Category Archives: Travelling

Technical, Travelling

Backing Up SD Cards on an Overnight Bike Trip

Leave a comment

I do many multi day trips on my motorbike, and rack up a lot of storage on SD cards. There’s the helmet camera, the camera facing me, the drone, and DSLR camera.

So here’s the setup I use to get a day’s photos off SD cards and onto a 4TB drive from a hotel room, using nothing but my iPhone and a few accessories. (for Android see end of post)

It is possible to use a laptop to copy the files, but this kit is a lot lighter and less bulkier than a laptop.

The Kit

  • Anker 7-in-1 USB-C adapter. The ports that matter here: SD, microSD, USB-A, and — the important one — USB-C power delivery. link
  • A 4TB portable hard drive. Big enough that you never think about it again. A fortnight of RAW files and 4K clips barely dents it, and you can keep several trips on there before it needs emptying. link
  • A USBA to USBC adaptor between the drive and hub – optional. It’s slightly quicker copying with USB-C. link
  • An iPhone. I use a 16 Pro Max, but this works with most iPhones. Anything from the iPhone 15 onwards has USB-C and plugs straight into the adapter.
  • A power source — your phone charger.

* Affiliate links

Before you leave: format the drive to exFAT

Do this at home. Format the drive as exFAT. It’s readable by iOS, macOS and Windows, and unlike FAT32 it handles files over 4GB — which matters the moment you shoot any video at all.

  • On a Mac: Disk Utility → select the drive → Erase → Format: ExFAT, Scheme: GUID Partition Map
  • On Windows: right-click the drive → Format → exFAT, allocation unit 128KB or larger

Then test the whole chain at home. Copy one folder end to end. You don’t want to find there’s an issue when you’re in your hotel room.

The hotel room routine

1. Power the hub first. A 4TB spinning drive draws more current than an iPhone will hand out on its own. Plug your charger into the adapter’s USB-C PD port before you connect the drive.

2. Connect everything. Adapter into the phone, drive into a USB-A port, SD card into the slot.

3. Kill auto-lock. Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never. iOS will happily stall a long transfer when the screen sleeps. Turn it back on in the morning.

4. Open Files → Browse. Under Locations you’ll see both the card and the drive. Open the card and find DCIM.

5. Make a dated folder on the drive. 2026-07-31 Day 3 Snowdonia. Something you’ll still understand in six months.

6. Copy — never Move. Tap Select → Select All → Copy. Go to your new folder and Paste. Move deletes from the card as it goes, and until that copy is verified the card is still your only original.

7. Walk away. Reckon on 10–20 minutes per 64GB through a hub. Leave Files in the foreground and go and have a shower.

Verify, then wipe card or store.

When it finishes, long-press the folder on the drive and check Get Info. Does the file count match the card? Does the size look about right?

Then, format the card from Files – make sure you format the card and not the drive!

If you want to be extra careful carry enough cards for the trip and rotate them instead. A full card zipped in your jacket plus a copy on the drive is two copies in two places.

Does this work on Android?

Yes, Android 11 or later will work, because that’s roughly when native exFAT support stopped being an OEM extra and became something you could just assume. A Samsung on Android 9 will very likely be fine; a budget handset on Android 13 might not

One thing to test at home before you rely on it: some phones will only mount one USB volume at a time through a hub. If the card and the drive won’t appear together, the direct copy is off the table and you’re staging everything through the phone’s own storage — which defeats the entire point.

Conclusion

This is a photo of the setup on my desk.

Travelling

Kefalonia 2022

Leave a comment

We had booked to go to Kefalonia with TUI in May 2020, but that didn’t go ahead, so we rebooked and went in June this year. We stayed at the Apollonion Resort & Spa, which was a very luxurious hotel but ultimately a bit far out from the main island than we would have liked.

The Hotel Location

There is a car/person ferry which goes every 30 mins from Lixouri to Argostoli which saves the 30-45 min drive around the coast

The hotel itself was very nice – parking outside our front door, and a very quiet balcony.

There seems to be a shortage of hire cars in many places, and there was no exception here. I did find someone through Facebook who provide excellent service – https://www.facebook.com/acerentacarkefalonia.

