Day 4 - Europe Cycling Holiday

My journey stated in Manchester and from there I headed to the P&O Ferry Terminal in Hull to catch the overnight ferry to Rotterdam.  Of course it rained and I was soaking wet .by the time I boarded the Maid of Rotterdam.  A small cabin, but it's only a bed for the night!

The next day I cycled across the Netherlands to reach Antwerp, in Belgium.  Great cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands' and it's obviously a popular recreation.  Most people were riding eBike.

Belgium was slightly boring until I reached Namur and cycled beside the River Meuse to reach Dinant.  The camping ground was full and I was forced to pay for a tiny room on the 5th floor with no lift.  After a day of cycling carrying all the gear to the room was a challenge..

Dinant is a lovely town which I could imagine myself visiting by boat mooring in the town centre,

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Leaving Dinant on Day 3 I headed East into the Ardennes Region This is rolling countryside.  A mixture of forest and farmland.  Whilst I enjoyed coasting down the hills, going up was another matter.  By the end of the day I was stuffed.

The camping ground was some distance from the town and .  It didn't have a restaurant or cooking facilities and I decided to reheat the sachet of emergency soup I'd purchased in the Netherlands.  That's when I discovered the gas canisters I'd bought in the UK didn't fit my Jet boil stove.  They were bayonet fittings and my Jet boil takes screw on cartridges.  cold soup for dinner.

It rained during the night and into the morning.  I faced a decision.  Stay dry in the tent; with no food!  Or cycle in the rain.  I chose the latter.  Consequentially there are no photos from today's ride.

I did a slight detour to reach the town of Bastogne, famous for being the location where the American 101st Airborne Division held off a major Nazi attacking during WW2.  The Nazi commander offered the Americans the chance to surrender as they were surrounded.  Their commander (McAufille) famously replied "Nuts"!

Tomorrow will probably be a long day as there are almost no camping grounds between Bastogne and the 700km point.  hopefully it will be dry.  Moreover I should almost be out of the Ardennes and back on flat land.

Googs Track and Beyond

These next two days proved to be technically challenging as I’d not previously attempted to tow a trailer over sand dunes. 

Googs Track was built by John and Martin Dinger in the mid 1970’s.  John’s nickname was Goog, hence the name of the track.  The family had purchased a land lease at the southern end of the track in the 1960’s and decided to build the track north to the access road beside the Trans-Australian Railway.  Their idea was it would expand the marketing potential of produce from the region by using the railway as a mode of transport.

The track is approximately 200km long and crosses an estimated 300 sand dunes.  Some have likened it to a mini Simpson Desert crossing which has an estimated 1000 sand dunes.  Most people travel south to north.  This is the more difficult direction as the vehicles tend to cut up and rut the southern side of the sand dunes.  The northern side of the dunes is much smoother.

I took very few photos over the two days on the track as I was too busy concentrating on the driving.

My driving technique evolved into using 4WD low 2nd gear with some momentum to get up the southern face of the dunes.  I also dropped the tyre pressure to 17psi.  This worked on all but one dune.

The first night was spend beside Googs Lake where I took the opportunity to take some photos of the money trees.

On the morning of the second day we reached a particularly high and steep sand dune.  There were two tracks to the top and I opted for the right, whilst the other driver towing a trailer went left.  Both of us didn’t quite make it to the top running out of traction.  The vehicle ahead of me then reversed back up the smoother northern side of the dune and with a snatch strap between us I made it over.

By mid afternoon we had reached the TAR (Trans-Australian Railway) access road and turned east.  An hour later we reached Tarcoola.  This is where the railway line from the east splits with the TAR continuing west to Perth whilst the CAR (Central Australian Railway) goes north to Alice Spring and Darwin. 

We continued east on the unsealed access road eventually reaching Kingoona where there was a free campsite.  There is also a caravan park and pub where a shower can be purchased for $2.

There were four caravans in the caravan park which made me wonder why?  They can’t go west and Kingoona seemed a dead end.  After looking at the map I realised it’s actually on an unsealed shortcut between Coober Pedy, further north and Ceduna.

Jenny there is a Federal Government initiative to provide EV charging stations around Australia.  Moreover the manufacturers of EV’s would like to demonstrate their viability in Australia as an alternative to traditional ICE vehicles.  One of the major factors preventing acceptance of EV’s is the range of the vehicles vs the vast distances that need to be driven.  Hence the desire to establish charging stations. 

Outback Trip–Part 2

At the end of each day a suitable quiet bush campsite would be found and the vehicles circled around a central campfire.  For some reason food cooked over an open fire is particularly delicious.

