37.3 milesAfter seeing the weather forecast for today, we weren't optimistic, but after overnight rain, we awoke to another very sunny morning. After a vast and excellent breakfast, we set out to ride round North Uist anticlockwise. The biggest climbs were between Lochmaddy and the Berneray road, and even these weren't particularly tough. However, we decided after looking at the map that we wouldn't investigate Berneray, and we continued towards Solas. After a bit, vast sandy beaches came into view, and it was with some chagrin that we discovered that the batteries in the camera had run down.However, as we approached Solas we could see the familiar Coop green and sure enough there was a rather good Coop in Solas. Not only did we buy batteries, but we got a couple of bottles of chocolate milk as a substitute for banana milk.Pressing on, we paused for a drink as we eased round to the western coast of North Uist. Here B&Bs become more plentiful. It also got very much sunnier, and we were able to see St Kilda in the distance.We took a detour up the C83 Solas road to look for a standing stone indicated on our tourist map. As usual this was not signposted, but was visible from the road. Retracing back to the main road, we paused at an excellent tearoom for a cup of tea and a slice of cake (lunch still out of the question as we were still full of breakfast).At Clachan we turned towards Lochmaddy, pausing only to stop at the ruins of a chambered cairn. Once back at the hotel, we changed and popped out to buy a paper and stroll about. A highlight was a visit to an art installation in the form of a camera obscura buily inside a cairn. Then back to the hotel for beers and dinner.We are apprehensive about tomorrow's weather, and may not ride over the Quirang as originally planned. Still, we'll make it to either Portree or Broadford.
View 2010 Tour Day 4 - North Uist in a largermap

57.1 miles
Another glorious start, though we did see some rain. We left the B&B in what we felt was good time to catch the 9.25 ferry crossing from Ardmhor to Eriskay. Ofcourse, we hadn't figured on the stonking climb out of Castlebay, which had us huffing and puffing like Ivor the Engine. But not before we'd had to stop to persuade the front derailleur to shift the chain onto the small ring. Then to add further insult, the chain dropped up a gear when we were on the steepest part of the climb - I suggest this as one of the unwritten rules of cycling.
Still, we made it to the ferry with time to spare (though we did worry, and my usually cautious stoker exhorted me to not only go as fast as possible downhill, but to face down oncoming motorists on the singletrack!). The ferry crossing was very smooth, and we saw a variety ofseabirds and quite a few seals lying on rocks. Eriskay's a small island, with another beach. It's mostly famous for the wreck of the SS Politician, which was the basis of the film Whisky Galore. Apparently the wreck can still be seen at low tide. Eriskay's now connected to South Uist by a causeway.
South Uist doesn't offer much in the way of hilly roads, which was rather fortunate, as we were facing a rather stiff northwesterly wind. At around noon, we stopped to cook up some food (chili con carne and rice) on the trusty Trangia, and shortly after this, we encountered a light shower that lasted for about half an hour. This wasn't a major problem - we soon dried off!
By the time we reached Benbecula I'd acquired an irrational need for banana-flavoured milk. At Clachan (where the road to Lochmaddy splits off), there's a shop - but unfortunately no banana milk!
We rode on over a changed landscape. Rather than riding between small lochans and over causeways, we rode up over peat moors, with small lochans shining deep blue under the sunny blue skies, Finally we arrived at Lochmaddy, where we'd booked two nights in the Tigh Dearg Hotel.Lo and behold, the (very smart) room had a bath, and sfter getting cleaned up, we retired to the bar for a couple of pints and a bar meal. I had fish cakes for starters and baked langoustines on egg noodles for main course. C had fish pie, Desserts were Eton mess for me and sticky toffee pudding for C. Then to bed after watching the rather alarming weather forecasat for Thursday.It looked as though we'd be stuck indoors watching heavy rain...
View 2010 Tour Day 3 - Castlebay to Lochmaddy in alarger map