There are a large number of beaches to explore on Kefalonia – here are a few of them:

Of course there was the obligatory 1 day scooter rental (rented from http://motoround-kefalonia.gr/en/). There are some excellent remote spots to see around the island.

The Scooter (Aeon Elite 350cc)

This is the route I took. I started from Argostoli, headed South, past Skala, then back up the East Coast, before heading South West back to Argosoli.

Finally, a selection of photos from the week.

Camera Shots
Phone Shots
Travelling

Gran Canaria Scooter Ride 2021

Leave a comment

We made our 2nd trip to Gran Canaria this year, our first was back in 2012 when didn’t do much travelling.

This year I wanted to explore the island so hired a scooter for 1 day. I rented a Piaggio Beverly 300cc scooter from Motos Tivoli (a highly recommended company) which was ideal.

The roads and views in Gran Canaria are quite amazing. The route I planned avoided the East of the island as it is quite busy around that way.

Here’s a short highlight video I made of my ride – it’s in 4K. The full video is 4 hours in total..

Here are some photos I took around the island whilst we were there:

Travelling

Viewing Historical Rides GPS Data (Multiple KMLs)

Leave a comment

BACKGROUND
I’ve been riding motorcycles for about 5 years, and pretty much every ride have used Geo-Tracker to record the GPS co-ordinates of the route and create a KML file of the route (which I store in Google Drive). I was interested in finding new areas to explore so wanted to view all of the areas I’ve ridden, and highlight areas I’d missed.

Below is the map I had at the end of this process, which was created in Google Earth Pro (the Windows version – it’s free). Each line is coloured by the year the route was made.

As you can see I live in the Midlands, near Coventry. Below is a close-up of that area, plus I’ve highlighted with yellow circles areas that I’ve not ridden:

THE PROCESS
I found it easier to group all the KML’s I have by year and then put them into separate folders. You don’t need to do this and can use with a single folder of KML’s if you wish.

Convert multiple KML’s to KMZ
This simply packages multiple KML’s into a single KMZ file which makes the routes easier to handle in Google Earth.
Install and Start Google Earth Pro, and add a new Folder (either call it the year, or if not grouping by ear something like ‘ROUTES’):


Then, select all of your KML files for that year and drag them exactly onto the new folder. You should now have something like:

Right-click on the year and then ‘Save Place As’, then enter the file name and save. Then, right-click on the year again, click ‘Delete’ and click on OK.
Follow this process for all the years you want to process or just the one route if you prefer

Add all KMZ’s to Google Earth
Still in Google Earth Pro, there should be no folders, so create a new one. I call it ‘By Year’.
Then, drag all of the KMZ files (NOT the KMLs) onto this folder.
Then click on the right arrow symbol next to each sub folder to minimise it:

Double-clicking on the folder ‘By Year’ should show all your routes on the map, the next step is styling and colouring these.


Styling and Colouring
To change the widths of all lines, and remove the yellow pin (icons) right-click on ‘By Year’, then ‘Properties’. Click on the tab ‘Style Color’, then the button ‘Share Style’.
Change the highlighted values as below:

Click OK and OK.

For each year, right-click on it, then ‘Properties’. Click on the tab ‘Style Color’, then click on the Color to change it. Click OK and OK.

Final Steps
On the Layers section I turn them all off except for ‘Labels’ as it looks cleaner, but you can show ‘Places’ or ‘Roads’ if you prefer:

For easier viewing in Google Earth Pro I prefer the top-down view, the keyboard shortcut for this is ‘u’. Here are other Google Earth Pro keyboard shortcuts.

Closing Thoughts
I store and add new areas to explore in a Google My Maps, and for route planning, and navigation I use Google Maps on my phone with one headphone plugged in.

Photo by José Martín Ramírez Carrasco on Unsplash

Travelling

Nuneaton Motorbike Ride

Leave a comment

A GoPro recording of a ride around the North of Nuneaton area on 20/05/2020.

I’ve switched video editing software from Cyberlink PowerDirector to Adobe Premiere – there was a bit of a learning curve but it didn’t take long to get the hang of it, and it has a load more features than PowerDirector.

Route