There are a couple of disappointments: first of all, it dawned on me that I’d been thinking of charcoal as one of those fuels that should be easily available during hiking, which is true, but usually in 4 or 5 kg bags, a lot more than you’d want to buy when hiking; secondly, my estimates of how much I’d use were rather optimistic. The latter was at least partly because I boiled more water than expected, however, and I’m not sure how it would compare, weight for weight, with gas or alcohol. Unfortunately, my fuel arrangements were unauthodox in past solo camping trips, so I’d have to buy another type of stove to make a decent comparison.

I’m not going to switch back to a Coleman F1 or dig out the trangia just yet though. An ultralite gas stove might be more efficient, quicker and cleaner in use, but I have subjective reasons why I’d rather stick to wood and charcoal. I go out wild camping to get closer to nature and the “simple” life (in some ways more complicated): turning on a gas knob and boiling water in 4 minutes with a mechanical roar doesn’t compare well with the gentle crackle of wood, even if I have to work harder and wait longer. A real fire is almost a living companion for the time it’s burning. Where it’s safe and responsible to do so I’d rather have a little open wood fire between stones than a stove of any kind.

Then there’s the ecological differences. I don’t know, to be completely honest, just how bad butane and propane are to produce, put in metal cans and transport to the shop, or how difficult the cans are to recycle, I just know that it’s bound to be a lot worse for the planet than the renewable resources of local twigs or commercially produced charcoal. Again, this is a very subjective, emotional concern, since the overall amount of butane I would burn in the next 10 years would be trivial compared to my car’s petrol consumption next week! Still, I don’t like burning gas at camp, and if I could be bothered to run my car on charcoal I would.

What I need to do is experiment more. It’s possible that the second design of stove with large holes all round the base was better (although I’d not like to lose the dual-fuel ability of the stoking hole for putting wood in. It might be worth going back to charcoal briquettes to get a longer, steadier burn, or mix that with the natural charcoal. It’s early days. My experiments have been rather approximate. I think I took about 250 g of natural charcoal, and I burned it in about 5 sessions, but sometimes I got two “kettlefuls” (about 250 ml) boiled, or the second one hot enough for coffee, other times just one. I was in the woods, not a laboratory. Sometimes the stove seemed to work extremely well, as in the video below; other times I struggled to get the wood to light, or the charcoal to light from the wood. As a wood-burning stove it was just as hit-and-miss, and maybe this was more due to the dryness of the twigs I used on different occasions. It was also very clearly affected by the wind, being helped by a steady breeze into the door, without which I resorted to blowing in it. It may be worth trying to increase the air input holes, although there are quite a number around the base. I wonder about lifing the stove up further on legs and putting holes in what is now the base and ash collection pit, although this translates in effect to making the wood grate higher up in the stove. I also wonder if the inch I removed from the stove did reduce the draught, and whether to add that height to the top (also acting as extra insulation for the top of the kettle).

One particular issue was the amount of charcoal dust among the pieces, which of course I ended up with in the bottom of the bag. If this were eliminated, the same weight would have done me a hot breakfast on the third morning, but as powder it’s very hard to use, mainly because it falls through the grate to mix with the priming wood, or forms a blanket all the way across the charcoal grate, choking off the air. I plan another trip before long, and in the meantime will do some slightly more scientific testing in the back garden.

I haven’t really described the making of the stove, not that it’s very different from a million others. I guess it might be useful to give a complete how-to sometime, but I’d rather tweak a bit more yet to get it better.

Mk II stove with wire mesh grate

New Stove Can
The bottom can is new, without a fuel door, but with big holes down below the level of the grate instead. I’ve given both a few test runs, and this seems a better option for my current intentions – if I can get the charcoal stove efficient enough I’ll avoid burning twigs, simply for the reduced smoke, tar and messing about. The fact that you have to feed a stove like this little twigs and stuff constantly means you’re constantly breathing in the smoke, whereas a normal camp fire you’ll only tend now and then. There is the option of packing it with more wood in one go, but that makes a lot of smoke, soot and mess on the kettle, burns like a torch for a few minutes and then you’re back to square one. This is the beauty of charcoal. I’ve gone right off sitting around stinking of woodsmoke.

The downside of having holes all the way round is that when there’s a wind blowing, you can’t point it into the wind to help fan the fire, but if there aren’t holes all the way round it will reduce the air, which is critical when it’s a still day. The optimum might be to have a door that can be closed on 2/3 or so of the air intake holes to force it with the wind. I suppose just wrapping foil round some of them would be an option too. I find it useful to put the whole stove on a layer of aluminium foil, and that can be brought up round the base as a windshield. It also reflects heat to improve efficiency and protect the ground from scorching.

Wider Chimney
I got the feeling that when I added the second can on top as a chimney, the fire was a little choked with the kettle in (which helps to boil the water in it!) due to the small area between kettle and chimney sides. The same thing happens when the kettle is located in the lower can rather than sitting on top of it on wires. For getting the most heat out of dying embers, this latter position is probably fine, because there’s less draught required, but when burning hot, the gap is rather small – only about 2.5 mm. The second can is important because it extends the height, creates more updraught and keeps the heat next to the kettle, but it has another disadvantage: it doesn’t pack up with the rest, being the same diameter as the stove can. These are your everyday baked-beans size holding about 420 g. They’re 7.5 cm diameter and 10.5 cm high.

So I’ve tried using a sweetcorn tin for the upper section – these are about 8.5 x 8.5 cm. – and fitted it on top of the other simply by cutting a hole a little smaller than the bean tin and bending it down evenly all around so that it locates on the top lip. The idea is that when the stove is on full blast and needs more draught up the chimney, you support the kettle only inside this upper, wider, can. [Edit: Now I've found that real charcoal doesn't burn with flames leaping up the chimney, I'm not sure if this is better or not. Further testing required.]

Improved Kettle Support
You could drill or punch holes in the sides of this upper can, and put thick wire through to support the kettle (people often use spare tent pegs), but I came up with a new holder made of two strips of steel cut from a larger can and wired together with thin wire where they cross. This is probably a little bit lighter than the wires, and more easily adjustable for fit. It can be bent to length and hung over the top of the can. Here it is inside the sweetcorn can:

I haven’t perfected it yet, and I’m not sure whether to continue using the pegs through holes in the stove at the lower level or work something else out. It might be good to get the hangar piece so that it works in both cans and just needs lifting from one to another. I’ve put too many bends in this one as I botched it together.

Better Grate
This wire-mesh grate is better than the old computer fan grill, particularly to keep smaller particles of charcoal from dropping through. Once I’ve decided how high to have it I’ll cut the legs to size (which are just parts of the mesh bent down and under), and then it’ll stow upside-down to allow more room for the kettle.

Kettle on its hanger inside sweetcorn tin

That’s about it apart from a slightly wider base (stray embers catcher and another layer of protection for the ground), but I’m not sure if that’ll survive later hacks. Again, it’s the problem of storing this. At the moment the sweetcorn size of tin, 8.5 cm, fits nicely inside my water filter. This wider one has to be stowed separately.

Natural Charcoal (Bar-be-quick Lumpwood)
This experiment turned out much better than expected. I thought it might be difficult to start, but it seemed pretty much the same as briquettes. It burned without the smell, without the smoke, and with hardly any flame, just red-hot coals. I think there was maybe a slight smoky smell right up close. The main advantage of briquettes for barbequeing is they often give a longer slower burn: for the camping stove this was a disadvantage. The lumpwood continued a fair old time too, but was a quicker, hotter burn, as far as I can judge without a suitable thermometer.

Hot or Not?
My testing at this stage is mostly subjective and proof-of-concept. I’ll get to boil times later. I noticed there’s a standard developed for this kind of thing – 2 cups – so I’ve since doubled up the water from my first experiment. [Edit - just realised this is still only about 440 ml, which is a bit less than 2 cups, 473 ml.]

I’m still using about the same slug of fuel by weight as a briquette, and even trying to reduce it. I used about 40-45 g. of charcoal this time, broken up into pieces about 2-3 cm across, plus the powder and intermediate stuff that comes from tapping charcoal with a hammer. I still expect that smaller pieces of a more even size might give better results.

The fuel of artists

My water took a fairly long time to get hot enough to use, somewhere in the region of 15 minutes, and didn’t reach a rolling boil. Personally, I’m happy with that. I’m not “fast and light”, just light. I don’t mind waiting a wee bit for a nice cuppa if the stove works well, doesn’t need too much tending, is clean enough (by which I mean mainly the air quality and lack of soot on pans), reasonably safe, cheap and fairly lightweight. I haven’t found out yet what weight of propane and butane it takes to boil 2 cups of water, and that’s my target, but
a) charcoal will always be slower, probably, and
b) it won’t explode, probably. (Powders, however, can do so.)
[Edit: There's a great comparison of stove fuels at Zen Backpacking, and charcoal isn't too shabby on the old BTUs, about 14000 BTU per pound weight compared to about 19000 for propane. Methanol comes in at under 8000. There's a lot of information on that page for estimating the weight of fuel and associated equipment required for camping trips, based on boiling a US pint of water a day, 16 oz, 2 cups, 473.18 ml - ish? Charcoal only gets a passing mention again, which I'm increasingly puzzled about. From the graph, I estimate my rough target as 50 g of fuel per "meal" or per "day", i.e. to boil 2 cups. Pimps. Lemon squeezy.]

I personally don’t require a rolling boil at camp. Near boiling takes a fraction of the calories and is great for most beverages and pouring over my super-noodles or whatever. For my tea and coffee I’d add powdered milk, so it’ll be too hot if it’s boiling. There are a lot of videos on youtube of stove tests, where the object is to time super-accurately 2 cups of water reaching that magical rolling boil, but not often much science behind it – in particular, often the starting temperature is not taken, which makes a vast difference. Boiling some water straight out of a glacial stream is going to take a lot more fuel than from room temperature. But it’s those last couple of degrees to boiling that take vast amounts of fuel. Changing state is energy expensive.

Probably the only negative side to this test was that the lump charcoal showered a fair amount of sparks, something I didn’t notice at all with the briquettes. These were tiny little points of light pinging as the charcoal caught light, and they didn’t fly very far, but it’s a reason to keep the stove further from a nylon tent or other flamable material than with the briquettes. In the average English summer, I don’t expect those little sparks would set light to anything, but it’s something to be aware of if it’s been particularly dry. I’ve only tested it once, so it could be a mere fluke and not happen again, or it could be a regular feature.

One other big difference is the ash – there’s very little of it with proper charcoal, just white wood ash as you’d expect. The briquettes produced a big heap of motly ash, and I don’t know if it’s common, but I found a fair amount of little pebbles in mine. That’s a trick charcoal men have been criticised for since the 17th Century, hiding stones among their wares. It’s not easy to get away with it now, unless you pulverize it, mix it with all sorts of other things, and then shape it into briquettes.

Natural charcoal is actually very pleasant to deal with. The lumps just look like black pieces of wood, of course, complete with grain. It’s mucky stuff to handle, but, as the saying goes, “good clean muck”. And if you’re ever bored at camp, you can draw something with it.

Stowed stove - hardly bigger than a tinny

Now, it’s not as high-tech as the backpacking filters where you pump the water through a ceramic element, but it’s got some serious advantages, not least that it’s a fraction of the weight and costs virtually nothing. It weighs about 50 g (1 3/4 oz), and could be a little less. I made it a generous size to allow nearly a litre of water to filter unattended, and put some rather overkill heavy-duty cord on it. Many of the pump varieties are getting on for 10 times that weight, they’re expensive, clog up and require maintenance or more expense replacing the filter elements, and you have to pump a handle to force water at high pressure, sometimes hundreds of times per litre.

