I have decided to move my blog from the original http://ian-barton.com to http://ianbarton.co.uk . All the pages from the original site are here. If you go to the old url, you should be automatically be redirected here.

My blog has languished for a few years. There are a number of reasons: time pressure, laziness and a few problems with Pelican. I have decided to use Nikola and my static site generator. I have converted the text in all the old posts to work with Nikola. However, there is a lot of work to update all the embedded photos. At the moment a lot of posts have embedded html which is incompatible with Nikola, so raw html and not photos are displayed! I am steadily working my through old posts fixing this.

I haven't included what I would be wearing, which would usually include a Rab Vapour Ride Lite jacket. In hot weather this would go inside the rucksack. In warm weather I wear Rab Treklite trousers. In cooler weather I wear my Mammut Base Jumps.

This is what I would typically take on a Spring/Autumn trip. In summer, if the forecast was good, I wouldn't take either the cagoule, or the waterproof over trousers, but would substitute either a Montane ???? or Marmot Dr-Clime windshirt.

I prefer to camp high up, so it's usually chilly in the evening and early mornings. The Montane prism jacket, worn over my base layer keeps me nice and warm. The Montane prism trousers

Last year I bought a Giant Defy 2. However, I didn't want to ride it through all the mud and salt in the winter months, so decided to buy a cheap bike to use in winter. I did quite a bit of research and decided to get a Decathlon Triban 500 SE. There is a more detailed review of the Triban 500SE road.cc .

I had to go into Decathlon with my daughter to buy some skiing equipment and had chance to look at the 500SE. It seemed to be a decent bike for the price and I had read several positive reviews. I ended up coming out of the store with one.

Decathlon Triban 500SE

After a few local rides of between 20 and 40 miles I was quite impressed. The microshift gears (3x8) weren't as smooth a the Tiagra on the Giant, but changes were positive with no missed gears. I have got used to a compact gear set on the Giant, which I prefer to the more traditional three front rings. However, there isn't anything around here that's steep enough for me to need the small front ring, so it wasn't really a problem. The saddle was a bit uncomfortable after a couple of hours riding. However, it can't be that bad as I have a better spare saddle at home and I haven't bothered changing it yet! The carbon fork absorbs road vibrations nicely. The brakes do their job of stopping you with minimum fuss, but I needed to pull a bit harder than on the Giant.

I did change the tyres for Schwalbe Durano Plus folding tyres, as most of my riding is along country lanes, where punctures from hedge cuttings are common.

Having ridden it for a couple of months the freewheel packed up about 5 miles from home. I had to call out International Rescue and put the bike in the boot of the car. Decathlon didn't have any freewheels in stock, so gave me a complete new wheel. Definitely excellent customer service. They showed me the broken freewheel which had rusted and the bearings were badly worn on the drive side. I wash my bike after every ride in the winter and am careful not to get detergent or GT85 anywhere near bearings.

Rear cassette after 1500 miles

After 1500 miles the gears began to skip. Measuring the chain it didn't appear unduly worn. However, the teeth on the cassette looked just like sharks teeth! My LBS replaced the cassette and chain, plus the cables.

So what's the final verdict. Overall I am happy with the Triban. I enjoy riding it and I don't worry too much it getting plastered in muck and grit. For the price it's a good buy, but don't expect the drive chain to be as durable as a more expensive bike.

I prefer gas for cooking and my stove of choice is the Primus Gravity. This is a remote canister stove, with a pre-heater, which makes it suitable for use in colder weather. Almost all my camping cooking is just a matter of boiling water to make a hot drink, or prepare a freeze dried meal.

I have looked at Jetboil stoves, but decided that they weren't for me because they were too heavy and the long tall shape makes them potentially unstable. However, if I needed to melt snow they would probably be my primary choice. One thing I haven't seen other manufacturers make is a cooking pot with a heat exchanger on the bottom, which could potentially improve the performance of a normal gas stove. However, Alpkit have now made a cooking pot with built in heat exchanger. I decided to buy one with the hope that it would reduce the time it takes to boil water on my stove and potentially save gas.

