Garry McGivern Travelsonabike2 February 2017 bicycle touring photos. Photographs that Garry has taken while travelling around on his bike. Plus, photos that have appeared on the website over the past month.
Photographs added to the website this month come from bicycle tours on the Isle of Wight, a ride around the Southdowns National Park. And Garry’s first try-out of his new MSR Hubba Tour 2 tent.
You can also find photos on Garry’s Facebook and Instagram pages, which you can view without subscribing. But if you already subscribe to social media, why not follow Garry?
Garry McGivern’s Bicycle Touring Photos February 2017
(pictures added to the website this month)
Looking back towards Ryde from the catamaran
Ryde Pier with the train that runs along it
The MSR the morning after
Campsite on the Isle of Wight
Cooking supper in the new tent
All ready for my first night in the new MSR
Waiting for the ferry at Lymington
Sunset over Bognor Pier
Health warnings on Garry’s new medication
We even had snow, all 2 minutes of it!
Sunset at Dell Quay
The Southdowns
Church of Saint Peter Lordington
Quiet lanes in the Southdowns
Racton ruin in the Southdowns
Racton ruin
Plenty of room for both yourself and all your gear
MSR Hubba Tour 2
MSR Hubba Tour 2
First set up in the garden
Hooks on the new tent
The exoskeleton pole system
MSR Hubba Tour 2
New look website
Rough seas in Felpham
It’s Murphy
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The MSR Hubba Tour 2 is one of MSR’s new tents for 2017, and it reminds Garry a lot of his old MSR “Velo” it’s what Garry has been searching for ever since his old MSR “Velo” simply wore out!
MSR Hubba Tour 2
Garry see’s this new MSR Hubba Tour 2 as an updated version of the old MSR Velo with some significant improvements!
One major improvement is the ability to pitch the tent with the inner tent attached allowing the inner tent to stay dry even in the heaviest of downpours!
It must also be one of the lightest tents for its size weighing in at only 2.74 kilos.
The exoskeleton pole system
The setup of the tent is also swift with MSR’s exoskeleton pole system, although Garry’s still not convinced of the longevity of these (time will tell!)
Pitching the tent is a case of pegging out the four corners assembling the exoskeleton poles, inserting the poles into the four corners, clipping the flysheet to the poles, assemble the single pole for the vestibule, inserting that into its sleeve and peg out, that’s the basic setup complete!
Because of the Hubba Tour 2’s lightweight, everything feels a bit delicate, the guy ropes are just like pieces of string, and the flysheet is very thin! So, to test the tent out Garry set off to the Isle of Wight for the night fully loaded as if he was going away on tour.
All ready and packed to go away
It was a rather blustery day with the wind blowing at a steady 22 mph. Once at the campsite Garry was unable to find a sheltered pitch and was forced to camp in a rather exposed pitch at the top of a hill!
Setting the tent up in the wind wasn’t a problem, and as Garry has already said it is a quick setup. Because it was so windy, Garry put out all the guy ropes to add stability which as we all know you’re meant to do each time you camp, but do we if moving pitch each night?
Inside The Tent
Once the tent was up Garry unloaded his bike and found that there was plenty of room for both him and all his panniers.
Plenty of room inside for both gear and people
Having the large vestibule means that if it has been raining and all your gear is wet, you can put everything in the lobby and keep the inner tent completely dry. It also allows you to get out of wet gear before entering the inner tent. It also provides somewhere to cook if the weather is a bit inclement outside, providing there is plenty of ventilation of course!
Cooking inside in inclement weather
The inner tent is an ample size with good headroom, and the two doors provide each person with an entrance, or if the wind changes direction in the night the other door can be used.
As This is the two-man version there is loads of room; however, for two people, it could be a bit cosy! (But as we all know if your cycle touring it’s always best to have a two-man tent for one and a three-person tent for two)
On the night, Garry was trying out the tent for the first time the wind got up and was gusting at more than 30 mph, but the MSR Hubba Tour withstood this and was unscathed in the morning, although Garry didn’t get too much sleep, at least the tent was ok!
The MSR the morning after
Summary
In summary the MSR Hubba Tour 2 suits all the requirements of a cycle tourist! It has a fast setup, which can be setup while raining and still maintain a dry inner tent. There’s plenty of room to store panniers and bags. It has a square footprint which from experience is better for wild camping as it enables you to tuck away out of site more easily and it’s very light!
Now that Garry has found the MSR Hubba Tour 2 he’s looking forward to more adventure cycling and cycle touring in the coming months!
Now that Garry has found the MSR Hubba Tour 2 he’s looking forward to more adventure cycling and cycle touring in the coming months!
Taking a bicycle on an aeroplane can be a nerve-wracking experience! I remember the first flight I made with my bike, it was a harrowing experience! Would my bike get damaged in fact would it even arrive!
History
I’d been cycle touring for nearly four years and had always avoided going anywhere that involved taking a plane! But now I was planning to cycle around the world, and that would require a few flights!