My filter uses gravity while I’m doing something else, and is pretty quick. I’ve slowed it down with a thin layer of cotton wool pad to allow the active ingredients to work more effectively. It doesn’t remove all the stuff the ceramic ones would, but has its uses. For instance, you might boil your water to sterilise it, or use drops or tablets, but sometimes it looks unappetising, and chemical treatments are less reliable if the water is cloudy or has other physical crud in it, so a simple gravity filter is a good idea. However, this does a lot more, according to the Brita site. It removes a good portion of chemical contaminants that might be there, and should go some way toward removing micro-organisms and inhibiting their growth, at least.

If you’re out on the trail on a hot day and run out of drinking water, and there’s a clear stream to drink from, you could be fooled into thinking it’s good quality drinking water, when there happens to be contamination from agricultural run-off or biological decay (like a dead animal upstream). Boiling uses a lot of time and fuel and leaves you with warm water to drink; using drops or tablets to kill the bugs works, but if you use them all the time for several litres a day, the weight becomes significant to the ultralight backpacker, and they’re adding more chemicals and sometimes alter the taste. You can use UV sterilisers, but then there’s the battery to carry, and the bulbs only last so long before they have to be replaced too. With a lightweight, gravity-fed filter, you can refill your water bottle from the stream and have a cold drink by the time you’ve rested a moment and drunk in the view, and enjoy natural stream water but with reduced risk of an upset stomach if you elect to skip the sterilisation chemicals or use less of them.

Here’s how I did it. The main parts are a pop bottle (I used a 1.5 litre one), cut off at whatever size is convenient, and the Brita filter cartridge:

The bottom of the filter cartridge has two circular areas of holes to keep the filter material from coming through:

I cut round one with a scalpel and glued it inside the neck of the bottle, like so:

This plastic mesh circle will perform two functions, as a first filter, straining out any particles bigger than about half a millimetre, and to keep the filter medium in place. A portion of Brita filter material will be held between it and a similar mesh fitted in the “bottle top” (now the bottom as the whole thing is upside down), here:

At first I used a solvent-free glue that professed to glue most types of plastic, but it was still slightly tacky after about 3 days and the water actually dissolved it (the photo shows it going white and soft), so I did it again with a solvent-based one, which seems to work fine and dried in minutes.

Next, I took the top off one of those water bottles that has a drinking valve. It looks a bit different because I cut off the white plastic outer tube. As it happens, I didn’t need to do this once I altered the way the filter attaches to the collecting bottle: my first idea was to slot this inner valve into the collecting bottle with a connector, and it only fitted the connector at this smaller diameter. I’ll probably replace it with a new one sometime, so water can be held in the filter reservoir by closing it.

An ordinary bottle top would have done, but not as well – it would pour badly – especially as I wanted it to pour straight into a similar bottle below.

The second mesh circle was cut and gradually reduced in diameter until it fit snugly into the inside, and I cut a ring of foam plastic to act as a seal:

A perfect seal isn’t really necessary, as any water leaking at this point has already been through the filter – it would only be a tiny gap probably smaller than the mesh itself. The mesh is there to stop the filter material washing through into your bottle, that’s all (although it is completely non-toxic anyway).

Actually, the plastic on the inside of the top was moulded with a flange to locate on the inside of the bottle neck, and three prongs of plastic extended a little further below this – why, I have no idea. In order to seat the mesh it was necessary to cut all that off flush, which was a little trouble. An alternative, probably easier in the long run, would be to use an ordinary top, cut a moderately sized hole in it and control the outpouring by inserting a tube of some sort, glued in place. However, in this version there remains a second volume below the mesh, which I thought might prove useful in some way. To get to it I would just need to pull out the O-ring and mesh.

The main filter chamber is reached, to replace the contents, simply by unscrewing the whole top in one. I expect to change the filter material regularly. I may pack a small amount to take on a camping trip, just in case, and it would be best to change it in between trips. Here’s what the filter looks like when you’ve hacked it:

And here’s the carbon and ceramic mixture being loaded into the filter:

Brita filter replacement cartridges are costly enough not to just hack a brand new one for the contents and plastic mesh circles, although you can if you want. All I did was replace the cartridge we use in the kitchen a week or so early, so I know that it’s got some life left in it. There is, of course, a great deal more material in one than you need in this scaled down version, so you can store the rest and replace it however often you like.

Ready to roll:

So here’s how Mk I was meant to work: my drinking bottle, a 1 litre plastic pop bottle, would be held somewhere convenient, between stones or in the side pocket of my pack, and something would hold the filter above it. I toyed with different ideas and poked about in my collection of junk and found this, part of the transit clips from a washing machine (sorry about the focus):

Part of it was just the right shape to act as the connector, if I cut a slot in it. It was light, strong and easily modifiable into a clip that would squeeze into the drinking bottle while holding the filter tight, like so:

You can see the slot in the bottom that I cut, which perfectly located between the gaps in the screw thread.

All that was required was a little support – here using part of my stove setup:

This was useable, but would require the drinking bottle to be held pretty steady to support the heavier top when first adding water. In the field this could be awkward and lead to spillage. So Mk II hangs by a cord threaded through the top, from a tree branch, walking pole, stick in the ground or the tent porch, with the drinking bottle hanging below. The best way to do this, I reckon, is to permanently attach another bottle top, with its end cut off to form a cylinder, by cord or wire to the filter. I used wire at first, which was easier to get the right length, but it snapped from being bent up when packed away, so I replaced it with some strong cotton, which was more fiddly to get right. A loop goes round the neck somewhere that won’t slip off (a good place is just behind the little ring of plastic that remains after first opening your pop, which is integral with the top until you break the connections), and then three cords are attached to that, spaced round the neck (I’m figuring that three is better than four), and tied to little holes melted through the bottle-top-with-no-top (these parts need naming!) – you’ll see in the video that follows how it ends up.

An alternative would be to hang it with some other kind of connector. I almost made it that way using two of those bits of white plastic, fitting them round the bottle necks and bolting them together, but really, cord is simpler and lighter. In the video, even though it’s quite windy and the empty bottle is swinging, it catches all the water. You could make the cord shorter, but you need to be able to move it to one side to remove the filter end to refresh the contents.

Now all I need to do when I want to filter water in the wild is take the normal top off my bottle, screw it onto the filter and hang it up. The only other thing needed is some sort of container to collect the water from the source, which can be a billy can or plastic bag.

Incidentally, I find that those plastic bags that are moderately thick with a reinforced top and press closure particularly good for getting water from even the smallest trickle of a stream. Many types of food come in them.

I deliberately made the filter chamber rather small as I’m on an ultra-lightweight kick this year. Different shaped bottles (like my drinking bottle shown here) have longer necks, tapering more gradually. Using one of those would give a bigger volume for the filter material and make the water pass more of it vertically.

While the Brita material itself is very light indeed, it naturally stays wet for some time in use, so you carry proportionally more water for more material in the chamber. This is at the cost of its functioning, of course – the more material the water passes through the better – but it also speeds up flow. If anything, the flow was rather “too fast” (in my guestimation), so I have since replaced the o-ring with a disc of cotton wool (cut from one of those make-up removers, but using only part of the thickness). The filter isn’t just stopping physical particles, it’s having various chemical effects on the water molecules, and if it isn’t in contact with them very long that effect is reduced. Just physically slowing it down should help remove more nasties for the same amount of material.

I was pretty chuffed with this project, but the best was yet to come, when I found purely by accident that my new lightweight stove-and-kettle combo fits right inside the filter reservoir. The whole thing packs together and goes in a rucksack pocket.

It’s a good job I had a success today, because I was getting pissed off with the whole affair. Among the things I tried over the last few weeks are making a simple wood stove and a gassifier (wood-gas burning) stove. I bought a new “ultralight” propane/butane burner and then returned it (because with a decent tin of gas it was almost as heavy as my current gas stove), I stripped the heavier bits of metalwork off that, a Rapijet, which has been a pain in the neck since I bought it, I experimented with alcohol stoves and considered hexamine solid fuel (but I’ve used that before and knew it wasn’t for me). The last thing but one that I tried was cooking by candle power, a tea light (albeit with a lot more wicks), but hot burning molten wax is hardly any less scary than hot burning alcohol (in fact probably a lot scarier) and tends to make a load of soot and smoke.

Er, don't do this...at least not without lots of safety precautions.

After the candle incident, I thought I’d have to put up with the Rapijet and forget home-made ones. I filled it again, but it started hissing out of the valve at the back, which is some kind of adjuster – maybe it’s meant to release pressure and is factory set, and maybe I moved it while I was stripping it of superfluous ironmongery – and then all I seemed to get from it was a very low flame or, if I unscrewed the adjuster a little, the adjuster itself would flash over and squirt burning gas out the wrong bit. It was the last straw with this thing, which let me down when I first used it on a cold wet night due to the cheap plastic knob rotating on its spindle, which was jammed off.

Back to the drawing board. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with many of the traditional camper’s favourite fuels and stove types. They have different strengths and weaknesses in different modes of use. Camping by car with my partner, which I do most years once or twice, I want to put a table up with twin gas burners on it and slap in a cheap can of whatever-ane with which to produce my gourmet, al-fresco feasts. But for my other camping…

My other camping is solo wild camping, not that I’ve done much of it: it’s mostly in my head, to be honest. I spend most of the winter wishing it was nice weather to camp, and then when the summer comes I start designing and making stuff and don’t get out much! Very bad. I’m hoping “my new invention” will encourage me to get more trips in this year.

Should I tell you, though? Should I divulge the secret? Should I develop the product, create a brand, manufacture it by hand in my shed? Dragon’s Den? Nah. I’m only joking. It’s not all that revolutionary – the secret is just…wait for it…

…burn charcoal

…briquette or otherwise…but…

…crushed or broken…

(sorry, yes, that really is it!).

On the other hand, it’s like doh? – wtf? – why is nobody doing this? Why are people lugging around bottles and cans of petro-chemicals? Why do they put up with the smell of fishy parafin or choke on their “smokeless” woodgas stove for ten minutes while it “gets going”?

I think a stove could be designed, and charcoal products developed, to make a wonderful backpacker stove, quick, easy, hot, pretty clean burning, pretty predictable in output, lightweight and cheap, for those who aren’t interested in knocking one up from old bean tins and smashing briquettes with a hammer. And it might just be me.

Woodgas, yeah, right on.

Why is charcoal better than wood, even in a woodgas stove? Because when you burn wood it produces a lot of gases that take some of the combustion heat to create, and you have to evaporate any remaining water even in wood that seems bone dry. The hydrogen in the carbohydrates becomes water when it combines with oxygen. Charcoal – which is produced by partially burning wood in an oxygen-depleted environment – is almost pure carbon, so it burns hotter and, given enough air, completely smokelessly as CO2 (which is “green”, “carbon-neutral” CO2, in that it comes from a non-fossil fuel). It doesn’t have to deal with all the water and other gases being produced. Woodgas burning is fine on a larger scale – I just don’t think it scales down to a backpacking stove that well. A lot of woodgas stoves are ideal for producing charcoal, and maybe I didn’t have the best woodgas stove ever, but it blackened my pans rotten, as everyone says they do. They swear blind they’re burning “clean”, burning the smoke, but that soot on the pans is unburnt carbon, char, charcoal. Go figure.

My first experimental burn of a briquette in a bean can was rubbish, but the second, with a broken/crushed charcoal briquette (just one) was a revelation. In 15 minutes I was enjoying my coffee and wondering how much more cold water I could boil on the remaining fuel that was glowing in the tin. The first boil was about 250 ml (sorry me no speaky american – it’s a decent mugful). The same amount of water from room temperature only got up to about 65 Celcius (too hot to hold) but didn’t boil.

If you try burning one charcoal briquette in a tin, it's hard work getting it going and it easily goes out.

I haven’t weighed this stuff, but it’s light. It’s charcoal, see? At least it mostly is. Briquettes have other ingredients (which some people make a fuss about, but really without much of an argument IMHO), but they’re still almost pure carbon. Or if you prefer, use natural charcoal, which I haven’t tried yet, but should work too. In fact, I can’t wait to try it. [Edit: actually, I got a shock to find they're heavier than I thought - about 50 or 60 g., but I reckon with some tweaks I can improve efficiency a lot yet.]

