Category Archives: Travel Blogging

Posts on my experiences in travelling

he Guardian, WordPress-and-the-web

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First experiment with the new Guardian WordPress plugin. Bit disappointing in most of the articles I selected were not available to be published :-(

However, it was easy to set up and for me to login to The Guardian and  get an API key, it certainly seems to be a better way for MSM to go than The Times locked in its paywall castle!

I was hoping to include an article about the Tour de FranceI was hoping to see a bit of the Tour de France on their rest day in Morzine. However, I think I will be away before the 12th July, as I hope to start my first day of cycling back from my apartment in Les Gets via The Rhone & Rhine valleys!

Which reminds me I had better check my insurance :-)

Note added 4 July: The Guardian seem to be able to edit the post after I have published it! Changing the title and removing my content!!!

I’ve now restored it to the original and added this note

7 July The Guardian are still playing about with this post, changing the title from what I can see even with latest version of plug in.

8 July Finally gave up on the plugin, deleted it and then it proceeded to delete the whole article! I’ve restored it and removed all their stuff

VERY DISAPPOINTING plugin it behaves more as malware than anything useful!

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Remote blogging

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Last night I tried to set up another Posterous account so I could post here. However, apparently you can only post to one site with each email address so no joy with that then, as I already use Posterous with geoffjones.net !

I’m now trying to use the iPhone wordpress app, which rather annoyingly just lost my words of wisdom whilst trying to attach a photo! Rule number one from the past, save and then save again before attempting anything!

Haven’t succeeded in adding any links yet :-(

So here is my view from Wetherspoons at Gatwick (must save NOW)

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Biking with Bikely

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Today whilst researching my upcoming bike ride down the length of The Rhine I came across the website Bikely, this amazingly allows you to trace over Google Maps and generate gpx files that my Garmin understands. I can thus plan the whole 1000mile route and let the Garmin Etrex behave like a TomTom device to tell me where to go. Bikely can even follow roads and thus create really accurate files.

An even better discovery was that the user “MockCyclist” had even created a map with the whole route plotted. A fantastic starting point, I’m now modifying his file to cut out the ferries that MockCyclist had used in Rotterdam and some other points on The Rhine.

I’m going to start from where I finished last year, My apartment in Les Gets, probably around the 7th July. I have to be back for my birthday on the 28th!

Here is the route so far:-

All 1000 miles of it!

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iPad first post

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iPad welcome screen

Experimenting with the WordPress app on my new iPad.

Beginning to love the iPad especially the HUGE Fonts available, in fact it’s rather weird going back to the iPhone! the iPad is ideal for us oldies with failing eyesight.

A problem for new entrants is that you need a computer & iTunes account to get it set up in the first place! This could be very very disappointing for folks thinking of getting one as their first and only computer.

Will I take it on my walks? Weighing in at 858gm with it’s £30 black case (yes pandammonium, Sally made me get one) compared to my Eee at 968gm is excellent! And now with the camera adapter (£25 in UK) it can backup my photos daily. However, it still has a major failing that I can’t back up my Garmin gpx files or geotag my pics. Maybe Ascent and Photolinker will do iPad apps :-)

So yes it will be coming to the great Italian wedding with me but still undecided about China.

Oh, still can’t work out how to add links with the wordpress app :-(

p.s. Links added on iMac

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Standon circular walk

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Today’s walk with the Cambridge Rambling Club A team was a circular walk starting from Standon and then heading over to Much Hadham. Christine ably led the walk and 10 of us set off on the hottest day of the year so far! Mud rain & snow were but distant memories :-) Here is the walk:-

Standon circular walk at EveryTrail

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During Sally’s mega shopping trip I treated myself to some Inov8 trail shoes which I tried out today. I felt a bit of a fraud as I didn’t seem a ‘proper’ walker. They are just so much lighter than wearing boots. My heels still started to hurt at the 12 mile mark after the damage caused by my Thames Path walk,. Hopefully, the bruising on my heels will go away with time. Otherwise they seemed fine, although still uncertain about walking through long wet grass with them.

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The Thames Path

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After 10 days of walking I completed The Thames Path from its rural source close to Cirencester and its 180+ mile twisty route to the Thames Barrier.

The route encompasses a lot of famous place names associated with Royalty and the English upper classes in fact it could be a tour of them from The palace of Westminster, Hampton Court, Windsor, Eton & Oxford.

Most days I did well over 20miles as the ground is flat, well marked & easy going. My days were:-

Day 1 (May 10th) Ashton Keynes to The Source and back again with Sally who I must thank for the lift :-) I stayed at the good Cove House. Distance about 15 miles.

Day 2 (May 11th) Ashton Keynes to Kelmscott about 21miles I stayed at the excellent Manor Farm with an amazing evening meal at The Plough.

Day 3 (May 12th) Kelmscott to Swinford another 21 miles or so Charles met be en-route and made me a coffee in his stunning house plus giving me lots of tips for my upcoming China trip, thank you :-)
My friend Chris picked me up so I could stay at his house in Abingdon.

Day 4 (May 13) Swinford to Clifton Hamden a 22mile day made possible by Chris picking me up again and providing a seconds night hospitality.

Day 5 (May 14) Clifton Hamden to Goring a short 15 mile day so I could be ready for Sally coming down for the weekend. I met Margaret who is walking bits of the Path over weekends etc.

Day 6 (May 15) Goring to Henley Lovely 21 mile walk with a couple of surprising hills.

