V2XS

The previous post described this event and the preparation work :
https://v2xs.com/vince-2022/

As I had recently purchased my own van we went down to Spain in a two van convoy this year, rather than trying to squeeze everything into Dougie’s van.

Austin had booked an entire hotel complex (The Liguerre Resort) for this year’s event as it was the biggest he has ever organised with over 130 competitors and the event being run over 3 days. However, we decided to sort out our own AirBnB nearby to give us more flexibility – we both hate the breakfast scrum in the morning, when you have to queue to get your food and are in a hurry to get going (start time is 8am). The journey down to Spain over the Pyrenees was very pleasant and we had time for a few stops on the way to admire the views.

The place we stayed was very comfortable with a great view and space to fettle the bikes.

Although it was bright and sunny on our arrival at Casa Lecina we knew that the forecast for the event was pretty grim with heavy rain and thunderstorms expected. We were using GPS so didn’t have to worry about getting maps wet, but were concerned about the water tightness of our phones and electrical connections. I had a small tank bag on my bike (see pic above) which has a transparent map pocket that I was able to use to insert the checkpoint (CP) sheets – these are the sheets that provide additional details and a photo of the exact location of the CP, plus telling you which digits/characters you need to record. Dougie had a “map board” on his bike with two phones and his running order/control sheet. He managed to “waterproof” this arrangement with a plastic bag that slid over the top.

Our usual method of working, based on previous events is that I take the lead and completely focus on following the route and finding the CP. Once found I get off the bike and find the necessary information and then give this to Dougie when he arrives so that he can record it on his running sheet. This gives Dougie more time to take a wider view and consider our overall strategy and options – he records the arrival time at each CP and compares that to the plan so that we have a running delta on whether we are ahead or behind schedule. He can then work out whether we should drop some CPs, reroute or even add extra ones. Having this information to hand is essential to being competitive but requires a great deal of preparation and planning in the weeks leading up to the event.

As we are totally focussed on keeping moving and accumulating as many points as possible we never have time to look at the view. On our post-VINCE trail riding covering the same area we have a running joke – Dougie will say to me “Do you remember this trail, with the ruined church just over there” and I’ll say “Never seen it before, but I know there is a CP behind that signpost over there!”.

Our original plan was to run for 3 x 10 hour days, which is less than the 12 hours allowed but would give us more time for bike prep, getting something to eat and getting to bed at a reasonable time before doing it all again the next day. Of course this meant we were not seriously expecting to win, but wanted to achieve as much as possible of our plan. As it turned out we quickly fell behind, partly due to the conditions – it was wet and quite muddy and slippery in places, but also due to the trails being more difficult than in previous years so our average speed was lower than planned.

The picture above shows a very distinctive ruined building which was supposed to have a sign on the tree, but it was missing. The photo was to provide eveidence that we had visited the correct spot.

The bikes ran perfectly throughout but I did have some failures of the bits I had bolted on. The first one was the Quad Lock mount that I use to hold the phone on the bike – it snapped !

Fortunately the phone was OK and I was carrying a spare mount and allen key to replace it, so not much time lost.

The second failure was the charging system – I had rigged up a USB port powered by the bike battery, but this packed up. Fortunately I had also prepared for this eventuality and was carrying a power pack in my tank bag and was able to power the phone from that.

The third and final failure was the phone itself which just died – possibly due to water ingress, or maybe the shock of being jettisoned from the bike when the mount snapped? Again I was prepared as I was carrying a spare phone.

Over the three days we ran for a total of 31 hours (compared to the 36 allowed) and covered 720Km of the 850 we had originally planned.

There was a prize-giving dinner in the evening and we were awarded second prize in the GPS class (doing a quick pro-rata calculation showed that we would have won if we had run for the full 12 hours each day!).

As this was his biggest ever event and may not be repeated on this scale, Austin had arranged a live band for the evening…

So that’s it for another year – what does the future hold ?

Well we can argue that we won the map class last year (but were disqualified) and on a pro-rata basis we “won” the GPS class this year(!), the only class remaining that we haven’t yet tried is the “Twin Shock Trailfinder” – this has to be done with maps and using a bike with twin shocks, which effectively means it will be a bike from the 70s. I can’t help feeling that machine reliability might be an issue in this class. Dougie already has his bike – a Kawasaki KLX250 trail bike, but I will need to find one – all part of the fun !