Knowing that I was now going to have to take my bike on an aeroplane, I decided to try it out on a short trip to Spain. It was also a reasonable excuse to go away!
I’d done some homework and found out that British Airways allowed you to put the bike in a giant plastic bag, so there was no need to dismantle anything. The only thing I had to do was to take the pedals off and turn the handlebars! Perfect for a first flight, I thought, thinking that the ground crew would see that it’s a bike and be a bit more careful! Rather than just another box, which might get thrown around!
All packed up ready for a first flight in 2011
The bonus of putting the bike in a bag was that I could cycle to the airport and pack it away there.
Panic Over
All my worrying was totally unfounded, and my bike arrived at the airport in Spain, in one piece and without a scratch!
At the airport in Spain
Since that first flight, I’ve flown many times, although I still get a little nervous before check-in. Although once my bikes checked in, I relax.
How To Pack The Bike Away
After sourcing a box from a local cycle shop, they’re usually happy to supply you with one for a small fee! Although sometimes they’re just glad to get rid of them and will give you one for nothing.
If a box can’t be found, you can cobble one together using several smaller boxes and plenty of parcel tape!
Loosening the pedals
While at the shop getting the box I also get them to crack the pedals (loosen them). Pedals can be quite hard to undo, especially if it’s been a long tour so getting the shop to loosen them with a pedal wrench is the easiest option.
As explained in my previous post “Planning A Bicycle Tour” subheading at the end of a tour, I find a quiet spot at the hotel.
Dismantling
Firstly, I remove the pedals that were loosened by the shop before turning the bike upside down. (The photos were all taken at home, so I’d undone the pedals myself)
Deflate the tyres
Next to get removed are the wheels, I also deflate the tyres a bit as they expand while in flight. It is also a requirement on some flights.
After removing the wheels, I’ve got some plastic tubes which I decided were needed when I packed my bike away for the first time in Istanbul. (They sit in my tool bag permanently now) The wheel axles are put through the tubes and then put back on the bike. It adds a bit of added protection against the forks getting squashed.
Plastic sleeve to go over axleThe axles along with the sleeves are put back on the bike
The racks and mudguards are the next parts to be removed.
Handy socket I added to my tools on my first trip to India
After I’ve removed something, I always place the bolt back into the hole it came from. Then when it comes to reassembling the bike, you know where everything is, and you don’t lose any!
Replace the bolts back into the holes they came from
I don’t bother removing the chain I just put it in a plastic bag and tape it to the frame. Making sure that I don’t put the tape on the frame, it doesn’t come off very easily! You can, of course, remove the chain, I just find it easier not to!
Extra Packing
Once the bike has been stripped down, I always put extra padding on the forks, chainring and rear forks for additional protection.
Extra padding on vulnerable parts
I also wrap everything I’ve taken off in bubble wrap. (bubble wrap allowing) To avoid scratching the frame, and stop everything rattling around in the box.
Racks and wheels wrapped up to protect against scratching the frame
Next, the bikes turned up the right way, and the saddle lowered. Just before dropping I draw a pencil mark on the stem, so I know what height to put it back at when I reassemble.
Mark the position of the seat stem
Finally, I turn the handlebars and everything gets placed in the box and securely taped up.
Everything all boxed up
Reassembling
Reassembling is a reverse of the above. When reassembling the bike, I find it a good idea to put a small amount of oil on each bolt. This aids in the dismantling the next time you fly, and helps avoid any bolts becoming seised up.
February has been a rather cold month (which you would expect at this time of year!) but we’ve had some nice sunny days, we’ve also had some pretty wet ones! I’ve also managed to come off my bike this month!
Racton Ruin in the Southdown’s
It was the first weekend of the month and I went out for a ride in the Southdown’s where I was due to meet up with my friends Dave and Helen later in the day and ride with them. However, after meeting up at a country pub in a village called West Marden we never moved! We stayed in there all afternoon drinking! We did manage a small ride later in the day, but that was only to get back to Chichester where we carried on drinking for the rest of the night!
Quiet lanes in the Southdown’s
I think I left Chichester at around midnight, it was pouring with rain and I mean really pouring, but I had to get home so off I set on the 8-mile cycle ride home! God, it was miserable, the rain was hammering down with a bitterly cold wind!
Because the weather was so bad I decided to go a different route home along the cycle path that runs beside the main road and this where I went wrong! Normally I cycle home on the back road and have never had a problem, but the one time when I use the cycle path I come off! Stupid cycle paths that’s why I don’t like using them, you’re constantly going up and down curbs when crossing side roads, it was whilst crossing one of these side roads that I managed to come off! I’m not too sure whether I hit the curb or what, all I know is that one minute I’m cycling along the path and the next minute I’m sprawled out over it with my bike lying next to me! Obviously, it was nothing to do with the fact that I’d been drinking all day!
Luckily there was no harm done just a couple of scratches, a torn coat, and a dented pride! Not that I noticed the torn coat or scratches until the following morning!
Not having any work commitments for a few days, I decided that I wanted to go away to France for a bike ride, despite it being bitterly cold!
