Bikepacking from IRELAND to SCOTLAND ( On an E-Bike )

Wild camping in the largest forest park in the UK after travelling via e-bike from Northern Ireland to Scotland.

Find out more about the Cairn Brave 2.0: https://geni.us/8SFG

SOME OF MY KIT:
Smidge: https://geni.us/8B5WGOb
Durson X-Mid 1 Tent: https://durstongear.com
Exped Ultra 0 Sleeping Bag: https://geni.us/9wULKH6
Exped Ultra Pillow: https://geni.us/xd4Qb
Flextail Zero Pump: https://geni.us/Z3jA6VH
The Smokin Midge: https://geni.us/T5fr
Exped 3R Medium Wide Sleeping Mat: https://geni.us/dHq8pkW

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[Music] you see that that is Scotland and I got here from Ireland via an ebike and over the last day or two I’ve been exploring I’ve been camping I’ve been editing some videos and of course I’ve been eating Alive by midges around the massive Galloway Forest Park but let’s go back to where this adventure started yesterday morning at my home in Northern Ireland hi guys okay we are away nice and early this morning and my strategy is get to the ferry terminal with as much margin of error as possible I’m running the bike at about 50% power so I’m averaging about 15 M hour with a bit of effort from myself that means the battery will probably be down to about 60% by the time I get to the ferry if there’s an opportunity to HP up the battery I’m going to take it and I should be able to do that at the ferry terminal and I will be able to do that on the ferry itself but you are kidding me there’s been an accident up ahead no okay so I approached there I could see multiple cars all stopped at the side of the road was preparing myself to witness absolute Carnage and then I spotted the lamb running around the road so yeah I L lamb in the road much better than an accidento this is Jamma hello I’m on my way to Scotland actually yeah I’ve been using Google Maps cycle interactions actually they’ve been brilliant they’re really really good at finding shortcuts and quiet roads that I just wouldn’t be able to find otherwise I can fly you know I thought the ride in the Belfast was going to be completely boring and through really dull urban areas but yeah I had no idea there are all these little Woodland areas hidden in the suburbs of Belfast especially not this area so here’s something that ebik has been really useful for so far and that is getting away safely when I’m at roundabouts Crossings and red lights normally if I was on normal bike with this much weight on it I’d be very very slow on the take off for this I just stick it into Bush mode and I can take off really really quickly this is the Belfast lockshore path starting from White Abby and for me this is kind of a special place because I went to University in this area and I spent the first two years of University been incredibly inac active I put on a lot of weight and then I had a realization I need to start doing something and so I started running and this exact place is where I started to run I just saw my fery on the way in so a bit of a contradiction with ebikes is that within certain parameters the faster you go the greater the range of your battery because the battery only assists you up to 15 M hour so if you push with your own energy past that 15 mph like currently I’m doing 16 M hour it’s no longer using any battery until I would drop under that and then it speeds up again so it’s one of those things where if you’re bike fit if You’ got a bit of bike Fitness you can get so much more range out of the bike and someone who’s got no bike Fitness whatsoever you home before H not on the bike just the AR is Right bar yeah all right smells horrible in here I got the impression that bike passengers aren’t a particularly high priority as there’s no proper bike storage there’s just a bit bit SP in an office on the car deck and now my plan here is a backpack because I travel by feries so much I know I get into the plus Lin every time connected the fair from Belfast to K Ryan in Scotland only takes 2 and 1/2 hours and costs me £104 as a foot passenger plus a [Music] bike apparently I’m getting to go first plan now is I got 30 Mi to the campsite but I managed to totally charge up my battery on the bike which means I can just have fun using full assist the entire way there I don’t like all these lores [Applause] [Music] I seem to be in Forest now hello [Music] hi guys [Music] I just dropped my phone on the ground and then ran over it it’s okay oh boy [Music] [Music] ah well that was 20 mi of absolutely gorgeous roads and I’ve just got one mile left to get to the campsite I booked myself India campsite for that first night so I could get an electric hookup to fully charge the bike overnight it cost £5 for the night including the Electric hookup downside was that I did have to carry an extra cable in socket so I could actually use that power [Music] supply well this has turned out to be an absolutely glorious day which I feel I feel I earned this after the um less than ideal weather I had most of the days on the West Highland Way a couple of weeks ago this is Glenn TR campsite it’s very very nice nice and sheltered which is why I’m moving because there’s a lot of midies around boop boop boop all right plan tomorrow is really simple it’s go and explore about 20 mi of Trail in Galloway Forest Park I find a few interesting things in the map we’ll go and have a look at and see what those are like get right through to the other side of a decent chunk of it find somewhere delicious to eat a massive lunch and then head back in to the Forest Park and find a perfect spot to Wild camp for the night [Music] there’s a fine art to carrying kit on a bike as everything gets split up over several bags I used two small Fork bags to hold my