"Leading The Tour"

Sunrise Over Coquet Island

2012-02-01T23:49:00.001Z

Stopped off quickly on the way to work this morning to take these quick shots, lovely sunrise.

Runners in The Park

2012-01-29T16:41:00.002Z

Nice to see a cheerful group out from Alnwick Harriers Running Club in Hulne Park near Alnwick this morning, lovely morning for it.

A Cyclist's Weight Loss Story - Episode 02

2012-01-27T22:17:00.004Z

Well, making good progress three weeks into the plan, here's the latest update!

Morning Walk

2012-01-26T23:16:00.002Z

Lovely day for today's walk so we set off down to the meadows by the River Aln below Alnwick Castle, lovely spot. I hadn't realised that in addition to the public footpath quite a large area has no been designated as having public access which is great, be a fab place to picnic when the weather warms up.

The Andrew Wilkinson Interview - Episode Seven

2012-01-24T23:56:00.000Z

On a bit of a roll here on the video publishing! I've just finished the upload of episode seven in this video series which I hope will be of interest. In this episode Andy talks about technology changes, the Shimano/Campagnolo divide and his triple chainring use amongst other things.

The Andrew Wilkinson Interview - Episode Six

2012-01-24T17:12:00.000Z

Here, you go, the latest video in the series of videos covering this fascinating extended interview with the great Andrew Wilkinson.

Morning Walk

2012-01-23T19:48:00.000Z

Just a short video clip of yesterday morning's walk round and about Alnwick and the surrounding countryside.

Foul! - or is it Fowl?

2012-01-15T22:11:00.000Z

Did an interesting calculation today as I knew the ready cooked chicken slices I have sometimes bought were overpriced. A pack of 4 slices of chicken breast, bought alone, was £3 and it contained 120g of chicken breast - 2.5p/g. This chicken, once cooked and dismembered (the breast will all be sliced up) yielded 772g of chicken and cost £5, - 0.64p/g. So, the pre-prepared option costs 4 times as much and doesn't taste as nice. Worth a thought?

Panasonic HX-WA10 Trial

2012-01-15T15:58:00.000Z

Out for a short walk again this morning and continued with some more trials with this camera. I uploaded the stills to a Picassa Web Album allowing Picassa to automatically resize them and I was very pleased with the quality that emerged from the operation. Here is a little slideshow but look at the online web album to check out the photos properly if you are interested.

Panasonic HX-WA10 Trial

2012-01-06T21:02:00.003Z

I've just noticed a very odd behaviour with the Panasonic HX-WA10EB-K which I hadn't picked up on until now. I've written to Panasonic about it an will post the reply when it appears, here is a summary of what I wrote.

"Hi, I recently bought an HX-WA10 which I had to return because of an image fault, I'm now using a replacement unit. I've noticed a very odd behaviour which is either a technical fault or a design fault. I have the still settings to record images in 12M 4608x2592 [16:9] format.

If I look at a subject prior to taking a picture and then zoom in to frame the subject all seems to be well, until I press the button to take the photo. When I do this the image is instantly partially unzoomed and the recorded image is a much larger field and consequently the area that I had zoomed in on (the part I'm interested in) is recorded far smaller on the image.

I just don't see what the point of being able to zoom is if the viewed image is not the same as the one captured. The image does not zoom out to it's fullest extent but given that an image will have been zoomed to exclude unwanted material it is crazy that the camera then zooms out and includes it! I have tried a number of image settings with the same result. I look forward to hearing from you."

I also found this on a forum when I was researching the issue so it doesn't seem to be just me:

"We bought two - one for work and one for pleasure. Both of them don't allow the zoom to work for photo's. you zoom in and when you push picture button it automatically zooms out....totally bug."

Video Recording - Using Stills For Detail

2012-01-03T18:45:00.001Z

Now that I've started using the stills option on my video camera more I've started using a slightly different technique when recording which might be of interest. I have no doubt at all that many people will have been doing this for ages but I haven't and I thought the tip might be of use.

If I am recording a large object, a building for example, sometimes there will be a particular feature that I want to show more detail in and in the past what I have done is zoom in on this whilst recording in video mode and taking a short clip of the area of interest. A problem with this is of course camera shake and I found that a better way of demonstrating small detail is to switch to the video camera stills mode, zoom in and then take a still picture of the area of interest which can then be edited into the footage when the time comes.

I found that doing this eliminates camera shake especially if using a tripod or monopod and I found that the detail has been excellent. When you come to the editing phase it is then a simple matter, should you so wish, to add motion to the "static" image which can give the illusion that the image was captured in video recording mode when it is in fact a still shot with motion applied later.

A recording I made recently of a tower in Northumberland is an example of this. I took a couple of zoomed in still shots of 2 cameos of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland which are embedded quite high up in the tower. Zooming in in video mode would have in all probability have led to considerable camera shake and I thought this little technique was quite a nice way to get round this. If you would like to look at the section of the video clip in question just follow this link. You will see the tower first and then the 2 cameos taken as stills and then incorporated into the video.

A Cyclist's Weight Loss Story - Episode 01

2012-01-02T22:21:00.000Z

Here's episode one and the introduction to what I am sure will be a long story of my return to fitness and a half decent body weight. It's taken me a long time to come to the conclusion that for whatever reason I can't do this by myself so I'm going to get help rather than just sit back and hope that things will magically change. I'm not looking for a short term fix here, but a long term solution.

Blu-ray and me...

2012-01-02T12:58:00.000Z

I've not yet gone down the Blu-ray route, I can't be bothered with the cost of disks, having to buy a burner for my own videos, and a player. YouTube does me, and my HD videos are safe and sound sitting on Google's servers. I'm planning on using the new generation of Internet ready HD TVs so I'll be able to look at my 1080p videos directly off the Internet so I'm missing out Blu-Ray burning altogether and I'll probably wait about 5 years before getting an Internet ready TV and I'll then access my videos directly. Broadband should be universally faster and cheaper then too :-) This is another reason to upload 1920x1080p video, I just wish YouTube would support 50fps, but that will come I'm sure. I reckon YouTube or a similar technology may well be the major "non-live" TV provider of the future and all the movies will be accessed this way and the Blu-ray technology will be cast aside, just like Betamax.

Hulne Park - Northumberland Estates

2012-01-01T22:45:00.000Z

Another 1080p video for your enjoyment :-) This one was recorded during today's walk in Hulne Park, I'd wanted to get some material of the place for a while now and just never made the time. Superb place to walk in the country without getting plastered in mud. Best viewed at 1080p in full screen.

YouTube Dispute

2011-12-31T21:49:00.000Z

I uploaded a video the other day and I'd deleted the original sound track and replaced it with some birdsong, the sound effects were provided as part of iMovie 'll. I was pretty surprised and more than a bit put out and concerned when YouTube flagged it as containing material that might contravene copyright rules. Specifically the warning said that the movie appeared to contain "matched 3rd party content" The note that went with it said that the movie would remain available, for now, but would have advertisements attached.

I was given the opportunity to invoke the YouTube dispute process and having done some reading around I extracted the following text from the Apple iMovie '11 licence agreement:

"iMovie contains sample content including but not limited to graphics, audio clips, video clips and/or templates (“Sample Content”). This Sample Content is proprietary to Apple and/or its licensors, and is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws, including but not limited to copyright. Except as otherwise provided, all Sample Content included in iMovie may be used on a royalty-free basis in your own video projects but may not be distributed on a standalone basis"

With some trepidation, I really didn't want to get black marked, I decided to invoke the dispute process and I'm delighted to say that the warning has now been removed. I just thought this might be of interest to anyone else who uses iMovie from time to time, YouTube do listen.

Local Walking

2011-12-30T14:22:00.000Z

Bit of a gloomy day for walking today but we went out anyway and felt better for it afterwards. Shot a few more clips on the Panasonic HX-WA10 and it seems to be performing pretty well, certainly well for it's size and spec.

Phone Contract Renewal - Review Time!

2011-12-24T12:08:00.002Z

My mobile telephone contract is up for renewal very soon and in fact I can renew it ahead of time should I wish to do so. I'm currently with Vodafone and I got a telephone call the other day asking me if I wanted to take advantage of their latest sooper dooper offer and renew my contract with them for the next 18 months or whatever it was. I hate this sort of telephone call and I will never do business in this way so I refused to take out a new contract, the offer they made would have cost me £25 per month without adding on any additional services.

When I was in town yesterday completing my Christmas shopping I decided to do a little investigating, I wanted to know what it would cost me to convert to an iPhone 4s and to compare this with the other option which is open to me which is to keep my existing BlackBerry and start a 12 month SIM only contract for voice and data.

I'm now pretty much certain that I will be sticking with my BlackBerry for 12 months as the SIM only contract including plenty of call minutes, texts and a perfectly adequate data package will bring my monthly cost down to just over £15 which when taken over a 12 month period constitutes a saving of hundreds of pounds which is always welcome. There was also the issue of moving data from the BlackBerry to an iPhone which may well have proved to be less than smooth and would not transfer everything I currently store. The BlackBerry works brilliantly with Gmail etc. and I am loathed to disrupt this arrangement!

Looking into a few other things in detail in respect of the iPhone 4s it came to light that given that the bulk of my phone/data usage concerns e-mail the BlackBerry actually provides what I believe to be a service which is superior to that offered by the iPhone when used in conjunction with a webmail service. Currently if someone sends me an e-mail it appears immediately on my BlackBerry without any intervention from myself, I had not realised that the iPhone 4s can be set to retrieve mail no more frequently than every 15 min which for me at least would be a retrograde step.