After the VINCE we stayed on in Spain for some more leisurely trail riding which I’ll cover in another post.

Regular readers will be familar with the VINCE by now – an event I have participated in for the last three years. It is run by Austin VINCE and takes place in the Spanish Pyrenees and is a bit like an off road treasure hunt on motorbikes. Austin and his team place a number of small metal tags with numbers and characters at obscure locations all across the region. This preparation usually takes place in the two years prior to the event itself. A couple of months before the event Austin then issues competitors with the essential information to be able to find the tags, located at what are called CheckPoints (CPs). It is then up to each team to try to plan an optimum route to visit as many of the CPs as possible and record the required information from the tags. The CPs score different values depending on how far away they are, or how difficult to access. The event is normally run over two days from 8am to 8 pm – that is 2 x 12 hour days in the saddle so endurance is required as well as good preparation. Competitors are only allowed to use the maps provided by Austin and a compass to navigate the trails and find the CPs – no mobile phones or GPS allowed.

In the 2020 event I teamed up with my mate Dougie and we finished second in the map class and were awarded the runner-up trophy. Last year (2021) we actually won the event but were disqualified for not correctly completing the CP booklet – we have entered this year as “Team Disqualified”.

For the 2022 event, Austin is using a new area in the Aragon region which is so large and has so many trails he has made it a 3 day event (3 x 12 hour days). Dougie and I have spent the last few weeks preparing our routes and have decided to forego the maps and compass approach and enter the “anything goes” class so we will be using GPS. This means we won’t get lost but will not be eligible for the winners cup. This video provides a glimpse of the detail of preparing the route…

Our final planned routes cover over 850 Km of mostly off road riding over the 3 days. As the distances are so large we have also had to plan fuel stops, which was not easy as there are only six filling stations in the whole area. Here are the routes:

The final factor which we can’t control is the weather and the forecast is looking pretty grim for next week with torrential rain and thunderstorms. We had a lot of rain last year and it made everything much more difficult, including making some of the tricky sections virtually impassable. Riding around soaking wet on the top of a mountain is probably not the best idea if there is lightning in the vicinity, but it’s sure to be exciting !

We’ll be setting off for Spain on Sunday 11th, wish us luck !

In June this year I attended a film school for trail riders run by Austin VINCE and based in the Spanish Pyrenees. I knew Austin quite well from the various events we have attended in Spain and knew he was a qualified maths teacher, but better known for being one of the first people to ride around the world on a motorbike. What I didn’t realise was that he was also an accomplished film maker and music creator. He had run a few one-day film making courses in the UK, but this was the first time he had offered a full one-week course which would involve trail riding to shoot some material and then editing to create some videos. He had rented a villa near La Seu d’Urgell which is just the other side of Andorra and managed to get a group of six people together to participate. We were given detailed instructions on what equipment to bring, what software to pre-load onto our laptops, etc.

What followed was a very intense week of hard work, starting at 8.30 in the morning and frequently going on until after midnight. The balance between time spent filming and time spent editing was initailly billed as 50/50 but it turned out we were so slow at getting to grips with the editing tools that the final ratio was more like 5/95 – a few minutes worth of material was enough to keep us busy for hours. I have created a few simple films in the past to try to convey something of what I’ve been up to, but I realised these were of rather mediocre quality and was keen to do better. So for me the course was a huge success and I learnt a massive amount is a very short time. The rest of the group had come over from the UK and were a bit disappointed at the lack of trail riding, but it didn’t bother me as I can ride anytime at home.

The end result of our week’s efforts was that we each created three videos, which became progressively more complex as the week went on. And here they are…

The first one was a short so-called “pop video”. This is a series of film sequences set to music intended to create an overall impression…

For the second video we were told to create a promotional video for the villa we were staying in. This again involved some film sequences and music but also had to include some “pieces to camera” which were filmed and directed by Austin.

For the final video we were given free reign. Austin took us to an abandoned village and we had to create our own story line, film scenes in the village, select some appropriate music and include some pieces to camera.

Once back in France I realised I would not be using the editing software often enough to continue paying for the monthly subscription so I tried out another open source editing program and used it to create an additional video, trying to make use of some of the skills I had learnt on the course. The video is just a bit of fun and shows Austin demonstrating how to get a particular shot.

