Before the last random meandering tour of the hills and mountain ranges of England and Scotland (idea for a book: find the least flat end-to-end route) I briefly mentioned the latest accessories with which I had pimped my ride. A few people asked questions about both the handlebar smartphone mount and the solar phone charger.
The Herbert Richter HTC Hero mount was pretty good. The reviews worried me because somebody said that it had failed on the very first ride and their phone had been destroyed. My experience was far better: I must have done at least 1,000km, in all kinds of conditions and speeds, before the cradle was knocked loose when I hit shoddy roadworks while descending the hill into Melrose in the Borders at 35kmph:
The trench across the road was one of a series. A developer has very recently put up a little cul-de-sac called Scottsdale and has dug up the road at intervals to lay the power for each streetlight. It appears they couldn’t be bothered to compact the backfill properly before smearing a bit of tarmac on the top. The road is already sinking as the backfill settles, and the tarmac job is already crumbling off. Presumably Borders Council will be left with the bill when it (and the rest of the development) fully falls apart — which it probably already has by time of writing.
I wonder if prospective buyers notice this shoddy shortcut when they visit? I wonder how confident they feel about the quality of the construction at Scottsdale after this, their first impression of the developer’s work?
(Unfortunately I can’t find the name of the developer because if you attempt to Google for new housing you get about 1.75 million hits from SEO drivel — a hundred thousand pointless property search engines, all duplicating the same non-content but promising to help you find new homes and new houses and new properties ready to buy and rent, for sale and to let, in Scottsdale, off the B6059 Dingleton Road, TD6 9HR, Melrose, near Jedborough, Tweedbank and Galashiels, in the Scottish Borders, Scotland, United Kingdom. None of them actually tell you anything about the properties listed, but they’re very keen to tell you they have properties in Scottsdale, TD6, Melrose…)
Anyway, everything’s fine because the excellent thing about the Herbert Richter HTC Hero handlebar mount is that it is designed for the HTC Hero, and the HTC Hero is apparently indestructible. It has scrapes gouged out of it, and there’s barely a straight line or flat surface left on it, but it still does everything it’s supposed to do.
It would probably be even more complete if I hadn’t simply put it back on the mount. It fell off again a few days later, on the crumbling roads of Arran, and the cradle no longer clips onto the mount. It merely slides.
The mount cost £17, and I think it probably lasted about 17 days. It was convenient being able to put the phone on the handlebars for navigation, but I’m not sure it was £1-a-day convenient.
And somebody asked me about the FreeLoader solar phone charger. It’s worthless.
At War With The Motorist 