So anyway, here’s a few photos of the burn, and a video follows. This time I put a small piece of firelighter (more than necessary, by the way) in the base of my stove – which was designed really as a simple wood burning stove, so the big door is actually not that useful here.

Then I inserted three wire bars across and the grate that rests on it (old computer fan grill) and dropped the crushed briquette onto it, with the powdery stuff falling last onto the larger pieces.

On lighting the firelighter there was a lot of smoke at first. I thought this was another of my famously bad ideas. I grabbed my camera to document the dire failure that was developing before my eyes. The video shows the last second of smoking just before it got to flash point and from then on there was hardly a wisp. I don’t remember exactly how long it smoked, maybe 30 seconds. [Edit: and I've found that most of this can be avoided too by putting another small piece of lit firelighter on top, which ignites the exhaust gases and smoke until the charcoal gets hot enough to do that itself.]

Next, flame poured out the top, and I put my can on top of the stove on wires, although I knew that with charcoal you should really wait until they’re glowing embers – I was pretty desperate for a coffee by this time so didn’t want to waste the heat.

As the flames died down a little I was able to add the second can on top of the wires, which acts as a chimney and insulation for the top part of the kettle (which is just a beer can with a lid). Putting too many obstacles in the way can choke a fire, but this coped pretty well. I have to say that I was still being very impatient, and an even better burn and boil would have resulted from waiting longer (as the 65 degree refill shows). I was so anxious to grab every calorie from the stuff that as it died down to glowing embers completely I couldn’t be bothered to mess about putting the wires through the holes in the side of the can to support the kettle just above the coals: instead I just lowered it right onto the fuel.

Kettle sitting directly on charcoal right inside chimney, with windbreak rolled up round base for extra cozy.

The photo at the top of the article shows the condition of the charcoal on removing the kettle of boiling water. I put another brew on and began adding insulating foil and cozying it all up even more. I’ve not had any experience of burning charcoal before – I don’t even do BBQs – so I’m not sure how best to balance the airflow/insulation, but once embers are red hot it’s sensible to close things down a fair bit. I expect my chimney design will help draw air in at the bottom, and then the heat of the exhaust gaes has to hug the kettle all the way up the sides. (The second can isn’t part of the backpacking stove design, as they don’t pack up small – instead I have a wire mesh and foil extension to do the same thing.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if with some improvements in design I could boil enough water for a reconstituted meal and put the kettle back on for tea or coffee to follow. I’ll have to work on new designs and start comparing performance. I reckon there’s going to be a critical balance between increased air input for hotter burning and insulating the stove – too much draft blows a fire out. I’m not sure what’s the best workable size of crushed fuel either: in other words, the finer it is the faster it can use up the air input, but the harder it is to have it supported on a grate, or avoid it getting blown about, rising as sparks. Powdered fuel can also fuse and choke the fire – I’ve seen it with coal on an open fire when you have a lot of coal dust left in the bottom of the scuttle and pour it on.

The coal burnt in coal-fired power stations is finely powdered, but it’s blown into a furnace like petrol injected into a car’s engine. A high-tech stove might well do something similar with powdered carbon products made from char. Of course, one way to go with this is to force air through it with a PC fan or something, but I’d like to keep it low tech – but clever low tech – and avoid the weight of the fan and batteries. I want my stove to be a simple hobo stove for burning twigs when that suits me – I love the smell for one thing – but at other times (like for stealth camping) I want a cleaner burn. I think I’ve found it.

I’ll share some of my insights and personal advice about biking in this post, but with a couple of warnings: 1) I am not in any way qualified to teach road craft, just to ride a sub-33-brake-horsepower motorcycle; 2) I didn’t get any training myself beyond CBT, so my advice is gleaned from the web or learned from personal experience. Nevertheless, I think I can offer some helpful tips, perhaps in particular for others who choose not to get professional training and are rooting around the web trying to make sense of the often conflicting information.

There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information, in fact. As I did my searches and went out practising, the thought emerged that I would like to write about the subject of motorcycle safety. It almost became a promise to influence the fates: “Just let me pass first time and I’ll help others in this mess!”.

Only the day before my test it felt like a terrible mess. One of the commonest problems with information on the net is that the date is often missing – blogs obviously being a welcome exception. People write things like “The new regulations have only been in place a few months and already…”, but there’s no date.

This seems to have led to my panic: I went out for my last driving practice (other than on the way to the test) trying to follow what I took to be good guidance, not realising that some of it was out of date, in particular advice about the shoulder check. Test requirements and the consensus advice of trainers change over time, so you have to be careful about what you’re reading.

And then there are regional differences. There’s a dearth of video help on module two, but one I found is at learn2rideVIDEOS on youtube. Now, while there may be some things to be gained from studying these videos, they apply to the test in Northern Ireland and invoke a look-signal-look manoeuvre that is taxing and, to my mind, counter-productive. The “look” part seems to involve a shoulder check, rather than a glance in the mirror, which is unnecessary in many conditions anyway, but the bizarre thing is that this precedes merely indicating and is then followed by yet another shoulder check! That seems to be what is implied, anyway.

Since it takes virtually no time at all to switch the indicator on, this means simply repeating the shoulder check twice in quick succession, during which time you may have ploughed into a bus. There are absolutely vital times do a shoulder check – before changing position on the road, changing lane or turning and setting off – and it’s just adding distracting complications to do such extensive rear obs before and after indicating, it seems to me.

Road Position
The other thing that was relatively new to me in that set of videos was the emphasis put on three precise road positions. Position 1 is one-and-a-half feet from the kerb and is used for turning left. Position 2 is in the centre of the lane, for normal riding and going straight on at junctions. Position 3 is one-and-a-half feet from the centre of the road, used for turning right and overtaking parked vehicles. Position 1 and 3 have exceptions: you should remain in Position 2 even when turning left or right if you’re in a lane dedicated to that manoeuvre.

This scheme doesn’t seem that helpful to me either from the point of view of best practice (although at the time I was mostly interested in getting rid of my L-plates!). As a very rough guide to a complete novice, perhaps it has some value: it at least draws attention to the availability of different road positions and making sensible use of them. But even so, it’s arguably not that useful to introduce the idea of three lane positions for the novice and then have to add a lot of qualifiers, and I’d have to add a lot of qualifiers. This is a general complaint I have about many training schemes, and particularly driving training, that they approach a complex task by devising a simple dogma (often underlined with an acronym) and drill it into people’s heads, instead of helping the student analyse the reality of the situation. Maybe I overestimate people’s ability to think about such matters, but I often find that the ordinary student will raise the same objections and qualifiers as are on my mind, while the poor brainwashed trainer tries to defend the creed. I did a fair amount of training to become a driving instructor at one time, and gave it up partly due to this frustration with being trained to treat people like programmable cyber-rats in a maze.

Here, for example, are a few vital “qualifiers” that immediately overturn the system above. Firstly, during normal riding I would probably choose a position somewhere near the middle of the lane, but I tend to avoid the very centre, especially on country roads. This often collects debris, from mud and gravel up to larger objects, while the areas either side are constantly swept by the passage of car tyres. The centre is also the place where most of the liquid spills take place, like oil and diesel. Certainly this is one of the worst bits of road to be on at a corner, but even with the bike upright you could regret being in the centre if there arises any sudden need for maximum grip. Town roads might have less debris down the middle, as a general rule, but beware of general rules. Where there is more traffic there are more discarded plastic (or glass) bottles and other bits of jetsam. Of course, keeping a safe distance avoids some of this danger, and where you can see a nice clean lane in multi-lane highways with a lot of traffic flow, the centre of your lane has the advantages of clarity of intention and maximizing the empty space around you.

Secondly, I often find that a position to the right or left of centre is a good one. The outer one is often good for maintaining an assertive manner, which communicates itself to other road users (particularly giving the message “no, you can’t just squeeze past, actually” to following traffic and “no, I’m not a small enough target for you to miss if you overtake now” to oncoming morons with heavy boots) and also keeps you feeling the ever-present need to focus, where chosing the least dynamic line along the middle of the lane can give you a false sense of security. It increases your view round left-handers, of course, too. But again here’s the danger of simple rules: how much space will you need to find out that this more exposed position isn’t any good anymore? If that dipstick does decide to overtake coming towards you, can you switch to a more defensive inside position? What about crossing the line of crap along the middle to get there?

So indeed, another very useful position to take can be to the left of centre, off the gravel but out of the way of oncoming traffic, including lorries dragging buffeting bow waves of air and numpties pulling out to overtake them. As I encounter road ends on the left or right I would favour the opposite side of my lane.

Finally, one-and-a-half feet from the centre line or the kerb should be considered just another rough guide. There may be better positions due to reasons of road surface or angles of view at junctions, giving subtle messages to other road users, etc.

The good news is that driving examiners are generally more impressed by the rider who shows good judgement, assessing the road ahead flexibly and intelligently, than one who blindly follows formulae, and this seems to be increasingly so, although there are still serious or dangerous errors that they have to fail you on.

Unfortunately, on that last practice run I tried to put my new-found knowledge into practice and nearly fell off the bike at a junction, not directly because of applying any particular technique, but because I was so busy trying to put them all together that I was distracted from basic bike control. I tried to set off from an almost-stop and had accidentally put the bike into neutral instead of first, so toppled and had to put a foot down. If I’d been on test at that point it would have probably been a serious fault, but I was convinced I’d have failed about 20 times by then anyway. I came home dejected and expecting to fail the next day.

But I kept searching and found this excellent article by Kevin Williams, who didn’t just nearly topple over on a 125, but “demolished [his] 400-Four” due to over-zealous rear observation, he said, going on to present an altogether better and more up-to-date approach. I’ve now read several of the Riding Skills articles there and have to say they’re extremely well crafted, encouraging and down to earth. It was just what I needed the evening before my test day, summed up in the sentence “The riding test seems to have finally accepted that mirrors are there for a purpose and that they are an easy way of finding out what is behind you” and this paragraph:

Mirrors should be checked regularly, even when riding in a straight line on a road which appears to present no hazards. On the open road, you will probably be checking mirrors every ten seconds or so. You need this information to update the 360 degree mental map that you should be keeping in your head. If you ignore the view to the rear, sooner or later something will take you by surprise, when you least need it.

The shoulder check or “lifesaver” is vitally important, but at the right times and for the right reasons, as that article and this clearly describe. Done at the wrong time, or too much, the lifesaver could be a life taker.

On the day of the test I set off early to get some last-minute practice in, but with a new approach to the whole thing, based on the principles of:

1. trying to remain physically and mentally relaxed, and
2. scanning, planning and acting within that 360-degree mental map

Now, I must not give the impression that this is a simple formula that anyone can put into practice and immediately be ready to pass the driving test! I have about 15 years of motorcycling under my belt, besides the driving instructor training and an overall 40 years of experience of honing my road craft, including as a cyclist and car driver. This made a massive difference to me partly – and perhaps mainly – because it allowed me to return to something much closer to my usual riding system, which took a lot of pressure off me. Things would be somewhat different for a younger or less experienced rider.

Nevertheless, I think these are excellent principles to put at the centre of anyone’s approach to road sense, and should help with the incorporation and application of new techniques at any stage.

Relaxation
Relaxation is an underestimated quality. Most of us know from personal experience that anxiety can impair performance, and it’s pretty common knowledge that we can only deal with so much information at one time. As we concentrate on getting it right for a test, there is a tendency for us to tighten up physically and become less capable mentally. The conditions of mental and physical relaxation are intimately connected, so it’s very easy to get into a negative spiral: more anxiety leads to gripping the bike harder, and that interferes with your control, which makes you feel more anxious. The trick is to recognise this tendency and interrupt it, making yourself relax physically and mentally, until your natural riding style is relaxed. Obviously there is a happy medium – if you relax too much you fall off!