35.6 milesWe woke to beautiful sunny morning. The breakfast room looked out twards Kisimul Castle in the bay. We got set up, planning to spend the day exploring Barra and Vatersay - we took the Trangia and the bits'n'bobs for a drum up and lunch. Fortunately we also packed some extra clothing, as the temperature dropped steadily through the morning, as the cloud grew ominously (consistent with the last weather forecast we'd seen which was for light rain). We'd hoped to have a brewup on the beach at Vatersay, but contented ourselves with a stroll - something repeated during the other beach visits today!The beaches on Barra and Vatersay are nothing short of splendid, as are the dunes behind, with displays of primroses and many other flowers, though the yellow flag irises had yet to bloom.From Vatersay we retraced our path back to the B&B, then on to the main circular road round Barra. This proved delightful, if still quite cold and windy - the clouds seemed to be breaking up. We stopped occasionally to admire views and beaches, but still felt too cold for lunch. At the north of this loop, weturned north, investigating where the Ardmhor ferry terminal was, then on to the Barra airport - the landing strip is thehuge Cockle Strand beach - where we stopped for soup and tea. This was most welcome as we were pretty cold by then.Further north to Eoligarry, where we walked onto arocky beach with terrific rock pools. From there we retraced to the circular road and headed back to Castlebay, pausing occasionally to admire the views. The Cuillins in Skye were clearly visible.Back in Castlebay, we changed, had a cup of tea, then wanered into Castlebay. We photographed Kisimul Castle from a number of vantage points (apparently Castelbay was the model for Kiltoch and Kisimul for the Black Island in Tintin and the Black Island). A fabulous pint of McEwans 80/- in the Castlebay Hotel bar was followed by dinner at the Cafe Kisimul, which specialises in Indian, Italian and seafood. I had scallop pakora and spaghetti marinara (combining all the specialities, I thought) washed down with a bottle ofHebridean Breweries' Islander ale. Carol had the same starter and followed with Jaipuri prawns.Then back to the B&B.We saw loads of birds, including many we couldn't identify - skylarks, herons, hooded crows. Many starlings. Heard a cuckoo.
View 2010 Tour Day 2 - Barra in a larger map

After a staged journey via Leeds and two nights in Edinburgh (and along the way buying and replacing the tandem's chainset, we departed first thing in the morning for Oban. As per usual, we transported then tandem by car on the roof rack. The journey was pretty easy, with no delays and rather pleasant and sunny weather (but a little cooler than over the last few days).
We arrived in Oban about 3.5h before the ferry was due to depart - even after leaving the car in the tender care of Hazelbank Motors, buying tickets (Island Hopscotch tickets 15 and 21), and having coffee we ended up hanging around. Despite the brilliant sunshine, the temperature was falling by the time we queued up with a surprising number of cyclists to board the ferry. On this occasion, cyclists were boarded first.The ferry departed on schedule, and after a voyage of 4:50 that took us along the Sound of Mull (Tobermory clearly seen in the afternoon sunshine) and beyond. We arrived in Castlebay on schedule. We were a bit surprised by how cold it was as we rolled off to find our B&B (Ravenscroft).
From our window, we had a great view across the bay, with Kisimul Castle lit by rays of sunshine.
Pretty soon, though, we turned in - looking forward to exploring Barra tomorrow. But not optimistic about the weather!

So, I refurbished the transmission on the tandem before our cycling holiday, and on the evening before we're due to head north, I discover a serious problem with the chainset, and the thing needs to be replaced...the main (right hand) drive crank is seriously mangled and isn't in line with left hand crank. The granny ring also now strikes the chain stay.Cue phone conversation with the excellent Spa Cycles of Harrogate, and I've arranged to collect a Stronglight Impact tandem chainset en route to Edinburgh tomorrow.

