Blog | Thoughts & Stuff
BB200 – 27 hours non stop around mid Wales
The BB200 is an event I’ve wanted to take part in for a while.…
September BAM
My original plan for this month was to find a nice weather window and go hammock camping again before it gets too cold – but this didn’t happen. We got some nice weather, buy I didn’t feel like…
Not Wales – BAM+ August
If you’ve read any recent posts on here, you may know at least one of two things:…
Scotland – BAM+ June
This trip was initially meant to be a local bikepacking ride in Kent, either back on the North Downs Way, or the Cantii Way. But at the start of the week I was planning to go I decided that I fancied…
North Downs Way – BAM+ May
I’m writing this a couple of weeks later, having got over the disappointment of cutting the ride short.…
(NO)BAM+ April
I didn’t go camping in April. I had an early date pencilled in, during a family holiday, but as like last year, I didn’t feel like going. So I’ll stop planning to combine things.…
Favourite Bikepacking Hack
I’ve read and watched countless bikepacking blogs and videos and have never seen this tip: keep a strap on your handlebars to wrap around your brake lever when propping your bike up.…
Bedgebury Overnighter
A work event near Bedgebury on Thursday afternoon last week gave a good excuse to ride down the night before, sleep there and attend the event and ride home, as a nice bonus overnighter this month.…
BAM+ March
I’ve been going to the Banff Mountain Film festival semi regularly since first going while I was at uni. This time I decided to follow in the spirit of things and have my own ‘adventure’ –…
BAM+ February
February’s BAM+ was much closer to home. Back out on the bike I had a route of about 25km planned, but I ended up cutting one of the extra bits off because the ground was so wet I couldn’t be…
Peak District – BAM+ January
To start my year of BAM+ off I’d planned a trip to the Peak District for January. I’d wanted to do a winter trip to a National Park for a long time but always put it off for a variety of reasons,…
Bivvy a Month – December
23:59 was, without exaggeration, the time I ended up shimmying into my bivvy bag on New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t meant to be this way, but a serious case of procrastination, followed by an even more…
Brother Cycles Big 'Un
Back in October I took part in an event called the Big ‘Un, run by Brother Cycles. I booked a place back in August, keen to have something on the calendar for the winter – how bad could the…
Bivvy a Month – November
This month's BAM was neither when, or where it was originally planned to be. As it was, I left home after work, in the dark, with the temperature already down to a solid 0ºC. I rode at a much slower…
Exposure RedEye Micro – Review
I couldn't find much about the Exposure RedEye Micro light online, perhaps because it's so small and much less impressive than Exposure's other lights, or perhaps because not many people bother with a…
A quick review of the Alpkit/Sonder Confucius bars
The Confucius bars from Alpkit are a set of bars with an extra loop on the front and are one of the many 'alt' bar styles you can get. Ignoring the extra loop on the front, they're pretty much normal…
Bivvy a Month – September
Another all tarmac (except for when I got into Bedgebury Forest) BAM this month, last Saturday. 30km-ish each way. …
Offa's Trans Wales
With King Alfred's Way and Bear Bones Bash routes ridden this year, I started to plan next year's adventures and there's few shorter/smaller/easier ones on the list, but the main event is what's…
A lighter inner tube
I recently bought a super lightweight butyl (normal) inner tube to replace the one I carry around as a spare/backup. On my most recent bikepacking trip around the Bear Bones Bash route I'd stuffed a…
Bear Bones Bash & Bivvy a Month – July & August
I recently spent 4.5 days cycling around the Bear Bones Bash route at a comfortable pace. Not quite ready for the BB200 format yet, though maybe with a slimmed down kit (no chair!).…
MSR Groundhog vs MSR Groundhog Mini
After snapping the top off of what was one of the better pegs I've had come with a tent (and test pitching a new tent in our garden and deciding I wasn't very confident about the longevity or…
King Alfred's Way & Bivvy a Month – June
This ride had been booked in for a while and it was only as it was a few days away that it really dawned on me that it would be a pretty big effort.…
Bivvy a Month – April
I've lost count of the number of times this month's BAM got pushed back. I'd originally planned to sneak off and sleep in the hills near to our Airbnb while in Wales on a family holiday early in the…
Bivvy a Month – March
This month's BAM wasn't a particularly exciting one. The route was 3× longer than the previous two months, but 100% more boring.…
I made pogies
My hands get cold easily when riding in cold weather and while I wear windproof gloves I find that they aren't really windproof. I also wanted to avoid wearing thicker, insulated gloves as I find them…
Bivvy a Month – January
Thanks in equal parts to the Bear Bones Bikepacking forum (for the Bivvy A Month concept) and Alastair Humphreys (for an increased desire for doing silly things) I found myself sleeping in a field on…
I bought another spork
