Stories on Two Wheels – Through a Lens, a Mic, and a Heartfelt Mind

Category: General (page 11 of 12)

Genral topics

Cycling Master Chef !!

To cook or not to cook? That is the question I have asked my friend!. The majority think that it’s not necessary as being in Europe I will never be far from a restaurant or coffee shop of sorts. Although I agree in the main, I think it would be foolish not to at least carry a small cooking stove. After some research I purchased a Trangia Stove. They are cheap, light weight and run on white spirits which can be got anywhere. 

So what can you cook on them! A quick look on the internet brought up this great website http://www.trangiastove.co.uk/index.php It’s all about Trangia Stove’s and has some recipes on there. So below is what they suggest. I will of cause add some of my own recipes but for know this will get me started. Many thanks to trangiastove.co.uk 

Breakfast

Porridge
1) add porridge oats to pan with some water
2) add milk powder and additional extras, eg raisins 
3) serve with topping of choice my favourite is honey to give a quick sugar boost with the slow energy release of the oats
Great start to the day.


Egg in a Bag
1) Put 1-2 eggs in bag and add desired amount of milk.
2) Add the additional ingredients such as mushrooms. Seal bag tightly.
3) Place bag in boiling water and cook for 3-5 minutes until desired doneness.
4) To eat as a breakfast sandwich, put egg combination in pita bread.
5) No egg encrusted saucepan to wash!!

Lunch

The trick of cooking on a camping stove is to choose meals that don’t require hours of cooking as this will consume your camping stove fuel quickly. Pasta camping meals or fried dishes are always a good idea to get the most from you camping stove and still have a tasty hot meal.
The other thing to bear in mind is the limited amount of utensils and pans to use, so for the mini trangia it restricts you to a one pot meal, or with the trangia 25 and 27 series to a two pot meal.
Chorizo sausage tortilla
1) cut chorizo into chunks, fry off in a little olive oil on the trangia frying pan,
2) cut some mushrooms and peppers and optional extras
3) slice some haloumi cheese and add this into the mixture
4) cook for a few mins
5) splash of balsamic vinegar
6) spoon / pour into a tortilla.
tasty, quick and easy.
Chicken Curry
1) Bring some rice to the boil, then set it to one side.
2) Fry some diced chicken in a little water/oil.
3) Throw in some onions/peppers again if you want.
4) Once it’s cooked, chuck on some pataks curry paste to taste
5) Add some campbells condensed soup and mix it all up
6 heat some more on the trangia and serve with the rice.
Veggie Chilli
1) oil, chopped onions. Fry in trangia frying pan.
2) add tin of kidney beans, chopped peppers, water. Boil.
3) have bag of salad (or wild greens), grated cheese, tortillas and pickled chillis on standby.
4) add chilli powder to taste.
5) spoon into tortillas, top with cheese, salad, pickled chillis, sour cream. Serve.
Chorizo Risotto 
1) Briefly fry the sausage and some chopped onions in a trangia pan.
2) add the rice (to soak up the juices) then water.
3) Add peas, carrots, peppers etc.
4) Chuck in some stock cubes and let it simmer away, use the trangia simmer ring to control the heat.
5) Watch out for it sticking though otherwise have fun cleaning the trangia pots.
Corned Beef Hash 
1) dice and gently soften the onion, season at this point.
2) dice and Soften the carrot.
3) add beef stock and potatoes.
4) Simmer for around 20ish minutes until spuds are cooked.
5) Add the cubed corned beef for the last 5 minutes.
Vegetable Stir Fry 
1) Warm two tables spoons of oil in trangia pan,
2) Add mushrooms, onions, corn, garlic and pepper,
3) On a moderate heat keep moving contents for 5 minutes,
4) Add sauce of choice or a few shakes of soy sauce with rice or noodles,
5) Continue cooking and stirring for a couple more minutes.
One Pan Pasta 
1) Boil 250g of any pasta shapes for 10 minutes until soft,
2) Drain and then return to the pan,
3) Stir in a couple of packets of stir-in-sauce or similar,
4) Chuck in a dozen or so olives, halved if you can be bothered,
5) Crumble some feta cheese on top.

Snacks

To keep your energy reserves up when hiking, it’s worth having some snacks. One idea is to carry some compact popcorn kernels, if you have some spare fuel in the trangia burner, cook up some popcorn as a nice hiking snack
Popcorn
1) add popcorn kernels to oil on the trangia frying pan,
2) listen until the kernels stop popping
3) add sugar
4) eat
Very tasty, quick and easy.
Cheesey Beans
1) Add a tin of baked beans to your trangia, and stir.
2) When hot add some grated cheddar and stir to melt.
3) Put in a pitta bread

Equipment List Update (Getting Expensive)

Below is a list of items that I think I will need on this trip. Some of the items have been purchased which I have listed in green, the other I’ve marked in red have yet to be acquired. 