The next morning we drove on exiting the Old Telegraph Track at the Balladonia Roadhouse.  After refuelling we continued east on the blacktop to the next roadhouse, Cocklebiddy.

It was here I noticed the electric vehicle recharging station powered by a generator using old cooking oil as fuel.

We left the blacktop at Cocklebiddy heading onto the unsealed Old Coach Road.  More fun driving! 

All the recent rain meant the vehicles were starting to get very dirty.

A day later we reached Madura Roadhouse, which was another refuelling stop.

A short drive on the Eyre Highway (blacktop) saw us reach the top of the Madura Escarpment with panoramic views of the coastal plain to the south.

This is where we left the blacktop and headed further east on the Old Eyre Highway.  The highway is the original section of east-west road across Australia.  It’s received no maintenance since the new Eyre Highway was constructed in the early 1980’s.  Interesting driving!

The geology during this part of the trip was sandstone and the route took us near many caves.  The entrances to most of them are sinkholes.

 

The area is popular for cave diving. 

We left the Old Eyre Highway at Eucla Roadhouse and headed down to the coast to visit the Old Telegraph Station.  This was the location where the telegrams were exchanged between South and West Australia.

Continuing east we crossed the border into South Australia.  There is a quarantine station here, however it’s operated by the West Australian State Government and only vehicles heading west are checked.  The South Australian quarantine station is further east at Ceduna.

I was carrying five 20L jerrycans of diesel on the trailer because I knew the price of fuel at the next roadhouse (Nullabor) would be the most expensive on the trip.

For a small fee it’s possible to get a shower at most of the roadhouses.  Water is precious out here and filling the trailer water tank would have cost me $1 for 25 litres.

 

Not much grass here! 

Two EV’s were using the charging station

The old roadhouse has been retained providing an indication of what the remoteness of the highway would have been like when transiting the area 40 years ago.

 

We left the main sealed highway continuing on the unsealed Old Eyre Highway until we again re-joined the main highway near Yalata.

The plan was to head north up Googs Track, which is just before Ceduna.  This would have avoided the South Australian quarantine station.  However some in the group needed fuel and food so we passed through the quarantine station where most people had to surrender any fruit and vegetables they still possessed.  I imagine the staff at the quarantine station eat well; and cheaply; on all the fresh food that is surrendered.

After replenishing our supplies we headed back through the quarantine station; where we weren’t stopped and searched as we were heading west; reaching the southern end of Googs Track.  This would be a test of my driving skills towing a trailer.

Four Week Off-Road Trip

In early June I joined a party of 10 vehicles on a 5000km outback trip to the northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia.  Two of us were solo drivers with the rest being couples.

The idea was to spend as little time as possible on the ‘blacktop’.   Why else be a member of a 4WD Club!

The off-road parts of the trip included:

• Hyden – Norseman Road
• The Old Telegraph Track
• The Old Coach Road
• The Old Eyre Highway
• Googs Track
• The Trans Australian Line
• Andamooka Road
• Southern Oodnadatta Track
• Lake Eyre
• Copley Road
• The Great Australian Bight

The start point RV was a Brookton, approximately 140km east of Perth.

Like many of the small wheatbelt towns, Brookton has a small rural open air museum.

Once the group had assembled the convoy headed further east, using various unsealed side roads to reach Hyden.  The first night was at ‘The Breakaways’ on the unsealed Hyden-Norseman road.  This was the same location where I had spent a night several months earlier on the ‘Peak Charles’ trip.

The next day we continued east to Norseman and then joined the western end of The Old Telegraph Track.   This track was originally formed during the construction of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line which was completed by the South Australian SA and Western Australian WA Governments.  The newly formed WA government committed a budget of £30,000 to the project, at a time when the state’s entire yearly revenue was about £135,000.  South Australia used steel poles whilst WA used timber (Jarrah).

All the material was carried by sea to various landing along the remote coastline.  They were then carried onwards using camels. 

One of the many problems was the South Australian Government used American Morse Code whilst the West Australian Government used the International Morse Code.  This meant that at the border telegraph station the telegraph operators sat opposite each other, with a wall between them representing the border between WA and SA. Each message had to be decoded and passed through a pigeon-hole in the border wall.

There are remnants of the line and one has to be careful when driving to avoid old pieces of wire or steel stakes that could easily puncture a tyre.

Our campsite that night was adjacent to one of the old and abandoned telegraph stations gradually being reclaimed by the land.   

Not quite there!

Well the defective drone battery recharged but the drone controller won’t accept it with screen messages informing me the battery voltage is too low and the battery is damaged.

More online research has revealed other people have had a similar problem.  Somewhere in the system is a memory that records the battery used to be defective and now won’t allow it to be used despite being fully charged.