I used to have a Light My Fire spork which was always a bit underwhelming – the dual ended aspect seemed great, but in practice was often either uncomfortable or ended up with you needing to swap…
My desk lamp
My desk lamp is, I think, an Anglepoise from made between 1938–1948 according to this article on dating angle poise lamps.…
My First Time Bikepacking – A Mini Adventure
Bikepacking. It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, as I love riding bikes and I enjoy camping. And I already had all the kit I needed to get out and do it but never had done.…
Making a house number
Ever since we moved into our house I've wanted a bigger (and better) house number. I know the pain of trying to find someone's house when they, or everyone around them has tiny little house numbers.…
What the hell Garmin
Like many people I've bought a turbo trainer and gone indoors for my cycling, well, pedalling. I struggled to find one in stock anywhere and searched on and off for a week or so, setting up stock…
Making a sort of static site
Up until yesterday the public portion of my site (this blog and the couple of pages in the menu) was built using a combination of the Ghost platform for the blog and just straight up HTML for the…
Sealskinz Waterproof Socks – Review
TL;DR: Better than they used to be and will do a good job of keeping your feet dry in most situations, but they have their limitations, which is to be expected.…
Your passwords are terrible (probably)
Think of your password – if you can, it's probably terrible. It's probably the one you use for everything, but you add a number or change a letter each time so it's fine. Yeah, that one. That is a…
This is my kind of selfie
Being both the photographer and the rider for this shot was a little tricky. Finding the right location took a little while too, several miles into our ride.…
Remembering how much holiday I have
Like many people (in the UK at least) I have a certain number of paid holiday days from work per year.…
Chill the fuck out
I wrote this a while ago and never published it, because I didn't think it really "said" very much. But reading it again today, having had a busy time at work recently made me decide it was worth…
My custom £500 clock
When I was setting up my home office last year I was on the hunt for a nice, simple clock for my desk. Something easy to read, but unobtrusive. As ever, I was quite picky and didn't manage to find…
I hacked my SD card reader
My MacBook Pro has a built in SD card slot, but when I went travelling I took a 11 inch MacBook Air with me which doesn't have one. I already had an "all-in-one" card reader which I was planning to…
Websites are getting fat
I visited a website recently that "weighed" 22MB. Twenty two megabytes, Gzipped.…
“Honey, I'm on the train”
I find myself standing, leaning against the glass, on an early morning train bound for London Bridge, stood closer than I'd like to my neighbouring passengers. …
Attempting to beat the winter blues with the Lumie Vitamin L SAD Lamp
As days get shorter and the night creeps in earlier I'm one of many people that find their mood greatly affected by the seasonal change. It's got easier over the years but when I was younger this…
Adventures in Home Printing – Part Two
"It's pretty heavy" warned the delivery driver as he passed the huge box over to me. He wasn't joking, the side of the box said 26kg. I signed scrawled my initials and made an inane comment about the…
Adventures in Home Printing – Part One
My wife groaned as I weighed up the pros and cons of another photo printer for the Nth time aloud over breakfast, which came after a week or so of printer related pondering.…
Setting up my Home Office
I made the decision (with my wife's input) to go freelance while we were travelling and was lucky that the house we'd already verbally agreed to rent on our return would have a separate room that I…
Photographing a Graduation
Many of you will probably have seen some photos from the graduation I shot recently. This was the graduation of my brother in law and so while it wasn't paid work I aimed to get him a nice set of…
Do I need a Web Designer or a Web Developer?
As with anything, until you're familiar with things even seemingly simple concepts can be confusing. This seems especially true when it comes to technical topics. So in this not-technical-at-all…
What's this thing on my lens & which way round should it be?
I see so many people using their lens hoods backwards. Every time I see someone using one the wrong way round I want to ask them why and always comment on it to my wife, much to her annoyance. She…
It's damn quiet here
I've been busy travelling and writing posts over on theransleystravel.com and have neglected to post any of my quite wonderful musings on here since last June, before we set out on our adventure.…
Cullmann Neomax 240 – A super lightweight travel tripod
The Cullmann Neomax range of tripods are super lightweight travel tripods, they come in three different heights and are designed for smaller cameras.…
An early morning in Knole Park
My first blog post was a success, with my parents and my sister at least. My wife helpfully, if somewhat demoralisingly, pointed out my numerous spelling & grammar mistakes.…
A ramble on the Fuji X-T2
There are plenty of reviews and blog posts about this camera already and I'm pretty late to the game but I thought I'd kick this blog off with another post about the Fuji X-T2.…
