UK TET: Great Western Trail 2024

Well, the first trip for 2024 after a pretty rough winter of no riding whatsoever! 

Two of us are heading down to the south western corner of the UK to ride the Great Western Trail, which is part of the Trans Euro Trail. Both of us are on KTM 690 Enduro's and both of us have ridden those areas before, but never as a continuous loop. 

So it'll be a ride down to the south to meet up, then a loop around the peninsula before getting back home for Easter. 

The GWT was set up by a recently departed friend, Jimmy. He was the UK Linesman for the TET and greatly added miles and lanes to that GPX file. A lot of trail riders benefitted from his work and passion for trail riding and also a lot of rural businesses, (even though I doubt they know it). He was a lovely fella and I was privileged to both work and ride with him, so this trip is a bit of a homage to his life and a thankyou for this part of his legacy. 

Whilst on this trip, I get to play with some new kit. I've got a pair of the Adventure Spec Singletrack Pants, some POD knee braces, some new luggage bits, a phone based navigation system, some handlebar muffs and of course the sheepskin to try out. So plenty of new and/or adapted bits of kit to be tested. 

The rest of my kit will be the same as last year's longer TET trip to Spain, Portugal, Morocco and France, as that all worked well. I have removed the heated grips from my bike though as they kept draining the battery and I'll try out the basic bar muffs as they are cheap to buy, easy to fit and don't rely on electric. I will still use the battery powered heated gilet though! 

Also, the cheap zip I had fitted to my Linesman Jacket in Morocco last year failed at the end of summer, probably excess pressure from me getting too fat! ;-) So I've had to replace that with anther waterproof YKK one. That was a boring afternoon of sewing whilst sat next to the radiator listening to music! Still, much needed kit maintenance.

Tyres wise, I've gone for the 50/50 Mitas E09 on my bike. The rear is brilliant on everything on a 690, the front doesn't like soft mud and slides or skitters a bit, (which can be disconcerting). With all the motorway, fast  road and then the trails, these will do the job, but I have concerns with the front if I find some muddy tracks or a soft based river crossing. The C19 is a better tyre for that, but lots of vibration on fast tarmac. Hey ho, as always a compromise. 

Its bloody freezing in Cumbria at the moment with some heavy rain forecast for the remainder of this week, so I might be a bit soft and trailer my bike south rather than ride. I haven't decided yet as I have a couple more days before I set off. 

With the nav tower, I have added an Orcas wireless charging carrier to carry a phone and keep it charged. It charges magnetically through the carrier plate and this is hard wired to the bike. Thus removing the plug in cable, which I found vibrated and damaged the charging port on a phone. I've added a Blackview BV9500 to this with some nav apps on it. I've also sourced a BV6600 as a backup, which has been well tested by a mate of mine on his KTM 500.

The Blackview phones aren't as slick as the Samsung ones I'm used to. The software is a bit clunky, they use a lot of Google Apps to do basic stuff like photo storage, messages etc. Both models are also heavy, but the battery on the 9500 is a 10ah one and lasts for 2 weeks in normal use or all day with GPS in full use. The 6600 last about a week apparently. They are also waterproof, (IP67 or IP69) shockproof etc, so time will tell if they are Steve proof! They both use the same charging lead and similar computer software linking styles. The final part to them is they take Micro SD cards and are both Dual Sim, so once abroad I can add in a foreign local sim card and also store relevant parts manuals, vehicle docs etc.

I've installed OsmAnd, Organic Maps & offline Google maps onto the 9500 as software. I need to spend more time with the OsmAnd nav app after last year and finding it really frustrating. All my friends tell me its great, so it must be something I'm doing whilst using it, so I'll try again. I think I still prefer my Garmin to nav by, but as last year's trip proved, I need a backup for when electronics fail and so I'll see how this set up goes. 

So, that's about it for this post. I'll try to update things as I go next week and I will give some feedback on the various bits of kit once the trip is complete and my bike is clean again!