Llangollen canal

Having lived aboard a narrowboat, a few of us nerdy types already knew what a beautiful place the canal can be - especially at this time of year, as the autumn leaves paint everything a red-and-gold colour. After moving to Llangollen, we took a bike ride along the canal, to the Trevor Basin.

(this was the start of our bike ride in Llangollen)

British Waterways have made an excellent job of upgrading the tow-path along the full length of the canal, and riding it was fantastic (helped, of course, because it's all absolutely level and flat). It took about an hour to meander along - rarely travelling faster than the boats on the canal!

What was so impressive were the views - so, inspired by Barney at BuildBrighton, we've decided to have a go at making a time-lapse camera that can be mounted onto a bike. The idea being that the next time we go for a bike ride, we can create a video to show everyone else what they are missing! We might even add in some GPS position recording, so that the cue points in the video can be tied in with an automatically updating Google map. But for now, we'll stick with making a camera that takes pictures every few seconds, and doesn't freak out when we ride over a few bumps (the towpath is lovely and smooth, but sometimes you have to go "off road" to cycle around obstacles such as dog walkers, moored boats, horses and woodland detritus).