The option does exist to poll for mail manually but I think I would soon get irritated by this. It would have been fine if I had never used the BlackBerry service but now that I am accustomed to e-mail just arriving without any intervention from me I did not want to start messing about checking for e-mail as a manual activity. The BlackBerry is essentially a "push" (BlackBerry servers to me) service but the iPhone a "pull" service with me having to set polling periods or manually initiate the pulling. The other thing is that each time an iPhone polls for mail (which may be every 15 minutes) there will be a data cost to this, though presumably only a small one.

The other thing that came to light during the course of my investigations was that the BlackBerry, apparently because of the way it handles data in a compressed form, apparently is far less an intensive user of data which makes it a more cost-effective option than the iPhone 4s I believe in terms of the data contract. This I think is particularly important if the unit is going to be used abroad, which mine is. Using the BlackBerry system my data use is very low, the guy I was talking to was in a good position to judge this as he was using both a BlackBerry and an iPhone 4s for a trial period and the iPhone 4s was much more data intensive in his experience.

It seems to me that there are plenty of people around paying possibly £35-£40 per month to have the latest and greatest smartphones, it's worth bearing in mind that a £15 a month SIM only option could potentially deliver a saving of £240 a year which particularly in the current economic climate is hardly to be sneezed at. I've made my decision purely based on cost and having looked at the major functions that I use the telephone for which are calling and texts, e-mail and social networking. I do of course make use of things such as live GPS tracking that these are not the prime functions.

Decision made, sticking with BlackBerry, £15 a month and review the market after 12 months. Given that Lorena and I both have phones that's going to save us around £350 over the 12 months.

Panasonic HX-WA10 Trial

2011-12-18T13:44:00.001Z

Readers of this blog will be aware that I recently experienced problems with this unit and had to arrange for a replacement unit to be provided. Having bought the unit from John Lewis.com there was no problem with this and having received the unit I was able to take it out this morning for a short trial.

The main purpose of the trial was to see whether the replacement unit exhibited the un-sharpness problem I previously identified with the original unit at the left-hand side of the image when recording in stills mode using the 16:9 image format setting.

I returned this morning to the stubble field that I used in my previous test and was able to take a photograph in similar lighting in a very similar position, a compressed version of the image is included below. I am delighted to say that though there is inevitably slight fall off in sharpness at the image edges the problem I previously identified is not present on this unit.

The outcome of this is that I will be able to take this unit alone on a forthcoming trip with the Tyneside Vagabonds Cycling Club and I hope to be able to capture some still and video images in widescreen format without the hassle of having to carry both stills and video cameras with all their associated chargers, recording cards, cases etc.

This story has a happy ending!

Here is the first trial video from the unit which incorporates some still images shot on this morning's walk, very happy with the quality, try viewing it in full screen mode (1080p).

John Lewis Customer Service

2011-12-17T12:10:00.000Z

Readers of this weblog will know that I recently purchased a Panasonic HX-WA10EB-K video camera and had a problem with image sharpness when using the camera in stills mode shooting in 16:9 format, the images were markedly unsharp at the left-hand edge though the video performance was good.

I raised this problem with Panasonic and the problem was referred to their technical experts who concluded that the appearances were probably caused by a lens fault.

There was a significant and disappointing delay in Panasonic's response and prior to actually receiving their response I took the matter up with John Lewis. I have always found my dealings with this company to be excellent, they always take customer service extremely seriously and make every effort to resolve matters in a timely manner.

On this occasion I am delighted to report that John Lewis once again dealt with the matter speedily, efficiently and in a most courteous and helpful manner. I made a number of telephone calls to both the Newcastle store and the online service, John Lewis.com and without exception all the stuff I dealt with could not be faulted.

John Lewis arranged a replacement camera to be provided promptly and without question or hesitation, I could not have possibly wished for better customer service and it is for this reason that I will continue to shop with John Lewis in preference to many other stores. Good customer service really is worth paying a premium for but it has to be said that in the case of John Lewis one doesn't even have to pay a premium as the store will price match and guarantees that they will never be knowingly undersold.

One final point which is worth noting is that included in the price of these types of goods John Lewis extends the manufacturer's warranty up to 2 years, one can genuinely buy with confidence with this level of support.

Am I A Millionaire?

2011-12-17T10:37:00.000Z

With the newspaper this morning came one of those free scratchcards which gives you the chance to win a variety of prizes including £1 million, I am always extremely sceptical of these and generally throw them in the bin. However, for some reason this morning I thought I would scratch off the panels and the result is shown below.

As you can see on the middle panel I matched 3 symbols and on the lower panel I matched two symbols, both of these apparently entitle me to a variety of prizes. There is of course the usual telephone scam applying to the “claim your prize" hotline, calls from a BT landline cost £1.53 per minute and the maximum (and therefore minimum) call length is specified as 6 min, the minimum time to claim is stated as 5 min and 40 seconds. There is the option to write in to the claims office enclosing a stamped addressed envelope and I'm just wondering whether it's worth a punt for the cost of 2 second-class stamps.

My gut feeling is that I might as well put this in the bin but then again if I do that I would just never know would I?

Any advice?

Tustain Motors - Alnwick - My Experience

2011-12-16T23:00:00.002Z

After considerable deliberation Lorena and I recently decided to have a pair of winter tyres fitted to the front of our front wheel drive Vauxhall Corsa. Because of recent events time has been at a premium and for this reason we booked the car in to have the tyres fitted (having pre-ordered them) at 8:30 this morning, this we reasoned would leave us plenty of time to carry out a number of engagements later in the day. It didn't work out that way.

The weather was poor this morning but I arrived at the garage bang on time to have the tyres fitted, the garage was quiet and there seemed to be little going on. I must emphasise at this point that the female receptionist on duty was her usual polite and helpful self.

The car was booked in without incident and I commenced what proved to be an extraordinarily long wait. After 30 minutes of absolutely nothing happening at all work finally started on the car and proceeded at what can best be described as a snail's pace. In the end, from having an 8:30 appointment, it was just after 10 o'clock when I finally left the garage. It had taken over 90 min to change two tyres.

Even having spent 90 mins in the garage what can best be described as “computer problems" meant that I had to leave without a proper record of the work that had been done and without a proper receipt, it appeared that the installed computer system was simply not working properly.

It seems to me absolutely extraordinary that it can take this length of time to change two tyres and that in this day and age customers can be held up in such a way not only by a failure to complete the agreed work on schedule but also that things can be so delayed because of computer malfunction. It was clear from the staff present that malfunctions of this nature were not unusual.

During the 90 mins that I spent waiting at the garage I was also struck by the amount of "wandering about" that seemed to being done, it appeared to me that there was inadequate focus on getting the practical work of the garage performed in a timely manner.

It could be that my experience is unusual but nevertheless this was the experience that I had, had I known that things were going to work this way I would certainly have made alternative arrangements.

Car finally in at 09:06

09:19

09:33

09:38

09:44 - Normal tyres heading for the boot.

09:46 - Car finally being driven out, 76 minutes after appointment time.

09:55 (Is that really Basil Brush on the screen?)

Then of course followed the computer problems, I finally left at 10:03.

Cake Stop & Recipe

2011-12-12T20:26:00.000Z

Sometimes things just work out well. I spotted some over-ripe bananas in the utility room and decided to make use of them by making a couple of banana tea loaves. Lorena and I had a couple of hours to spare this evening so we set to and had a combined effort and knocked up the two little beauties pictured below.

I always try to bake double quantities as it just seems a much more fuel efficient thing to do and I doubt that these will last very long! This is NOT a low calorie recipe, each loaf contains 100g of chopped walnuts which are of course healthy but do contain around 700 calories! Then of course there is the butter, the sugar, the eggs etc. What the hell, live a little, it's all good stuff!

If anyone would like the recipe here it is, these quantities will make 2 2lb loaves as above:

Ingredients:

450 g of Be-Ro self raising flour.
Half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
2 pinches of salt.
150 g of butter.
350 g of caster sugar.
4 medium eggs, beaten.
900 g of ripe bananas weighed with skin, peeled, mashed.
200 g of walnuts, chopped.

Method:

Heat oven to 180°C. Grease and line the base of 2 2lb loaf tins.
Mix together flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, add the eggs a little at a time alternately with the flour.
Stir in the remaining flour, bananas and walnuts and place in prepared tins. Bake for about 1 1/4 hours.
Cool on a wire rack.

Best kept until the following day before eating!

Panasonic HX-WA10 Trial

2011-12-11T16:33:00.001Z

This is exactly why I shop at John Lewis, their customer service is second to none, unlike Panasonic. I have just received the reply below about my video camera problem, they couldn't be more helpful, and this was dealt with on a Sunday!

Thank you for your email regarding your Panasonic HX-WA10 Camera.

I am sorry for the fault that your camera has developed, and the ongoing difficulties you seem to be experiencing with Panasonic. Unfortunately, we are unable to view any external reference numbers, but I have sought the advice of our instore Technical Support team on this issue.

They have stated that if you can please kindly bring the item into store they will certainly be able to investigate this for you, and arrange for a repair or replacement if needed.

I trust that this will be of assistance. If there is anything else we can do to assist you, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Panasonic HX-WA10 Trial

2011-12-11T08:19:00.003Z

Well, Panasonic have so far proved to be completely useless in terms of customer service which is disappointing. I've followed all their procedures and submitted my original sample file and heard a big fat nothing. So, all I can do now is fall back on the customer services of John Lewis and hope they can get some sort of answers, here's what I have sent to them:

Using the click and collect service I recently (02.12.2011) ordered a Panasonic HX-WA10 video camera, the order number was *****678. I collected the items without any problems.

I have now used the camera a little and performed a couple of trials and in one aspect of performance I am very disappointed and I believe the camera may be faulty. I have taken this up with Panasonic who have been worse than useless.

