Welsh Mountain Bike Series, Rd 1. Margam Park.

The historic Margam Park, in Neath Port Talbot, played host to the first round of the Welsh Mountain Bike Series today. Three weeks ago would have seen the course blanketed in a covering of clean white snow, unlike today, which saw the course swimming in a sea of mud! There's been no hiding the fact it's been wet here, very wet. To get some idea of where to watch the race, I watched the preview video of the route on the events website. Taking into account the weather I headed for the copse of trees - where Go Ape is located. Here the course wound it's way through the trees, so offered some shelter from the rain. The course was tough going, the ground was saturated, in fact it was literally a river of mud in places.

It was a constant battle to keep the camera dry and the lens clear of water, a battle which the rain was winning. I walked along side the track to where it emerged from the trees, here the track ran trough a quagmire which was criss-crossed with roots - a difficult combination. As well as watch the competitors ride, push, crawl, fly (I did say fly) and in one poor child's case, cry; I could see them climb to the lower ridge line at the top of the decent through the rhododendron.

Despite my constant struggle with the rain, the spot I chose turned to be quite a eventful one, the bog was a brutal wheel swallower, with over a dozen riders going over the handlebars, with various degrees of style! I wish I'd brought the strap for attaching my GoPro to a tree to catch some of the spills.

I've uploaded some (more to come) of my photo's from the event to my Flickr page, if you'd like to purchase a photograph, please drop me an email, with the photo number or comment below and I'll get back to you. I donate a percentage of any sales to the MND association.

As a side note, they say a bad workman blames his tools, but I'm constantly disappointed with the focusing on the 7D (especially when using the 24-70 lens).

Rallying a Bentley Continental GT, Top Gear Style.

After a longer than usual break from our screens, the new series of BBC's Top Gear started on Sunday evening. Personally, I've felt the show might be starting to loose it's 'edge', many of the segments have felt far to contrived, and the 2011/12 Indian Christmas special, was quite frankly awful.

The series seems to have got off to a hopeful start, the Hamster tested the new Pagani Huayra, which the Stig took around the Top Gear test track in record time. Clarkson tried to build a Peel P50 beating micro car (slightly annoying) and the segment I've been waiting for since the Wales Rally GB last autumn, James May taking the Bentley Continental GT Speed out for a spin on a WRC Rally stage.

I'd been to the Sweet Lamb stage of the Rally last year (2012), so had seen James May filming with the Bentley on the stage, for what I assumed would be a segment for Top Gear. I'd been looking forward to seeing the result of the days rallying! The runs took place in the gap between the two runnings of the special stage, there were some rumours in the crowd that James May was going to be filming. After a while, a silver Bentley slowly drove onto the left hand side of the stage, I'd never seen so many GoPro's! the car was covered in them. Kris Meeke drove slowly (ish) to the final hairpin of the decent into the Sweet Lamb 'bowl', there it turned and hurtled down the hill, over the cattle grid and through the first of Sweet Lamb's watersplashes.



Hitting the watersplash

The Bentley practically emptied the all water from the watersplash, it was like a tidal wave. From the watersplash, they hit a small jump and considering the weight of the car, got all four wheels off the ground! The car then went out of sight as it slid around the small complex at the centre of the Sweet Lamb complex, then through the second watersplash (river ford) and up the hill which exists the complex. There they stopped and after a short break, turned the car and drove back through for another run. They did several runs through of the stage, some with the GoPro's attached and a couple of runs without them. Each run through Kris seemed to push harder, on a couple of occasions coming close to pushing to hard, at one point damaging the bottom lip of the front bumper. This isn't to diminish his skill behind the wheel, considering he was running on road tyres!

 

 

To see some more photographs of the Bentley, plus photo's of the Rally as a whole have a look at my flickr site.

GoPro has come home.

I've received my GoPro back yesterday, after a quick test it appeared to be working, with playback appearing smooth and without any of the 'stuttering' previously exhibited. Even when I turned the Protune option on, there were no footage problems and the menus scrolled with crashing the camera. When connected to my computer I was prompted to upgrade the firmware - I chose to ignore this for now and contacted GoPro for advice as the firmware mentioned it fixed (amongst other things) freezing issues. TBH I'd have liked to have had some information from GoPro if they'd identified the problem.

Today, the camera froze again while navigating through the menu options. (argh). I decided to bite the bullet and apply the firmware, HD2.08.12.222.WIFI.R56.00. I installed the firmware to the camera, wifi bacpac and remote, so far the menu's and the video has worked correctly. Only time will tell if this has finally fixed the issue!