Another tranche of albums recommended by the 1001 abums generator. Some really excellent albums here, bust also a few that I can't really understand why they made it onto the list.

On the whole, my album ratings have quite a strong concordance with the global reviews, the main exceptions being hip-hop albums.

With our favourite tandem sidelined until I can take the rear section of the frame to the Seatpost Man in Chorley, I’ve taken it upon myself to sort out the Longstaff tandem.

I had this tandem frame built about 30 years ago and for the last 20 or so years it has seen very little use. It's a rather lovely single marathon frame finished in flam kingfisher blue. I had the frame built for fast riding rather than touring, and it has seen use on a couple of occasions in time trials. The tandem is pretty light for a tandem, but it's really a bit old-fashioned now: it has an elderly Campagnolo tandem chainset, Campagnolo tandem hubs with screw on freewheel, and Dia-Compe cantilevers. Gearing is Campagnolo Ergo-Shift, with a Choris rear mech and a triple front derailleur from  a long unavailable Campagnolo MTB groupset. I built the 40 spoke wheels with Mavic Module 3CD rims and 13G/14G butted spokes. Those rims are a bit limiting regarding tyre width.

I returned to the NBRC club events after the cycle tour of the Hebrides. I've had a bit of a disrupted season so far, with the minor operation taking me out of two club events, plus the tour taking me away from two others. The training has been similarly affected, though the stats indicate that Im (just about) hanging in there.

Anyway, it was back to Astwood for this event, on a sunny evening with a light wind. It seemed to be cooling down quite quickly. I chose to ride the P5 with the deep rim front wheel, which worked out well. We had a field of 9 riders, and all started. Several were on road bikes, including the winner. I came in second, but first on vet standard. I didn't really notice any real problems except for the coach that came at me head on at one point on the lane after turning at Chicheley!

I thought it might be helpful to record some of the technical information pertaining to the tour.

The bike – we rode the Thorn Raven Twin tandem we’d bought back in 2013. This was reviewed over several blog posts on this site. The tandem worked pretty well until the final day of cycling, when the front seatpost snapped, rendering it unrideable. That’s only the second time in my life I’ve had a seatpost snap. Other than that, we found that gear shifting seemed a bit sticky. Perhaps an oil change for the Rohloff hub is due. 

Day 8 Monday Acharacle to Oban - in which we suffer a serious mechanical problem that brought the tour to a sudden end! Monday June 3rd.

Up bright and early for breakfast - pancakes and bacon this morning. After loading everything up and settling our bill with the hotel, we we set off towards Strontian. Our plan for the day was to ride over to Strontian, round the end of Loch Sunart and over the long three mile climb to the equally long descent to Lochaline. From Lochaline we'd catch the ferry to Fishnish on Mull and cycle a few miles down the road to Craignure for the ferry to Oban.

Day 7 Sunday Acharacle (2nd June)

It was a bit hard to believe after yesterday’s excellent weather, but the weather forecast for rain all day turned out to be true. We did get out for about 18 miles in the drizzle, cycling along Ardnamurchan as far as Glenborrodale through lovely mixed woodland. Saw a red squirrel. A very wet red squirrel!

Day 6 Ferry from Armadale to Mallaig, cycling Mallaig to Acharacle (1st June)

Another relatively low mileage day, but one with substantial climbs. We headed for the Loch Shiel Hotel in Acharacle, where I'd booked us in for two nights. We had the best weather of the tour so far, but we did tangle with the planned route on the bike computer. I had planned to ride on the B road through Arisaig, but as it turned out the routing (and I can't recall whether I planned this on Komoot or Garmin Connect) took us on annoying little detours with surprisingly inappropriate gradients. It seems to me that very often a specified cycle route doesn't suggest enough thought has been taken on gradient!

Day 5 Departing from Tarbert and Cycling on Skye

This was to be the longest day of our tour in mileage terms - around 60 miles. The plan was to catch the early ferry from Tarbert across to Uig on Skye and basically head down via Portree, Sligachan and Broadford to Armadale. I'd had real problems arranging accommodation on Skye - since the bridge was built, vistor numbers have rocketed and much of the accommodation is for rental cottages of books up well in advance. Added to this was the disappearance of the last to ferries from the website! In the end, I found a B&B in Ardvasar, a mile or so beyond Armadale.

Day 4 North Uist, South Harris Thursday 30th May 

Redburn House is a ‘self-service’ B&B, with no resident manager – breakfast is provided for guests to help themselves. This was convenient, and this enabled an early breakfast so we could set off by 7.30 to cycle  over to Berneray for the 9.30 Leverburgh ferry.  

Day 3 Eriskay, South Uist, Benbecula and North Uist, Wednesday 29th May 

The plan for today was to ride through Eriskay, South Uist, Benbecula and North Uist to Lochmaddy, where I had booked accommodation. We were up fairly early because we planned to ride to Ardmhor ferry terminal for the first Eriskay ferry at 0925 and we thought it prudent to allow some time for mechanical hiccups. In the event the ride was straightforward, so we arrived early, and had to hang around for a while before the ferry came in.