In particular, unnecessary tension tends to creep in to the upper body and arms. The bars should be held reasonably firmly, but with some looseness in the elbow, not with body weight pushing down on straight arms. It can help a lot to move the muscular action down to the legs and squeeze the tank between them, feeling the upper body becoming looser.

Relaxing seems to make everything easier almost instantly. Tension makes your 3D world close in around you and time seems to rush past. Relaxation opens you up to observe where you are better and everything seems to slow down, giving you more time to think. I found regular mention of this in relation to module 1 on bike forums. It was almost a mantra: “Relax and you’ll be alright mate” – and in practising my u-turns and figure eights in an empty carpark I was amazed to discover just how much truth there was in that. Keep getting rid of the tension. You become much more aware of your sense of balance and you feel the operation of the bike better, the revs, the speed, the biting point, everything.

On the carpark or out on the road, you react much better, too, if you’re relaxed. There’s a whole deeper level of this I could go into to do with meditation, but I’ll save it for another time.

It’s not easy keeping calm. My examiner, following in a car for some unknown reason, told me on the intercom to pull over at the side of the road in the layby coming up. We were on a narrow country lane, probably only six foot wide and actually one-way, unusually. I was approaching a wide house entrance with lots of room and began to pull over there. He started saying (almost irritably, I thought) “No, not there; go round the corner and stop in the layby”. I moved on, round the corner, which had a wider portion on the outside of the bend. Since this was quite a tight bend, and I was thinking of it as a passing place (stupidly: it’s one-way), I thought he meant there was a layby further on “round the corner”, as he’d said. He raised his voice again as I was virtually past it altogether, telling me “There, that’ll do just in there!”. I obviously wasn’t as calm as I thought (and maybe it’s not very easy doing his job either), because as I jammed on the brakes and wobbled into the last few inches of space, looking round to check for possible traffic, I ranted, “That’s not a fucking layby, for fuck’s sake!” or similar. I thought there was a strong possibility he would fail me, but I planned to have something to say about it if he did. It’s not fair to tell someone to do something so counterintuitive as stop on a tight bend. It’s one of the places they tell you specifically not to stop. Just because it’s one-way doesn’t make it ok..probably. It was also quite a steep hill (down – he wasn’t doing this for a hill-start but to begin the independent driving section). See that’s the time you have to take a deep breath, not shout too loud or use the middle finger hand signal.

The Mental Map
So there you are traveling along the road at the centre of a 360-degree sweep of activity. You keep track of this as a kind of mental map, which you update all the time. Danger could arise from anywhere, although of course the potential for it is concentrated in certain places. Traveling forward, your main concern most of the time should be assessing what lies ahead, while stopped in traffic you might need to monitor things more evenly, or with some other emphasis, perhaps to the side or even rearward. Of course, you don’t sweep round like a radar, but you should have that sense of knowing (or getting to know) what’s happening everywhere around you.

At one point on my module two I was waiting at a junction that was just beyond a bus station. On approach I clocked the bus trying to cross the traffic to enter my lane. The driver waited, but as I pulled up he was in my blind spot, so I kept a keen eye on the bus, the traffic passing in front of it and the queue of traffic behind me with a regular right shoulder check, as this was a significant potential hazard. If someone flashed him to come out, or he decided to barge across the lane to stake his claim to the road, I wanted to know about it in good time. Of course, I also wanted to make it clear to my examiner, sitting on my tail, that I had noticed this danger and was monitoring the situation.

The Shoulder Check in More Detail
The good news is that if you regularly update your mental map with mirror checks, the Driving Standards Agency has twigged, you don’t have to act like a nodding dog on a parcel shelf anymore. There are times when the shoulder check is absolutely essential, but if you’re not doing too many you’re more likely to remember them, and you don’t give other motorists confusing messages.

I’m still a novice in this particular technique, I must admit, and one of my biggest lessons has been the importance of doing more shoulder checks. Only a week ago I would ride for hours and not do a single lifesaver, relying on my regular mirror checking alone.

By the time of the test I wasn’t at all clear how far my head turning round would be taken as a shoulder check by the examiner. Clearly he thought they were fine, because none of my three minor faults were on observation. I tried to make the required ones fairly clear, but once or twice I thought that wasn’t enough. It was often not clear where the crossover was between a mirror check (which, as all the advice seemed to suggest I should, I was emphasising so he’d not miss me doing them) and a shoulder check (which I didn’t emphasise, partly because I’m not used to them and partly because I know you’re not supposed to crane your head round too much). Typical of me – I was beginning to get to grips with all this on the freaking day.

But I think I’ve realised that, for someone following, it’s probably difficult to tell the difference anway. One thing that seems not to be mentioned in any of the materials I’ve read is precisely how you perceive what may be in your blind spot. The better articles do at least explain where it is – it extends from where your peripheral vision ends when looking ahead to what you can see at the outer edge of your mirror, but the missing piece of information I’m referring to is that when you perform a shoulder check, you assess the contents of the blind spot in your peripheral vision, while you turn your head to the side. This is important information for understanding the technique, I believe. With my head turned only 45 degrees to the side, I can see almost to 180 degrees behind me (as I sit here – I haven’t tried with a helmet on, which might limit it a bit more).

That would explain why some of my less obvious checks were considered good (and did seem functional to me), even though I hardly seemed to turn my head. The other great thing about this fact is that the peripheral vision in the other direction – towards the direction of travel – still covers a fair amount of what’s in front of me while I’m “looking behind”.

In fact, I’m not really looking behind. The way the purpose of a shoulder check is often described is to “look into the blind spot”, but you don’t look directly at the blind spot. Your line of sight isn’t in that direction – it is more to the side of you, and your eyes turn in their sockets, so your head isn’t even turned that far. What happens is that your peripheral vision confirms the emptiness of the blind spot, or picks up the possible hazard there. You do it early enough to abandon the manoeuvre if you have to.

This is another thing that makes the shoulder check weird, that most of the time it’s not about looking at anything. 99.9% of the time, there’s nothing there to see. You could say the shoulder check is a “not looking at nothing” (before it hits you): if you’re looking directly at it, you’ve turned too far and could adversely affect your steering and balance; if it’s a something, you abandon the manoeuvre it precedes.

Well, that completes my backward glance at passing my module 2! I don’t know how much more I’ll write about road safety, but hopefully I’ll return to the subject in coming months. One thing that came out of watching the videos mentioned above is how useful biker videos are for discussing and demonstrating road safety. I’ve done a few test videos myself that I’ve put on youtube, and I might explore this aspect further. I wonder what the picture quality would be like through that plastic screen now I’ve taken the L-plate off. I might write a bit more about the mod 1 later, too.

If you’re about to take either test, good luck and remember: relax and be at the control-centre of your 360 degrees. Show your examiner that you do the required things, but you’re making responsible decisions for yourself all the time. That’s what makes a safe driver, not having to be told everything. Your attitude will be very influential, affecting all the examiner’s subjective judgements right from the start. And even if you think you’ve failed, try to ignore it and carry on. The worst thing would be to find you hadn’t then, but did later because you stopped caring.

Camping beside the Cleveland Way near Sneck Yate Bank. My adapted racing bike and Terra Nova Competition one-person tent.

I suppose I really ought to begin this with an apology to the owner of this lovely piece of land, not that you’re likely to read my blog – you’re probably far too busy trying to eke out a living working the land – but if you do…sorry. I didn’t ask your permission to camp the night, partly because I didn’t know where to find you, but mainly because I was utterly exhausted. The second thing I should do is appeal to every other wild camper to respect the countryside and leave it, within reason, as we find it. Wild camping and “stealth” camping are slightly thorny issues, but the bottom line is that, in most of the prettier parts of England, we are tresspassing, strictly speaking, on many occasions, if we don’t ask permission to camp, and the practice is only as common as it is because of the generally good nature of landowners (and, perhaps, the hassle and expense of trying to sue someone). I might get into all that again later, but for now I just want to write a bit about my camping trip.

Here’s the bike, a Marinoni frame with mostly the original Campagnolo fixtures.

Er, that's far too much gear, mate...

My Bike

I’ll interupt this to say a bit more about my pushbike. If you’d rather just read about the trip, skip on to the next heading. The frame is a racer, and a rather top-end make, but I’ve replaced the narrow racing wheels for some bog-standard alloy tourers after the front wheel went down an expansion gap in a level crossing, bent badly and nearly caused me serious injury. I also replaced the pedals for some simple plastic ones.

The bike came to me by accident. I found it resting against a skip out the back of Morrisons, where I worked at the time. It seemed abandoned, but that was suspicious, since who would leave a racing bike in perfect working order unattended and unlocked leaning against a skip? I asked around all day. I moved it to somewhere a little safer, but left a note in case someone came for it. By the evening, I decided it must have been stolen and dumped, put up more notices, and threw it in the back of my van to take home. Now, with hindsight, I know that I should have taken it to the police station. Someone might have claimed it. You never know. I feel rather guilty, because I didn’t do that. I pretended to myself that putting up notices would be enough. It was probably nicked miles away and the owner might have reported it, and if I’d taken it to the police that person could have got it back. Sorry, mate. I guess I probably thought it was alright because I hadn’t stolen it; “finders keepers” I probably said to myself. I liked it very much. I didn’t have a bike. I had no idea that it was a good make. The strange thing is that if you’ve ever seen the logo for Marinoni and the logo for Morrisons, you’ll know that they’re almost identical, a capital M inside an ellipse inside a square, and when I saw that stamped on the frame I thought, stupid me, I didn’t realise we had our own delivery bikes here. Maybe someone else had found it dumped earlier, after its little excursion, and thought they were bringing it home to us!

So anyway, that was about 1992 or something, 17 years ago. I’ve loved it since, although it’s actually far too big for me, and then I decided to do some modifications for cycle touring and camping. This summer I made some front pannier frames out of aluminium that I had lying around, mainly because the forks don’t have the usual fitting holes for mudguards, which most front frames utilise. Of course, it would be a simple job to buy some and make a small alteration, a bracket at the bottom or something, but since I had to alter them I might as well start from scratch and save myself a few quid.

DIY front pannier rack

The horizontal bar is L-section aluminium with two short slots cut in the upper face to accept the lugs on the pannier back and bolted to the forks via a simple bracket and rubber mounts. The other end is bolted to the diagonal, which is made from some carpet joining strip, with a hole drilled for the axle end to go through. Another piece of the same forms the small extension with a similar hole drilled, pointing down from the axle and has a lug at the bottom for the pannier lower attachment. The axle nuts are just tightened up to hold these two pieces together against the fork dropouts.

I considered not having the diagonal connection bar, and overcoming the tendency for the horizontal to rotate foward by placing the upper pannier lugs either side of the fork. This would reduce the weight a little, but in the end I went for the stronger, triangulated design, which also kept the pannier further forward away from my feet on a tight turn.

Here you can see the lugs on the pannier back slotted into the frame. If you fit things like this, it’s useful to fashion a curve on the bracket to help hold it in line with the fork, and to pad both sides with rubber to protect the paint and give the mounting a little bit of give.

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Pannier rack fitting close-up

We found the black rear panniers that you can see on the earlier picture in a cupboard, the “wife” and I, and we both had no idea where they came from. They would be perfect, I thought, for the rear carrier, with some hi-vis stripes ironed on and various other modifications to the fittings.

That meant that my old separate panniers from the back could be hung on the front wheel, which is what serious touring cyclists do, as any fool knows. For one thing, you need to carry more than you can get on the back; for another, it balances the bike much better that way.

The little patch of silvery plastic on the rear pannier is another addition I made – a solar-rechargeable torch, fastened with velcro – or at least some Velcro(TM)-like hook-and-loop stuff. This worked for the one trip, until I ripped it off a little too quickly and the inevitable happened, the hooky bit was more adhesive than the glue sticking it to the torch.

