The Folding Society
Winter Weekend, Portmeirion, 29 November - 3 December 1999
The Portmeirion Weekend in November has becoming an established event in
the calendar for folder enthusiasts. The 1999 event was once again a
great success, as these reports show.
We took a digital camera and Psion Series 5mx computer to Portmeirion,
and were able to load photographs and reports of our activities onto our web
pages each evening during the week. These original daily reports are still available: if you wish to see
them - use the links below.
Final report
This year the annual
Portmeirion meeting was a few days later than previously, starting on Monday
29 November and finishing on Friday 3 December. As in the past, a couple of
dozen members and their cycles took advantage of this opportunity for an
autumn/winter break, including one from the USA. By my reckoning we had 4
Bike Fridays, 3 Birdys, 3 Brompton SPs, 1 Bickerton, 1 Panasonic Traincle, 1
(motorised) Micro, a demountable Longstaff tricycle, and the rest were on
normal Bromptons.
Monday
Most
people made the journey down to Portmeirion by train, arriving by stages
throughout Monday. Probably the largest single group was that which arrived on a
rather delayed train which left Birmingham New Street in theory at 10.20am,
but in practice about 30 minutes later than this: By the time it arrived at
Penrhyndeudraeth there were 8 of us on the train. As Alan Foreman had the
tricycle on this train, there was a good deal of excitement during the
change at Machynlleth, where the train staff were unhappy about allowing it
on the train (tandems and tricycles are not allowed according to Central
Trains rules). Happily we got Alan and the trike on in the end, with the
assistance of a member of the station staff who carried it from the one part
of the train to the other (see photograph).
One drawback of taking a holiday at this time of year
is that it gets dark so early in the afternoons, and by the time we arrived
on Monday it was too dark to do anything other than buy food etc for the
evening meal.
Much activity
at Penrhyndeudraeth as the bicycles, tricycle and Alexander Henshaw's
trailer are reassembled.
Tuesday
Monday
had been a beautiful day in weather terms for this
attractive journey down, but although Tuesday was much greyer and windier,
there was no rain. Most people used the day to recover from their the
journey, but Michelle Whitworth, Derek Carpenter and myself rode over
to Criccieth, Llanystumdwy (where the bikes and riders are pictured by
the Lloyd George Memorial) and then along some very pleasant lanes to return
to Porthmadog via the A487. It was certainly hard work riding into the wind
on the way out, but of course much easier on the way back, and the descent
into Tremadog was particularly enjoyable. Paul Stobbs on the Panasonic
Traincle apparently followed a somewhat similar route later in the day, but
using one very minor road which we had not been along he collected two slow
punctures, one front and one back. As the Traincle uses lightweight plastic
tubes in its 12 inch tyres, and these will not accept normal patches, this
was quite a problem. Paul had a spare conventional tube with him, and this
was fitted to the rear in the evening, and we tried a glueless patch on the
other tube, but this was not very satisfactory as it seemed to leak except
at quite low pressure.
Wednesday
On Tuesday evening we made a tentative plan for a ride,
weather permitting, to Caernarfon on Wednesday, going there via the road,
and returning most of the way along a cycle path. Happily the weather was
good, with sun, much less wind than the previous day, but still remarkably
warm. In the end 10 of us went on this ride, although two of these joined as the ride
progressed - Paul Stobbs having made an early trip to a cycle shop in search of a
tube for the Panasonic, and Philippa Wheeler using her motor on the Micro first to catch
us up a few miles into the ride, and then to go on ahead on the way to
Beddgelert so that she could photograph us. After Beddgelert, where some of the riders
are pictured at a refreshment stop (see photograph), she reverted
to pedal power. From Beddgelert there was quite a steady climb, but fortunately nothing too
steep, and this quiet A road had some excellent views as we made our
way to Caernarfon for our lunch stop. By then we were becoming concerned about
the time and how soon it would get dark, particularly as some people were not very well
equipped with lights, so this was quite a brief stop, and we set off without
delay along the cycle path, which initially follows the Welsh Highland Railway. The surface of this
is path is quite good - fortunately, as the tricycle was with us, but nevertheless Anna Finch's
Bridy Green succumbed to a puncture, and as the first patch did not stick properly, a second
halt had to be made. After this had been repaired the group pressed on quickly as the light was
beginning to fade, and in the end we returned as two groups. The bikes used
for this ride, which totalled about 47 miles, were 3 Brompton SPs, 2 Bike
Fridays, 1 standard Brompton, 1 Birdy, the Panasonic Traincle, the Micro and
the Longstaff tricycle.
Thursday
The
main activity on Thursday was bike testing, and of course the main
attraction was Paul Stobbs' Panasonic Traincle. Our picture shows Peter
Henshaw riding it at speed. A preliminary report on the Traincle appeared in
Folding Society News number 42 (http://www.whooper.demon.co.uk/foldsoc/fsn/fsn042.html),
and a more detailed review can be expected in the next issue of A to B. We
will also be putting a copy of our report, with additional photographs, in
the test section (http://www.whooper.demon.co.uk/foldsoc/tests.html)
of this web site within a few days.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Bickerton, seen here with owner Mike Lenton,
was less of an attraction.
Derek Carpenter's load carrier was another attraction - and yes, it does
separate, though only into two rather large pieces!
Philippa made the mistake of taking the motor off the Micro for people to
try the bike, but of course everyone was more interested in it with the
motor fitted, so she had to put it back on again!