tent and my sleeping bag and then everything else was mostly divided between two paniers on a rear rank [Music] let’s go and see if the Cafe’s open okay I’ve had a baked potato with haggus and cheese I I’ve got some editing done I’ve consulted a map we’re currently here at Glen Trill and my ultimate destination is here St John’s Town of Del where I know there’s somewhere amazing I can get lunch it’s about 22 miles but I just want to sort of explore this area and my hope is after St John’s to come down and maybe find somewhere to Camp somewhere in here before heading back down to Newton shirt tomorrow morning back through Glen lose and back towards the ferry which is down here Galloway Forest Park is actually the largest Forest Park in the UK covering nearly 300 square miles this is Brucey Stone and is a big rock to commemorate the time Robert the Bruce made the English very upset this is the Karen Brave 2.0 it is kind of AIT hybrid bike between a gravel bike and the mountain bike it’s got really thick comfortable tires it’s got disc brakes um it’s got gearing that’s designed for going uphills and it can handle just about any type of terrain within reason something I really wasn’t interested in doing was just doing a range test like just let’s see how far I can go in a single battery because those videos are very boring and the reason they’re very boring is that you can get loads of miles from an ebike if you you cycle incredibly slowly like it’s it’s it’s it’s I don’t think it’s really a fair thing to do what I want to do is I want to test this bike using it at an assistance level that makes the actual cycling bit fun enjoyable but also to show you that it’s possible to have a proper Adventure in one of these and it’s not actually that difficult to charge it up and top it up as you go along I’m letting the pressure in my tires down I’ve forgotten that I’d pumped the up to 45 PSI for the road which is not great for bumpy grind so I’m going to drop them down to 35 that is immediately noticeably more comfortable [Music] whoa look at the waterfall up [Music] there I mean look at that it’s fuse like this that just make me want to take a quiet moment and [Music] woo ah a ooh we’re probably Offroad [Music] night this is white laging Buffy and if I wanted to this is where I could spend the night but that wasn’t my plan my plan was to go on and get lunch and come back and Camp somewhere else huh but I could just stay here I’ve been sitting here for a few minutes and I’ve made a decision I’m not going to spend the night here there’s a few reasons but big one is it’s only 3:00 p.m. so I’m going to be sort of sitting around here for hours um on my own and what’ll happen is it’ll get to a bit late and I’ll think oh I’ll get an early night and get loads of sleep and then a pile of people will probably turn will turn up also this trip has been about exploration and Wrecking and planning for future Adventures so 100% I will be back well if you’re going a crash the best place to do it is on some very soft bog I don’t actually know quite what happened there I just find myself off the bike we go ew thanks for the dust Oh I thought I was in Mad Max for a minute there was flying down this Trail and in the distance I could just see this massive lorri coming towards me dust flying out the sides lunatics hanging off the side of it playing flaming guitars my bcks [Music] here we go two and a half hours later and I am thoroughly refreshed both nutritionally and electronically so I got to go find somewhere to camp for the [Music] night I’m not entirely convinced this route was designed for bikes this had better turn out to be the most fantastic shortcut ever or I am going to follow with Google Maps it was a shortcut that has saved me about a mile working out the range for electric bikes is incredibly difficult there’s so many different factors involved but this bike by default comes with three different settings it’s got economy mode sort of normal or Trail rad mode and then boost mode but you can using Shimano app activate up to S I prefer that because allows me a more fine chune um how I’m going to use that part I’m currently going uphill in eco mode it feels like I’m pretty much doing all the work if I turn that off that is zero assistance that feels horrible absolutely horrible Echo mode means I can just about get up this hill under my own steam but I do need to have a little bit of bike Fitness to be able to do that the next mode up which is the mode I use the most if it’s gives me a Range about 50 to 70 Mi that now feels like I’m only having to put in about half the effort now if it’s really steeper I’m feeling really lazzy I can keep going right on up until I get the boost mode where I I’m pretty much spinning my legs doing absolutely nothing and the bike is just crying me up the hill but if I use boost mode I’ll um drain the battery in 24 mies so on a full charge on mix toin using it mostly in one of the lower modes which does provide a decent amount of assistance I’m able to get comfortable 60 70 Mi out of this which is quite amazing if you think about it but I do have to put in some way on effort so if I get the hill I have to drop down the gears and that’s how I like to use an electric bik it’s not to let me go out and travel somewhere with zero effort whatsoever but it’s to let me get further than I would have otherwise now if you put it all the way up excuse me hello what I was trying to explain to you with the range of this bike some Americans just pulled up beside me with a puncture I sent them back to deler and the hope that the service station back there might be open good luck Americans I’ve just realized that the service station I sent the Americans to might be closed