Tunnels, Two Tunnels, GPS, Flipping Computers and Autumn Leaves

Not too long to go to my B2S ride now, a little under two weeks. I even had a couple of emails from the organisers to check what bike size I need and to confirm my flight details. As the Longstaff was custom built I was not totally sure, however my Marin came from Ben Hayward's in Cambridge (www.benhaywardcycles.co.uk/) and fortunately for me they keep records of bikes sold so I was able to ring them and find out - it turned out to be a 19" inch frame. So my excitement is growing.

I've just acquired a new toy, sorry I mean serious training aid - a Garmin Edge 605 GPS unit (buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=10884) . It clips onto the handlebars and can track my journey by recording: speed, calories, altitude, distance, time, position and at the same time show my location on a map. It will also behave like a conventional GPS system and show route directions, useful because I have been known to get lost when taking random routes. I can also "race" against a previous circuit of a route and get a constant update of the relative position. The device has a claimed on-time of 15hours between charges and has training software that lives on the PC.

I first used it on the Bristol-Bath bike path, (www.bristolbathrailwaypath.org.uk/home.shtml) as it was the first time, I just used it to record training data and work out appropriate settings. One setting will record speed/position data only when moving; I stop to take pictures from time to time and did not want that randomly affecting the data, if it keeps recording when I am stationary then it would give a slower overall speed.

It worked well, I was able to view my cycle ride on Google Maps and also my speeds at different points of the journey. One thing I learnt is that, understandably, it cannot track position when in a tunnel and after a certain amount of time turns off the tracking, it then needs manually turning back on. As the Bristol/Bath cycle path follows an old railway line it takes cyclists through an old tunnel - Staple Hill Tunnel which is around 0.5Km/0.3miles long. When I went through there was quite a lot of water dripping from ceiling. What I found is that the GPS stopped tracking near to the end of the tunnel when on the way through and I should have stopped to re-start it and allow it to get a satellite lock. As a result my cycle speedo showed a 10Km longer journey than the EDGE 605. When I viewed the route on a map there were a couple of large gaps starting after I went through the tunnel one for the way out and one for the way back.

Having checked on the web, it turns out that the path is under threat for use as a guided busway into Bristol, quite understandably local people are very upset with the plan to change its use(http://www.railwaypath.org/). The last trains ran around the end of the 1960s. According to Wikipedia there were 2.4 million trips on the path in 2007 - so it is well used. Judging from my experience a lot of people use it to commute between Bristol and Bath. There are also plans to re-open a disused railway near Bath which will result in around 4 miles of share-used path which will use a large viaduct and two tunnels, only in this case one of the tunnels is around 1.6Km/1mile long. You can check out the imaginatively named project at the following website: Two Tunnels Greenway: http://www.twotunnels.org.uk/index.html)

The other thing I noticed is that the Bath area is a lot hillier than here in the flatlands of East Anglia, they are hard work and I am out of practice, I will need to track some down hills, although I have left it a little late. :--)

As today was a lovely sunny, cool day I took the GPS out on the usual trip around Wicken Fen to try it out. I have finally gotten the associated software acquired with the device working. Actually I spent hours, edited the registry, restored back to system points, only to find, after a phone call to Garmin, that they knew the bl**dy software didn't work and I needed to download an almost secret update from the recesses of their website. I did and it worked - sometimes it is just better to pick up the phone and have a chat.

The sky was clear and all of the fields have been harvested, this field of stubble is waiting to be ploughed up, although I did see at least ten tractors out ploughing fields today.

On the route I stopped and had a chat with a bloke on a "recumbent". The type of bicycle where you lie back and pedal with your legs out front. It is good for those with back problems and is more stream-lined and now I don't have one. He is involved with the Cambridge Cycling Campaign and is also instrumental in getting some of the new paths through the Fens sorted out. I had not realised how hard they have to work to get the funding money. I thought that a recent "competition" for UK lottery money was going to fully fund many of these projects, in fact they all rely on raising a lot of additional funding, which is one of the main reasons that these projects can take a long time to complete. The other problem is that there can be lots of negotiation with the landowners involved, some of whom seem to think that it is a gravy train, or maybe they just don't want to have better access to the countryside. If this were a major road project the land would get bought by compulsory purchase.

I tend to explore when out cycling, this picture is a path in Wicken Fen that I occasionally cycle along, it is strange to see tarmac laid through a field. Despite its appearance it is easy to cycle along and good for kids to gain more mastery of a bike - flat mountain biking!

This is virtually the same aspect, but closer to the lode that the path runs alongside, it was quite sheltered so not much wind and so the water surface was flat - ideal for reflection pictures.

At the end of the path there is a nice view of one of the windmills you find in the area. The Dutch were involved with the drainage of the land and used windmills to pump water around. This one can still be seen working occasionally.

Finally as it is Autumn here is a shot of some leaves, what caught my eye was the way the sun was lighting them up and the purple colour of some of the leaves. To focus attention on the purple leaves I used Google Picasa 3 to create a soft focus circle around the interesting leaves.