The handlebar bag is also a do-it-yourself job, an old camera bag, which I suspended with cord and some of those spring-loaded D-clips you can get in outdoors shops, the latter just clipped onto the brake cables where they enter the brake lever housing. That’s not really best practice, but I was sick of trying things that didn’t work, with this and two other bags, and this did work.

The bag was suspended by the loops where the shoulder strap had been attached, just above the side pockets, so all it needed was securing below to stop it swinging back and forth, which I did even less technically, clipping it to the looped-wire spring of the front brake. I know, I know…! Again, it worked, only needing adjusting at one point on the outward journey when the cords lengthened and the bottom began to rub on the tyre.

I was chuffed to bits with this bag, because it had moveable compartments made of foam padding, so I could set it up nicely to protect my camera, and it was big enough for tons of other gear, phone, wallet, field glass, compass, kitchen sink… I put it “backwards” so the top opened away from me. The pocket nearest me was big enough for a map, and I gave it a spray of silicone waterproofing.

The Trip

I have referred to this trip since as a nightmare and a failure, but in reality it was a steep learning curve and involved some really good parts. It was, after all, my first ever cycle camping trip involving wild camping. My only other cycle camping was during a single journey from Harrogate to Oxford spanning about four days and three nights spent on commercial sites. I had only been wild camping once, spending a dreadfully stormy night on the moors, having gone there on the bus and then a few miles on foot. After that I realised that I wasn’t up to carrying a pack on my back. Either I needed more practice and workouts to get fitter, or those days were just behind me now. I hope it’s the former and I do a little backpacking too in coming years, but for now I turned my attention to cycle-camping, letting the bike take the strain.

This trip was rather  a catalogue of mistakes, a lesson in how not to do cycle camping. Mistake number one was setting off too late. Despite thinking that I’d done most of the packing the day before, it seemed to take forever to get the last bits done that morning, and I set off about 1:30 pm. That’s only a mistake if you intend to go a long way, and I did.

Now, I should point out that some people will consider this a short way, a quick spin on the bike, I know that, before I reveal how far that is. Actually, I didn’t even know how far it was (and still don’t) – that’s mistake number two – I just had a spot in mind, from looking at the map and google earth, and I thought it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get there. A rough guess would be about 45 to 50 miles. Insane.

I could probably do 50 miles without too much difficulty if it was fairly flat and I didn’t have any luggage. I know that I average about 10 miles an hour and I’m sure I can sit and peddle for 5 hours, but for that I’d have to set off in good time, and the route wasn’t flat, and I had an insane weight of gear on the bike, I estimate somewhere in the region of 17kg. Why so much? Well, I was hoping to be pretty well self-sufficient for about 5 days, for no good reason, and that meant carrying more food, more clothing and a few other extras like a hand-wound torch with built-in charger for when my mobile battery was low. Even so, mistake number three was to pack far too much. At the last minute I was still trying to decide whether to take only a pair of sandals, only sneakers or both, and ended up taking both. I had a similar difficulty deciding whether to take a half-litre vacuum flask of hot water to have a cup of tea on the way (and to keep water hot while camping, too), and ended up doing so – a ridiculous luxury, I now realise.

I set off through Knaresborough and out to Ferrensby, then West across to Aldwark Bridge, and enjoyed the ride. Most of the first hour or so it was raining lightly, which was refreshing. I stopped once to shelter under a tree when there was a heavy downpour.

Mistake number four, however, was that I didn’t stop and eat or drink enough. The flask did me a couple of cups of tea, and I ate some Brazil nuts from time to time, and I drank probably about another half litre of water. The first mistake, setting off late, played on my mind, so that instead of stopping and having a good meal in a pub or resting for longer, I kept pushing on, and I got some of that mission mentality, like this was some macho test of stamina.

I then rode North through the villages on the York plain towards the moors, and I think I went into a weird kind of mental blank.

Approaching Oldstead and White Horse Hill

Kilburn White Horse

That was the view ahead, White Horse Hill, and that was the hill I intended to climb, but I wouldn’t be finished by a long chalk, pardon the pun. My journey was supposed to continue over the moors to the top of Sneck Yate Bank, then go East down the hill into Hawnby, then climb again over the Osmotherly road across more moorland.

I did get to the top of White Horse Hill. I had to push the bike up it. In fact, I was so knackered by then I had to push it for about 20 paces and take a rest, over and over. Even if I had mountain-climbing gears instead of racing ones I would probably have got off and pushed. The little road wound up and up. I thought I’d never get to the top. I didn’t time it, but had the feeling that it took me most of an hour.

Part of the problem was that I didn’t have a clear destination or route, and by this time I was scouting for suitable campsites. That’s ok, except that if you don’t stop to camp, you might waste time looking at a spot and trying to decide what to do. Not being used to this game, I was constantly trying to weigh up how much daylight I had left, how much energy I had left to pitch the tent, find water, cook and so on before losing the light, and how confident I felt that something better might turn up in the next few miles. In fact, I was beginning to scout for campsites long before reaching White Horse Hill, and I only took the detour to Oldstead because it looked more promising on the map. This meant more wasted time and energy, because, although there were places I could have camped, I got another fit of machismo and wanted to push on and get higher.

White Horse Hill itself would probably be a bad place to camp, being quite a hot-spot for tourists and, no doubt, early-morning dog walkers. Once I was up on the higher ground, I began searching more seriously, now giving up the idea of getting all that way to my intended destination past Hawnby.

It was then that I remembered the wonderful view from a little track that I’d seen just at the top of Sneck Yate Bank (as I used to live in Hawnby and communted along that route most days), and decided to investigate it for camping potential. There was nowhere suitable to pitch a tent there, but I saw a stand of trees nearby, marked on the map as High Barn, and saw that there were a few springs marked too a little way off. The trees would give me some shelter from the elements, and I would just have to hope that I could find water. I only had about half a litre left.

High Barn

I opened the gate and pushed my bike over the rough grass on the bridleway, part of the Cleveland Way, up to High Barn and chose a good spot down behind some piles of brushwood between the trees. There was quite a stiff breeze blowing, but behind these it was nice and still. The photo above was taken the next day, of course. By this time it was late evening.

I was exhausted. I pitched the tent and got the stove out to make some dinner. However, the endless decision-making continued: should I try to find a source of water first, or try to eke out the small amount I had left. I’ve lost count of how many bad decisions I made by this point, but this was the next. It was beginning to get dark rapidly, and that put me off trying to search for springs or streams down the hillside by torch-light for obvious safety reasons. Who knows, it may have been a good decision, a life-saving decision. Certainly it made sense at the time not to go trudging about over land I didn’t know in the dark. I had passed some big puddles on the way along the bridleway, which also persuaded me that this was the best decision, since I wasn’t going to die of thirst. It seemed best to put the dinner on with what little water I had (carrying only dried food, obviously) and hunker down for the night.

So that’s what I did. Unfortunately, I put a little too much of the dried vegetable soup in the pan for the “sauce”, and then, worst of all, I put some pasta in as well. The resulting thick gloop was hard to get down, and the pasta just didn’t cook, but merely sat there soaking up some of the precious water and turning to a rubber consistency. When you’re very tired, often you get past eating. You don’t feel hungry, and have to tell yourself to eat for the sustenance. I tried to eat what I could of the soup-gloop without throwing up, went to do what bears do in the woods, enjoying the view of the lights of villages all across the plain below, and went to bed after a quick phone-call to my partner and then a text with my map coordinates.

Now things didn’t improve at this point. I had chosen carefully the bit of ground that gave the best compromise between shelter and surface, but I’d given too much emphasis to the shelter. I realised it was a bit lumpy and rather damp, but figured that the lumps were damp clay, and I could easily thump them down to make a flatter bed. Once in my sleeping bag, however, I found that they were harder than I realised, and so began that well-known camper’s routine of shuffling round most of the night, trying to fit one’s limbs between the lumps. Despite overpacking on most things, I had rather skimped on the mat, using a couple of layers of the yellow plastic underlay that goes under wooden floors (a tip from another camper on a forum), and my sleeping bag was pretty thin too. I had a slight headache, probably from mild dehydration. It was colder than I expected. I slept intermittently, then deeply after the sun came up.

I woke up rather too hot and unzipped the tent to cool down. I thought that it wouldn’t be long before people started coming past – this was probably quite a popular route of a weekend, and it was Saturday. It was very pleasant basking in that warmth, but I knew that I had to get up and start finding water. I collected up what I would need, remembering to take my valuables with me, and set off to see what “spring” on the map would actually translate into. The view from here made it all worth it.

The view from High Barn

As I set off I saw someone coming towards me, a man walking a couple of dogs, so I said hello and asked if he was local. I said I was off to find a spring or stream, and did he know of a good place. He said there were some springs further down the hill, but he didn’t know if they were running or not. He said that he knew the farmer who owned the land, after I made apologetic noises about camping, and that he wouldn’t mind. He pointed to the farm house, which wasn’t more than half a mile away, and suggested that I should call and ask to have my water bottle filled.

Now this is a curious issue that I’ve thought about quite a lot since then, but it isn’t really a favourable proposition to me, getting tap water from houses and farms. Part of the reason is that I’m camping where I shouldn’t without permission, partly it’s because I’m trying to manage without home comforts like running water, and part of the picture is certainly my generally introverted nature. I cycle off into the hills to be on my own. I had passed a pub in Oldstead, where the smell of food and beer mingled with the soft murmur of voices, and didn’t stop. This tendency, I’ve decided, is stupid. It’s not like I’m supposed to be living off the land like a commando. It’s supposed to be a biking holiday!

I descended the hill, following the map, and found the nearer of the two springs marked. It was disappointing, being not much more than an area of mud. This is a common occurence. It’s not a good idea to take springs marked on maps at face value. Sometimes there may not even be any trace of water at the surface.

I continued further downhill, nearer to the farmhouse, and found the other. That was more like it, a circular depression about ten feet across full of murky water, but with a relatively clear trickle flowing out and down the stream bed. The only problem was reaching the water across the mud all around, but I found some good spots, washed my pots and then moved upstream a little to fill my water bottle, my “dirty” water bottle, that is, and I also scooped some into a plastic bag. It was hard to get much for the mud and the debris running into whatever was placed in the flow. I three-quarter filled the bottle by gently pushing it down into the mud, holding the lip upstream at the surface. It was then that I realised I had hardly got any better water than I’d passed in those puddles, but at least it wasn’t standing water.

Back at camp I set up my home-made filter and filtered the least dirty of the water into the pan to make coffee. The filter is just an old plastic pill container, a cylindrical pot with a lid, into the bottom of which I melted a few holes; I lined this with cotton wool, poured a small measure of the contents of a Brita(TM) filter cartridge in and placed more cotton wool over the top to leave the bulk of the volume as a reservoir for the dirty water. It works pretty well just placed in a pan, as long as you’re careful not to spill the dirty water directly into the pan (or it’s not critical anyway, which it certainly wasn’t this time). I think the Brita stuff gets rid of a fair amount of any chemical polution that might be present, and, of course, does a pretty good job of removing the particulate matter, though not down to the micron levels that a proper outdoor ceramic filter would. I’m not sure how much of the bacteria and other nasties it kills, but I was going to boil it anyway, which does the rest.

Readers may repeat experiments with Brita filter materials outdoors at their own risk! I did email them to ask their opinion on how suitable their products are for such pursuits, and kindly offering them my free consultatory expertise as a novice outdoorsman – there may be a gap in the market – but I’ve heard nothing back. They’ve probably filed it under “Top Secret: New Product Development”, or “Crank Emails”. I think there must be a gap in the market. Everything else seems to be heavy and/or bulky and, although it might remove all known pathogens in one go without boiling, I’m sure there are a few folks like me who just want to improve the clarity and remove a good percentage of any pollutants.