We even had snow, all 2 minutes of it!
It was a Thursday and I was all packed up ready to catch the night crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe where I would then cycle down to St Malo and get a ferry back to England on the following Monday. I was just about to leave home when I received a phone call from Doreen one of my clients who is more like a friend now.
She’d had a hip replacement the week before and had just come home from hospital. They’d only allowed her home because she had a stair lift as she was still unable to climb stairs. Unfortunately, when she went to use the stair lift and go to bed it wouldn’t work! So, she gave me a call to see if I could help! Which of course I did.
Once at Doreen’s (who’s in her 80s) I checked the stair lift for anything obvious and not really knowing anything about these things there was nothing I could do, the only thing I could possibly do was to try and get Doreen up the stairs!
I certainly couldn’t carry her up, even with the help of her daughter-in-law Ness who was staying with her for the week. The first thing we tried was to help her walk up by lifting her legs one at a time onto each step, but that was too painful for her! Next, we tried her shuffling up the stairs on her bottom, that wasn’t too bad and we managed to get up the first flight of stairs onto a small landing, but now she was in too much pain and unable to move either up or down!
Whilst we were stuck halfway up the stairs wondering what to do, some more of her friends turned up and joined in the debate as to what we should do!
After a lot of debating it was decided that going down wasn’t an option and the only thing we could do was to try and lift Doreen up one stair at a time! But as it was a staircase there wasn’t a lot of room for anybody and it was down to me to try and lift her up!
Ben, one of the friends that had turned up use to be a nurse and suggested that the best way to lift her up the stairs was for Doreen to fold her arms and me to put my arms and hands under her armpits grab her arms and haul her up backwards! Well that was the plan, but Doreen being a rather large chested lady, it wasn’t as simple as that and her boobs kept getting in the way and she kept complaining of being in pain! But despite her pleas for me to stop because of the pain (forget about my back!) her trousers that were gradually being pulled down where I was dragging her up rather than lifting her and me groping her boobs I finally managed to drag her up the stairs! Once at the top we all had a good laugh and got Doreen settled in her bedroom.
After all those shenanigans, it was too late to catch the ferry, which was probably for the best since it was so cold and very!
Because I never went away I decided to give the website a makeover and give it a more modern look, which went fairly well and wasn’t that bad once I got into it. However, it’s still the same old rubbish, just presented in a more modern way now!
New look website
Julie got a new cat this month called Murphy, he’s not a kitten he’s about 7 years old and came from a couple who had to spend a lot of time away from home, they felt it was unfair on the cat being left alone all the time, so they reluctantly decided to give him away. He’s a lovely natured cat although rather timid but he seems to be settling in at Julies despite her other cat Marmite not taking to him yet!
Murphy Julie’s new cat
Browsing on the Internet one day I discovered that MSR were making a new tent like my old MSR “Velo” which is the tent I’ve been trying to replace ever since it just wore out! I know I’ve brought a couple of other tents since, namely my Hilleberg and another MSR and although they are very good tents they were just never as good as my old “Velo” so I just had to buy one!
The tent arrived two days after I’d ordered it and I immediately had to try it out in the garden!
It was very quick to put up and it certainly was like my old “Velo” perhaps I had finally found a replacement for my old faithful tent!
Excited at the thought of finally finding a replacement I was itching to get away and try it out, unfortunately I had work commitments and was unable to get away until the following week, but at least it gave me a few days to find a campsite that was open at this time of year!
After struggling to find any campsites that were open I eventually found one at Kite Hill on the Isle of Wight, which is no more than a 30-mile cycle ride. So, to make it into more of a trip I decided to cycle down via the New Forest and catch the ferry from Lymington to the Isle of Wight, making it more like 70 miles.
It was a hard ride down with a strong headwind, although once on the island the wind was behind me. At the campsite, there was nowhere to pitch my tent out of the wind which was now gusting at nearly 30mph and was due to get stronger in the night. In the end the best place I could find was at the top of the hill next to a hedge.
Campsite on the Isle of Wight
In the night, the wind really got up as forecast which led to a bad night’s sleep for me! I lay there for most of the night wondering whether the tent would withstand this battering from the wind and even when I did fall asleep I was almost immediately woken up by another strong gust of wind but my new tent withstood this and was unscathed!
Ryde pier with the train that runs along it
The ferry that I was due to catch home the following morning was cancelled, initially I thought it was because of the strong winds but it turned out that they had found a bomb from world war 2 in Portsmouth harbour and had closed it until they dealt with the bomb. This meant that I had to cycle to Ryde and catch the fast cat instead which was good as it’s the only crossing to the Isle of Wight that I’ve never done, apart from the hovercraft that also goes to Ryde but then they don’t take bikes.
Looking back towards Ryde from the catamaran
I arrived home at around midday after covering a distance of 100 miles.
Now that winter is out of the way and Spring is here the days are getting longer and the nights shorter, I’m looking forward to going away a bit more on my bike especially as I’ve now got my new tent!