Another lovely sunny evening for a North Bucks Road Club evening time trial, and a return to the Stony Stratford course for another counting round in the club league.  There was also a gentle breeze that promised to toughen the outward leg.  Oh, and a profusion of greenfly in the air!There was quite a bit of discussion as to whether we should use the replacement Nash-Whaddon circuit, as on our previous event at Stony Stratford when the course was affected by roadworks.  In the end, we decided to go with the usual course, as riders who'd ridden the course earlier in the week said the road was clear enough (and so it proved).  What was more worrying was the comments that travellers had caused problems near the turn on Monday, with kids playing 'chicken' with the riders as they passed.After a slightly delayed start occasioned by a parade of sports cars and a group of horses, we were off.  For my part, I found the outward leg really very tough.  The first few miles are quite twisty, and the winter has most certainly not been kind to the road, with even more potholes added to the existing unrepaired road defects near Beachampton.  Dodging the potholes, I reached Beachampton and began the climb up to Nash.  I really suffered on the final stages to Nash (probably I need to lose a bit of weight to improve my power to weight ratio!).  In Nash a motorist had kindly parked on the bend, leaving their car door wide open while they looked at the back end of their car.  Avoiding this stellar parking act (and hoping that other riders, and indeed passing motorists would too), I pressed on up to the turn.  A clear ride round the turn and off on the return leg, where I felt I wasn't reaching the usual speed on the first section back to Nash.  Once through Nash the speed was up well over 40mph at times - though tempered with concern over bends in the road and assorted road defects to come.I roared through Beachampton and on over the twists, turns and astonishing potholed surfaces, putting a big effort to cross the line in 27:19.  This was better than I'd felt I was doing, but I really need to work on the climbing!  On the other hand, it was faster than any ride I did on this course last year.Results

								Pos. on
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	10	Tony Parks	NBRC	26.23	V45	30.29	.+ 4.06	4
2	15	David Glossy	Team Corley Cycles	26.29	S
3	7	Chris Dunwoodie	TeamMK	27.00	S
4	13	Robert Saunders	NBRC	27.19	V50	31.41	.+ 4.22	3
5	14	Glenn McMenamin	NBRC	27.35	S
6	8	Will Hilton	Virgin Active	28.06	S
7	5	Brian Primett	NBRC	29.12	V43	30.01	.+ 0.49	6
8	11	Aleck Hornshaw	TeamMK	30.18	V41	29.33	.- 0.45	8
9	6	Clive Faine	TeamMK	30.22	V63	35.05	.+ 4.43	2
10	9	John Buchanan	TeamMK	30.27	V40	29.20	.- 1.07	9
11	3	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	31.24	V67	36.13	.+ 4.49	1
12	4	Christine White	NBRC	33.01	LV45	32.26	.- 0.35	7
13	2	Gordon Batcock	NBRC	33.27	V69	36.48	.+ 3.21	5
14	1	Alan Lawson	NBRC	33.29	V41	29.33	.- 3.56	10
		Tandem
	16	Kevin Stokes	TeamMK	25.08
		Geoff Perry	TeamMK

And here's a map of the course (note that the northern end of the course has an additional section including a return to the car park).
View Stony '11.4' 19/5/10 in a larger map

Courtesy of Information is Beautiful, we now find out what the UK is best at (Because Every Country Is The Best At Something).So, where Madagascar is best at vanilla, the Netherlands is best at Ecstasy, and Estonia is best at Adult Literacy, what is the UK best at?CCTVOh crap!

In

Looking out of my office window before riding up to Astwood for this evening's time trial, one might have been forgiven for thinking it was going to be a balmy warm late spring evening.  Well, it was fairly balmy - there was only a light wind - but warm it most certainly wasn't.  As we lined up at the start, the temperature was falling quite rapidly, and it was quite chilly.We also didn't have a pusher-off, so watching riders start by failing to clip into their pedals was really quite amusing,  Until it was my turn to start!  Anyway, roaring off down the main road to Chicheley, I was quite pleased that my ride up from work had been brisk (rather later leaving than I'd intended): my heart rate was rapidly raised to a decent racing level.  I roared down to Chicheley, I think in part because of a gentle tail wind.  I stayed in the saddle and on the tribars all the wayto the Chicheley turn, then as usual took the bend quite cautiously as it's often rather gravelly.  On up to North Crawley, and I was convinced I could see another rider ahead of me.  But who?  I couldn't figure it out, and for the rest of the race kept seeing the rider, then not, as the mystery rider moved round bends ahead of me.  I tried hard to keep on the tribars round the bends after North Crawley, which I think helped to keep my speed up along those sections.As I approached the final mile or so, I reckoned the mystery rider was #10 (and so it proved).  I scorched down the final descent and nipped up the climb to the finish, again staying on the tribars, finishing with 23:49.  As it turned out, this was only 5 seconds behind Tony P, and good enough for second place.  Actually, my best time on this course is a mid-23, so this was really quite a good ride for me (and certainly my best this season).Results (map of the course follows)