The problem is with the still pictures when shooting in 16:9 format, the left hand side of the image is markedly unsharp in comparison with the rest of the image. I sent a sample to Panasonic who said it would be looked at by their "technical people" but I have heard no more. I bought the camera for a forthcoming holiday as I wanted to shoot both video and stills on a single unit in the same image formats but the quality of the still image on this unit in 16:9 format is not good enough as you will see.

The initial response from Panasonic was allocated the following reference: JFAR-8P9C4Y and the matter remains unresolved. Panasonic asked me to email them the original file which I did but I have heard absolutely nothing more from them. I also made an image available online which illustrates the issue though not as well as the original image as the online version is compressed but you will still see that the left hand part of the image is blurred. You can view the image online here: http://bit.ly/rNVKcS I can send you the original file if you wish to see it and examine it in more detail.

I hope this can be resolved, I'm getting nowhere with Panasonic at all.

We shall see what happens.

Alnwick Snow

2011-12-10T12:27:00.002Z

A few more clips of the first snow of the season in Alnwick this morning, no transport problems here at least, so far. Winter tyres ordered ;-)

First Alnwick Snow

2011-12-10T09:24:00.002Z

The snow has arrived in Alnwick, sorry about the video quality but I compressed it right down to around 3.5MB for a quick upload :-)

Panasonic HX-WA10 Trial

2011-12-04T18:44:00.003Z

Today Lorena and I went out for our usual short walk and it was a good opportunity to test the Panasonic HX-WA10 stills/video camera. For such a compact and waterproof (down to 3 metres) camera I'm pleased with the results but I do have an issue with the stills.

I've uploaded a still picture below and there is significant unsharpness on the left hand side of the image. This is quite difficult to appreciate on this smaller image but if you click on it and download the larger one you will see what I mean. I think this may be a fault with this unit so I've been in touch with Panasonic and I'll wait and see what they have to say.

Vacuum Flask Cookery

2011-12-04T11:08:00.000Z

I cooked my porridge this morning using a the vacuum flask cooking technique and it worked brilliantly, it's going to be great for cycle touring. Now going to start experimentation with cooking rice and pasta using the same technique. I plan to use a stove, probably the MSR Reactor, purely to boil water/milk/porridge and to "cook" the porridge/rice/pasta in a Stanley wide necked vacuum flask :-)

Elderly Care In The UK

2011-12-03T21:04:00.002Z

The National Health Service in the UK has a very interesting approach to the care of the elderly which in all honesty I find quite repugnant. You start off with a sick and elderly person who is seen by a doctor and the decision is taken to transfer the poorly patient to hospital. The patient is then examined by the doctors at the hospital and is deemed to be frail and sick and is immediately admitted to hospital to be cared for.

Over a period of time the patient then fails to respond and because of their age and the complexity of their medical condition becomes progressively weaker and more frail. After a protracted period of poor communication, indecision and procrastination the decision is taken that the patient, in spite of now being infinitely sicker than when they were first admitted, is "well enough" to be discharged.

The logic of this completely escapes me, you enter hospital because you are sick, get much worse, then you are well enough to be discharged. Essentially this is simply discharging people simply to die "elsewhere" - the patient becomes a "bed blocker" (as displayed on a prominent dry wipe board on the ward) without that "elsewhere" being part of the same system.

At this point the patient is at the mercy of the “Social Care" system the complexity and inefficiency of which simply beggars belief. A mind-boggling bureaucracy then decides, without of course ever actually seeing the patient, who does and who does not qualify for ongoing care funded by the National Health Service and the standard of care, apparently monitored by the Care Quality Commission remains a complete and utter lottery. Once in the "Social Care" system it becomes difficult to identify exactly who is in charge of the care of a patient, the focal point of the hospital consultant having then been lost.

Funding appears to remain available to treat large numbers of "self-inflicted" conditions. At the same time it seems to me that old age, which will inevitably and naturally come to those who are fortunate to live a long life, will in many cases simply lead to a later life of neglect and poor levels of care, probably with enforced self funding in spite of a lifetime of contributions to the tax and National Insurance systems.

They do say that the civilisation of a society can be judged by the way it treats its elderly citizens, my recent experience has taught me a great deal about the civilisation of the society in which we currently live.

Radcliffe Accident

2011-11-30T21:14:00.000Z

Grabbed this short clip when I passed yet another nasty looking accident locally, this one was just near Radcliffe, South of Amble.

Graeme Obree - A Brief History - Episode Three

2011-11-30T10:44:00.000Z

This recording was made when Graeme Obree was the guest of honour at the Barnesbury Cycling Club annual awards presentation. This is the third episode of a fascinating insight into this world famous cyclist and covers moments in Graeme's career such as the stand he took when he joined a professional continental team when taking performance enhancing drugs was commonplace.

Graeme talks about how he looked at the problem of bike design afresh in his quest to find a way of going faster after the banning of his original time trial position, developments which led to what came to be known as the Superman position. Graeme reflects candidly on what it was like with the British Cycling team when the team had no money for even the basics and tells how at times he was prepared to ride to the point of killing himself rather than face failure.

Graham reflects on how he feels he was robbed of his career by the scourge of drugs when he realised that he was riding at a huge physical disadvantage and finally in response to an audience question talks about the practice which was known as "race fixing".

Graeme Obree - A Brief History - Episode Two

2011-11-29T17:06:00.000Z

This recording was made when Graeme Obree was the guest of honour at the Barnesbury Cycling Club annual awards presentation. This is the second episode of a fascinating insight into this world famous cyclist and covers moments in Graeme's career such as the building of "Old Faithful" from washing machine parts and Graeme's unlikely career move when he began training as a receptionist.

The presentation refers to Graeme's doubts about whether he was in fact good enough to achieve his objectives and notably how he once trained at night through a blizzard, an episode where he concluded that punctures are actually sent as character tests. During the recording Graeme recalls details of his first our record attempt and his breaking of the world sea level our record as well as his successful record-breaking ride much of which he contributes to the power of the mind.

Later in the video Graeme covers what he refers to as the social shock of celebrity and its impact on him and then the events which led up to the banning of his revolutionary time trial position.

Graeme Obree - A Brief History - Episode One

2011-11-29T13:06:00.001Z

This recording was made when Graeme Obree was the guest of honour at the Barnesbury Cycling Club annual awards presentation. This is the first episode of a fascinating insight into this world famous cyclist and covers the start of his career, his first cycling club and his first race as a schoolboy.

Graeme mentions his first open race win at the age of 17 and how we used to scavenge tyres as well as his early races to raise money. Later in the video Graeme recalls how he began to innovate as a cyclist and how Chris Boardman took him out of his comfort zone as well as his problems with sponsorship

At the end of the video Graeme starts to talk about his decision to tackle the world hour record and the initial realisation that he simply wasn't good enough and how he decided to tackle this.

2011 Barnesbury Cycling Club Awards Dinner

2011-11-27T22:54:00.000Z

This was a fantastic night with the prizes being presented by the great Graeme Obree. Graeme also gave an excellent and very entertaining speech, a short history of his life in his own words. I was fortunate to be able to record Graeme's speech in full and I'll be posting it as three episodes over the next week or so. In the meantime, enjoy the presentations!

The Indispensable Man

2011-11-25T21:23:00.001Z

Sometime when you're feeling important

Sometime when your ego's in bloom,

Sometime when you take it for granted

You're the best qualified man in the room.

Sometime when you feel that you're going

Would leave an unfillable hole;

Just follow these simple instructions

And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hands in it up to your wrists,

Pull them out - and the hole that remains

Is the measure of how much you'll be missed.

You may splash all you please when you enter.

You may stir up the waters galore,

But stop, and you'll find in a minute

That it looks just the same as before.

The moral of this is quite simple.

You must do the best that you can.

Be proud of yourself, but remember.

There is no indispensable man.

Wet Roads Can Kill - Denwick Crash

2011-11-22T16:47:00.001Z

I find cycling on wet roads, particularly at this time of year, an extremely dangerous business. Only this last weekend some folks from my club, The Tyneside Vagabonds, I believe had a narrow escape when a 4x4 skidded in their direction and this kind of thing worries me. It's not just the very real risk of skidding off oneself which is bad enough, it's the lunatics in vehicles who have no idea whatsoever how slippery the roads are and who just speed round corners in total uncaring ignorance, inevitably they somethimes skid and inevitably they sometimes skid into other road users.

Lorena and I were out for our walk today on our usual route. The route brings us out at a small junction in Denwick where we wait to cross the road. The lane we emerge from happens to meet the main road on a bend. Right on the bend is a telegraph pole which we always stand next to waiting to cross the road.

Today when we arrived at the bend there was a police car, an ambulance and a blue van which had gone off the road and smashed into a stome wall and the telegraph pole EXACTLY where we normally stand waiting to cross. The driver had clearly been going too fast and had skidded off the road into the wall/pole, there were no other vehicles involved.

The fact of the matter is that if we had left the house about 20 mintes earlier we would have been waiting to cross the road exactly where he went off the road which would probably have killed both of us or at the very least seriously injured us both. As it was we were fortunate but it does serve as a reminder of the extreme dangers of skidding vehicles, most drivers are unaware of just how feeble their grip ona wet road is, until it's too late.

Here are some shots of the accident I snapped with my mobile telephone:

Bacon Butties "Al Fresco"

2011-11-20T21:52:00.000Z

Off down to the river in the Autumn sunshine today for a bacon sandwich cooked in the open air, they always taste so much better. Couldn't resist taking the video camera!

Tyneside Vagabonds Club Ride

2011-11-19T19:17:00.001Z

Nice ride out this morning with the Tyneside Vagabonds and couldn't resist sticking the helmet camera on my head and grabbing a few clips. It was a nice morning but unfortunately it clouded over very quickly but still, nice to record a few clips just for the record!

Shopping - Car or Bus?

