CATCHING UP.....

WALKING ON DARTMOOR - MERRIVALE

With all the hype surrounding the Royal Wedding, there was no way that I was going to remain too close to a television.(I still remember what the wedding of Charles and Diana was like).
So last week I headed off to Devon. I did a spot of walking along some sections of the Two Moors Way and other parts of Dartmoor- visited a few people  and had a family celebration meal at a local restaurant. This was to celebrate Anne's Mother's eighty fifth birthday.

I have now been home a couple of days and thought that I should catch up a bit with the blog and other things.....mind you the hype is still going on.  Something about the wedding seems to be on the television every time that I dare to turn it on. I will be off to France two weeks today, so if I can avoid looking at a TV until then hopefully most of it should have died down a bit by the time I get back...!    I mean lets face it- how many ways (or times)  can a television commentator describe the hat that Victoria Beckham or some other so-called celebrity is wearing......I just find it all a bit mind numbing........

A LITTLE BIT OF WHEEL FETTLING 

One of the little tasks that I had to do on my return from the beauties of Devon was a little wheel truing. After I returned from the Backpackers weekend meet a few weeks back I noticed that my rear wheel on the Revolution Tourer seemed to have a very slight kink in it. Now as I say, it was only slight and a lot of people probably wouldn't have bothered too much with it but perfection is my middle name and with the trip to France in just a couple of weeks I thought that I would get it spot on.

The wheels on this bike are Mavic A719 rims laced to Shimano Deore XT hubs. I have had these wheels for one year now (I upgraded all the components on the bike in April 2010) and since Mark at Bicycle World built them at that time I have not taken them back to be checked out, even though I have done over a thousand miles on them.

One other thing that I had noticed was a little bit of play on the cassette. With the wheel off I  removed the cassette and checked everything out- but all seemed OK. I replaced it and tightened up the lockring again and it now seems as solid as a rock. I can only assume that the lockring was not torqued down quite tight enough.

PLANNING FOR FRANCE

Yesterday I met up with Mike & Chris McEnnerney and Peter Calcutt. We met up at Mike & Chris's house to discuss plans for the up-coming trip to France.

The idea was that we would set out a route and general plan for the trip and make decisions on places that we wanted to visit.
Well we did a lot of talking....lots of talking.....most of it was talk about previous trips.....long distance walks.....camping.....backpacking and a little about our French trip.
After six hours we had  made a decision...!
We had decided where we would be camping on our first night.....well kind of!
In actual fact it should take us a lot less time to cycle to our first night stop than it took us to arrive at the decision.
We will obviously be doing a lot of talking when we are in France...........