Alpkit BruPot test setup

The Brupot was delivered with the typical rapid efficiency. I wanted to compare it to my MSR stainless steel kettle, which is my usual cooking pot. Both vessels hold 1 litre of liquid, but the Brupot is slightly slimmer and therefore narrower. The Brupot has a plastic detachable lid, with a drinking slot so you can use it as a cup. It has detachable handles, which are covered in plastic so you don't burn your hands. There is a tightly fitting neoprene sleeve, which acts as a pot cosy. However, Alpkit recommends that you remove this when cooking. Since the sleeve is a tight fit, it's effectively useless. Can you image trying to fit a tight sleeve round a pot full of boiling water without burning your hands?

Alpkit BruPot and MSR kettle

I decided to do a head to head to see how long each pot would take to boil 500ml of water. I used my Primus stove with a full 500g canister. The test was conducted in the kitchen, so I didn't bother using a wind shield. I adjusted the flame on the stove so it didn't come round the sides of the pot and I didn't alter the flame setting when I swapped the pans. Each pan was filled with 500ml of cold water from the tap and placed on the stove.

I measured the time it took a continuous jet of steam to appear, which should correspond to a rolling boil. I didn't take the top off either pan off while it was heating the water, as this would increase the time to get a rolling boil. Thus there may have been a small error in judging when a pot was actually boiling. Also I didn't conduct another test with no lids on the pots, which would have made it easier to see if there was a rolling boil, as this isn't the way I use the pot when camping. I repeated the test three times. Between each set of repeat experiments I turned off the gas, then re-lit the stove , so the times for each run can't be summed to give an average, as the gas flow was probably different for each run.

Much to my surprise the Alpkit BruPot was slower to reach a rolling boil than the MSR, by about ten seconds in each test. That's not a big difference, but I was expecting the BruPot to be significantly faster because of the heat exchanger. I like the BruPot and it will probably replace my MSR kettle, because the handles and top are better. However, it seems that the heat exchanger doesn't work for my use case.

The Alpkit Brupot weighs 266g, including the bag and my MSR kettle weighs 254g.

A couple of years ago my son wanted to do a photography project for school. We had recently bought a Canon EOS 550D DSLR, which he was keen to use. While wasting time browsing various photography sites, I found several references to using the Canon for making time lapse films. The basic concept is that you take a sequence of still photos over several hours and then combine them together into a video format. Thus you can condense many hours of still photography into a short video, which shows a speeded up version of the scene you photographed.

ffmpeg -f image2 -start_number 91495 -i G00%d.JPG

ffmpeg -f image2 -start_number 91495 -i G00%d.JPG  -r 25 -s 1280x960 -vcodec libx264 -b:v 30000k timelapse_25fps.mp4

mencoder -speed 0.25 -ofps 25 -ovc copy timelapse_25fps.mp4 -o quarter_speed.mp4

ffmpeg -i timelapse.mp4 -i music.mp3 -map 0:0 -map 1:0 -codec copy  -shortest output_video.mp4

sox -e ima-adpcm short_audio.mp3 looped_audio.mp3 repeat 1000 # adjust count as necessary

There are a number of Coast to Coast cycle rides in the UK. This series of posts is about the ride that starts at either Workington or Whitehaven and finishes at Tynemouth or Sunderland. Depending on the route you choose the ride is around 140 miles long with approximately 15,000 ft (altitude calculated from my GPS tracks) of ascent. We had decided to do the ride over three days.

There were five of us planning to do the ride: my son with two of his friends and one of my brothers in law. My brother in law could only join us for the last two days. Also I wanted to let my son ride in a group with his friends, without having his ancient Dad tagging along. This meant that I was effectively riding solo, since I do almost all my cycling alone this suited me.