The bloody stove ran out of gas next. I’ve got one of those [name to be inserted], that is basically an oversized cigarette lighter: you fill it up at the base with butane from a cigarette-lighter-refill canister, and it has a knob to turn it on with an integrated button for the piezo-electric spark. The first trip I used it, I bust the knob by overtightening it and had a cold dinner, but I made a repair later. I’ve not used it much yet, but on this trip I noticed that it does seem to empty pretty quickly, or I haven’t managed to fill it fully. It’s hard to tell whether it’s still taking gas when you fill it, and, unhelpfully, the instructions don’t say if you should use any of the adaptors (that are listed for different lighters on most cans of fuel), so I just do it with none of them. The other downsides with these things are that they’re no good at altitude (you need a different fuel – propane, I think) and they’re not exactly very lightweight either, I guess because of the need for a good strong metal case to hold the pressurized gas; then you have to take a refill. It’s one of the things on my list to look into improving for next season. On the other hand, it has advantages: it’s odourless, relatively safe (the flame is controlled and more visible than some fuels), compact (I carry mine inside a 1-litre cooking pan along with the stove’s dismantled base pieces, a washing-up sponge and the pan handle), and cheap. The base, however, is already wearing at its joints, making it a lot less safe, and I have replaced this with my own design which is smaller and stronger and lighter (more of that scrap aluminium).

Anyway, the stove running out meant letting it cool down before filling it, and while I was waiting for that along came a couple of very chatty walkers who kept me from my morning cup of coffee for another twenty minutes as we compared tents, stoves, routes and prefered methods of travel. They were very kind and offered me some of their water, but I was fine, thanks.

Finally I got some coffee made (with powdered milk, of course, but I don’t mind that), as more people filed passed saying hello and commenting on how late I was having breakfast. Breakfast? Jesus, it took all morning to fetch water, filter and heat it and make a cup of fucking coffee. I’d get round to breakfast in good time. One of the lovely things about the outdoor life is that you appreciate ordinary luxuries more. You can’t just fall out of bed and switch a light on, turn a tap, flick a switch, open a cupboard and hey-presto, there’s your coffee.

I enjoyed that coffee, and then I made porridge for lunch. I lazed in the sun for a while, and began thinking about what to do next.

This trip had had to be fitted in between other commitments, and all along I’d been a bit disappointed by the weather forecast. It was lovely that day, but Sunday was supposed to bring very heavy rain, and then it was meant to ease off a bit after that. When I set off I was ignoring the implications, that I might spend a lot of time sitting in the tent in the rain, but now the idea seemed rather depressing. I could sit it out and hope things got better before long, but going home today was quite tempting, even though that made it just a one-nighter when I’d intended to have a few days to a week.

I put off that decision a little longer by focusing on the present campsite. The ground was wetter than I had realised last night, and I’d had to put a load of straw in the doorway to minimize the mud I was tramping through. The ground was lumpy. I could move the tent a little way along to a better bit, but then the water supply wasn’t very good. I could go further afield to find better water, but then I was camped on what was clearly a busy public bridleway at the weekend. The rain might keep them away tomorrow, but then we’re back to the other question again, whether I wanted to be here in the rain at all.

Would it be better to move into the woods somewhere for more shelter from the rain? No. Trees don’t really shelter you from continual rain. They shelter you from a shower, because the water sits on the leaves for a while, but if it continues it all just runs off on you anyway, bringing dirt and debris onto the tent with it.

In the end, I decided to pack up and cycle somewhere, leaving the question of where until I’d set off. This was probably another bad idea.

Uppermost in my mind was the idea of cycling on to where I had intended to go yesterday, but I had to admit that my apetite for this trip was waning, and besides, I hadn’t even seen the place. I expect that I must seem very pathetic to a lot of people. I have an anxiety disorder, I’m told (I worry about stuff too much). Anyway, this is what happened. The negative possibilities seemed to grow in my mind every time I formed a plan of action, but in particular I imagined that tomorrow would bring torrential rain and the “easing off” would be minimal. Some people would expect moderate rain and then a lovely few days afterwards to look forward to. By the time I’d got back to the road, I was beginning to think that heading home today would be best. Besides, the cycling itself was very enjoyable, whereas camping in the rain on my own might turn out to be a washout, despite having brought a book to read.

Another cyclist pulled up beside me and we had a chat. He was in all the lycra stuff on his racer and was just enjoying a spin up from Thirsk where he lived. I briefly mentioned my predicament and how I was thinking of quitting and riding home today. He said that the weather could be very unpredictable around these parts, so not to take too much heed of the forecast. It almost made me change my mind, but by now I had cycled in the wrong direction for a while and I didn’t want to start taking the whole thing apart again. He cycled off ahead and I continued to “quit”, as it felt. Even as I did so I had big doubts about the wisdom of this. By now it was mid-afternoon, perhaps around 4 pm. and much later than I’d set off yesterday, and I was tired from the outward journey. My trip meter said it was 35 miles, although it would be more downhill and I could avoid the detours, making it more like 33, but this was a crazy decision, the worst one yet. I kind of knew it at the time.

I continued, and whizzed down White Horse Hill in a matter of minutes, just a little concerned for my brakes. That was that. I realised that my worst error the day before was in not stopping enough, eating enough and drinking enough, so I vowed to stop at the next pub and have a jolly good nosh before the trip home, which might take me well into the evening.

I did stop in Coxwold, but only had a pint of bitter shandy and a packet of crisps. I didn’t feel like eating any more than that, and just packed another packet of crisps for later. I asked the barman if he’d fill my water bottle with tap water, I chucked away the remains of my filtered water and set off.

I made good progress at first, helped by knowing most of the turns without having to check the map. However, I got complacent at one point, went the wrong way and added another 4 miles to the journey. This was unfortunate, as it was just when my morale was about at its lowest anyway and I was really flagging.

It was only a few miles further on that I decided that it would be most sensible to phone my partner and ask her to come out the remaining 8 miles in the car and pick me up. It honestly wasn’t just a failure of guts and determination. It became a serious medical decision, because by that time my neck was giving me appalling amounts of pain from the riding position and the cool breeze on it, despite a home-made buff. It was dark and getting colder, and there was the prospect of a number of steep hills, the worst being the last half a mile up from the Nidd valley at Knaresborough. I was pushing my bike up Gallabar Hill towards Marton and the A1 when I called, at about 9 pm.

I could have got home in about an hour to an hour and a half, and wouldn’t mind the exhaustion – indeed I would revel in my suffering and success  – but there was a good chance that I would have grave issues with my spine, and that was not worth the trouble. Another solution would be to just stop and pitch, but in my condition I thought that was also a stupid option. I had blown the chance of making this a nice cycle-camping trip. I had overdone it massively on the mileage over two days for my age and condition, and now it was finally time to do the sensible thing rather than make it worse by causing myself more suffering. It was wonderful to get home. I had beans on toast and several cups of decaf and began to feel human again

Even with quitting early, my neck has been pretty painful and stiff for many weeks. I hate to think what it would have been like if I’d pressed on.

The lessons from this first cycle-wild-camp are many. My legs were hardly stiff at all, so I know that I’m up to that level of physical work. It wasn’t the peddling that did me in. It was poor attention to food and drink, combined with the riding position and my neck problem.

I’m planning to replace the drops with a straight handlebar or even something more cruiser-like for a more upright position. However, I’m now considering whether further messing about with my old racer that’s too big for me anyway is sensible, or if I’d rather splash out and get something more suitable. I’m crap at making decisions, that’s clear, but last time I thought about it I was in favour of sticking with it, putting a new handlebar on, refitting the whole gear train with a “stump puller” and getting a sprung saddle, as my behind is going to take more of a battering if I sit more upright.

I remember reading that one of the most important things in a touring cycle is comfort, and that any reduction in pace from the wind on your chest is more than made up for by being able to keep going longer. It was in Richard’s New Bicycle Book, and for that reason he considered a mountain bike a good choice for touring, to my surprise. I don’t think he means those cheap 30 kg things that pass for mountain bikes, though, but a grand-or-so’s worth. Hmmm….

It was pretty sickening that I’d made such a hash of the trip, especially as I began to analyse it and realise what bad decisions I’d made all along. Even worse, the next day, supposed to be heavy rain according to the Met Office, was fair, as was the rest of the week. If I had only decided to move from High Barn and find a new camp, I would probably have had a good time up on the moors, and I wouldn’t have had the painful and aborted trip home. I could have rested up, sunbathed, chilled out, and set off several days later for a nice relaxed ride home. Oh well, you live and learn.

Going back to the garage about the squeak!

I did, and to be honest it’s been a bit of a let down. I’m beginning to enjoy it in recent months, but only on fairly short runs, and there was a long time when I didn’t want to bother with it. While I was still waiting for it to arrive I began doing up my push-bike, and by the time it did I would have preferred not to have bought it at all.

It’s ok I suppose, but the main thing about it is that it’s not really for me. All my careful deliberation on the theory of what sort of bike I wanted was pretty well wasted time, mainly because I’m getting on a bit and am more susceptible to aches and pains, especially from chills in the breeze whilst riding in slightly awkward positions. I couldn’t take it for a test ride, of course, which might have flagged the problem up, but I soon found that the racing style – a relatively hard and narrow seat combined with low bars – meant that I was quite uncomfortable after only a few miles, both in the deriere and neck area.

The latter was certainly made worse by a cycle trip on my push-bike, carrying an insane amount of gear in four panniers, tail pack and handlebar bag, 35 miles up onto the North Yorkshire moors (via White Horse Hill, which took me about an hour to push the thing up!), and back the following day. It was my first cycle-camping trip since I was in my twenties, and I caused myself such dreadful pain in the neck that I phoned “her indoors” with about the last 12 miles to go and got her to pick me up in the car. Even so, my neck has been really bad since then. I have got to keep it warm if I go out on either machine now. I’m doing some remedial yoga to help keep it loosened up as the Autumn comes on.

Other things that got me down about the bike were that the rear tyre is more worn than I realised and the bike squeaks quite a bit as it rolls, noticable at low speeds. I rode it down to Castleford to ask for some advice, but they said that both were fine – loads of tread left and some bikes do squeak like that, but it’ll probably go off in time; it’ll be the brake pads just slightly touching the discs most likely… I’ve noticed that I can stop it sometimes by putting the rear brake on for a second, as though it’s that it doesn’t quite disengage sometimes, but I still feel that this must be a fault – I just haven’t had time to find out more about it yet.

In terms of the looks of the bike and my general ownership of it, things have changed now. It turns heads occasionally, and I do love the thing, but I also look at Van-vans and suchlike with envy and wonder what it’s like to pootle about on those sedate things with their soft, wide saddles and fat tyres and slightly more upright position.

A trip up to Pateley Moor

The CBR is fairly nippy, but needs to keep buzzing at moderately high revs to have any kind of decent torque, which is another thing I dislike. I remember by old CB125 and how you could open it up with the engine barely more than ticking over and it would accelerate doggedly, sounding strangely powerful for a small bike. The CBR isn’t as whiney as my Suzuki GP100, but probably doesn’t quite pull as much of a punch either, as that was a 2-stroke. It will do about 60 comfortably under normal conditions, and I’ve had it up to nearly 70 (indicated, which is probably nearer 65 in truth) with a following wind and a downhill stretch.

It’s this racing style I wasn’t used to, and I decided on it partly for the experience – so if nothing else I can now say I’ve had one and don’t like them all that much. Chugging through traffic, it is harder work than other bikes I’ve had. Of course, I’m still not used to it yet, having only put about 400 miles on the clock so far, but I don’t feel balanced as I come to a stop and set off, either. People keep saying that it’s a great bike to do your test on, but I can’t see how. I need to do some more practice at low speed – I expected to get the hang of that much quicker, and still wouldn’t really say I’m confident I could do a 180 in the road without putting my feet down at some point. I got used to slow turns on the learner bike in a few minutes!

So I’ll probably get round to doing my test in coming months, maybe next Spring, and then find something very different for my “proper” bike.

Well, you've got to take one of those shots, haven't you?