2011-11-16T08:49:00.001Z

Having worked out the cost per mile of driving our Vauxhall Corsa as being just over 13 pence per mile in petrol alone I thought I would do a comparison of the cost of going to Newcastle shopping by bus and car to see which would be most cost effective, just out of interest as the car is by far the more convenient and quicker!

The return journey from Alnwick to Newcastle is 70 miles so the petrol cost of that journey works out at £9.10p. On average we might stay in Newcastle for perhaps 3 hours and the cost of parking for 3 hours is £4.80 (£1.60 per hour), this makes the cost of a three hour trip to the shops £13.90. This is of course before you even think about buying anything in the shops or going for an over-priced coffee and a cake :-)

So, the return trip, with one or two adults in the car, £13.90p.

I then rang up the Arriva bus company to find out the bus fares on the 501/505 service which runs from Alnwick to Newcastle. To establish the fares was not as easy as I thought it would be but I got there in the end, the results were useful. The single fare from Alnwick to Newcastle was £5.20 but interestingly the return fare was £6.20, there would of course be no parking charges with this option.

This means that the same 2 adults making the return journey by bus would pay a total of £12.40 making the bus the cheaper option for two people by a figure of £1.50. This is only a modest saving given the convenience of the car and is almost certainly not worth the extra time and effort.

However, it is well worth considering using the bus if either I or Lorena are going into town on our own. In this scenario the single person journey in the car would still be £13.90 but the bus option would be less than half the cost at the single return fare of £6.20, a saving of £7.70 which is very significant if the additional journey time is not an issue.

Clearly far greater savings could be made if additional people were given a lift into town and further savings can be made using the car option if one makes a later journey. Car parking charges stop at 18:00 so if one were to arrive just after 17:00 one would pay only for one hour of parking no matter how long the stay was. A return journey by car with one hour of paid parking would come to £10.70. This would be a cheaper option than the bus journey for 2 people and would be just £3.20 more expensive than the single occupancy car journey with a stay of 3 hours.

At least having the information allows an informed decision to be made, whatever that decision may be.

Increasing Fuel Economy

2011-11-15T15:56:00.001Z

I suppose I should have done this before but it does seem daft to pour petrol down the drain by not driving as economically as I can. Seems to me that if the fuel tank of our Corsa holds about 45 litres of fuel that's going to weigh around 45 kilos, or not far off 100lbs. Given that the heavier the car is the more fuel it will use at any speed it makes good sense to drive with a lighter fuel load.

My plan is to run the tank down until the fuel light comes on and then to put around 25 litres of fuel in instead of filling it up. This compromise will reduce fuel consumption whilst still giving an adequate range for general driving around. 25 litres is 5.5 gallons which at 43mpg will give us a range of about 236 miles, more than adequate for general driving around locally.

If we get snow and ice I'll increase the fuel load to hopefully improve traction but also as a precaution should bad weather cause delays etc.

The Koga Signature Touring Bike

2011-11-11T17:58:00.001Z

After much thought and deliberation I have pretty much decided on the touring bike I intend to buy in due course. I'm going to go for the bike I was able to try when I met up with Andy who was on his travels homeward to Scotland, it was lovely.

I'm going for the GlobeTraveller with a Rohloff hub and hydraulic disc brakes. I'll need to get myself a small tent, a new sleeping bag (goose down) and a couple of other bits and I'll be off.

I think it will be pretty exciting, the plan is that for my initial short trips, say 5-6 days, in the UK Lorena will drive up to a pre-arranged meeting point half way so that we can stop in a hotel or B&B and catch up and then I'll continue on my way. This arrangement will break up the trips and will make the whole thing much more socially acceptable :-)

I think it's going to be great!

The Cost of Motoring

2011-11-10T12:32:00.000Z

I decided the other day to get a more realistic idea of the cost of driving around so that I could get a feel for the cost of individual journeys we make. I started off by filling the fuel tank in our very modest 1.4 Vauxhall Corsa and then just using the car normally for a few days. I then refilled the car and recorded how much fuel it took to fill it, the mileage that we had done, and the cost of the fuel, the car runs on petrol.

The initial results are as follows:

In round numbers the cost of fuel per litre at ASDA was £1.28 and we had covered 280 miles between top-ups, to refill the tank took 29.21 litres. Converting to gallons we had used 6.42 gallons, this made the price per gallon £5.86 and gave a reasonably accurate fuel consumption figure of 43.61 miles per gallon.

So, to travel 280 miles had cost us, in petrol alone, £37.50p which gives us a per mile cost in petrol alone of 13.425 pence. This means that a 20 mile round trip of 40 miles is going to cost us £5.37p before we even think about parking or the other costs associated with the trip.

To make an estimate of the other costs I added up the car insurance (£280), road tax (£190), MOT (£40) which gave me a figure of £510. I added to this an estimate of depreciation of £1000 per year giving a total of £1510, I have EXCLUDED any additional costs for repairs. All this added together and spread over the year gives me a cost of just over £4 per day before I drive the car at all and EXCLUDING repairs.

So, completely ignoring the original purchase price and any repairs when I come to make my round trip to work the cost of just having the car is £4 before I even move move and it will cost me an additional £5.37 in petrol, a total of £9.37. If I were doing that 5 days a week it would be costing me £46.85 a week to go to work, or £187.40 in a 4 week month or £234.25 in a 5 week month. This of course excludes the staff parking charges I might have to pay at the NHS hospital I work at.

Now that's scary.

Crazy Parking

2011-11-04T14:22:00.001Z

This has to be one of the daftest examples of parking I've ever seen. The driver can have had absolutely no idea where he or she was, frightening really.

Young and Greek?

2011-11-04T13:19:00.003Z

If I were a young Greek I'd be looking to get out of the country. Take the scenario, currently able to work anywhere in the EU, Greece defaults on it's debts, leaves The Euro and then has to leave the EU. Life in Greece then gets very difficult and Greek nationals can no longer work anywhere, no longer being EU citizens. Life then starts to look pretty grim I'd have thought.

Alberto Contador Modelling?

2011-10-30T08:28:00.000Z

Is it just me or does it really look as if Alberto Contador has taken to wearing makeup and started a new career as a model? You've just got to wonder if it was just clenbuterol in that dodgy steak I guess.

Training With an ErgVideo Plan - Week 05

2011-10-29T20:43:00.002+01:00

I'm rather late with this post for reasons I won't bore you with but week five on the ErgVideo Plan went just fine, not easy, but fine. To view the usual graphs of the intensity distributions, TSS etc. for the plan so far follow this link.

As you can see the weekly TSS and work done (kJ) are back up again and my average weekly HR remains higher than it was at the start of the programme and this simply reflects the ongoing increased time in training zones L4 (threshold) and above.

I've made a decision about the plan and that is that I'm not going to complete it "as is" for the full 20 weeks but I'm going to start using it as a guide and will tailor it to suit my own requirements. The reason for my choosing to do this is that I feel that the plan as it stands "off the shelf" is making me spend too much time at the higher intensities at the present time and definitely too much time at these intensities for this stage of a twenty week plan, for me at any rate.

As you can see from the above distribution charts for the week I've spent 21% of my training time this week in L4 and a further 27 minutes in L5 and above and I feel that this is just too intense for this stage of the plan, falling as it does in late October. I would normally be reserving significant volumes of higher intensity training for the later stages of a training cycle.

So, I'll use next week as a sort of transition week and I'll achieve this just by knocking the AT setting back on some of the higher intensity sessions and I'll also be rescheduling things to ensure that I don't end up doing 2 threshold sessions (long intervals) a week with just one day between them which is the scheduling that the Training Advisor Tool has produced for me.

I suspect that the issues I'm finding are related to the Training Advisor Tool generating the programme based on TSS, perhaps with less emphasis on the overall IF of the schedule and the actual time spent in the various training zones. That is pure speculation as I've got no idea how the tool actually does what it does, but it's still damned clever!

On with the plan...

Blood Glucose Experiments

2011-10-20T23:01:00.001+01:00

I've been tinkering around measuring my blood glucose levels at various times over the last couple of days. The primary reason for doing this is that there are reckoned to be a large number of undiagnosed type 2 diabetics in the UK and I thought it would be a reasonable thing to do to make sure that my blood glucose levels were generally in the normal range. Undiagnosed diabetes can do untold damage prior to it being diagnosed and I reckoned why not do a few tests out of interest.

Anyway, the results have been fine and I was also very interested to see whether my revised dietary regime was resulting in the desired level of blood glucose stability. I have been very happy with the results, my blood glucose levels, even when measured 60 minutes after a meal, have remained within the normal range, generally between 5-0 and 5.5mmol/L. The foods I'm consistently eating now are resulting in essentially no major fluctuations in my blood glucose readings, which was the primary reason for the modifications I've made.

Tonight I thought I would examine the effect of a 90+ minute endurance ride on the VELOtron on my blood glucose level. I rode the Port de Pailheres ErgVideo at a L2 intensity and measured my blood glucose before and after the session. During the ride itself I drank only water, I ate nothing and I didn't take on any specific carbohydrate foodstuffs before the session.

Prior to commencing the ride by blood glucose measurement was 5.7mmol/L and during the ride itself I performed 1124kJ. As you can see the calorie burn was not insignificant without taking on nutrition of any sort, I averaged about 200W for the duration of the session. There were some higer intensity efforts towards the end of the ride and at the end of the sesion I felt fine and my blood glucose level was 4.2mmol/L. Though lower this reading was still within the normal range which I was encouraged by, it looks as if I wasn't on the verge of a blood sugar "crash". This, to me at any rate, suggests that a substantial proportion of the energy requirements from the session were probably met from fat rather than carbohydrate stores, but I'm open to any interpretations folks may choose to offer! I think if I'd been using a lot of glycogen during this ride, given that I drank just water, the end level would have been far lower.