I’m sure the list will grow as I get closer to leaving, but If you think there is something I have missed, please leave a comment below.  

Bike Set Up
Thorn Sherpa Bike 510XL with Standard forks £999.00
Brooks Saddle £100.00
Ortlieb Front Roller Plus – Hazel/Black – 25Ltr £84.00
Ortlieb Back Roller Plus – Hazel/Black – 40Ltr £94.00
The Altura Orkney Bar Bag with 7 litre capacit £54.00
The Shimano A530 Touring Pedals £41.00
Lights £100.00
Bottle cages £45.00 Sub Total £1,517.00

Thorn Sherpa MK2 Bicycle


Camping
The Northface Rock 3 tent £230.00
Trangia 27 Cookset With Spirit Burner £60.00
Trangia fuel bottle 0.5L £15.00
Therm-A-Rest Prolite Plus Matress £80.00
The Northface Aleutian 1 Season Sleeping Bag £75.00

Sub Total £ 460.00

Sleeping bag and matress




Electrical
Powermonkey extreme £120.00
Panasoniq GF3 (Ex Display) £120.00 
Nexus 7 £200.00
Software / Cables £20.00
Sub Total £460.00

Google Nexus 7 Android Tablet

Cycle Clothing
Endura BaaBaa Merino Tech Jersey X2 £90.00
The comfortable and ventilated Specialized BG Sport Touring Shoe £75.00

Endura BaaBaa Socks £15.00
*Endura FS260 Pro Shorts X2 £110.00
Sub Total £290.00

Everyday Clothing
Shorts x2
Light Weight Trousers  x1
Fleece Hoodie x1
T Shirts X3
Swimming Shorts
Flip Flops
Trainers

Cycling Shoe
Medical / Personal Hygiene

First Aid Kit for Bike £30.00
Dioralyte x12 £7.50
*Personal Hygiene £30.00
Sub Total £67.50


Travel and Food
Train. Southwest Waterloo to Portsmouth £40.00
Ferry Crossing £230.00
Hotel for when I land in at Santander £45.00
*£40.00 per day 75 days £3,000.00
Sub Total £3,315.00

Ferry


Ongoing Costs 
*O2 travel package. £2.99 per day when used
  
Grand total £6064.00



Spanish & Portuguese Festival Bucket List

Below is my bucket while in Spain and Portugal. 

What: San Fermin (Pamplona Bull Run)
When: 6th to the 14th of July 2013 
Where: Pamplona


What: Tomatina (Tomato Fight) 
When: 21st of August 2013 Wednesday
Where: Buñol,near Valencia

What: The Festa de Santo Antonio (celebrates the ‘saint of love’ with newly-wed couples giving thanks and singles praying for a match made in heaven)
When: 12th June 2013 
Where: Lisbon


What: Rock in Rio-Lisbon 
When: 13 September 2013
Where: Parque da Bela Vista in Lisbon


What: The Festa de São Gonçalo (Amarante witnesses a large procession with single people exchanging phallic-shaped cakes as love tokens)
When: First Weekend in June 2013
Where: Amarante, Portugal

First Impressions

My new bike…. It’s Just Fantastic!. Possibly the best bike I have ever ridden. I am not a bike expert but I have owned a few bikes and ridden a lot of different bikes from mountain bikes through to a full on race bikes, such as the Pinarello Dogma 2. As of today I’ve been ridding the bike for a couple of days now. Thorn Sherpa MK2 is stable, smooth and very comfortable. I’m really pleased how the bike feels in general, although it is quite a bit heavier than my race bike I’m surprised how fast it is and how well is climbs. In fact it climbs better than my Specialized Secteur Comp 2012 although they are two very different bikes.
The riding position is bang on and I felt that I could of ridden all day. I bought this bike over the phone and I didn’t test ride it, so I was little worried about the sizing, but the guy’s at Thorn know their stuff and reassured me that the size was right for me. How right they were. The Bike feels like it was custom made for me.. It’s perfect.

For Tech Sake

Staying in contact with family and friend’s whilst on my trip is very important to me. Having the ability to speak to loved one’s or video calling them something of a must. If nothing else just to reassure them that I am in good shape and all is well. I am a keen photographer and I would like to document my trip using some of the photos I will be taking.