On the other hand, I’m starting to feel rather attached to it in the meantime. I also have plans to make good use of it – oh, no, I’ll probably be naming her next! – as the colder weather comes on. I’ve done a couple of wild-camping trips on the pushbike over the summer, and hope to continue to do some more. However, while cycling in the cold isn’t too much of a problem, camping in the cold could mean taking a heavier-grade sleeping bag and more clothes, and the shorter days limits the distance I can go, particularly with my neck problem. I realised the other day that using the motorbike could solve both of those problems, allowing me to go further and carry more gear without strain.

Again, of course, the CBR isn’t the most sensible bike to put luggage on (and a bright orange one isn’t the best to do “stealth” camping on!), but I’m planning to make a frame that I can put the larger of my cycle panniers on. I’ve looked at a lot of motorcycle panniers online and in the shops that are “suitable” (sort of) for my bike, but I don’t think they’ll hold much compared to mine, and are short in the vertical direction, which is also a pain for the shopping trips. I realise this is to keep them above the up-swept exhaust, but I’m going to mount them higher (sacrificing the use of the pillion seat, of course), which should allow them to fit. I may put an extra metal plate above the can if necessary, too. The frame, which I intend to make from something like ply wood or strong plastic and attach vertically either side, will also allow fitting points for a tail pack. I can then buy, or fashion a rucksack into, a moderate-sized tank bag. If I need even more stuff, I could carry a small rucksack, but I don’t like riding that way.

But one of the little moments of realisation that came to me was that motorcycling in the winter I will need my thickly padded waterproof one-piece suit (one that is large enough to go over other warm clothing and afforded me the nickname “Michelin Man” in the sixth form), and that means that I’m already carrying about all the insulation I’m likely to need for the night. Embarrassing as it may be, I’m planning to get into my summer-grade sleeping bag with it on, or even dispense with the sleeping bag altogether.

Wild camping (or “stealth camping” if you will), particularly by pushbike, has been a bit of an obsession with me for a few years, but it’s taken me all that time to get organised, buy equipment, adapt my cycle and find suitable places to go. In recent weeks I’ve been prepared and finding places has been the limiting factor, other than the weather. The motorbike has been a great boon in that. I’ve been able to nip up to the North Yorkshire Moors or the Dales and quickly scout around in a tenth of the time it would take by pushbike, even without luggage.

Up on Pateley Moor

Pretty, isn’t she? Name suggestions, anyone? Sorry about the state of the pics, by the way, but I left my camera at home and just used my phone.

Well, that’s about it for the CBR news. It’s still squeaking, but not quite as badly. I haven’t had any major problems so far. The other day, after overtaking, the gearbox seemed to slip between the gears for a moment and the engine ran wild until I closed the throttle and shifted again. I guess that’s all it could be, and it is something I’ve had happen several times on other bikes, so I’m not too seriously worried, but it’s something to keep an eye on. It’s something else for the guys at Castle Motorcycles to tell me is perfectly normal!

I might have bought a bike that was ready to ride away, but I wanted to get one from a dealer for my relative peace of mind, and they generally need servicing before you collect them. I put the deposit down on mine last Saturday, and it’s now Friday, which was when I was going to pick it up. In the interim I’ve got my insurance and I’m ready, but I already phoned to put it off.

It was quite windy yesterday, and I checked the Met Office website for a forecast: the last thing I wanted to do was ride my new bike away from the shop in a gale. Looking out, I decided that how it was then was somewhere near my limit – if it was easing off tomorrow I’d be ok, but if it was about the same or worse I shouldn’t risk it. You need some time to get used to a new bike, and one of the most dangerous conditions for riding is high winds, especially with strong gusts. The windspeed in the Yorkshire region, according to the Met Office, was 18 mph, gusting up to 34 mph. The forecast for today was for winds of 26 mph with gusts up to 41 mph. Saturday (tomorrow) was back to Thursday’s kind of speeds, and Sunday was supposed to be as calm as a millpond. Since it made sense to avoid the Saturday shopper traffic, too, for my first ride, I phoned and said I’d pick it up on Sunday. I think they were glad of the extra time to fit their servicing in.

There’s really no way I’d set off to ride a bike in this. I’ve checked the website again and it’s worse than yesterday’s forecast, 23 mph with gusts to 43 mph. The steady windspeed is slightly less than yesterday’s forecast said, but it’s the gusts that really cause you hell on a bike. With more experience I might be able to cope with this wind, but I’ve no idea how the bike handles, and it will take some time riding in more moderate conditions, or in this level of wind over short distances on clear roads, to be able to gauge it accurately. I’ve never ridden a bike with such extensive fairing cover, which will help it slice through a headwind nicely, but could act as a big sail to sidewinds.

Winds, especially blustery ones, are about the worst conditions for a bike, particularly because there is almost nothing you can do to compensate. There are a few things you can do, which I’ll relate below, but unlike rain, cold or snow, high winds can just make it impossible – or extremely dangerous – to ride at all, perhaps even more certainly than patches of ice on the road. Bikers are a little like ancient mariners – we have to wait for a favourable wind – although in our case it’s better if it’s dead calm or a steady light wind (and, of course, from behind). Like the captains of sailing ships, we’re stuck in port if it gets too violent out there.

It’s sometimes very problematic, because you might have ridden somewhere on a nice calm morning, only to find that the wind picks up by the time you want to return. If you’re not far from public transport or can hitch a lift in a vehicle with a few more wheels, you might take that option and collect the bike later. If not, you may have to decide whether to try to cope with the high wind somehow, or find somewhere to stay (perhaps even overnight) until the storm abates. I don’t think I’ve ever had to make an unplanned overnight stay, but I think I remember sitting around after school on more than one occasion, coming home in the late evening when the wind died down a bit. Winds are often lighter in the evening and early morning, though there’s no counting on it. Sometimes they’re steadier, even if they’re still fast.

So how do you cope with high winds on a bike? Well, the first thing to note is the big difference between a steady wind and a blustery wind. A strong wind can be relatively easy to cope with, though it requires some care: the greater danger comes when that wind suddenly changes, either faster or slower than the average. Changes in wind direction can also happen suddenly. Both these kinds of sudden change tend to throw you off balance. In a steady sidewind, even quite a powerful one, you would lean the bike towards it and that would be that – you’d hardly have any trouble at all. Unfortunately, real winds are seldom like that.

It hardly needs saying that in high winds you should reduce your speed and proceed with extreme caution. You should also pay even more attention than usual to owning your lane – all of it – the full width of which you might need to occupy at any moment. Do not ride along close to the kerb, even if you’re going very slowly, or you may end up mounting it, or being overtaken dangerously close. Also be aware that pedestrians and their belongings could be blown into your path. Everything needs a wider berth – someone getting into or out of a car might have the door pulled out of their hand by the wind; a child’s buggy could easily be tugged or tipped over; umbrellas, shopping, bin bags and other litter could come at you at any time.

As a biker facing a windy ride, you need to be aware of all these different, constantly changing, conditions. From even before you set off, you need to feel the wind on your body and watch its effects on the landscape around you. As you begin to ride you have to gradually (but as quickly as possible) gain some understanding of the conditions this particular wind is going to throw at you. You might ride for a few minutes in relatively steady wind, and it is easy as a novice to become complacent. A gust can come from nowhere and change your direction and balance in an instant. Your direction of travel relative to the wind is important, and this will change as you turn corners and as the wind itself changes.

The wind suddenly dropping is just as dangerous as it suddenly rising. As well as happening naturally from the general motion of the air over the land, this can happen due to the immediate landscape around you, including buildings and other traffic. If, for instance, you’re riding along in a steady sidewind on an open road and pass a large building, you may suddenly find yourself in a calmer patch of air and have to compensate. Worse still, the wind often reverses, or changes direction in unexpected ways behind such obstructions. It can also change when it’s on the leaward side of you, although it’s not usually as dramatic. Conversely, beware the open spaces at the ends of roads and other gaps. Sometimes in a town you can be riding in almost total calm and forget the wind, only to be hit by a massive blast from a road end, the entrance to a courtyard or similar hole in the protective wall of buildings, where it can be funnelled and reach even greater speeds than elsewhere.

The same can happen if you overtake or are overtaken, and as traffic passes in the opposite direction. Large lorries and buses can be particularly dangerous, and the wind round bridges and tunnels can be very turbulent, but even the wind blowing across a barren plain can be quite changeable.

So, as a general rule, you must be ready for the unexpected. However, the trick to this, somewhat counterintuitively, is to remain relaxed and fluid, not tighten up. You may, of course, have to tighten your grip a little on the bars, and it might also help to grip the bike between your legs, but you need to keep your body relaxed so that you can respond quickly and automatically to any sudden push. It’s a bit like the Aikido principle of moving with a blow from an opponent instead of trying to stay solidly opposed to it, which just hurts more: be like the willow rather than the oak, Glasshopper.

If the windspeed or direction hitting you changes suddenly, there is no doubt that it will result in a different natural direction of travel, and you will have to move to compensate in some way to avoid weaving too much across your lane. If this all sounds rather difficult, don’t worry – we’re talking about adjustments that your brain computes and your body makes without you having to think about them, just as you compensate automatically if you’re standing on a train and it suddenly brakes.

Many a time, a strong wind will involve repeated gusts that last for less than a second, after which the wind returns to how it was before, a fairly steady speed. With experience you may find that you can ride through these momentary changes, not adjusting your balance at all. You will be buffetted slightly off course, then come back to your line again, without any particular hazard being caused. Indeed, in most cases, you will find that you are making that judgement subconsciously all the time: which changes are momentary and which continue for a fraction of a second longer and have to be compensated for.

Riding in winds becomes easier and more natural, but there are always going to be limits. Side-winds, of course, are more dangerous, tail winds can be advantageous in terms of your progress and petrol consumption, and headwinds can slow you down to a crawl or make riding very uncomfortable, depending on the engine size and fairing cover of your bike. Crouching down is helpful in a headwind, of course. Crouching may be of some use in balancing in a side-wind, but staying relaxed and responsive is more important, and crouching might interfere with that.

A further tip that can make a big difference is to tighten your clothing in any way possible, as well as securing any flappy bits of luggage. Specialist motorcycle clothing should be quite close-fitted anyway, depending on the purpose it’s designed for, and even at 40 mph you begin to see why – the headwind you create even on a still day grabs at any loose clothing and makes it flap, causing turbulence, reducing your speed and increasing your fuel consumption. It also tires you out on longer journeys. Many jackets have adjusters on sleeves and at the waist or hem: tighten them as much as is comfortable.

If you’re wearing looser clothing that can’t be adjusted, a few rubber bands round the arms might help. It might sound strange (and look a bit odd), but it’s amazing the amount of drag caused by loose bits of clothing. The wind will pull at you less, you’ll feel much safer and more confident, and therefore relax more.

If it’s dry, keep your visor down as much as possible to avoid dust and other debris being blown into your face (if it’s raining, you’ll probably have it down anyway).

Experience – gained always with an emphasis on caution and riding well within your abilities – is a great teacher. If you live on a housing estate or have somewhere safe you can get to easily, it’s worth practising in more severe conditions than you would normally, to learn more about and extend your limits, but be very wary if you’re still on the public highway, keep your speed down and watch out for pedestrians.

Finally – something I’ve just realised from doing it myself – if you spend a bit of time checking the windspeed forecasts online, for instance at the Met Office, and compare the current conditions with the numbers, you’ll have a good idea what to expect from forecasts at a later time, perhaps when you’re planning a longer trip.

Pic of my bike

Now, I’m not going to bang on about this particular bike and how it’s the best bike in the world and all that…yet. First, I thought I’d share some of the decision-making process that I’ve been through over the last three weeks. I’m hoping that my experience might be of some use to others getting into motorcycling, or returning to it, and choosing a learner-legal 125. It might be of particular interest to other old fogies and mid-life-critical ex-bikers like myself, but if you’re a teenager and have an open mind, you might just learn something too, you never know.

