Ok, nu har jag dragit ut på det länge nog, men jag skyller på jobbet och min lathet.
Jag har klippt ihop en liten video från cuklingen där, men den är ganska kass. Dels så är det filmat med en liten point and shoot, cyklandes med en hand på styret och kameran i den andra; dels så är det filmat bara när det var lugn (och lite tristare) cykling.
Så några klokhetsord till den som vill dit och cykla:
* ta med egna skor, handskar, glasögon och kläder. Hjälm fick jag låna.
* ta med ryggsäck med snacks, typ Snickers eller Maktkakor
* Kamera!
* se till att bli en liten grupp med erfarna cyklister; svagaste länken...
* var inte sen att dryfta era önskemål för guiden; vi visste inte hur mycket uppförs det skulle bli och det visade sig bli en. hel. del. Så även jag, som cyklat väldigt mycket (men haft ett uppehåll på två år innan det här) var helt slut redan efter halva dagen.
Klipper in texten jag skrev till Youtubevideon sist i posten, skriven på engelska för jag tänkte bidra lite till internetskunskapen. Förväntar mig inte några stående ovationer för videon, den är bara för att visa lite av vad man kan få se...
Här är videon:
texten...
In early feb 2011 I went on a mountain biking tour on Madeira, Portugal. This is a small, crappy video showing some of the more easy parts. We were three tourees with one guide, going for a ride a couple of hours. We bought the full day tour, which happened to be like this:
* pickup at hotel, ca 0900
* fitting of bikes and transport up on a/the mountain
* rode till lunch, then waited for most of the rain to stop (rainy season)
* then rode back to where we picked up the bikes at around 1500 o'clock.
* Back at the hotel at around 16.
The bikes were some Specialized full suspension bikes and in quite good shape. Bought the tour from a tour salesman for 56€, but it is Bikestation Madeira (
http://bikestation-madeira.com/) that actually takes care of the bikes and touring. Overall a fantastic experience with amazing nature and a great guide (and bikes). However, if you do this yourself, you would surely be happy if you did the following: bring your own mtb gear, SPD shoes, gloves, glasses and whatever you might want to have (only the bike+helmet was provided) AND ask the guide in advance to not go as much uphill (there is a lot of that).
The video is really crappy because:
* it's my first try ever on video editing
* it took me 10-20 minutes (ie, I didn't put much effort into it) to make it
* I took the video while biking, holding my point-and-shoot with one hand while trying to bike with the other.
As a result, this isn't very representative of the experience as I didn't shoot any video when it was as hardest or the most fun, only while going slow and easy. But, I wanted to share it anyway as there aren't many videos on this so when I was looking into this before going, I never got around to even know what to expect.
So, please keep in mind that this only shows brief parts, the most boring parts, of the tour. There was a lot more of that mud, and very narrow tracks in deep forest, that are not in this video.
Also, temp was around +10C up there, and we were lucky to have just a little rain that day (2 of 3 days it was raining, rainy season).
