Solo motorcycle jolly France/Spain

[Spriddler]

I am 75 and have hip and back problems so I might be a little optimistic hoping I can do this. I have had both hips replaced this last ten years or so and am waiting for an op to replace my left joint again. This one has become loose and gives me pain. I also have spinal stenosis. If I find it all too much I can always U turn and come home. What with Covid and other things these last few years I have not been able to get away. Thanks again John.

I couldn't agree more. We've lost far too much adventuring time. I'm 77 and for the past 12 years have only had use of my left arm and hand so I know what you mean about riding with aches and pains. When leaving for a trip and I'm asked where I'm going I always say 'towards........' e.g. the Pyrenees, Bavaria, or wherever I have in mind, or if I'm in mischievous mood I say 'I'm going there and back to see how far it is'. If it ceased to be fun, I'd come back. Memories aren't made from finding excuses to put things off , or as a pal of mine says: 'The best cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree'.

 

[Orion]

Yes! I am planning in 2024 riding a TNT 125 from Santander to Calais via La Beneza to watch the road racing.
Will be interested in sites you stay at along the way.

Have you been to La Beneza before? We visited back in the mid 2000s and had a great time - Bultaco, Ossa and Montesa rule! Not sure if it was on the same trip but we stumbled on a sort of race meet in Santander as well. The Chimay Classic in Belgium is one I’ll have to get back into the habit of visiting again - bikes and Belgian Trappist beer, heaven!

 

[dij]

Hi all off topic a bit but would a motorcycle blog riding through France to Spain be acceptable on fun? I have my ferry booked in May from Newhaven and my first overnight stop paid for.

I used to have a place in Catalonia, mostly rented out in summer but I traveled by bike to it every year after the letting period in September down through France. I really enjoyed the biking in France and never did motorways unless time constrained on the return. First trips involved just an overnight half way but journeys developed into a multi-day french tour - different each year - the french part of the tour became so much more to me than was the destination. It was so enjoyable it led me to moving to France in 2018 - despite BREXIT.

 

[Burgo]

 

[Spriddler]

If you're anywhere near Santander end May there's the II RIDER COLOMBRES 2023 that will be held from May 29 to June 4 in Asturias which is a huge event for riders and for spectators just to see a vast range of bikes of many nationalities.

II RAIDER COLOMBRES

Ven a disfrutar de excelentes paisajes en esta espectacular Raider Motera que discurrirá por parajes de Asturias, en el mes de mayo y junio, fechas, precios e inscripciones en esta ficha.

www.concentracionesdemotos.com

I've ridden in the classic bike Colombres Rally which is in September and the 5,000 Curves rally; 300km a day in the stunning Picos mountains. The Spanish certainly know how to put on an event on the road and for the 'leisure' times.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Tony the Manc']

Hi all off topic a bit but would a motorcycle blog riding through France to Spain be acceptable on fun? I have my ferry booked in May from Newhaven and my first overnight stop paid for.

Looking forward to hearing about your motorbiking.............keep us updated.

 

[MrDean]

Have you been to La Beneza before? We visited back in the mid 2000s and had a great time - Bultaco, Ossa and Montesa rule! Not sure if it was on the same trip but we stumbled on a sort of race meet in Santander as well. The Chimay Classic in Belgium is one I’ll have to get back into the habit of visiting again - bikes and Belgian Trappist beer, heaven!

I haven't been before but the videos look .

 

[fifthwheel]

Looking for a bit of help with posting short video's and pics. I think I have all the gear but no idea. What I have, an android phone with Google resize app, a Gopro Hero 10 as yet unused. I subscribed to the cloud storage through Gopro and downloaded the Quik app but it takes forever to upload anything to the cloud. What I want to do is a similar blog to Tams trip posting pics and text of my daily blunders and cockups. I can take a couple of sim cards for the Gopro but will need to store the content somewhere. I dont think I can do this in Mcdonald's using wifi as it would take too long. If I used the hotel wifi it would take longer than overnight for a 256 card. A lot of pics I see on Fun seem to be very big and have great detail, I think if I tried to upload a similar size it would say my pic is too big. What is the larges size file I can upload here? Thanks

 

[kingspeed]

I dont know what I'm doing here but the bike photo I have saved on my PC running Linux Mint is too large to post. I don't know how to make pics smaller but it says 8.4mb in size and is too big. I am trying to upload from Go Pro cloud, is there another easier way. I can use Google Drive I think. I think I remember Tam trying to make his pics smaller but can't remember how he did it. Old man on a new bike! https://gopro.com/v/aRg5dLDvd871V

Hello, Love the bike. Have a great trip, regards Trevor.