It is now Thursday 24 February and only two more days to go before I start my trek back to the Quercy. This is the first day of rain since I’ve been here, which has given me a chance to catch up on the Blog. I can’t complain as I’ve been here seven weeks and the daytime temperatures have consistently been in the high teens and often over 20. It looks like the freezing cold weather back home is finally over so not a bad time to be heading North.

For the second part of my stay I was joined by my sister Sara, who flew over for 10 days but decided not to share my little apartment, preferring to stay in a five star hotel on the beach instead.

As usual when I get together with my sister, we manage to get A LOT of exercise and during the course of her stay we averaged over 40,000 steps per day. This started with a morning run on the beach (which I have done every day I’ve been here), usually followed by a very long walk in the afternoon or a trip out on mountain bikes. I think she had ideas of lounging on a sun bed by the pool but in the end the holiday became a kind of “boot camp” by the sea – very enjoyable but admittedly quite tiring. We had two favourite walking routes – one out to the West across the marshes taking in the ruins of a Roman Villa, the other one was to the East along the beach (tide permitting) to the harbour at Portimao and our favourite destination – an ice cream stall. The ice cream cones were cheap, very tasty (mint choc chip) and enormous..

As the walk to the ice cream kiosk was rather long we managed to find a beach restaurant to use as a refreshment stop near the half way point..

We managed a few meals out with Tim and Helen, when we could fit them in to our busy exercise schedule…

On one of the beach walks we decided to be a bit more adventurous and try to follow the line of the cliffs as closely as possible. Not really recommended as the cliffs are badly eroded and unstable – with lots of danger signs for good measure. A bit of rock climbing was an interesting addition to the training regime though…

On one of the beach walks we came across one of the “stone piles” that are quite common (don’t know if they have a name – cairns?) – basically a stack of rocks created by a passing tourist. However, this particular stack was one of the most impressive I’ve seen. Usually they are just a pile of rocks in decreasing sizes, balanced on each other, but this one had small pieces inserted to hold the whole thing together.

Sara and I stood there admiring it for a while and she became convinced that it was not free standing and must be glued together in some way – so scrambled up to take a closer look. As children we were taught to “look with your eyes not your hands”, but Sara completely ignored this lesson and lifted the top stone to see if it was held by anything more than gravity (it wasn’t). Unfortunately this destabilised the stack and the whole thing started to totter and collapse, the next picture shows her trying to hold it all together shortly before it became a very small pile of rocks…

Once Sara had gone home for a rest I was back into my daily routine of a beach run, followed by breakfast of coffee and a Pastel de Nata at the Plaza cafe opposite the apartment.

In the afternoon I would typically head out onto the trails to the North on my motorbike or mountain bike. My favourite destination was Monchique – up in the hills about 30Km North of Alvor, which took about an hour and a half on my (electric) mountain bike. It wouldn’t be possible to climb some of the hills without electrical assistance. Tim rented an electric bike from Tic Tac Cycles and joined me on one occasion, but he had a puncture en route and it took us four hours to get there.

I was very impressed with the performance of Tim’s bike – he used a lot less battery than I did and managed to get up one hill that I had attempted and failed to get up several times on my bike. His rental bike was a KTM hardtail with a 250W centre drive motor and 400Wh battery. Mine is a home built electric conversion from a Trek full suspension bike with an OZO 1000W hub motor and 1000Wh battery – so on paper it should have been faster, run further and been able to climb better. As it turned out they were quite evenly matched with the KTM apparently much more efficient on battery use. Of course it may just be that Tim just has more cycling ability than I have – I needed to find out !

So I rented another KTM bike from Tic Tac to do the Monchique route and get a back to back comparison with my own bike. The results were very interesting, but I won’t bore you with all the details here. Suffice to say that the bikes were quite evenly matched but the KTM only used one third of the battery power needed by my Trek, and it managed to get up the tricky hill.