								Pos. on
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	9	Tony Parks	NBRC	23.44	V45	26.30	.+2.46	4
2	11	Rob Saunders	NBRC	23.49	V50	27.33	.+3.44	1
3	8	Lindz Barral	i-team CC	24.07	S
4	10	Chris Dunwoodie	TeamMK	24.36	S
5	12	Geoff Perry	TeamMK	25.01	V50	27.33	.+2.32	6
6	7	Kevin Stokes	TeamMK	25.09	V47	26.54	.+1.45	7
7	5	John Buchanan	TeamMK	25.25	V40	25.30	.+0.05	10
8	14	Graeme Freestone King	Team Synergie	26.38	V50	27.33	.+0.55	8
9	4	Clive Faine	TeamMK	27.04	V63	30.30	.+3.26	2
10	13	Ruth Freestone King	Team Synergie	27.41	LV46	28.25	.+0.44	9
11	1	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	28.20	V67	31.30	.+3.10	3
12	3	Gordon Batcock	NBRC	29.19	V69	32.00	.+2.41	5
13	2	Tony Brunton	NBRC	30.13	V45	26.30	.-3.43	11

Time Keepers:- Steph Cousins & Tony Farmborough NBRC
View Astwood '10' 12/5/10 in a larger map

A few days into the newest release from Canonical, Ubuntu GNU/Linux 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), what are my initial opinions?  On the whole the upgrade from 9.10 went very smoothly.  Since I'm using a customised desktop with Compiz effects, I didn't see too much in the way of visible changes.The seemingly much-discussed move of window control buttons from the right to the left of the window title bar completely passed me by, as this is how I've had my desktop for a few years now.Not much different in boot-up times, but this is a seriously tweaked notebook which slows it down post-login.  On my desktop PC, boot seems very quick, as does the post-login desktop setup.The new version of the Gwibber social networking app seems a big improvement.  It now seems to filter out the vile Farmville crap from FaceBook!  A simple interface as well, enabling access to different feeds (though I'm only using two Twitter accounts and Facebook).The big news for me is that iPod Touch support is there.  I believe that on a fresh installation this would probably work out of the box.  In my case I had to install ifuse (easy enough via synaptic).  Now I can add music to my iPod without having to go to a Win PC and load iTunes.  This worked well, but appeared to disrupt album artwork for those albums I'd already uploaded via Windows iTunes.  I restored the iPod, and repeated the album transfer, and this time, everything went smoothly - no artwork corruption, so perhaps this was just a coincidence.I picked up a tip (from somewhere out there on the web) to edit /etc/fuse.conf and uncomment the line

#user_allow_other

to

user_allow_other

This seems to have helped the upload of music files to the iPod.Related to this is the development of Rhythmbox as an alternative to iTunes.  I buy the occasional DRM-free mp3 album from Amazon: Rhythmbox has links to three other online music stores, including Ubuntu's very own Ubuntu One.  I decided to have a go with Ubuntu One.  This proved a bit interesting!  The interface is clean and easy to use: making a purchase of an album was pretty straightforward.  However downloading seemed a bit complex, though probably this was just because it was different to systems I'd used before.  Firs, the files get transferred to one's Ubuntu One cloud storage, of which there is 2Gb for free (you can upgrade to 50Gb for $10 per month).  From there, manual downloads are a bit of a nuisance: as far as I could tell you have to download each file one by one.Firefox was updated to 3.6.3 - no major issues.  (while this is nothing to do with Ubuntu, one of my plugins got updated and broke some website JS functions - this was Ghostery version 2.1, now inactivated until such time as the Ghostery developers get their act together - this isn't the first time the Ghostery plugin has affected Firefox function)