Solar Chargers.. Does price matter?

I brought two different solar changers, the power monkey explorer and a Chinese made one at 11.95 off ebay and claims to have a bigger battery than the Powermonkey by 400mAH. I was impressed how long the powermonkey kept my Sony Ericsson Xperia smart phone alive when it fully charged but I tried to recharge the battery in the sun and its taken a long time to get fuly charged admittedly it been raining and cloudy but the days are still quite long. I would think it would take one whole day of blistering sun to fully charge the battery.

While charging the units outside I forgot about them and they stayed out over night in heavy rain both units had misted up by the morning and the led torch on the cheeper unit was always on. both seem to be working corectly now but its only been a day since they dryed out. I hoping that these two units will keep my Xperia and the Garmin alive. through out the journey.

above Chinese Solar Charger
below PowerMonkey Explorer

The PowerMonkey is by far the most expensive and has a better construction but will the smaller battery life be noticed does the other unit have enough solar area for a battery of that size...

The manual says that 6 hours is enough to charge the power monkey, well we will see certainly not when it raining in england.


Stayed tuned to see how they both preform in the field..

Bicycle Touring insurance

Im not the kind of person to normally get insurance the only insurance I have is car insurance, but with a couple of months away cycling and pushing my body to its limits I thought it a good idea to get medical insurance at least. Looking into it a bit more I found what I really needed was insurance to cover me and my bike..

The Cycle Touring Club is the longest running cycle club in the world they offer insurance especially for Bicycle Touring you can find details here. CTC Cycle Insurance

The British Mountaineering council offers insurance to there members a membership fee of 29.95 a year then they will give you a quote a insurance policy. Its there trek policy that includes cycling in the small print.  You can find them here http://www.thebmc.co.uk/modules/insurance/policies.aspx

So After wading through many company's that insure my bike from theft not travel or medical in the same policy. The only obvious choice was the CTC since they are a cycling organisation and know what happens on tour I found it the only acceptable choice. At Only 77 pound for there economy policy for 2 months cover  I thought it worth having. If its going to get to  hundreds of pounds I may have been setting of with out any and thats kinda stupid I bet that just 2 trips to the doctor would cost about the same. Let alone Some one stealing my bike heaven forbid. I was expecting them to post out the paper work and was a little disappointed to find I had to download it and print it myself normally that would be ok but I don't have a working printer at the moment. Some one said I could print it at the local library but I  think Im going  to just keep it digital and hope we can view it if/when its needed.

CTC Policy Wording 2010.pdf here is the policy wording something I couldn't find before buying the policy, after all it is insurance something you don't know if its any good till you need it

Id like to add I am in no way affiliated with CTC or Citybond, this is just what I found out while looking for a policy to cover me and my bike.


Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein

The Route Finalized and Less than 10 days till Departure

 You Can Click here for a Nice fullscreen map of the Whole Route.

We had a good look at the routes on Google Earth and decided that the EV5 route above was the best choice it is the longest and goes the highest but only by a small amount and the amount of pleasant traffic free riding was going to make up for the extra distance and elevation gain. I have called the routes EV5 and Francigena but in reality I think my routes are different from any official route by that name, but do follow the same general Direction at least when looking at the overall map.

Course Name	Saved Date	Public	Distance	Elevation Gain
ev5 Calais to Rome	8/7/2010	No	1688.14 kms	14,108 meters
Boulogne to Rome	8/7/2010	No	1617.28 kms	14,089 meters
Calais to Rome Francigena	8/6/2010	No	1611.48 kms	13,689 meters

GPX of the whole route.. EV5 GPX Click here

Pre trip ride and GeoTag Photo

Well We went for the bike ride with the bob trailer from Bristol Bike Workshop, the weather was a bit dismal on Saturday but there where a few sunny periods. I guess its what its going to be like across France unless the weather picks up fingers crossed huh.

I loaded the bob trailer up with 30kg of books to leave at Andy's house while I'm away. I liked the way the trailer attached to the Skewer of the rear wheel a big improvement on what the Raleigh trailer I used to tow My daughter Jasmine around in but I did find there was a speed wobble that came on on the down hill stretches never noticed that when there was two wheels on the trailer.

