But that left me sans pack.

During last summers 2 week toddle along the South West Coastal path, I'd ended up carrying a lot of bulky gear. My pack weighed about 20kg, which is heavyish, but perfectly acceptable for comfortable multi day trips (if I'd been on my own I'd have skimped a lot more on clean clothes ;))

The problem wasn't the weight, it was the bulk - 2 sleeping bags for example (50l airflow packs like my partners may technically take 50l of bulk, but only it comes in small bits. Bulky objects like sleeping bags don't fit at all well), a tent, a thermarest. All these things are mostly air and weigh relatively little, but take up a huge amount of space.

Quite a bit of this stuff ended up strapped to the outside of my pack, which means it gets soaked when it rains. Charity shop bags wrapped around everything improves matters somewhat. This led me to think about the widespread belief that you don't need a pack of more than 60l. How often do you see backpackers with stuff attached to the outside of their packs? Very very frequently indeed. Tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats almost always end up fastened across the outside of packs, and for the latter two they are things you really want to keep dry. My feeling is that many people you see backpacking with 60l packs are carrying 80l of gear.

So when it came to getting a new large pack, I went big. Karrimor SF 60-100, with 2 12.5l side pockets, so it's nominally 85l without opening the overload zips. On the one hand, it's absolutely bloody vast. On the other, on a 7 day walking trip a couple of weeks ago it fitted everything I needed, with plenty of room left over so I could dig around inside without unpacking in the rain / drop in my partners coat which wouldn't fit in her crammed 50l pack. If we'd been carrying camping gear it would have fitted securely in the pack, rather than having to fasten it to the outside in the rain with straps that can loosen and slip.

As an added bonus, the side pockets come off and zip onto a PLCE daysack yoke to form a rather wierd looking but practical 25l daysack. Plus it's made of heavy, hardwearing nylon. I think this one will last a lot longer than the old one :-)

To start with it was quite unsettling, and every journey I forgot to keep pedalling at some point, at which time the bike turned into one of those bucking bronco machines that were popular in the 80's. I'm getting the hang of it now though. The long descents are a bit of a beast - I have to slow down with the brakes to a cadence I'm comfortable with, and that cadence is getting faster all the time. The amount of control you have over the bike is astounding though - you can ride very much slower and still retain control (not tried standing still or going backwards yet).

The training effect is also slightly surprising. I'm getting to work with tired legs, which can only be a good thing for my fitness and running ascents (and with the 3 peaks race only a few weeks away anything that helps with ascent is good).

Sunday evening it snowed.

So yesterday (Monday) morning I thought "just put the front snow tyre on, a lot of people don't bother with a back snow tyre at all".

Those people don't live in hilly areas. My commute to work starts with a 1/4 km 1 in 10, then a 1km 1 in 12. Halfway up my back wheel slid out, but thanks to the front snow tyre I retained control and didn't land on my face. Back down the hill to put the back snow tyre on.

45 minutes and one blown out inner tube later I had the back snow tyre on, and apart from having to stop to adjust the chain tensioner again, the rest of the journey was easy. Well, not easy exactly, the snow tyres have about the same rolling resistance as a flat tyre (not kidding, I keep looking to see if something is rubbing or I've got a flat), so pedaling is hard work, and the noise is very similar to riding on a flat tyre. But they do grip very, very well.

These are the tyres in question:

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/schwalbe-marathon-winter-performance-rigid-road-tyre/

1) Before you open a raster VectorMap District file (e.g. SE05.tif) move all the .tfw files from 'georeferencing files' into the same directory as the .tif files. Otherwise the .tif files will be placed in the bottom left hand corner of the map, miles from any other layers.

2) You can convert .dxf files (from OS Panorama/Landform) to shape files using the QGis dxf converter plugin.

3) Try enabling 'Labels' in the layer properties, but make sure you remove the default label from the text field below. There are various things in the label fields, have an experiment to see what you can find.

4) Ordnance Survey don't own right of way data, that belongs to local councils. I've asked my local council if they'll let me have a file from their GIS (they do use one) and so far they haven't said 'no'...

5) Walls. There are no walls marked on the maps I've been able to find. This is something of a difficulty for using OpenData maps for navigation. If someone has found wall data, please can you tell me where it was.

That's it so far...

2011 is here, and I'm back tinkering with SAML and webservices.

Currently building a webservice architecture that can be switched from SOAP to XMLRPC to REST easily.

Also back to running after a couple of weeks taking it easy. Rombalds Stride is coming up soon.

Lots of plans for the year.