It's just interesting to try to build up a picture of what's going on inside when we do these exercise sessions and of course to be able to confirm these consistently normal readings is reassuring.

Training With an ErgVideo Plan - Week 04

2011-10-16T22:36:00.003+01:00

Week four of the ErgVideo Training Plan generated by the Training Advisor Tool is now completed and it's been another challenging one. The data generated from the week's workouts has been entered into the Training Plan Spreadsheet and if you are interested you can look to see how things are shaping up, just open the graphs using the tabs at the bottom of the sheet.

As you can see the overall TSS for this week has dropped significantly, just 357.4 this week compared to last week's 417 but this isn't the whole story, not all TSS scores are equal. As you can see there was actually quite a bit of threshold training, a total of 85.6 minutes of the total training time. There were again two scheduled threshold sesions this week, both at 100% of FTP, which I don't enjoy.

Here is a summary of the power and heart rate distributions for the week, in power terms a pretty even distribution between Levels 1-4:

The average weekly training heart rate this week was also higher than previous weeks, at 139. So this, in spite of the apparently reduced volume and TSS, has not been an easy week. Well, 4 weeks out of 20 done so I'm 20% of the way through. Next week looks to include two threshold sessions again, one of which is an FTP test and the other is longer then previously. On top of that I have the climbs of Hautacam and the Port de Pailheres to contend with, entertainment aplenty in week 5!

Training With an ErgVideo Plan - Week 03

2011-10-09T22:02:00.001+01:00

The plan rolls on and I felt this week there was a very significant jump up in the intensity of the training which I must admit took me by surprise. Remember that this plan was produced using the Training Advisor Tool on the Ergvideo website which looks at the ErgVideos you have in your library and develops a plan for you based on the parameters you select in the tool. I'm just trying out the system and the plan for my own interest to see what it delivers in terms of actual training sessions and intensities.

In terms of ease of use and how the whole ErgVideo system works in conjunction with the training plan it can't be faulted. What will be interesting will be to see what kind of shape I am in at the end of the 20 weeks!

This week's plan included 2 threshold sessions ridden at 100% of FTP which was a very significant introduction into the plan and which left me feeling a bit tired but I seemed to recover Ok. If you look at the time spent in the power zones and the percentage of total training time spent in those zones you can see that there was indeed a big jump in intensity, I wasn't imagining it!

If you would like to view the graphs below on their original spreadsheet, which shows the actual percentages and numbers etc. when you hover over the columns use this link and simply click on the tabs at the foot of the page that opens to view the graphs.

On top of the significantly raised intensity there was also an increase in absolute total training time and as you can see all this resulted in an overall modest rise in the overall average HR for the week which comes as no surprise.

Finally considering the total work done for the week and the overall training stress score, as expected both have risen significantly in week three.

So, all in all a challenging week with increases across the board in pretty much everything one can measure when monitoring a training programme. Next week looks to again be challenging but with a substantially reduced overall training volume though there are again 2 threshold sessions scheduled to be ridden at 100% of FTP, now won't that be fun!

Training With an ErgVideo Plan - Week 02

2011-10-04T10:16:00.001+01:00

The ErgVideo plan rolls on, this is a short summary of week 02 which has gone well, I'm actualy finding the plan quite interesting to follow and I'm enjoying the variety but it remains to be seen whether that continues as winter draws closer and the plan unfolds. This week saw a small increase in the overall TSS on last week (12) but the overall training time and the energy consumption for the week were both slightly down on week 01.

In terms of time spent in training zones the emphasis was on L3 training with a total of 02:15:56 being spent in this training zone which made up just over one third of the total training time. In comparison with week 01 the time spent in zones three to six were all higher than in week one so a slight shift to a generally higer intensity in terms of time spent in power zones.

A summary of the power and heart rate distributions by zones for this week is shown below:

Week three looks to be challenging, it includes two threshold sessions working at 100% of FTP as well as some other quite long sessions, hard work for so early in the programme, it will be interesting to see how I get on!

We Are Being Slowly Poisoned

2011-10-02T10:01:00.000+01:00

I've been doing quite a bit of reading recently and I've come to the conclusion that we as a race, certainly in the developed world, are being steadily poisoned. We are are for sure much less active than we used to be and we also have a "natural" tendency to eat too much just because it is there but there is something altogether more sinister going on. What I'm referring to is the sheer volume of refined sugar that is being added to foodstuffs and the more I read food labels the more horrified I become at how much sugar is being consumed, often without us knowing it.

Check out this food label:

This was a particularly good example, a jar of Uncle Ben's Sweet & Sour sauce with extra pineapple. Now, this is for sure an ultra low fat food so folks could quite easily think it was "good for them". Examining the label reveals that this 500g jar of sauce contains 18.6g of sugars per 100g, so that's 92.5g of sugar in the jar, so looking at it another way 18.6% of the jar is pure sugar, now that shocked me.

Out of curiosity I weighed out 92.5g of sugar into a regular desert bowl and this is what it looked like:

Now, I don't know what you think but I think to have that much sugar (without really knowing it) incorporated into an evening meal, even for several people, is just ridiculous, and I'm going to do something about it.

I am absolutely certain that many of the problems society faces in terms of obesity are caused not by fat, but by sugar, hidden added sugars in everyday foodstuffs. Lorena does not consider herself to be someone with a particularly sweet tooth but she was utterly flabbergasted when she saw this, she eats more sugar than she thinks she does, as do the vast majority of us.

Training With an ErgVideo Plan - Week 01

2011-09-29T23:14:00.003+01:00

I decided that over this winter I would try doing as much of my training as possible using the ErgVideo system developed by Paul Smeulders. One of the main reasons for this is that I have a good selection of ErgVideos and I reckoned that this would be a good use of them and I am hoping that this approach would keep me motivated over the winter months.

I've used the ErgVideo Coach Tool in the past and taught myself to draw up plans of my own but this time I thought I would experiment with a plan generated by Paul's Training Advisor Tool which looks at the videos you have in your library and then draws up a plan based on data that you enter into a simple web page.

Anyway, I downloaded my plan which you can view using this link and I am now in week 2 of the plan and all is going well so far. This is an incredibly slick arrangement for following a plan, I simply click on the link in the plan for the appropriate day in the plan, review and accept or modify the session and then the ErgVideo3 package on my computer is automatically configured to deliver the scheduled ErgVideo workout and all I have to do is ride and watch the scenery go by.

The plan is in it's early stages so far and I am sure it will get a whole lot harder but you can see from the plan that today being the 29th of September I climbed the Col du Soulor at an easy pace. I'll continue to work my way through the plan day by day and see where it takes me.

The power and heart rate distributions for the first week of the plan (5 training sessions) are shown below for interest, plenty of endurance and tempo intensity work, just click the image to enlarge it for viewing:

Help Folks If You Can

2011-09-24T07:10:00.003+01:00

Was on my way to the shops on the Brompton last night as it was getting dark and I bumped into a guy on a smashing touring bike, Ortleib panniers and the works. He was looking for a campsite in Lynemouth and seemed a bit tired. Anyway offered him a pitch on the back lawn at the cottage and bike storage, got him fed and all was well. He'll be in for a cooked breakfast soon to see him on his way to Scotland, smashing guy, a professional trombone player cum teacher. Funny old world.

Here's a slideshow of the few photos I took:

Newbiggin by the Sea

2011-09-18T12:11:00.000+01:00

I was down in Newbiggin yesterday hoping to get some decent video clips for a project I'm working on but the weather was very overcast and it wasn't worth recording a load of stuff I'd not really be able to use. However, I did happen upon this small remembrance garden which I thought was nice and very peaceful so I recorded a few clips, these are places I always fine very thought-provoking.

The Andrew Wilkinson Interview - Episode Five

2011-09-16T23:27:00.008+01:00

The next in the Andrew Wilkinson interview series covering his record-breaking ride from Land's End to John O'Groats on a mixed tandem, sleep deprivation and the use of caffeine.

I Love Liquorice

2011-09-08T22:37:00.000+01:00

For some time I've been a big fan of liquorice and I reckon I've tried most of the brands available, there is a surprising variety of them. After extensive, and very enjoyable, testing I have come to the conclusion that this one is my favourite. Just the right consistency, nice sized pieces, and in a nice looking "retro" type packaging which appeals to me. And of course it's less that 2% fat :-) That said, I'll still keep experimenting ;-)

Raid Alpine - Stage Three Video

2011-09-03T23:25:00.001+01:00

Slowly working my way through the stages as time allows. Here is a selection of video clips, helmet camera clips and stills from stage three.

Things about Alnwick

2011-08-25T19:32:00.000+01:00

The county town of Northumberland, Alnwick, where we moved some years ago has had it's share of publicity over recent years and I reckon it's a great place to live. Here are just some of the newsworthy items that have come the way of this historic market town.

Voted the best place in the UK to live by Country Life magazine.
Bondgate within in Alnwick won the best UK shopping street in the Google Street View awards.
Chosen to be visited by the Olympic torch on June 14th 2012.
Her Majesty The Queen and Prince Philip visited Alnwick on 22nd June 2011.
Not a good thing but identified as one of the most expensive "seaside" places to live in England and Wales.
The Alnwick Garden is home to one of the largest treehouses in the world.
Home to Alnwick Castle, the second largest inhabited castle in England, which has been the home of the Percys, Earls and Dukes of Northumberland since 1309. The castle is used as a stand in for the exterior and interior of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films, which has led to an increase in public interest with Alnwick
Home to The Alnwick Garden, the third most visited paid-for garden in the UK.
August 2011 Alnwick voted the best market town in the country by Countryfile readers.