Although i was impressed with how much it weighed very light and well constructed, but I think Im going to stick with panniers for this trip. It was a tough choice tho, but the price of the trailer played a big part.

I've made a map with a geotagged photo on it, after finding out that my Sony Ericsson Xperia wasn't geolocating my images correctly I've had a nightmare trying to work out the best way to GeoTag the photos. For this map I used gpscorrelate a GPL application for linux to tag the photos from the GPX track-log. The only problem with this is that the camera and the GPS have to have the exact same time looks as if ill be doing the journey in GMT just to make everything easy(ier). I still have to write a small script (sed awk great) to extract the LatLang from exif data and write to text file so I can make these maps along the way with out to much manual reading and checking of photos. http://gpsvisualizer.com really deserves a mention here I'm using there web application to make the maps that are hosted on my own personal server and included in this page using a iframe.

Anyhow Enjoy....

Garmin oregon 450 initial impresions

I  got a Garmin Oregon 450 gps unit to help me navigate my way from Canterbury to Rome looking into the amount of paper maps i was going to have to carry at a decent resolution was about 40.

The 450 does not have any topo maps like the 450t so i opted for using http://openstreetmap.org maps along with opencyclemap. The maps i have installed dont have any topo contour lines its possible to have this style map but due to copyright you have to generate the maps yourself. I've had a look at what's involved and its a bit of a task considering the size of the map needed. But i hope i manage to get it sorted before i go.

Im normally gnu Linux user but ive also been using  freinds computer running vista to try and use base camp and map source are two Garmin applications to supposedly interact with your gps unit. Garmin web updater got the unit up to date with the latest firmware. So every thing should work right? Yeah right ;-)

Basecamp and mapsource had issues working with the device the one saviour was the device went into mass storage mode and i managed to copy tracks made on bikeroutetoaster but it seemed a hit and miss affair whether they would show up in tracks menu. The track can have 10,000 points per track so i had to split the track into three parts. Im unsure how to convert tracks into routes with the handset basecamp had the option but didnt work for me. Found some mentions to having to use the correct version of basecamp. Garmin site and manuals gives hints at best. The user interface is a pleasure to use for most things. Alkaline battery's don't have a stable enough output, it drops the back light when one bar drops of the gps battery meter. A set of NiMH are really needed as per manual then I might be able to read it as I ride along on the sun.



Location : Stapleton Rd, Bristol, City of Bristol BS5 6,

Weekend Test Ride.

This weekend is the big planning event, we are cycling to Chepstow to see my friend Andy.
We will be testing the gps unit and possibility a bob trailer from Bristol Bike workshop.
Must get to bed got to start work at 5.30 am but glad to get this mapping working..

Paper work and the route.

I been playing around with bikeroutetoaster.com it creates cycle routes then saves them into gpx files for your hand-held GPS units. Ive been really impressed with the route that BRT has made. When I looked at it through google earth, it showed me that we are taking canals for the most part of France and it looks like pretty good roads and paths all of the way( further investigation needed really).

The route hasn't been finalized yet, just waiting for this weekend for that. Possible alternatives are Plymouth to Rosscoff or Dover
to Boulogne.

There doesn't seem to be much in the  distances Roscoff took a boat I think from southern France to Rome..

Anyhow here goes map and ill get the kml  and gpx files up of the final route.

enjoy.

I  also brought insurance today from cycle touring club..
Went for the ctc economy travel insurance at £77 seems pretty good, covers the bike and me for two months.

Getting my new bike ready

Fitted my old rack and panniers to my bike they fit really well except the bar bag does interfer  with the brake cables. Just keeping my eye out on ebay for some good stuff going cheap. Front rack and panniers, gps mount for the garmin oregon 450 are just a couple of things on the wish list.

At home with the warrior

This is My Current GPS Position:
Latitude: 51.474635
Longitude: -2.549217

Got back from work early this week with the new connondale warrior 600 fitted my rear rack and paniers, they fit well after bending  few of the brackets. Still need to get a few things to ready the bike but i feel im well under way and with only 3 weeks till departure i must stay focused and use my spare time .well.