 

[wfdTamar]

Just use Polarsteps. It tracks and plots you on a map. You pick the spots you want to do a blog entry, write your text, then pick the photos and videos you want to attach to that blog entry. The only catch I found is videos are limited to one minute (but you can have multiples). That saves on uploads and boring people so I don’t mind it.

You want to be able to take photos in high resolution, but only upload medium resolution ones (suitable for web viewing and faster, lower data uploads).

The GoPro might be recording in 4K which means huge uploads (unless it uploads a lesser version).

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Jane And Rog]

I dont know what I'm doing here but the bike photo I have saved on my PC running Linux Mint is too large to post. I don't know how to make pics smaller but it says 8.4mb in size and is too big. I am trying to upload from Go Pro cloud, is there another easier way. I can use Google Drive I think. I think I remember Tam trying to make his pics smaller but can't remember how he did it. Old man on a new bike! https://gopro.com/v/aRg5dLDvd871V

I think that if your photos are standard JPGs, then this site offers to resizs them as you upload. Others, it doesn’t - we notice that e.g. with portrait mode photos from our iPhones, no resizing happens, or with photos edited in another app, which presumably saves TIFFs or other uncompressed files.

 

[EuroTrotters]

On yer bike

 

[fifthwheel]

Looking for a bit of help with posting short video's and pics. I think I have all the gear but no idea. What I have, an android phone with Google resize app, a Gopro Hero 10 as yet unused. I subscribed to the cloud storage through Gopro and downloaded the Quik app but it takes forever to upload anything to the cloud. What I want to do is a similar blog to Tams trip posting pics and text of my daily blunders and cockups. I can take a couple of sim cards for the Gopro but will need to store the content somewhere. I dont think I can do this in Mcdonald's using wifi as it would take too long. If I used the hotel wifi it would take longer than overnight for a 256 card. A lot of pics I see on Fun seem to be very big and have great detail, I think if I tried to upload a similar size it would say my pic is too big. What is the larges size file I can upload here? Thanks

Thanks everybody I have spent hours on this and have had to admit it has me beat. My Motorola Android phone works great and is very quick to upload pics without any photo size problems. I really wanted to use my Gopro for photo and video but I am really struggling with it. I have an Amazon fire tablet I really wanted to use as its obviously bigger than the phone but It seems so complicated so it looks like the phone for this forum and Gopro sd cards for myself to view the content at home on the pc. I have bought a helmet chin mount for the Gopro and intended to post a little video each day after riding. All the Gopro content seems too big to post including photo's even after resizing and setting the camera to a smaller resolution. Do we have a dummy page on Fun that I could use to get my files the correct size that I could delete after I have finished playing around instead of using this page that I'm on now?

 

[wfdTamar]

Probably be better with a MacBook Air. You could put the Gopro footage on it and likely resize it to upload onto the internet.

 

[Jo662]

Thanks everybody I have spent hours on this and have had to admit it has me beat. My Motorola Android phone works great and is very quick to upload pics without any photo size problems. I really wanted to use my Gopro for photo and video but I am really struggling with it. I have an Amazon fire tablet I really wanted to use as its obviously bigger than the phone but It seems so complicated so it looks like the phone for this forum and Gopro sd cards for myself to view the content at home on the pc. I have bought a helmet chin mount for the Gopro and intended to post a little video each day after riding. All the Gopro content seems too big to post including photo's even after resizing and setting the camera to a smaller resolution. Do we have a dummy page on Fun that I could use to get my files the correct size that I could delete after I have finished playing around instead of using this page that I'm on now?

If you use the GoPro app ,your photos will transfer to your phone via Wi-Fi Automatically.
It is a subscription service,but worth it imo.
You can even edit any videos on their app too. It may be an easier way.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[wfdTamar]

The problem is the GoPro file sizes are huge. I have some that's 4 minutes of 1080i and it's 2.36Gb. There may be options in the GoPro to cut the quality (it's been a while since I used it).

 

[fifthwheel]

If you use the GoPro app ,your photos will transfer to your phone via Wi-Fi Automatically.
It is a subscription service,but worth it imo.
You can even edit any videos on their app too. It may be an easier way.