whoops battery takes roughly about 6 hours to completely charge from zero so that’s why if I do need the charg it from zero I daily um I would go and stay somewhere I can plug it in overnight roughly 2 hours on the charge will give you 20 M of range now that’s not exact because batteries actually slow down as they get uh towards the finish I think the last 20% of a battery takes the same amount of time as the first 50% something like that but yeah roughly if I plug it in for 2 hours that’s in another 20 mi [Music] range took me forever to find somewhere to Camp I was trying to find somewhere that wasn’t too sheltered that was at least a bit of a breeze going through trying and keep the midies away are really bad at the minute so I found a few spots but all far far too sheltered I thought I need to get somewhere along the the lock Shore because that at least is going to have a bit of a breeze on and I finally find this spot Tada nice grassy pitch now unfortunately the road is right there but the road’s sort of up a bit so I’m not getting the full noise of the vehicles and um there is a little bit of a breeze coming through here but I checked the forecast the wind has completely changed Direction during the night so I’m going to wake up in mid say welcome to Mid Town I’m trying everything I can this trip to keep the midies away I’m holding the flex till repeller I’ve got smoke coming off my arm and my hands are absolutely crawling with them I might have to resort to the only thing that’s definitely guaranteed to work a fire [Music] so after me going on about not using fire pits I’m going to use a fire pit I think this is okay it’s on a beach there’s no ground to burn underneath it’s just gravel no the midies can’t get me if I stand directly in the Smoke well there’s no midies on me I’m taken no chances I’m a little bit paranoid about security as you can actually see my tent from the road if somebody parked just up there they could look down and see it a bit concerned with my bike so I’ve hid it behind the tent it’s got a lock on it it’s got a few things on it but the thing I’m most interested in or excited about is this that’s it armed I pull an alarm for my bike so if I was yes if I was a sneaky sneak Thief want me to demonstrate I am a sneaky sneak Thief a bicycle I will steal this oh no what was that I’m sure it’s probably fine I’ve also attach the tent to the bike so if it gets really windy during the night there is always a possibility the tent will move and pull on the string set the alarm [Music] [Music] off if you wear into the seat sort of into the ground and stick your feet out in front of you you can just a b convince yourself that it’s comfortable it’s really not well this has been uh quite a fun little adventure and something quite different from what I’ve done before I’m kind of liking these multiday things they’re huge amount more work to edit but it feels like a proper Adventure when you do multiple days oh oh no come to beds was trying to say something profound give me a second I’m going to go rinse this in the lock would you come off get off there you muddy sticky pil of Klingons tomorrow tomorrow might be the thing that ruins this trip for me because so far the weather has been fantastic and historically I absolutely hate cycling in bad weather forecast is giving Rain uh getting worse and worse and worse my plan is I’m going to try and get up early leave early and try and get back or at least a good bit of the way back towards the ferry before before it get soaked story my candle light in the tent burning one of these little midgy corns not because there’s any Midge I just like the smell of them it’s quite nice being in a tent with like fragrances waing around I call this the spa tent mentality I mean I can just hear the gentle SS of the water labing down in the lock Shore I’m the sign of a a liner 30,000 ft in the air and every now and then a car goes past the speed and spoils the illusion somewhat but there’s a lot of smoke coming off that I’ll see you in the morning for the final part of this trip [Music] I hope to get up before the midies this morning I haven’t quite Managed IT they’re route and boot uh so I’m got to get packed up and get out of here beautiful this morning there’s absolutely zero wind which is what the mid is like I could have done with the breeze um so yes I got to get packed up and head out of here pretty quickly nearest time is about 10 miles J Jer going to head there hopefully try and find a bit cafe or somewhere I can pitch up for an hour or so uh but for riding the last 30 mil back to the ferry let’s get back to the boat Oh but before then I want to go and visit some [Music] deer welcome to midg time whoa look at my hands and my clothes I tell you what for every anti- Midge thing that I’ve used the only thing that really beats him is long sleeves a midet and then put smidge repellent all over your hands anything else I’ve tried once they get to this level this like proper swarm level nothing works out I think the worst thing about this is that I really need to go to the toilet and there’s absolutely no way I am providing a large fleshy surface for these midin the rain hasn’t arrived yet but it’s going to this whole morning just feels ominous look at their silly [Music] faces No apparently the road’s closed for resurfacing work which means I have to go this [Music] way oh hoay [Music] well the r [Music] starting this is absolutely miserable I hit it and the Lori drivers in this road aren’t messing around they’re flying past me really oh I’m getting off this Road for a bit [Music] [Music] hey sheep do not run out in front of me you Maniacs near they knocked off the bike by a sheep one mile from my house [Music] oh