Day 7 (May 16) Henley to Windsor/Eton A cracking day of over 23 miles with Sally followed by a meal at Zizzi’s thank you Philip and congratulations on your upcoming wedding :-)

Day 8 (May 17) Eton to Hampton Court A big 24 miler so a tiring day thanks to AroundMe I located the Lionsgate Hotel even though I had no prior booking!

Day 9 (May 18) Hampton Court to Chelsea another 22 miler this time with aching feet :-( Very impressive that the countryside extends so far into London. AroundMe saved me again by finding a cheap hotel in Chelsea, The Oakley the neighbouring Fiamma made me an excellent vegetarian stuffed cannelloni

which brings me to the final day

Day 10 (May19) Chelsea to The Thames Barrier 17 miles to do what a crow could fly in half! Past all the magnificent buildings associated with London, Big Ben, The Globe, Tower Bridge etc etc
All totally awesome except for the nagging pain of two small heel blisters :-( :-( although relieved somewhat by meeting Alwyn & his wife who are planning to walk to Santiago from St Albans, they had just returned from cycling the length of New Zealand having previously crossed Canada and covered fair distances in Australia – amazing the folks you meet when walking.

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Geoff’s travelling gadget bag!

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I spent tonight shortening all my USB cables so that my electronics can pack away neatly.  In the past I have carried a rats nest of cables & Power Supplies with me.

The result of tonight’s endeavours is shown above. It’s now  below 2Kg including the Asus power supply, Garmin GPS, Olympus uTough camera, Eee 4G, rechargeable battery charger & iPhone.

Its always annoyed me that the Olympus cameras come with a separate power supply and cable rather than charging through their USB lead. Tonight, whilst shortening the camera lead I discovered that if I left the green & white wires disconnected then it would charge through the Eee USB port (OK you also need a complete cable to get the pics off).

On the Eee I have a nLite version of XP Pro (About 3GB in size) with GPS Trackmaker for downloading tracks of the Garmin, Picasa for downloading images of the camera and storing locally on a 16GB SD card. GPicSync ties the images to the gpx tracks. I also have MemoryMap with the whole of the UK at 50000:1 plus The Alps and Pyrenees :-) I run CCleaner very frequently to get rid of accumulated crap and keep about 600M free space. It also has iTunes so the iphone can charge and unlocked if anything goes wrong.

So the Thames Path will be the testing ground, at least I will be passing a lot ofelectronic stores if anything goes awry.

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A day in the woods with Cambridge Rambling club

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Today’s Cambridge Rambling Club ‘A’ team ramble was led by Vera. 12 of us set off from Toft (well actually from Gresham Road, Cambridge).

Twas a gorgeous sunny day with lots of blossom on the trees with cowslips and a few bluebells making their 2010 appearance. We wended our way from Toft through Great Eversden, Kingston Wood and then lunch in Bourn churchyard, followed by a drink at the very trendy Willow tree pub where are numbers grew to 13 with the addition of a recent Nobel Prize winner :-) then along Bourn brook and onwards to Hardwick wood.

A great day out and many thanks to Vera to organising it.

Toft Circular Walk with Cambridge Rambling Club at EveryTrail

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Bradfield Wood circular walk with Cambridge Rambling Club

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Today we were back with the Cambridge Rambling Club A team for a walk led by Debbie. It was a bit of a jaunt to the starting place, 35miles from Cambridge! but 17 of us made it to the start. With me giving my shorts the first airing of the year!.

Twas a glorious spring day with a cold wind, spring is well upon us now in evidence with the lambs & kids in the fields plus all the blossom and the leaves starting to appear,  In fact as the day went on it seemed more blossom was appearing by the minute.

Lunch was at Beyton which interestingly still has a 1950′s kids playground with the original Wicksteed roundabout and swings all of which are distant memories in Cambridge, due to the health & safety gestapo prohibiting them!

An interesting walk especially seeing the coppicing in action at Bradfields Wood, although the products seemed quite expensive to me, Hazel bean poles at £8.75 for 10 and Hazel pea sticks at £4.25 a bunch!

Here is the walk on Everytrail. Poor Debbie was a bit upset that the walked turned out slightly longer than her little map measuring wheel had indicated!

Bradfields Woods circular walk

Map your trip with EveryTrail

Map your trip with EveryTrail

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iPhone unlock problems

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I recently had O2 unlock my iPhone prior to me transferring my number to T-mobile. I wanted to test T-Mobiles unlimited internet and texts for a tenner a month.

All went well until….
I’ve now discovered that putting the iPhone into flight mode  locks me out of the iPhone totally, insisting that it has to be connected to iTunes to be unlocked as the SIM card has been changed :-(

To make it worse plugging it into iTunes  says the iPhone is ‘damaged’ and needs to be taken to an Apple store :-( :-(

I’ve now discovered a work around. To get access to the iPhone menu’s, Remove the SIM card. You can then access the General menu and take it out of Flight mode. Replace the SIM and unlock with iTunes if you have remembered to bring a laptop with iTunes on it.

Oh, and iTunes is total bloatware – installing it on my little Eee with its 4GB drive consumed 500MB of space. Windows XP pro by comparison fits in 3GB.

Another annoyance is, away from home,  I cannot do a full iPhone sync. As on any other computer I use it will lose all the music, contacts and applications if I sync.

Now if only I could order that Nexus…..

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