I have about a decade’s experience of riding bikes. First I had a Honda SS 50, which I used to commute on from the north side of Leeds to school in Pudsey when I was 17, about 12 miles away. Then I traded it in for a Honda CB 125 when we moved to Harrogate, about twice as far from school, and my dad thought that the journey would have been pushing it for a moped.

I continued to ride my trusty CB when I went to college in Oxford, and rode back home on it in the holidays up the A and B roads – ah, that lovely old Fosse Way, I must do that journey again soon for nostalgia’s sake. I sold the Honda when I was strapped for cash several years later, and regretted it bitterly. Some time later I got my third and last bike, a Suzuki GP100, which was ridiculously fast compared to the larger displacement Honda, being a 2-stroke.

And that points to one of the first considerations: 2- or 4-stroke? Two-stroke bikes are generally quite a bit faster, both in terms of their top speed and particularly in their acceleration, but they have a higher-pitched sound, and you have to mix 2-stroke oil (either in the tank or, for more modern bikes, by filling a separate 2-stroke oil reservoir every now and then). This gives them the distinctive smell and the pall of bluish smoke, which some like, others hate, and which we should all wean ourselves off anyway for environmental reasons. Manufacturers are still making 2-stroke machines, but they’re becoming rare for consumer bikes, keeping their status in the sports market. As well as these differences, 2-strokes run hotter and take more careful maintenance, making them more trouble, more expensive to maintain and fix, and much easier to burn out. My GP100 died a death when I rode the 600 miles or so from Oxford to Inverness and beyond – which would probably be a bit of a strain even for a larger engine.

In contrast, 4-strokes, pretty much what everyone has in their cars, are more resilient, quieter, with a lower-pitched rumble that’s more pleasing to everyone except race fans. Racing should be relegated to the race track, so if your bike is for road use, just forget 2-strokes. If you need more poke for occasional racing in the appropriate place, or for off-road sports, maybe a 2-stroke will suit you. They’re a hell of a lot of fun even in the smaller end of the market. Four-strokes are fun, but it’s a more sedate kind of fun.

Two-strokes often have a narrow power band in the rev range, and require more gear changes to keep using the full power. Four-strokes tend to deliver power more evenly over the rev range.

There’s a relatively new 4-stroke 125 engine with four valves instead of two, in a few models these days, including the Derbi Mulhacen, and this has a little more oomph without losing the benefits of 4-stroke technology, but I’m not sure quite how much difference it makes, and they’re not particularly cheap.

The Derbi Mulhacen was on my shopping list last week: there was one for sale, the Cafe version, 14 miles away and I went to try it out in the shop’s carpark (although the oil light came on after about 30 seconds and the guy said we should stop). I fell in love with the Mulhacen as soon as I saw it. It’s a gorgeous bike. Unfortunately, it was sold while I was considering my decision, but I don’t mind. I’m not absolutely sure that it is “learner legal”, since it is quoted as producing 15 bhp (brake horsepower), and strictly speaking the limit for learners is 14.6 (or, in new money, 11 kW). Also, I’m not sure I trusted the seller completely, as he told me that I, as a mature learner, could ride more powerful bikes than the 11 kW limit while I was learning, which I have failed to find mentioned on the Government website, but which conveniently would include the bike he was trying to shift. Strictly speaking, he was right – I could ride faster bikes while I learned – but only accompanied by an instructor on another bike, and in radio contact, but he failed to add that little qualification. Also, I saw the power statistic for this bike stated wrongly at bikez.com, where they say it puts out 20 horsepower, and I queried how his Mulhacen could be advertised as learner legal, and he didn’t correct that massive overstatement of its power either. Cheers Baz. If that’s your real name (LOL).

Seriously, of course, you have to double check your information and take your time, unless you are absolutely sure you want a certain model and there aren’t many about.

Anyway… I can’t continue without demonstrating just how gorgeous this bike is:

Derbi Mulacen Cafe 125

See? Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I don’t imagine you could park one of these in the middle of town without a lot of admiring looks from passers by.

One of the things that attracted me to this bike, appart from its looks and the 20, er, 15 bhp (still more than most 125s), was the ground clearance. I’m a bit obsessive about choosing my purchases when they’re anything more important than a biro. I make a mental list of the features I want (and don’t want) and check each option against it, and one of my wishes was for some decent ground clearance. The wish-list is informed by my intended use, and I hoped to find a bike that would cope with some moderately difficult terrain. I hesitate to say “off-road”, because everyone immediately tells me that nothing I suggest will cope with “offroading” (including, bizarrely, the XR 125 L), because they imagine I mean racing round a dirt track doing crazy jumps or wading through swamps, crossing the Sahara, or riding up a vertical rock face, when what I mean is just that I’d like my bike to cope with getting off the tarmac and onto rocky or muddy tracks, particularly those that cross the moors and wind their way into the hills.

Honda XR 125 L

So what in hell am I doing with a CBR, a race-style bike? That would seem to be the least favourable choice for getting into the wilderness. Well, to some extent I had to compromise – I had to limit the kind of terrain I tackle, and I had to consider other uses – but the CBR’s ground clearance isn’t actually as bad as I thought even with the lower fairing; plus, I might consider removing it when I set off for a bit of wild camping in the hills, and without it there’s a lot more room underneath. The exhaust pipe is then exposed, and there’s no protective belly-pan as some of the offroad bikes have, so care will be needed, but I’m interested in getting from A to B, not how quickly I get there.

The other considerations are that the vast majority of the riding I do will be on tarmac, and I don’t want to have the disadvantages of something like the XR. In particular, I wanted to minimise the problem of 125s (especially 4-strokes) being underpowered. See, I might be working this little thing quite hard, carrying camping gear and riding most of the day, or I might be wanting to commute or have a nice long Sunday ride into the country with no luggage at all, but keep up with the traffic on A roads. Reading the reviews, my list of possible bikes shrank a lot on the number of niggles about not having a decent speed. The CBR isn’t a fast bike, of course, and there are complaints that when you hit a headwind or a big hill you slow down a lot, but the CBR seems to be one of the fastest 4-stroke 125s around. The quoted power output is 13 bhp. Many user reviews (the believable ones) report it cruising on the flat at 70 quite easily.

In contrast, the XR is quoted as about 11, and many of the reviews say the acceleration up to about 40 mph is fantastic, but after that it’s a bit of a struggle, and many report it topping out at a cruising speed of around 55 or 60. Then again, this is a bike that has big knobbly tyres, and you don’t want to be cornering too fast. There’s little in the way of fairing to speak of, certainly nothing that will reduce aerodynamic drag, and it’s an upright seating position, with a higher seat and wide handlebars, so of course you’re going to find high speeds hard work compared to something that takes its design from a racing machine and is fully faired, a small, light bike with a low saddle and lowish, narrow bars. Aerodynamic drag is the biggest factor limiting speed for any given power, and it increases as the square of the speed. This means that the drag at 60 mph is four times the drag at 30. The weight of a bike is of less importance to top speed, except it will affect you on hills a bit. Generally, it will reduce the acceleration, and increase the stopping distance also, but a heavier bike should reach about the same top speed given more time. Don’t start me on Newton’s Second Law of Motion again, for fks sake.

The same sort of concern made me reject the Suzuki RV 125 Van-Van…

Suzuki RV 125 Van Van

The van-van seems like one of those bikes that generates a fan club. I love them, although I haven’t ridden or even sat on one. I think they look cool, especially from the back due to that enormous tyre, the width of the thing and the lazy riding position. People look comfortable and unhurried riding around on these bikes with a bunch of luggage, two up, in their greasy old leathers and open-face helmets, and you could ride one across a beach, but they won’t cope with much serious off-road stuff because they’re quite heavy, and they don’t cope that well “on road” either, due to being seriously underpowered (according to the majority of reviews I read).

Many of the riders are more mature (as I am), and many of them cite this lack of speed as a positive thing. I saw reviews more than once saying that the RV quite possibly saved the rider’s life by being rather slow. Others praise the RVs stately passage from a more aesthetic perspective. I’m not so sure. The safety aspect of having an underpowered bike – this argument presumably resting on the fact that you will fall off at slower speeds, or not fall off at all – is offset by the increased danger from being constantly passed by other motorists when on main roads, and undermined also by an argument for self discipline and safety awareness that we should all apply anyway. If you’re riding at a safe speed, you’re riding at a safe speed. If your bike is capable of doing no more, or ten times that speed, it makes little difference to what is a safe speed in those circumstances. Almost the opposite applies, in fact: if your bike is an underpowered lump and you’re going too fast round a corner, you’re in more danger than doing the same on a bike designed to lean more and grip more.

Having said that, CBR 125 owners should be warned that their bike, while it looks like a racing machine, hasn’t got limitless grip, and the stock tyres are one of the least praised aspects, so don’t push it. I’m all for riding (or driving a car) well within safety margins, not somewhere around or just inside them. There are other ways to get thrills, and driving fast on the public highway is not a legitimate one; simple as that. I have to admit to pushing the envelope a lot in my younger days, especially when I found that power band on my 2-stroke Suzuki, but I had to stop and give myself a stiff talking to, because I wasn’t going to survive intact much longer doing what I was doing on it. Personally, I think that a lot of that madcap driving is compensation for not being satisfied in other areas of life – certainly that was so in my case then. It was like, deep down, I wanted to crash, or didn’t care enough about myself. Now I care big time. I want to keep all my faculties and my life, and I enjoy improving my riding skills along the lines of the advanced rider, not the fast rider.

Finally, I should briefly mention the Honda CBF 125, and the worthy workhorse of a bike that it has replaced, the CG 125. Yesterday, when I went to Castle Motors, I spent the last hour or so of this three-week-long research trying to decide between the CBR (600 miles in the ownership of Honda UK, 57-reg, a few minor scratches, £1895) and a brand new CBF (£2020)…and still getting on the XR as well a couple more times and wondering…wondering…dirt tracks…?…

The CBF would have to be brand new; it’s just been launched very recently. I’m a bit of a miles-per-gallon freak, too, and this would probably be the most economical production 125 anyone has ever made. It’s supposed to be moderately quick, although I have doubts about how it would compare to a CBR, and I think it’s only about 11 bhp, but Honda boast fuel economy of 120 mpg. It would be fine for a bit of light touring, perhaps. I even had to admit that in the flesh it isn’t quite as horrifically ugly as I thought, although straight from the side I hate that pointy little fairing below the level of the headlight with the overstated flame-like version of the Honda wing logo. I sat on it and it was comfortable. The bars were somewhere between the wide XR’s and the racing CBR’s, just bog-standard.

And that’s the problem. I’m not a complete slave to being sensible. I didn’t want to come home with a bike that I don’t really like the look of, just because I might get another 20 miles out of a gallon of petrol…although I might be kicking myself in a year if petrol is twice the price it is now and CBFs are worth more than they were new. However, it was partly a sensible decision, in that that eventuality is a bit of a long shot. Although it was only a hundred quid more, any new bike loses several hundred the moment you sign the documents. The CBR was, I think, a snip, and I haggled very unconvincingly, but got another £50 off, and then 15% off a jacket and boots while I was there. I have to say the salespeople at Castle Motorcycles were great, helpful without being pushy, friendly without being patronising, and I got the feeling that they could be trusted. Thanks again guys. They’re a Honda dealership, which makes me feel more confident, too.

There’s a load of other options out there, and I haven’t mentioned the Derbi Cross City I was thinking about, or the Derbi Terra Adventure, which would probably be my dream 125 if money were no object, but the reliability of Honda bikes is probably second to none (although occasionally a lemon gets through quality control), and it’s worth remembering that if you choose a popular model, or even just a popular make, parts are likely to be cheap and easy to come by, and servicing might be cheaper too.

I should take delivery of my CBR next week. I still have moments of doubt about my choice, but it can’t be too far wrong, and it’s under warranty for a bit yet, as well as having AA cover, and at the end of the day it’s a learner. I might get something bigger in a few months.