Once you get North of the motorway (and avoid the golf courses and solar farm) there are trails going everywhere. I had been spending quite a bit of time in the evenings plotting out and validating routes using Google Earth for me to explore the next day. As time went on I tended to stick to my favourite routes – usually involving a cafe as a destination. Most of the off road tracks are perfectly manageable and are really forestry tracks. However, some of them ae very much steeper and trickier due to the loose rocks or ruts. I didn’t intentionally try any of these on the mountain bike, but did test myself on a few with the motorbike. This particular hill is en route to Monchique and is pretty challenging although I did manage it…

Since I have been here I haven’t really used the car at all or been very far afield, so one day I decided to head out West to the Atlantic coast in the car and visited the fort at Sagres – just about the most south-westerly point in mainland Europe. The whole area seemed to be dedicated to surfing and with good resaon as they have some amazing surf beaches…

In the evenings, when not plotting routes or going out to dinner with Tim and Helen I did manage to read a small amount of one of the books I brought with me. My apartment was actually quite cold and dark in the late afternoon and evening so I often took the opportunity to get out and watch the sunset over the harbour…

Tim and Helen have been spending the Winter out here for many years and have made great progress with their Portuguese language skills – I can just about manage the usual please, thank you and can I have the bill. However, I did see an old Clio parked at the side of the road with some writing on the side window that I think I could translate…

Oh yes and I need to mention the Lemon Tea… I stopped having caffeine in the middle of last year and have been pleasantly surprised at the range of herbal teas available. Helen did mention once that I should try putting a bit of lemon rind in a cup of hot water to make a nice refreshing drink. I never got around to trying it and had assumed it would have very little flavour – how wrong I was ! It is now one of my staple brews, supplemented by a bit of ginger and turmeric…

Well that’s about it for this year, we’ll have to see what next year brings and whether I can make it back to Morocco. Until next time…

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This post covers the first three weeks of my “escape from the Quercy cold”, covering most of January 2022. For this part of the holiday I was joined by Georgina, recently returned from two years in Canada, who was off again at the end of Jan to participate in a Yoga teacher training course on one of the Greek Islands (Amorgos). Tim and Helen spend every winter out here and now have their own apartment in Alvor – they had kindly arranged an apartment rental for me in the same building at a very reasonable rate. My original plan was to use Alvor as a base but to also venture into Morocco but with the Covid situation this has not been possible.

The journey from Albas to Alvor is about 1500Km and we broke the journey into three legs with two overnight stops. We were towing the trailer with my KTM and Trek mountain bike, to give me plenty of opportunities to explore the trails in theAlgarve.

Our first overnight stop was at a truck stop, which was fine, but we weren’t prepared for the dining experience… We went down to the “dining room” at the appointed hour and found lots of small tables spread out around the room – each one laid for one person. We sat down and were immediately brought another place setting and a bottle of red wine straight from the fridge. Food quickly followed – no menu, no choice – you just eat what you are given it seems…

The second leg took us right down through Spain to Badajoz, right on the border with Portugal. After two days driving I needed to get some exercise so went for an evening run down by the river.

This was a “proper” hotel but the main restaurant was closed so we went to eat in the cafe next door, which proved to be fairly basic, but filling..

We arrived in Alvor in good time, but spent a while trying to get the trailer into the very small underground parking space. Tim was most insistent that nothing was allowed outside the white line on the floor that defined the allocated space. I carefully arranged the trailer and bikes to comply and used the space like this for three weeks, until one day I returned from a ride to discover that my trailer and mountain bike had been unceremoniously dragged across the garage into another space (in spite of having a wheel clamp fitted!). I consulted Tim and he soon realised that he had shown me the wrong space ! So much for being careful with the white lines !!

One of the great things about Alvor is the beautiful sandy beach that is only a short walk from the apartment. I have been taking advantage of this by going for a run on the beach every morning, usually followed by breakfast at the Plaza Cafe opposite the apartment.

After my run and breakfast I have tended to return to the apartment and spend some time reading on the terrace which gets the sun in the morning – not really had any rain and daytime temperatures have been 16/17 most days. There has been a bit of a chilly East wind but in the sun and out of the wind it is very warm and certainly a far cry from the sub zero tempertaures being experienced back home in the Lot.