I had done the Way of the Roses last year on my hybrid bike. I had carried a fair bit of gear in panniers. For the C2C I decided to use my road bike and carry a minimal amount of gear in a rucksack. Most cyclists don't like carrying a rucksack, but since I do a lot of walking and climbing, I find I prefer to carry things in a rucksack rather than in panniers. As I was using my road bike, I made a couple of modifications to the "Official Route". On the descent from Whinatter I followed the road, rather than the track through the forest. Leaving Keswick I cycled past Castlerigg Stone circles before rejoining the C2C at Threlkeld, thus avoiding the railway track. On day three I avoided cycling along the Waskerley Way, taking the B road that runs parallel to it. However, my son, who was also on his road bike cycled, along the Waskerley Way and said it was fine.

Depending on the route you take the C2C is around 140 miles long with approximately 16,600ft (5,320 metres) of ascent. Most people do the route over several days. We had decided to do it in three days. Day one was Whitehaven to Keswick. We chose Keswick as the destination because my son and his friends were staying at one of his friend's grandmother's house. This turned out to be a good choice as the ride wasn't too hard, so was a nice introduction to the route.

Day two was Keswick to Allenheads. I chose the destination on the basis that it Allenheads was supposed to be the end of the big hills, so day three would be a nice easy ride. This turned out to be quite a short day and it turned out that there were two more big hills beyond Allenheads!

Day three was Allenheads to Tynemouth/Sunderland. My son and his friends had chosen to finish at Sunderland where one of his friends parents was going to pick them up an drive them home. My brother in law and I planned to finish at Tynemouth. However, I had to get back to Whitehaven and then drive four hours to get home, as we were going on holiday the next day. My brother in law had done the route previously and knew that we couldn't take cycles on the metro, so would have to cycle the ten miles from Tynemouth back to Newcastle station. I wasn't that bothered about going all the way to the coast, so we finished at Newcastle station.

See my rant about rail transport arrangements for the C2C.

Le Grand Depart

We had originally planned this section to complete the major climbs of the middle section in one day. It turned out to be a very short day, about three and a half hours (excluding tops). In retrospect it would have been better to continue beyond Allenheads, but as we had pre-booked accomodation this wasn't possible. With a bit more planning we could have probably completed the route in two days, although for me, this would have been pushing it a bit.

We had arranged to meet my son and his friends at the place they were staying in Penrith about 8:30am. We had planned to have breakfast at the Little Chef, but although the pillar on the outside said it would open at 7:00am, it turned out that it wouldn't in fact open until 8:00am. Somewhat fed up, I decided to cycle down into Penrith and have breakfast at Morrisons. After breakfast, I cycled up the steep hill to the house where my son was staying. The house was actually on the C2C, which made initial route finding straightforward.

My son and his friends raced off in front while my brother in law and myself followed at a more sedate pace. Once again the weather looked decidedly dodgy, with cloud obscuring the moors in front of us. We passed through Langwathby . There followed several sections of up and down, but nothing too steep. We could see cars climbing the A686, high up on the moors, in the distance. The tops were covered in cloud, so we couldn't see that cafe.

Looking back from Hartside cafe

From the description I had expected the hill up to Hartside to be challenging. However, it turned out to be much easier than many of the other lesser hills. It's long, but apart from a very short section, where the route joins the main A686, it's not particularly steep. I managed to maintain a respectable pace and only stopped to take photos. I arrived at the cafe just as the cloud lifted. I couldn't have timed it better. The cafe wasn't too busy and a couple of cups of tea with an apricot slice were very welcome.

The descent from the cafe was very pleasant. Although it's on an A road, there was very little traffic. Not having seen any traffic for the last three miles, as soon as I wanted to turn right at Leadgate a veritable convoy suddenly appeared behind me. The ride down into Garigill was pleasant. However, the initial section out of there was a shocker. After overcoming the very steep start, the hill goes on, and on, and on. However, the subsequent sections aren't too steep and there are fine views all around. We stopped for a drink and some food at the top of the hill before beginning the descent towards Nenthead. Just before arriving at Nenthead there is a very steep descent. This culminates in a couple of very sharp bends and the road is very potholed. There are several signs warning you to slow down. Take note! Going too fast will result in a painful crash.