After the testing session, a few people went for short rides - my own
took me to Harlech Castle - hard work riding into the wind on the way there,
but very enjoyable on the way back.
Friday
Although I was the only one on the first train from Minffordd (08.28),
most people were on the next one, which meant that for most of us the
majority of the day was spent on getting back home, and remembering what a
good time we had had.
Afterthoughts
Many of the participants had been to one of the
Portmeirion events before, which proves just how enjoyable they are.
Nonetheless, there are now only three people who have been to all 4 of these
events - David and Jane Henshaw and myself. Alexander Henshaw is the
youngest person to attend yet, and seemed to enjoy himself.
The refurbished Prisoner Shop at Portmeirion now has
internet access, and we were able to check our web pages when we discovered
this mid-week. For those who needed to do so, it also provided a means of
checking email, although I did this myself using the Psion Series 5mx which
I had taken down to prepare the web pages. Our picture shows Paul Stobbs and the
Panasonic (star of the event) outside the shop.
Preparing web pages on the rather small, mono Psion
Series 5mx screen was less than ideal, and I did not have access to a proper
web page editor, and the text editor I used had no spell checker. Nor could
we edit our pictures in any way, so some really could have benefited from
some cropping. Nevertheless, it proved an effective way of making web pages
available quickly without having to lug a lot of gear around. And when I came
to pay the phone bill at the end of the visit, it
turned out their logging system was not working, so there was no charge! You can read more
about the computer technology at the end of this page, if you are interested
My own SP performed flawlessly, and proved ideal for
this sort of event. It was folded and covered on both the outward and return
journeys - normally I would not bother with the cover unless the train staff
requested it, but when several folders may be on the train, it seems wise to
conform to the rules; in the end mine was the only folder on this particular
train on the return journey. The distance I rode over the 5 days was 116.7
miles, bringing the SP mileage up to a total of 600.4.
Over the four years I have taken 4 different folders to Portmeirion. The
first year was a little different from the others, in that there were only 8
of us, all in the same house, and as a result we tended to go out as a group
too. All the others had Bromptons, and I had a Bike Friday, and more time
was spent folding than riding, which made the Friday something of a
nightmare - it's OK on your own, or with other Fridayists, but with
Bromptons it is very embarrassing. The second year I took a standard
Brompton T5, but I did find it a bit constraining in terms of when I wanted
to go on longer rides. The Birdy I used last year was very successful,
although not so good for luggage carrying as the SP this year. Overall, and
ignoring the different conditions on the four occasions, I think the Birdy
and SP have proved most successful for this type of outing, involving
folding at the start and end, and for storing the bikes at night, with no
need for much luggage and distances of only 50 - 120 miles being covered in
the week.
The computer technology
We wanted to be able to post daily reports and pictures on the web site,
but without needing to take a lot of bulky and heavy equipment with us.
While a digital camera did not present any real problems - we have been
using a Nikon Coolpix 900 for over a year - the computer was more of a
problem. Notebook computers are ideal from a computing point of view, having
the ability to author the web pages in software like Frontpage, link in
pictures from the camera, loading them onto the notebook either via the
camera cable or by plugging the CF card directly into the notebook, and then
transferring the pages and pictures to the web site using FTP software and a
built-in modem. The problem was that even a Toshiba Portege 3110Ct is
quite heavy, bulky and fragile when you are travelling by bicycle. I
have used various palmtop computers for many years, including the Psion
Series 5mx, but none has provided the necessary combination of modem
connection, reading CF cards, editing web pages and transferring these pages
and pictures via FTP. In mid-November, two FTP packages became available for
the 5mx, and this solved the main problem. Although the screen of the Series
5mx is really rather small for this sort of work, and is mono, and there is
no proper web page editing software, nor picture editing software, there was
just enough to be able to attempt the job. Our final system was the Nikon
Coolpix 900 camera with 12M CF card, Psion Series 5mx with PC card modem
adapter, a US Robotics card modem, the RMRFTP software, RMRText - a very
basic text editor which could be used to compose the HTML of the web pages,
mains adapters and other leads.
As we could not edit the photos that were being taken - not even to crop
them - we used the camera in a low resolution VGA mode, although even that
produced rather larger (or at any rate wider) pictures than we really
wanted. Some pictures intended for other uses were shot in higher
resolution. The pictures were viewed and suitable images selected using the
cameras internal screen, and then the CF card was removed and plugged into
the Psion and these picture files were copied into the Series 5, and the
text of the web pages was typed in with the RMRText program, including links
to the pictures. The Series 5 was then linked to the modem and the telephone
in Government House, where we were staying, and the RMRFTP program was used
to connect to the web page storage area, and the report and picture files
were copied across. The chief difficulty was the limited screen size and its
rather poor visibility, which made typos difficult to spot, and a few layout
problems also occurred.
Towards the end of our stay I discovered that the No 6 - Prisoner - shop
at Portmeirion, which has been refurbished since our last visit, now has
on-line computers connected to the internet. They are quite happy for
visitors to use these to look at anything on the net, including their email.
I was able to check the pages using this and correct a few errors which
became apparent this way. Another time I could probably make more use of
these computers to edit and check the pages and also upload them, which
would be easier than trying to do everything via the Series 5.
Overall though, the system worked and was quite easy to transport. I hope
that those who did log on to read our daily reports enjoyed taking part in
the event, if from a distance.
Folding Society home page |
Event reports
Copyright (C)1999 Ferrets Anonymous
Last updated: 6 December 1999
URL: http://www.whooper.demon.co.uk/foldsoc/pm991.html