water very much. Not a single drop got through them and I have even heard experiences from people that actually left them in a flooded field with a laptop computer inside and everything was fine and dry.
There are many reviews on the internet and YouTube, so I´ll just borrow one…
If you can afford them, I highly recommend.
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In the mean time, while I write the posts, the video below was produced by my son and a friend and features clips from moments of the entire journey to Paris.
Thank you!
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