Taking in Lake Windermere, Hartside Top, Rannoch Moor, Glencoe and Kinlochleven on the way up to Fort William (camping at the foot of Ben Nevis for 2 nights), and then the ride to Skye taking in various monuments and POIs in the way there and back.

Hoping to get plenty of pics and a lot more video footage this time which I’ll post up after the trip.

Rough outline of the route I’ve got planned (Will probably take the Mallaig ferry on the way to Skye rather than take the sea bridge in both directions):

View Larger Map

Part 1:

Part 2:

Although the site appears to be intended for fitness cycling and the like, It might be a useful tool for me to show more detailed maps of my routes in future.

One Issue I currently have with the embedded googlemaps that I use on my Routes page is that it only seems to display one page at a time, and therefore does not display my enitre routes on one map overlay currently. This may be a limitation of the mapping features of Google or perhaps my limited understanding of how it currently works, but either way, it’s not doing what I hoped.

I’m going to play around a bit more with this MapMyRide application over the next week or so and see if it’s a suitable alternative.

Either way, if you have an iPhone or blackberry and want to start tracking your routes for free then it’s well worth taking a look at the MapMyRide.com website. They are currently doing a snazzy new website at: http://beta.mapmyride.com/

The new route map can be accessed using the menu’s at the top of the site. Here’s the direct link. Enjoy.

It was Towny’s first opportunity to try out the Scottoiler he’s recently fitted to his Honda CBR600 and a good opportunity to try out the new Superflexi antennas fitted to the VStroms. Unfortunately in my excitement to get out and on the road I completely forgot the power socket for my bike and therefore didn’t have a chance to try the radios / antennas out after all. C’est la vie, maybe next time

After a ruddy nice ride over to the cafe, we pulled up a few chairs and tucked into some bacon sarnies and a few mugs of tea and watched all the clean bikes arriving – some of which were making probably their first outing this year. After a chat about tours later this year and coming to the conclusion my next ride will most likely be a GS 1200 after all, we made a quick hop back to Droitwich. Parting company with Andy and Towny I made my way back to the Malvern Hills.

As I had the camera (Sony DSC-T500) in my tank bag, I decided to risk trying it out on my Arai lid to see if I could get the suction mount to stick on it. Somehow I’ve managed to find a sweetspot on the left side of the lid and as a result I managed to get a quick video of the last few miles home over the Hills on the B4232. The video will be up on youtube shortly and should appear in the sidebar once it’s been fully uploaded.

Once I’m happy the suction mount will indeed stay solidly attached to my Arai I’ll do more videos more regularly. Long term, I hope to get the Sony HXR MC1P HD helmet cam so I don’t have to do such a Heath Robinson setup with my current camera – Time to save up a lot of pennies I think

One thing I have learned this week though is that despite having handguards, heated grips and some decent Aplinestar GTX gloves, the ends of my fingers have been baltic at the end of the ride and despite the Heine Gericke suit doing it’s usual fantastic job of keeping the chills out, I am going to have to give in and by a heated kidney belt at some point before the next winter as there’s always a noticeable chill around that area where the air manages to get under the jacket.

In preparation for the seasons riding and next years european tour, I’ve also fitted a mounting bracket and cabling for an external 2ft SuperFlexi Antenna from Thunderpole.co.uk. Most of us that rideout together now have Midland 42 portable radios and the new antennas will help boost the range and clarity significantly. I’ll post up some pics / details of the mount on the VStrom later.

Hoping to do a cafe / black mountains ride this Sunday.