All in all a fab place to live :-)

Video Interviews - My Mum

2011-08-23T16:52:00.002+01:00

This is the second in the series of four video interviews with my Mum, this interview covers the third and fourth decades of her life during which time she was married and had two children, amongst many other things!

Video Interviews - My Mum

2011-08-22T07:46:00.000+01:00

This is the first of a series of four video interviews with My Mum, we decided to document her memories in a series of 4 interviews and this one covers the first 20 years of her life. This was quite a project but I'm very very glad I made the effort, it will be an invaluable record, in fact it already is.

Raid Alpine - Stage Two Video

2011-08-21T10:14:00.001+01:00

Next stage video produced, this is a mixture of HDC-SD700 clips, helmet camera clips and stills taken during stage two of the Raid Alpine. Great ride. When viewed on YouTube the video can be viewed also in HD at 720p or 1080p, great for full screen viewing.

Today's Concoction

2011-08-21T10:10:00.000+01:00

Quite a few different small portions of fruit and veg left over this morning so the juicer is the ideal way of using them up and avoiding waste. This mixture was made up of celery, carrots, blueberries, grapes and fresh ginger. The ginger gave it a really nice kick but it would be easy to overdo it!

Raid Alpine - Carnet De Route

2011-08-20T16:23:00.000+01:00

If you decide to ride the Raid Alpine you get a card which you have to get stamped in certain towns to show that you have passed that way, hopefully on a bicycle ;-)

Here is an image of my fully stamped carnet, this then gets sent in and in return you get your certificate of completion, complete with a profile of the whole route detailing all the main suffering sites :-)

Here's the profile which is on the back of the copulation certificate:

Raid Alpine Stage One Video

2011-08-16T23:39:00.000+01:00

Finally managed to spend some time getting some of the Raid Alpine material put together into a video which I've now uploaded to YouTube, hope you enjoy it! Lots more to come in forthcoming weeks :-)

Another Juicy Day

2011-08-15T22:46:00.000+01:00

The juicing programme rolls on with another successful and nutritious day. This morning we enjoyed a cocktail of nectarine, orange and lime:

Tonight's drink was a lurid green spinach, orange and kiwi fruit which I love:

Raid Alpine ID

2011-08-15T08:39:00.000+01:00

I thought it would be nice to keep a record of this, my Raid Alpine ID. This is issued to every rider to identify you as a bona fide Raid Alpine participant. I did see several discarded at the side of the road as a I rode along, presumably either sodden by the rain or discarded in disgust on yet another climb!

Seriously, it looks rather forlorn now that the event is over having travelled over so many high passes and passed through such wonderful countryside. I just didn't fancy just binning it without recording it for posterity, if you see one of these on your travels you know what the rider is up too!

Latest Juicing Efforts

2011-08-14T22:49:00.000+01:00

Couple more juices produced today which I thought I should record on here for posterity!

This one was lovely, pineapple, a fresh lime and sweet potato:

This one was I am sure extremely beneficial in health terms but was, erm… slightly less tasty. It was made from fresh tomatoes, a raw onion and 2 lemons :-/

Contour GPS Camera - Card Formatting

2011-08-14T15:13:00.002+01:00

I made the mistake this morning of using a micro SDHC card in the helmet camera which hadn't actually been pre-formatted by the camera itself. The result of this was that it didn't work :-( Nothing could be done about it for today's ride but I found the instructions to format it using the unit, which are not in the manual, here they are:

Unlike the Contour1080p and original ContourHD cameras, SD cards for the ContourGPS must be formatted with the formatting “pinhole” button on the camera. To format a microSD card, do the following:

1. Power off the camera.
2. Remove the microSD card from the camera.
3. Power up the camera with the microSD card removed. The camera will TRIPLE beep and the SD card LED on the lower rear of the camera will flash red and the front record LED will flash red/yellow, indicating the SD card is missing.
4. Leave the camera powered up and insert the microSD card.
5. Using a pin or small nail, push and hold down the pinhole "formatting" button located above the SD card slot. The camera will beep once when the format is complete.
6. Release the pinhole button only after the camera beeps.
7. Power off the camera by holding down the power button for 3-5 seconds.
8. Power up the camera. The camera should boot normally and be ready to shoot video.

All data on the SD card will be lost during the format process.

The other thing to do of course, which I didn't do, is to do a test recording before you go out with a new card, especially if it's something important. In the event it rained today and it was cloudy so nothing much was lost ;-)

Tonight's Juice Therapy

2011-08-12T22:22:00.000+01:00

Another howling success on the juicing front this evening with a combination of broccoli, celery and cucumber making this lovely green concoction.

Many claims have been made for the health benefits of green vegetables and juicing them seems to be a convenient way to consume them without the damage caused by cooking. I read a story about a guy who was a bladder cancer sufferer who had brought about big improvements in his condition by consuming broccoli and fruit juice so I can't believe it's going to do any harm and may well do good, in any event they taste good!

If anyone is interested here is the article about the bladder cancer sufferer, Cancer Research UK also showed an interest.

Looking forward to tomorrow morning's offering already!

The Juicing Scheme

2011-08-12T09:27:00.000+01:00

Lorena and I have decided to get into juicing fruit and vegetables on a regular basis from here on, I'll post some of our experiences here and also whether we feel any better, or worse, for it!

Yesterday's first effort was excellent and contained spinach, oranges and kiwi fruit, probably one of the nicest drinks I've had, we must have just hit lucky on our first attempt with this machine.

Great colour eh!

Andrew Wilkinson Interview - Episode Four

2011-08-11T21:27:00.002+01:00

I've today posted episode four of the Andy Wilkinson interview series which I hope will be of interest, here you go:

Introductory Video - Raid Alpine

2011-08-08T23:51:00.001+01:00

Just a short introductory clip taken on stage one of the Marmot Tours Raid Alpine. If you've not cycled out there you should really think hard about making the trip, it's terrific. Best viewed on the HD (720p) setting or on 480p.

Raid Alpine Photographs

2011-08-08T15:49:00.004+01:00

I have now had the chance to do some preliminary work with the photographs I took during the 2011 Raid Alpine Challenge. I have geotagged the photographs with an approximate latitude and longitude and uploaded them all to an online photo gallery where the photos can be viewed by stage either on a map, as slideshows, or as individual images.

Just follow the links to the stage you want to view by clicking below as required:

Links to photos of the Stages:

Stage 1 Monday 1st August 2011. Thonon Les Bains to Praz sur Arly (114kms with 2743m ascent).

Stage 2 Tuesday 2nd August 2011. Praz sur Arly to Tignes La Reculaz (105 kms and 3079m ascent).

Stage 3 Wednesday 3rd August 2011. Tignes La Reculaz to Cesana Torinese (127kms and 2620m ascent).

Stage 4 Thursday 4th August 2011. : Cesana Torinese to Vars, plus Col de Sestriere (105.5kms, 3004m ascent).

Stage 5 Friday 5th August 2011. Vars to Valberg (132kms, 3142m ascent).

Stage 6 Saturday 6th August 2011. : Valberg to Antibes (149kms, 2051m ascent).

Here is an example slideshow from Stage 1.

Raid Alpine - Heading Home

2011-08-07T10:32:00.001+01:00

Just killing an idle hour in Antibes sitting by this lovely fountain before setting off for Nice and the flight home.

I understand that it's raining back home so it's by bye sun and warmth and hello rain, wind and cold.

Changes will be made, I feel a turning point approaching.

Raid Alpine Stage 6

2011-08-06T22:51:00.001+01:00

Well, the raid Alpine is complete, finally arrives in Antibes in the South of France, the home of some of the world's super yachts. It was interesting wandering around the port looking at the toys of the mega-rich and it struck me how totally bored all aboard looked gazing out almost appearing to wonder what life was really about.

I wondered whether I would swap with them given the chance, in all honestly, I wouldn't.

This has been an excellent trip, 703km and 16,300m of ascent, that's over 10 vertical miles, in the space of 6 days. We crossed 31+ cols and saw some of the best scenery on offer to the cycling enthusiast.

It was really excellent that all of the riders setting off on the challenge completed it in it's entirety which I understand isn't always the case, so lovely that nobody was left at the end feeling as if they had "failed" - everyone was a winner.

All of us faced up to our own challenges, some facing difficulties unknown to others and often unmentioned. Some had longer days than others but we all covered the same distance and we all crossed the same high passes, a magnificent achievement.

The trip was brilliantly organised by Marmot Tours and the support throughout was the best I have experienced on a cycling holiday to date. The Marmot Tours team of Helen and Nathan couldn't have been more supportive and nothing was too much trouble for them from the start to the finish of the holiday, 10/10 from me.

It will be nice to get home and one of the nice things about making an effort with the photo and video recording side of things is that all the memories come back as you get home to sort things out in the weeks and months ahead. Without those records, for me at least, things al become rather a blur!

What next? Who knows? To be honest by deliberately taking my time on this ride and taking the time to ride steadily, to pause to take pictures and to enjoy the scenery I have probably awoken a latent interest in cycle touring. It seems to me that with time and determination one could have a fantastic time travelling slowly carrying one's own gear through the countryside covering 40-50 miles a day and crossing maybe one col per day and really savouring every mile.

For now at least it's well done to all those who rode the Raid Alpine with Marmot Tours starting on 1st August 2011 on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Watch this space!

