Alfa GT

A few random images from our recent run to the North West Coast of Scotland.

Return to Trabuco

Eighteen months have slipped away since I visited our base in Spain. Last week Ali Charlie and I flew over for a few days, and despite there being a heatwave in the preceding week, we found mainly rain in Trabuco. The place hasn't changed much, if anything it seems to have been tidied up. Apparently the mayor is putting as much money in to public works as possible to deal with the recession.

We drove over to Nerja one day in search of the sun, and found the sea shimmering with a radiant turquoise.



A new Village sign had arrived.........and if we needed more evidence of the heavy rainfall, Iznajar was once again full for the first time in five years.

Diesel magic

The Ford Focus has has a hard life, and recently after 108k miles I had to replace the clucth and flywheel. ouch! the best part of £900 moved from my account to the local garage who did a fine jobe for £300 less than the Ford dealer.

The car drives like new again, but the spiraling cost of diesel forced (£1.39 per litre) encouraged me me to examine how savings could be made.

The car is supposed to deliver up to 65mpg, but in real driving conditions, the best average I get is around 42, even with the lavish amounts of motorway driving I have to do. I once saw 52 mpg, by sticking at a 70mph for a few hundred miles, but that was very hard work.

I've read about remapping the ignition system, and heard that major gains could be had, but laziness prevented me from traking further. With the added incentive of high prices at the pumps I decided to re-visit, and rather than a re-map located a CR Tech box from Bluespark Automotive.

This is a piece of electronics that plugs into the Fuel inject circuit and re-interprets the signal to make the engine more efficient. The claim was 30% more power, which translates into economy because you don't need tyo feed the engine as much because it's performing more efficiently. I had my doubts but decided to give it a try.

It works. straight out of the box, The engine behaves as before, but there is definitely more oooomph when you put you foot down. My first trip down to Milton Keynes saw an average mpg of 62mpg at 70 - 80, and on Saturady I re-set the average figure on a 20 mile trip on the motorway and saw 70mpg! The average soon drops once short journeys and colds starts are indulged in, but the average around town is now 52mpg.

I wish I'd installed a long time ago.

This week I finally found a restaurant in Northampton that serves good food. It's in the centre of the town on the ring road, and was a church some time ago. In fact it was one of the oldest churches in Northampton before being defrocked, and the town has grown up around it.

It was quiet when I arrived, and after been shown to my table I looked up and saw this ghostly figure perched in a window, high above the dining area.

Great food - I had soup followed by fish pie. I enjoyed it so much , I returned the following evening!

Removing the cold barrier.

Today the sky was blue, and the temprature crept up to 6 degrees centigrade (where is that pesky degree symbol when you need it?). Previously it would have been too cold for riding, but today I broke with tradition and donned my christmas present from Ali, a set of Keis electrically heated vest, gloves and boot insoles.

At first I wasn't sure how effective the gloves and soles were - I could feel the heat on my back but everything else seemed just OK rather than hot. I changed the setting from medium to high, and set off up the M55. I cold still feel the heat from the vest but everything just seemed comfortable. This is some acheivement when you take into account the windchill factor that motorway speed brings, driving through the digits until they hurt.

After 50 miles I thought I need to see what it would be like without the heating, and after a couple of miles at 30mph, my fingers were hurtingto the point of being dangerous, so the experiment has been a success. I made my way home, and after 80 miles my legs began to complain, my hips seemed to freeze and discomfort penetrated my knees. Next time thermals will be worn.

After 95 miles, I returned home, sharing the last part of the journey on the M6 and M55 with a guy on a Triumph Rocket. As we pulled up at the last set of light I could see the wires leading into his gloves. Electric heating - it's the way to maximise the bright winter days and cure the blues.

I washed the bike down to get rid of any residual salt, and by the time I finished the cold was making me shiver - I wa no longer protected by the Keis gear!