I have the app and am able to save to Gopro cloud but still struggling with the file size. I'm still working on it

 

[wfdTamar]

I’m not familiar with the Fire tablet or what OS it uses, but on a Mac or Windows you could use another app to shrink the file size of the videos (something like Handbrake) then upload that file to the cloud. However doing that could make the file unrecognisable to the Gopro software.

I’d use YouTube or Polarsteps if that happened.

 

[fifthwheel]

Edit. getting the hang of it now

 

[fifthwheel]

Edit

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[fifthwheel]

Delete

 

[fifthwheel]

Delete

 

[fifthwheel]

Sorry for the deletes but after a lot of messing around I think I can now post video's and photo's from my phone.
Looking forward to the trip. Should I start a new thread or carry on with this one? John.

 

[wfdTamar]

What's the process you've come up with?

 

[fifthwheel]

What's the process you've come up with?

Downloading from GoPro to the Quik app then uploading to Dropbox then posting a hyperlink to the forum, Sometimes the hyperlink is not clickable and has to be copied and pasted I'm still working on that. I think its possible to send a link from the GoPro Quik app to the forum but Iv'e only managed to do that once and can't repeat it again.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[wfdTamar]

Problem is you might run out of space on Dropbox (you only get 5Gb for free). Does Dropbox reduce the file size (
I don't think it does)? Youtube does for people watching it, but I'm not sure it does for you uploading. Makes sense to use the Gopro cloud (you paid for that didn't you?), but I can't see a way to reduce the upload size (to save data).

You really need something on the computer to reduce file size before you upload.

How to Edit Videos on the Amazon Fire Tablet

The Amazon Fire Tablet is a convenient tablet with a clear, big screen that’s mostly used for entertainment – streaming media, reading books, playing music, and various other fun activities. Other than watching videos, this large display can be useful

www.alphr.com

 

[fifthwheel]

The hyperlinks I am creating from gopro quik app dropbox or google drive etc sometimes send black text instead of blue and are unclickable if I create a direct link. When sending a link I get the preset places I might want to use eg,
email dropbox whatsapp etc etc. sugested to me and they always work, its only when I use a direct link for posting on here for example when the link I send is unclickable.
I dont know where I can send a link to practice, if I keep sending to this forum I will end up with a load of deletes which I dont want. I want to get it right before the trip. I am sure I have seen a test page available somewhere on a forum but cant remember where. I wont start to tell how long Iv'e been trying to crack this as it is unbelievable.

 

[wfdTamar]

If you want to see what Polarsteps can do have a look at this (you may need to make an account and ask me to add you to my list of viewers). This is my trip around France (mostly) in 2019 in my Hymer.

It shows a diagram of the route with a dot at each diary entry. You click on a dot and it goes to the entry where you can read, view the pics and videos (though I don't think I put any in that trip). You can do it on your phone.

Polarsteps

Polarsteps is the personal travel log in your pocket.

www.polarsteps.com

I did take video and waited til I got home to compile it all into an iMovie video (only 4 hours long!). One of the better bits of that is a sped up segment up and down lots of hairpin bends in the Alps.

 

[fifthwheel]

If you want to see what Polarsteps can do have a look at this (you may need to make an account and ask me to add you to my list of viewers). This is my trip around France (mostly) in 2019 in my Hymer.

It shows a diagram of the route with a dot at each diary entry. You click on a dot and it goes to the entry where you can read, view the pics and videos (though I don't think I put any in that trip). You can do it on your phone.

Polarsteps

Polarsteps is the personal travel log in your pocket.

www.polarsteps.com

I did take video and waited til I got home to compile it all into an iMovie video (only 4 hours long!). One of the better bits of that is a sped up segment up and down lots of hairpin bends in the Alps.

View attachment 715419

I have looked at Polarsteps in fact I follow Tam on there but was looking for something more instant, like a little daily video and a couple of photo's members could see with a couple of clicks. Another thing is I dont like to be beaten.

 

[wfdTamar]

If you want to be able to post stuff on this site you have to work out how to resize the files (reduce file quality/size). For viewing on a computer, phone or iPad screen, they can be quite low resolution which also cuts how much data is involved. I posted a link to video resizing software for the Fire. There’s sure to be photo software too.

It should be a matter of getting the Gopro content from Gopro to Fire. Resize it using that software on the Fire. Upload from Fire to hosting service (Gopro cloud, YouTube, etc) or direct to this site. If you put it on the hosting service, then post a link to it on this site.

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}