Raid Alpine Stage Six

2011-08-06T08:00:00.003+01:00

Beuil to Antibes (149kms, 2051m ascent)

The route starts with an epic 22km descent through the Gorges de Cian, which should be impressive to say the least. From here we climb up the small Col de St Raphael (876m), followed by some fabulous cross country riding on an undulating gradient. The last main col of the trip is the Col de Bleine (1439m), which is followed by a well earned 27km descent into St Vallier de Thiey. The coast is in sight here. We head on over the Col du Pilon 786m (which we should hardly notice). Then there is a true downhill bias as we head into suburban Cote d’Azur. It will be a bit of a shock to enter such populated areas after the tranquillity of the route, but also there should be a definite ‘holiday’ feel about the place! We follow the quietest but least complicated (we hope!), route into Antibes and to the coast where we end our epic journey. Our hotel for the night is on the sea front of Cagnes sur Mer, just up the coast from Antibes. It is the perfect place to dip our toes (probably all of us in fact!) in the Med, enjoy a seafood dinner and partake in a few celebratory beverages!

To see the stage map and follow my position live follow the link below:

http://www.endomondo.com/event/2014501

Raid Alpine Stage 5

2011-08-05T21:33:00.001+01:00

The Raid Alpine rolls on and after today's efforts all that remains is one day and if all things go to plan I will be in Antibes in the South of France and at the end of the journey tomorrow evening.

Today was spectacular, in particular the crossing of the Col de la Bonette, the highest paved road in Europe. It's quite hard to get your head around a climb like that as it lasts for 23 kilometres and involves an altitude gain of around 1600 metres topping out at 2802 metres, certainly high enough to make you feel the altitude.

It rained towards the end of the ride, the first daytime rain of the trip which wasn't a problem at all and I was only out in it for about 15 minutes at the very end of the ride, not unpleasant at all :-)

Spent a few minutes this evening looking at a few clips from the helmet camera and it looks as if everything has been working properly so that's great, hoping to have some nice shots to work with.

So, about 90 miles to Antibes tomorrow, and no massive hills! :-)

Onward to the Med!

Raid Alpine Stage Five

2011-08-05T08:00:00.004+01:00

Vars to Beuil (132kms, 3142m ascent)

We continue our way up the Col de Vars with a 350m climb to the top, over 7kms, as a fairly gentle ‘warm up’! Today has some beautiful riding ahead with a great descent for approx 20kms after the Vars. From Jausiers, we start the ascent of our highest col, in fact of the highest col in Europe, the Cime de la Bonette (2802m). Though it will be a tough one in terms of the length of the climb (23kms), it is a fairly steady gradient, and thanks to this col, you get your incredible 53km descent from the top, down to St Saveur de Tinee! Just one more little Col – Col de la Couillole (1678m) before we stop for the night in the lovely town of Beuil.

To see the stage map and follow my position live follow the link below:

http://www.endomondo.com/event/2014459

Raid Alpine Stage 4

2011-08-04T20:29:00.000+01:00

Well, stage four completed and it's been another hot and mountainous day, the scenery has been amazing again.

Crossing the Col d'Izoard was a real highlight and the rock formations in particular that I've seen so often when watching the Tour de France were really memorable. I hope as I get even older than my memory for these things doesn't fade too badly as I want to enjoy them in the future but I guess at least I'll have my photographs to remind me if it does!

Another nice hotel and as you can see from the photos I went out for my usual baguette when I finished the ride, I can't think I'm going to lose much weight on this trip but I've got to try to keep my energy levels up ;-) Gawd knows how much ham and cheese went into it, enough to feed a small army, I just hope the Perrier was slimming ;-)

Tomorrow promises to be a really challenging day. The main obstacle of the day, standing between us and eventually the coast, is the Col de la Bonette which I believe is the highest paved road in Europe.

I've crossed the Col de la Bonette in a car when I was travelling up from Nice with friends to ride La Marmotte and at the time I remember thinking "I'm glad I'm not on a bike" - but now I am. I'll just see how things go, could do without the cold and sore throat I've now developed, almost certainly picked up on the flight.

Another hefty dinner tonight on top of the baguette so that should stand me in good stead. Right at this very moment the Col de la Bonette looms very large in my mind.

I'll let you know how things go tomorrow :-0

Raid Alpine Stage Four

2011-08-04T08:00:00.004+01:00

Cesana Torinese to Vars, plus Col de Sestriere (105.5kms, 3004m ascent)

We sneak in the Col de Sestriere (2035m) for a ‘tampon’ before returning to Cesana Torinese and continuing back into France with a 500m climb up the Col de Montgenevre and then a quick 14km descent before the start of the infamous Col d’Izoard (2361m), with its monuments to Fausto Coppo and Louison Bobet. Not content with this epic 19km climb from Briancon, we also face the first half of the Col de Vars today, though only a 9km climb. It is a lovely route hopefully with great views and classic Alpine meadows. Sainte Marie de Vars is a classic ski resort and will offer us a good nights rest before our 5th day on the bike tomorrow!

To see the stage map and follow my position live follow the link below:

http://www.endomondo.com/event/2014403

Raid Alpine Stage 3

2011-08-03T18:01:00.001+01:00

Another good day with Marmot Tours on the Raid Alpine :-) The weather was once again kind to us as we crossed first the Col d'Iseran (2764m) and then the Col du Mont Cenis (2086m). I could definitely feel the altitude on the Col d'Iseran, something I've not noticed so far but there will be more of that to come!

For some of the day I was convinced that it was going to rain but it held off for us and the views on both of the climbs were spectacular. Lorena and I will I hope be out here in due course in a campervan and that will be excellent, might be an idea to drive the route of The Raid just for the enjoyment of it, without the exertion :-)

Tomorrow's first climb is the climb from the hotel up to the ski station at Sestriere. We were given the option, if we felt we wanted to, to tack the climb onto the end of today's ride which would make for a shorter day with less climbing tomorrow, and a lie in :-)

I decided to take that option so tomorrow's first climb for me is now done, so tomorrow I have the Col de Montgenevre (1865m) followed by the mighty Col d'Izoard (2361m) to deal with. These will be followed by a far from insignificant climb at the end of the ride up to Vars, our stop for the night at the end of day 4.

So all going well so far and in terms of days ridden I'm at the half way point, onward!

Raid Alpine Stage Three

2011-08-03T08:00:00.004+01:00

Tignes La Reculaz to Cesana Torinese (127kms and 2620m ascent)

We only have the last 17kms of the Col de L’Iseran (2764m) to do today (easy!), before another whopping descent of 31kms! A quick nip up (600m of climbing) the Col de Mont Cenis (2,081m) and then another lovely descent, this time taking us across the Italian border into the town of Susa. We head uphill from here (though not steeply) for approx 35kms to our end destination for the day, the small town of Cesana Torinese, just below Sestriere, which was home to the 2006 winter Olympics.

[The offical route was amended a few years ago to avoid this section of main road from Susa to Cesana Torinese. The amended route takes us over the col de Finistre and the col de Sestriere, however the final 8km of the col de Finistre is unsurfaced and is unsuitable for road bikes, hence we have opted to stick to the original route, but taking in the obligitory 'control' by riding up the Col de Sestriere from the east]

To see the stage map and follow my position live follow the link below:

http://www.endomondo.com/event/2014312

Raid Alpine Stage 2

2011-08-02T17:37:00.001+01:00

Another super day here in The Alps, this picture was taken looking back towards where I had come from as I climbed the Cormet de Roseland before the long descent into Bourg St Maurice.

Very hot again today which made the last climb in particular rather a drag as it was on a busy road leading up to Val d'Isere but as is always the case the top always comes in the end. Staying at a little place called Le Reculaz which overlooks a man made lake generating clean HEP energy.

The descent off the Cormet de Roseland was long (about 20km) and spectacular, very enjoyable and I also noticed gentians and orchids by the road, I hadn't seen gentians since Lorena and I were last walking in The Alps. It's so easy to just pass these things if one is in too much of a hurry and I'm enjoying riding at a steady pace.

Seems strange after the TdF ride in 2010 that I've been riding for just 2 days and already I'm a third of the way through the route, that took me a week last year!

Anyway, tomorrow takes us into Italy, to Cesena Torinese, slightly longer stage again but slightly less climbing and the majority of the climbing comes in the first half of the route with another drag to the finish, should be fun!

Raid Alpine Stage Two

2011-08-02T08:00:00.004+01:00

Praz sur Arly to Tignes La Reculaz (105 kms and 3079m ascent)

A beautiful days riding today, visiting some of the most well known areas of the Alps in both winter and summer. We have a meagre 2km warm up from the hotel before we start on the lovely Col de Saisies (1,633m) with a great descent to the pretty town of Beaufort. Our next climbs come one after the other, starting with the Col du Pre (1740m), with a quick descent before climbing back up to Cormet de Roselend (1968m). Oooof! But, then we get a 26km descent before starting on the mighty Col d’Iseran but only as far as Tignes La Reculaz (just before Val d’Isere), where we stop for a well earned rest.

To see the stage map and follow my position live follow the link below:

http://www.endomondo.com/event/2014262

Raid Alpine Stage 1

2011-08-01T16:39:00.001+01:00

Well, that's stage one completed which went just fine. Arrived at the hotel in Megeve a few hours ago and have since been out and bought a cheese and salami baguette and a Danish pastry to tide me over until dinner time :-)

The Col d'Ramaz was probably the highlight of the day but it was all lovely and the weather was amazingly kind to us and I'm not going to even think about complaining about it being hot, it was excellent.

The ride was very well supported by Marmot Tours throughout with no logistical problems at all, they were there where they were needed, couldn't have been better.

The other point worth mentioning is that the .gpx file supplied by Marmot Tours for the ride worked perfectly which meant there were no route finding issues at all and I rolled right up to the door of the hotel without any troubles at all, terrific stuff.

Had the helmet camera in operation and have also taken some clips at various stops so hopefully I'll be able to put together something for the stage combined with some stills I've also taken so hopefully that will make a nice little record of the ride.

So, off the La Reculaz tomorrow, slightly longer and slightly more climbing.