Georgina had signed up to a local gym and was spending each morning there, before starting work at lunchtime – she has continued working for a Canadian cosmetics company, providing on line and telephone support to customers. This kept her busy all through the afternoon until 8pm in the evening. My afternoon routine involved heading out somewhere on either the motorbike or mountain bike, usually following a route I had planned the day before. There is an official trail riding route that covers the whole of Europe called the TET (Trans European Trail). This doesn’t come down as far as Alvor but does run East West through a town called Monchique, which is about 30Km North of Alvor. So I had in mind to head up North and explore some of this ready defined route. I also tried to find some routes of my own which became quite frustrating as a number of the routes I had identified from the map and on Google Earth turned out to be private or blocked off.

I spent many an evening plotting potential routes to explore – the main issue is that the coastal strip is all concrete so it is necessary to head North (or NE or NW) to get clear of all the development and across the motorway which runs parallel to the coast. North of the motorway there are an almost infinite number of trails to expore. However, I eventually worked out that directly North of Alvor is mainly golf courses, which don’t allow access to the trails and North East of Alvor is an absolutely massive solar farm that generates 49 MW of electricity. Other than using the main roads, the main route out is one I found to the North West which became my go to start point for any trail riding. In order to explore some sections of the TET I did three trips out with the car and trailer to get to the start of the route and then unload the KTM to get straight onto the off road sections.

My morning beach run makes an 8-10Km circuit, depending on how much of the beach I cover. The difficulty varies depending on the state of the tide. At low tide the sand is hard and flat, but with the tide in I have to run in the soft sand nearer the dunes which is much harder work.

I also played a bit of tennis with Georgina. Tim and Helen are regular players and members of the local club – but we couldn’t play with them as they are far too good for us! I brought my old bats and balls from France but found that the balls were so old they had lost pressure and didn’t bounce very much at all. Fortunately Tim was able to let me have some more from his stock and put mine in his special device for re-pressurising…

The Plaza Cafe gets the sun in the morning and it was usually warm enough to sit outside. I gradually worked my way through the various options covering various “pastries” and their toasted sandwiches – my favourite being the “Tosta Mixta” or ham and cheese. I finally settled on a decaffeinated coffee and “Pastel de Nata” – a traditional Portuguese custard tart. Tim and Helen’s usual habit is to eat out at lunchtime at one of the local restaurants which offer traditional Portuguese food (usually fish/seafood) and are great value. Tim usually makes a strategic choice of restaurant on the day by judging the amount of sun and the wind direction – ensuring that outside eating is going to be possible. Georgina and I joined them a few times – usually at the weekend when George wasn’t working.

It seems that most of the land to the North of the motorway, that is not reserved for golf or solar panels, is dedicated to forestry of some sort. It is hard to tell as most of the trees/shrubs are only a few feet high and look to have been only recently planted – it seems that there was a massive fire that decimated the whole area and it is now being replanted. This has a trail riding side benefit in that there are a huge number of “twin track” trails, which are probably to provide forestry access to all the different planting areas. The ground is gravel/shale and mostly quite easy going if somewhat dusty. However, there are some big climbs and descents which can be okay, but in some cases have become very rutted due to heavy rain and strewn with rocks which makes some of them pretty challenging. I did find one over to the North East by the reservoir which I named “Dam Hill” – being close to the reservoir dam. I came to the top of the hill and looked at the steep, rutted and rocky descent and thought “shall I get off and walk the bike down here?”. Instead I just decided to go for it and managed to get half way down before I fell off – no real harm done but a lesson learnt. I subsequently went back to the bottom of the hill a few days later and walked up some of it to assess whether it was worth another attempt. I think it was probably manageable, but on my own in the middle of nowhere I decided it was took risky and left it for another day…

I forgot to bring the GoPro so don’t have any riding footage apart from this low quality video from my phone on the handlebars which gives some impression of the trail conditions. This is a loose and rutted descent but nowhwere near as difficult as dam hill – there are lots of them like this one so it is fairly typical. I was glad I didn’t bring my big KTM 950 on this trip…

I also had a similar downhill scary experience on the mountain bike, which is much less capable on these big hills than the KTM.

When not risking life and limb I do get a chance to stop and take in the views :

Monchique has become my favourite destination – it is reachable on both the Trek and KTM (using different routes) and has a nice bike shop/cafe, called Velochique, with great food and a sunny terrace.

I’m now about half way through my Portugal break and my sister Sara is arriving later today for the next ten days. It looks like the temperatures in the Lot are now above freezing but they’ll have to be much warmer than that before I’ll want to head home…