Laptop

Now, my original thought was to buy a cheap laptop. I noticed a flaw in my plan, A small laptop is not cheap. Yes you can buy a laptop for around £300.00 pounds but there is a problem. Number one, it’s going to be too big and number two, who needs to be dragging along the Titanic with them. To get a small laptop, or should I say an ultra book, it going to set me back £600.00 min. Then there is the weight issue. Not a problem when your at home but when riding around Europe it’s something you need to think about.  

The laptop I chose was the Lenovo IdeaPad U410 Ultrabook coming in at £699.00. The spec on this laptop is really good for the price but at the end of the day it’s still a lot of money. Then there’s is the weight issue, at 1.85 Kgs it’s not really heavy but this is just the laptop and not the charger. So with the charger this would come in at around 3.6 Kgs. Then you have the battery life, which at best will give you about 8 hours… so the manufacturers claim? But in reality I think 3 to 4 hours, is a more realistic estimate. Managing power is a different matter also. I looked at the Solar Gorilla which is a fairly large solar capture device and a power gorilla which is a solar storage unit. So all in all with the Laptop and Solar units I would be looking at £1000.00 

Tablets 

The idea of a laptop soon became unrealistic. I looked at the Apple Ipad and the Mini Ipad. The main problem’s that I encontered was firstly price, secondly price and thirdly, there is absoulutey no way of loading images on to these devices without  the aid of a computer. Now Danny a good friend of mine, advised me about google’s Nexus tablet. We started looking at the Nexus 7 which comperes to Apples Mini Ipad. The price was bang on, at only £200.00 for the 32 gig version, compered to Apples £350.00 for the same storage, but what about loading images on to it? Well that’s not a problem either. There is a app called Nexus media importer that cost £2.62. which lets you import images and other media such as music or even video footage. I will also need a OTG cable which uses the mirco usb on the nexus and a normal female USB socket, there fore allowing you to plug in a media device such as a card reader. There is also the power consumption. The Nexus will run for 9 hours on the web, and has a standby time of around 300. hours. Managing the power needs of the tablet, my iphone, my camera and various accessories will all be  catered for with the Powermonkey Extreme coming in at £120.00



So all in all my communication, creativity, entertainment and power needs will come in at £320.00 pounds. 
Needless to say I’ve ordered the Nexus 7. I’ll let you know how things pan out.  

Solving My Data Needs

Thank you Brussels for the Euro roaming rules. This means that at £1.99 per day O2 will give me 25MB of data.

Personal Hotspot

I wanted to know if I could use my phone as my personal hotspot, so I took a look at O2’s T&C and I am happy to report that its allowed. This is great news as I can know use apps or software like Skype to communicate. Staying in contact was a concern of mine, and also having the ability to use either use my phone or laptop to search via the internet is vitally important to me, especially when looking for a place to stay. 

Click the picture above to link to O2 travel.

No Turning Back

I had trouble sleeping last night, I wasn’t sure if its the cold I’ve got or the fact that I’ve got two months before I leave on my journey and the only thing I’ve purchased is my ferry ticket. When I woke up it was still on mind. What the hell am I waiting for I asked myself. 

I was wrestling with the fact that Thorn, the people who make the bike are in Somerset and I should really go down there and look at all the options and get fitted out before spending all this money.
The problem was finding the time to drive down there and because they are not open on the weekend. This means taking time off work which I didn’t really want to do as my work have been really good to me and I did want to take advantage. 

So whilst checking out Thorns website http://www.sjscycles.co.uk
I saw they had a ex display bike that seemed to fit the bill. After a telephone call and going through some options I purchased my new bike.. So now I am the owner of my first touring bike. 

It’s a Thorn Sherpa MK2 510XL finished in Satin black. 
Now I need to give her a name, after all I will be riding here every day! lol 
At the same time I purchased the front and rear panniers, handlebar bar and a Brooks B17 saddle. Click here for a list of items purchased to date. 

One Step Closer

Today I am one step closer to my adventure of a lifetime with the purchase of my ferry ticket. My departure day is set for Tuesday 4th June and I sail at 17.15 from Portsmouth and arrive at Santander on the following day at 18.15.

I am not a seadog so to be honest I am not looking forward to this part of the journey but I am very excited now I’ve booked the ticket. 


Now I need to buy everything else. Also this just come into my mind. I arrive in Santander at 18.15 which will not give me anytime to find somewhere to camp for the night. I better start looking for a B&B for when I arrive.. 


My Journey begins… 


Update. booked a B&B for the night I arrive.