Raid Alpine Stage One

2011-08-01T08:00:00.022+01:00

Thonon Les Bains to Praz sur Arly (114kms with 2743m ascent)

Warm up day (of sorts!). We leave the tranquil shores of Lake Geneva with a lovely 10km warm up at least, before hitting the start of the first col, the Col des Moises (1118m). With this one under our belt and one ‘tampon’ already done, we are officially en route of the Raid Alpine! There is quite a bit of navigation today but the route takes us through some lovely pine forests and over the foothills of the Alps before hitting the smaller of the ‘big boys’ with the Col de la Ramaz (1557m) and then the climb to the ski station of Megeve at 1107m, towards the end of the day.

To see the stage map and follow my position live follow the link below:

http://www.endomondo.com/event/2014139

At a Cross Roads

2011-07-28T17:00:00.001+01:00

I think I have reached a bit of a turning point with my cycling and I'm not entirely sure which way to turn. Last year and leading up to my Tour de France ride I found it easy to keep on training and I had no problems with motivation at all. This was probably because I felt there was a real purpose to it and because what I was training towards really mattered to me, it was something I had wanted to have a crack at since I'd had the idea a year or two beforehand.

The 2010 TdF ride went well as readers of this blog will know but essentially since the ride ended I've been struggling with motivation and though I have continued to train there have been periods when I have done relatively little in the way of training in any serious way.

I've been out on a couple of rides recently which have been pretty challenging and I know I'm below where I could be though I did a very hilly 115 miles solo recently without any real problem at all so I'm not exactly unfit. My problem is that I'm no longer sure whether I really want to dedicate so much time and energy to cycle training when in fact I'm not really training for anything that requires a peak of fitness of any sort.

I've sort of come to the realisation that in order to get back where I was say 14 months or so ago I would have to put a great deal of work in and even then I'd be nothing more than average and it's just recently all started to look a bit pointless.

What is strange is that I have recently started riding with a really nice bunch of guys from the Tyneside Vagabonds CC and have enjoyed their company greatly, even managed to get some chain gangs going which seem to have been well received. Even this does not seem to have motivated me to get back into what I would call proper training so as I said at the start I'm not really sure how to move forward.

Part of me actually quite fancies becoming a purely "leisure" cyclist and just going for a gentle roll around the lanes but another part of me feels that I shouldn't do that having invested so much time and money over the years in developing not just my knowledge but also the range of equipment I have, in particular my VELOtron which I saved long and hard for.

I'm even finding that I've become bored with riding around on the same old roads, I know pretty much every bend, every pothole, every hill and I've seen more or less every view from every angle within cycling distance of home so even that gets tedious, then there is the weather, which is normally poor!

So, it's all a bit difficult really, things on the home front are challenging too as my Mum is now very old and frail and the outcome there isn't going to be good, that all hangs over me like a black cloud and certainly has a negative effect on my state of mind.

In the end in this sort of situation the best thing to do is often just to do nothing and to see how things pan out so that's what I think I'll probably end up doing. I have some time off work now and I'm off to ride the Raid Alpine next week so I'll see if that lifts my spirits though even that hasn't panned out as perhaps I'd first thought it would.

Watch this space…

RAF Sea King Rescue Helicopter

2011-07-25T20:06:00.000+01:00

This was a great sight, I just happened to have a video camera with me and it was taking off from the hospital I work at just as I was leaving for home. Great job these people do.

Long Chain Gang

2011-07-24T23:03:00.000+01:00

Excellent ride today with the club. Couple of groups out for a long chain gang ride, we ended up covering around 55 miles at about 21.4mph in very windy conditions. I think we all enjoyed it, an excellent training session delivering a TSS of well over 200.

Looks as if these will be becoming regular fixtures as the weather permits. All really encouraging as I find this kind of riding really helps my fitness and makes me work on areas I may not concentrate on enough during the normal course of events.

Big advantage of this kind of riding for me is that it's very time efficient, 60 very brisk miles done and back home well before lunch time.

To Live To Be 100 You Must...

2011-07-20T21:30:00.000+01:00

Well, we finally have the answer in the form of an old guy from Warkworth in Northumberland. We have the answer to the question: "how do I get to live to be over 100 years old and remain healthy?"

And the answer appears to be porridge every day and lots of cycling :-)

Why Does This Annoy Me?

2011-07-20T20:36:00.001+01:00

I know we should always be pleased for others when good fortune smiles upon them but I'm afraid there is just something about this picture which makes it, possibly, the most annoying photograph I have ever seen. I'll let you know if I work out why it affects me that way.

Andrew Wilkinson - Doing it My Way - Episode Three

2011-07-16T23:17:00.002+01:00

Episode three in the series of videos entitled "Andrew Wilkinson - Doing it My Way" has now been published and is available for viewing either on youTube or below. This video covers fuelling and hydration, views on “rocket fuel”, Andrew’s early cycling years, his first race and his early sporting “prowess”.

The Antiques Roadshow

2011-07-16T16:37:00.000+01:00

A selection of clips from our visit to The Antiques Roadshow, couldn't really have had a better day for it, great outing.

The Antiques Roadshow

2011-07-15T23:41:00.002+01:00

I have more video from our trip to the roadshow to come but this is a just a short clip of a little gold cup that was discovered which was I believe valued at approximately £10,000 :-)

Andrew Wilkinson - Doing it My Way - Episode Two

2011-07-07T17:39:00.000+01:00

Here is episode two of my interview with Andy Wilkinson, we covered planning for the 2011 record, event selection, supporting team details, pacing planning and then started to discuss feeding and hydration in this episode.

Andrew Wilkinson - Doing it My Way - Episode One

2011-07-05T20:59:00.001+01:00

Unfortunately it's not been possible to use the bulletin feature on YouTube to let subscribers know about new videos so I'm using the old method :-) I'm delighted to be able to share the first episode from my interview with Andrew Wilkinson (see previous post) and I hope very much that it will prove to be of interest, top bloke.

Andrew Wilkinson - Doing it My Way

2011-07-03T09:53:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I was privileged to spend much of the day with Andrew and Jill Wilkinson at their home near Chester. As many people will be aware Andrew is essentially a legend in his own lifetime in the UK either holding, or having held, many of the long distance cycling and time trialling records over a number of years.

Andrew is currently the joint holder of the mixed Land's End to John O'Groats tandem record (51 hours) and also holds the human powered vehicle Land's End to John O'Groats record in a faired recumbent vehicle (41 hours), Andrew has previously held the Land's End to John O'Groats solo bicycle record.

Andrew won the British Best All Rounder (BBAR) in 1996 establishing National records at all distances. In 1997 he set the competition record for a 24 hour TT with an astonishing 525 miles. On the 25th and 26th of June this year, last weekend, Andy again broke the 24 hour TT record with a stunning distance of 541 miles. The list could go on!

I was very interested to find out more about someone who could do this sort of thing, how he trains and prepares, the equipment he uses and all the multitude of other things that go to make up a record breaking cyclist. I was delighted to get the opportunity to interview Andrew at length which I completed yesterday.

I will be editing the material I have and uploading it to YouTube as a series of short videos over the forthcoming months which I very much hope will serve two purposes. 1) I want it to act as a source of reference material for people who are interested in an amateur rider who has proved capable of these extraordinary endurance feats. 2) I want it to act as a permanent record and tribute to an extraordinary cyclist, and thoroughly nice bloke, whose talent and exploits perhaps don't always get the recognition they deserve.

The link to my YouTube channel is shown below. Subscribers to the channel will be the first to be informed when a new episode has been released as a subscribers only bulletin will be published. Subscription will be by far the quickest way to learn that a new episode in the series is available. There will also be an interview with Andrew's wife Jill, herself a very high level triathlete, giving a fascinating perspective on their lives and what it takes to support a record-breaking cyclist.

http://www.youtube.com/user/PedalBikerUK

I very much hope that the series of videos will prove to be of interest.

Archiving Original Video Files

2011-07-01T09:04:00.002+01:00

The video camera I'm using records in 1920x1080p at 50fps and the image quality when viewed on a high definition TV is absolutely staggering. Inevitably when you start to convert and edit files for YouTube and the like there is some quality loss and for this reason I wanted to be able to get back the the original files to play on the camera if need be, particularly for very important footage.

What I've decided to do is to store the original files (.mts) in the case of my video camera on a series of external drives which are now pretty cheap so that I can get back to the originals or re-edit from them if need be.

If I look at the contents of one of the SDHC cards from the camera it has 3 directories on it called DCIM, MISC and PRIVATE. What I'm doing is copying these 3 directories, and their subdirectories, into a directory on the external HD and I'm naming the directory according to the date and the event, so something like 20110622QueenAlnwick. I've found that doing this if I want to replay the originals at full quality on an HD TV I can just copy those 3 directories back onto an empty SDHC card and then they will play just fine through the camera :-)

The original .mts (AVCHD) files are not suitable for editing so I'm converting them into a suitable format for editing and then I just ditch these "temporary" files which can easily be regenerated in the future if need be, from the originals.

That's than plan, I just hated the idea of getting rid of my original files, especially of important footage.

Orchids in an Alnwick Meadow

2011-06-24T19:10:00.000+01:00

I'd spotted some orchids in a meadow quite near to where I live and close to Alnwick Castle the other day. I had a bit of free time this morning so thought I would troop on down there with my trusty video camera and here are the results recorded for posterity, enjoy!

The Queen and The Duke Visit Alnwick

2011-06-22T17:49:00.001+01:00

Had an absolutely fantastic day today. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh came to visit Alnwick to open a new YHA and to attend a celebration of carers in the area which was held at Alnwick Castle hosted by The Duchess of Northumberland. I was lucky where I decided to stand and ended up incredibly close to The Queen, I could have touched her! I'll remember today for ever, fantastic.

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh arriving to open the new Alnwick Youth Hostel.