The ride came about when last Christmas he mentioned that it’s always something he really wanted to do. Never one to turn down a cycling opportunity I agreed to do the trip straight away. So, a little later in the year than we’d thought (due to me being in Mongolia for 3 months) we set off on the 3 day, 100+ miles, hill climbing marathon from Winchester to Eastbourne.

And… it went almost entirely without any problems. No fallings off, some light rain on the 3rd day but nothing to slow us down, no mechanical breakdowns, relatively few aches and pains and most of all: NO PUNCTURES! After my previous experiences (with between 4 and 8 riders) having just 2 people (and 2 bikes – both in good working order) made things a lot more straightforward.

Thanks again to Liz for luggage support on the first day (after that we carried it).

We also discovered some amazing vegetable curry pasties in the general store in a little village called Jevington – last stop (and 2 hills) from Eastbourne. So good we went back for a second one (though they got my second one wrong and it turned out to be cheese and onion – still bitter about this!).

Here’s a video I put together of the trip – some gimmicky stuff in this one:

A great way to round off the summer of cycling. Now I’m not commuting I’m looking for some more cycling challenges to motivate me to keep the fitness up through the winter. Anyone???

This ride brought some sights I’d not yet seen in Mongolia including:

• A large white date marked on a hillside built out of either chalk or light stone. Thing was it was the correct date – presumably updated daily by the inmates of the prison in the valley below.
• Stunning panoramic views of Ulaanbaatar (see photos)
• Rubbish! Tons of it – on the hills just outside the Ger districts – sometimes we were riding over whole hillsides of broken glass and other rubbish. The hills just beyond that though – beautiful.

At one point we attracted the attention of a group of young boys who decided to ‘help’ me up a hill by holding onto my seat post and running alongside. Eventually I had to give up as I could barely manage the hill even without the unpredictable tugging on the bike in all directions. After exchanging lots of grins and waves I managed to break clear of them when the gradient eased. We ended the ride with a fast descent back through the Ger districts – great fun.

So – though I’ve not used any other helmet camera to compare it with here are my initial thoughts about the Tachyon:

• I like the overall form factor – it’s a fairly compact unit and is well built.
• The micro comes with only one mount – designed to allow it to sit on curved surfaces – you then fix the mount to your helmet with 3M Dual Lock (it comes with a strip). This is essentially like Velcro but  much stronger – it works surprisingly well and I can imagine fixing it in all kinds of places without worrying about it.
• I was warned by the that the sound quality wouldn’t be great – a necessity with the camera being waterproof. I was initially very worried about this as I made some test recordings in my office and there was a lot of unpleasant electronic background noise. However I was relieved when I first filmed outdoors that this wasn’t present – so must have been interference from other electrical equipment in there. So no – the audio quality isn’t amazing – but it’s good enough for a voice over etc.
• I’ve mounted it on the top of my helmet using the universal mount. I did experiment with mounting it on the side but my helmet visor comes into the edge of the shot.
• I did have one problem when it sits in the universal mount – though it is secure, there is room for a small amount of movement causing a loud rattling to be captured by the camera. I’ve solved  this easily, if inelegantly by adding some Blu Tack to stop the vibration.  To be honest, I don’t really bother with sound now anyway choosing to put most videos to a soundtrack.
• Video quality is fine – no complaints about it. It’s not HD – but then that costs more money.
• Use the batteries and brand of micro SD card recommended by Tachyon – I have tried one other brand of card which was rated just as fast and I noticed the camera was slower to begin and finish recording. It’s just not worth having to worry about whether it has really started or not when you are out riding.
• The still photo’s aren’t great (they are only VGA) so I certainly won’t be able to leave my still camera behind.
• The camera is waterproof down to 30 meters so can be used for diving!
• It’s designed to be a very tight fit for batteries and this does mean Tachyon recommend you don’t use rechargeables so it’s not very green.

In summary, I’d highly recommend this camera if you need something that will stand up to vibrations and the general rigour of action sports. I’ve just noticed on their site they’ve brought out an HD version of the full size camera so maybe an HD version of the micro will be next…

For more info check out the Tachyon site and the following videos I’ve made with it:

Atlas Descent

Winter Commute

Queen Elizabeth Country Park

Devices used in recording the video/stills were a Tachyon XC Micro helmet camera, Cannon Digital Ixus 70 and an Apple iPhone.

The gallery below is the best of my photos from the whole Atlas Mountains trip – unashamedly featuring lots of me!

In other news I split my small chain ring today, I am now competent at pouring mint tea from height and the riding was great.

Split and bent small chain ring

Mint tea - yum!

Anyway day 3 included some barely rideable single track, some ‘good’ climbs and an awesome fast offroad descent. Also a broken shoe, some James Blunt on a misty hilltop and some ‘falls’ on the singletrack – see photos and video…

Our trusty support vehicles

Tim with helmet camera at the ready

Juliette's bike after her crash

Emergency shoe repair

After a very late arrival Sunday night (3am uk time) in Agadir we started with a 3 hour transfer by 4 wheel drive to start the first days riding. Then proceeded the setup/checking over of the bikes – 15 hired Specialized hard tails and 1 non hired Specialized hard tail. This took a long time as all the bikes needed to be adjusted after they’d been in transit and a number of people (including myself) had brought their own saddles and pedals. There were also several stripped threads to deal with.

Once we got under way the riding was excellent. A rocky, fairly technical descent becoming smooth and quick towards the end. We did suffer from punctures though and after riding through a village almost every bike had at least one thorn induced puncture so we arrived at our hotel in the dark. I loaded up on pasta and meatball tagine which was excellent. 1 beer and 1 glass of wine later I headed for a fairly early night as I was still recovering from that late flight into Agadir.

Day 2 is to be a 70km ride with a mix of road and off road. 80km if we add on the section we missed on day 1 due to the fading light. If you’ve cycled with me before you’ll know I’m unlikely to turn down the chance to do a bit extra!

The following are two photos of the scenery during the day and the last is the view out of my window in the hotel!

First Descent of the trip

Evening sunlight on the hills

View from my window