My assumption is the memory function is either in the battery or the controller.  As the battery is useless in its current state I decided to fully dismantle it and inspect the battery BMS (Battery Management System) circuit board.

I’s going to unsolder the Red and Black cables that the battery cells to the BMS.  If the memory is in the BMS I’m hoping removing the power to the BMS will reset the memory.   If this doesn’t work a replacement (expensive) battery will need to be purchased.

On a more positive not I’ve repaired the ebike battery charger.  Working on the principle of looking for the simple things first I dismantled the charger.

Then I tested the continuity between the charger and the plug that connects to the ebike.  There was no continuity on the negative so I dismantled the plug and found the negative wire had disconnected from its terminal.

A quick touch with the soldering iron and everything was good to go!.

I need to start updating the blog on my latest outback trip!

Faulty Drone Battery

According to the manual one of our two drone batteries has developed a fault and needs to be replaced.  The battery no longer charges and a fault is displayed by the four LEDs flashing alternately in pairs. 

These batteries are not cheap and I am loathed to purchase a replacement.  One of the things I noticed with lithium batteries is they can get confused (layman term) and aren’t really defective.  They just need to be reset.

The base and top of the battery are joined together with six small screws (one hidden) and some glue

After removing the six screws I used my knife to cut the glue separating the top from the base.  The two small screw securing the ribbon cable to the top were then removed allowing the top to be set to one side

Pushing up from the base I was able to raise the four lithium cells and gain access to a small multi-pin plug.  The plug was secured into its socket with glue which I cut with my knife before removing the plug.  This disconnected the battery cells from the circuit board

After waiting 30 seconds I inserted the plug back into the socket before plugging the battery into the charger to test if the fault had been cleared.

The battery appeared to no be charging correctly.

The battery was then reassembled and placed back on charge.  I noticed it was showing 75% charged and assumed one of the four cells may have contributed to the fault. 

Once the battery is fully charged I’ll insert it into the drone and complete a detailed status check using the drone controller.

Another Idea

Yesterday’s bike ride was done without a working speed gauge.  I immediately realised what had happened.  The bike stand had crushed and then cut the wires in the cable between the speed sensor on the rear wheel and the motor controller.

This is the third time it has happened and each time the end of the cable going into the motor controller gets shorter.  If this continues to reoccur I’ll need to dismantle the motor controller to replace the cable. 

The first stand I owned was attached to the frame near the rear wheel.  It wasn’t sufficiently strong to hold the bike upright when the trailer was attached.  Luckily it snapped on the last day of my first trip to Taiwan.

The second stand has two legs and fits immediately behind the centre hub.  The issue is this is also where the cables from the motor exit and the stand tends to catch on the cables.

Arrow points to the cable pinch point

Another solution was required.   Initially I thought I’d just prop the bike against a tree, wall or fence.  However that only works if one is available.   Google had a photo of a purpose made bike stand designed for laden touring bikes.   However it would need to be purchased from the USA and was expensive.  I decided to try and make one. 

My idea involved purchasing a cheap extendable trekking pole from the local KMart ($9.50)

The handle and strap were removed and replaced with a small wooden block and a half section of surplus pvc pipe.

Two small button bungees are used to apply the bike brakes.  This prevents the bike from moving away from the stand.

A third bungee is used to secure the new stand to the bike frame.

The idea seems to work, but I’ll need to conduct a few trials to confirm that.

When stored the pole is collapsed and secured to the top bar of the frame using the bungee cords.

It’s obviously not as quick to use as an attached stand.  But I’ll only need to use it when there is no readily available tree, wall or fence!

Voyage to Tonga

The 2024 long outback trip has been completed and the clean-up has commenced.  There is a considerable amount of cleaning to be completed and I won’t start writing about the trip until that has been done.

Meanwhile our eldest grandson has departed Opua, NZ for the capital of Tonga, Nuku'alofa, on his steel ketch, SB Cowrie accompanied by his girlfriend and a 3rd crew member.  Cowrie was built in Cornwall, UK in 1991 and sailed to NZ via the Falkland Is and Cape Horn.

They are using the “blackbox” navigation system I assembled using a Raspberry Pi4 and I’ve been slightly worried about the reliability of the system.

He sent us a link to MapShare which allows us to monitor their course.  A couple of screen dumps are attached below.

It appears after 10 days at sea they have reached Minerva Reefs anchoring inside North Minera Reef.

The reefs only appears above the waterline at low tide and is a well used resting point for yachts heading to Fiji or Tonga.  The north reef also provides a relatively safe anchorage during bad weather.

I’d better get back to cleaning.   More to follow!