Crossing into Northumberland

My wife was waiting at Nenthead and we stopped for a chat and some more to drink. After an initial steep climb out of the village we turned off along the B road to climb up to the top of Black Hill, the highest point of the C2C. There follows a short descent before another small hill. After that it's a great downhill ride all the way to Allenheads.

View from above Nenthead

The village of Allenheads is quite stretched out and the pub and our accommodation were at the far end. My son and his friends stayed in the pub, ee stayed at Newhouses, which was a short way out of the village up a track. The proprietor seemed very confused about exactly who she had booked in, despite email confirmations. However, we sorted it out eventually. The accommodation was superb. The rooms were large and comfortable. Downstairs there was a separate residents lounge and kitchen.

After a short rest, we wandered down into the village to join the others at the pub. We had an enjoyable meal and a few drinks before wandering back up the road to our beds.

Sculpture on the outskirts of Consett

When I got up in the morning, I felt slightly sick and couldn't eat much of the excellent breakfast. Luckily I recovered after a couple of hours on the bike, but was a bit worried about how the day might go. I wanted to get to Newcastle as early as possible, so I would be able to get back to Whitehaven in time to drive home. I was also worried about not being able to get my bike on the train.

Almost as soon as I left the village there was a steep hill. This lead through a series of tight bends and was hemmed in by forestry. Just what you don't need first thing when not feeling too well! However, I made it to the top, where a van was disgorging the beaters for the days grouse shooting. The following downhill section to Rookhope was the most enjoyable descent of the whole trip. It's just the right gradient to coast, with the occasional boost from the pedals.

In Rookhope I ignored the off road section and continued on along the road to Stanhope. The climb out of Stanhope was without question the toughest of the whole C2C. Overall the hill wasn't too bad, but there are two sections of 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 near the start. I managed the first section, but gave up and walked on the second one. Eventually the road reaches the start of the Waskerley Way. I wasn't sure about doing this on a road bike, although my son took this route and said it was fine. I needed to do even more climbing before I reached a small B road that descended parallel to the Waskerley Way. This was a great descent, most of it just coasting along. At the end there was a bit of ascent to rejoin the Waskerley Way.

On the outskirts on Consett I stopped for a breather and the others caught me up. We cycled past the old smelt wagon at Widgetts Junction and missed out turn off to Newcastle. Luckily a local cyclist helped us out with directions and we were soon back on the right route. Most of the rest of the route follows an old railway with a good surface. I just wanted to get to the end, so just put my head down and pushed on. Finally I emerged next to the river and got a bit confused when I seemed to be cycling the wrong way. However, it turned out OK as I needed to reach the A695 road bridge to cross the river. From here the C2C shares the route with the Hadrians Way cycle path.

I could seen some rain blowing up the river towards me and about two miles from the end I was engulfed in a downpour. There was no point in stopping to get out waterproofs, as I was soaked in a few seconds. I ploughed on, stopping only to ask someone in a bus shelter how to get to the station. His directions were spot on, but finding the entrance was problematic. I met up with my brother in law, who was having the same problem! Eventually, we got into the station where a very helpful member of staff told us that there was a train to Carlisle leaving in about 10 minutes. We raced onto the platform, where we discovered that this train had space for six bikes and all the slots were empty, so we had at least got our bikes onto this train OK.

Once I sat down I started to feel very cold. I had no spare clothes, so just dripped and shivered all the way to Carlisle. There was a train to Whitehaven ready to depart. This train does only have two bike spaces, but the guard was fine about me just sitting and holding onto my bike. Finally I was back in Whitehaven in the early afternoon. I went to Tescos for a hot drink and some food before cycling back to Chestnuts to pick up the car. I had a brief chat with the owners before setting off back home. Unfortunately, junction 16 on the M6 was closed at night for repairs. I could have come off at an earlier junction, but there were no signs before junction 16 indicating that it was closed! This added an unnecessary extra 30 miles to my journey.

I spite of the drenching and extra unnecessary 30 miles driving home, I had enjoyed the last day. I would like to do the route again, but next time I'll try and do in two days.