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Photo shoot and a new helmet

Hello!

Welcome to the latest Arctic Ride 2014 blog! For the regular readers of the blog you will notice that its been a few weeks since I have posted and this is because I moved house and I've been without the internet (which makes blogging somewhat difficult). The good news is I am back online and even though it was my birthday on Friday and my wedding anniversary today I've managed to squeeze in a blog to give everyone an update of what I've been up to.

Even though I've been busy moving house I haven't let it get in the way of my preparation for my 6,000 mile solo charity motorbike ride to the Arctic Circle. As ever I've been rather busy and I have two major updates to tell you about.

The first was my photo shoot with Allinson's Photography. The aim of this session was to produce some professional photos that I could use as publicity shots for both press releases/media articles and for my social media network.

At Whitley Bay Lighthouse where I will start my ride in May 2014

Those of you who have seen recent photos of the Arctic Ride bike will have noticed the Allinson's Photography logo on the side boxes and I'm very please to be associated and supported by such a great local company.

As with most things in the North East of England the photo shoot was dependent on the weather being nice. Luckily the morning we picked in August was a nice one so we were able to get some nice shots. We tried to pick some iconic places in the North East of England and in the end we decided on 3. The first location was St Mary's Lighthouse in Whitley Bay. Whitley Bay is the town I grew up in and the its lighthouse, St Mary's, is where I will be starting from next May.

St Mary's Lighthouse, the icon of my hometown of Whitley Bay
After the shots were taken in Whitley Bay we moved to Newcastle upon Tyne to its famous quayside to get some shots.

The Tyne Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne

The Millennium Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne 
The final location for the shoot was at the Angel of the North. For those readers who aren't from the North of England, and contrary to popular belief, the Angel of the North isn't actually in Newcastle but is located in Gateshead.

The Angel of the North
So that was a small selection of my photo shoot. I'm sure you will see at lot of these photos in the coming weeks and months. To check out the full gallery please visit www.allinsonsphotography.com/event/Arctic-Ride-2014

Big thanks to Bruce Allinson from Allinson's Photography for his work on the shoot.

Now... the second big thing which has happen in the past few weeks involves helmet manufacturer Reevu. I spoke in detail about Reevu back in one of my blogs in June (link here). Reevu are based in the North East of England like myself and back in June kindly offered to help me out with my trip by providing me with a state of the art helmet. As all bikers know, a motorbike helmet serves one purpose - To Protect. Reevu's helmet take this concept one step further by producing the world's first motorbike helmets with integrated rear vision system.

I popped down to meet the team at Reevu last week where they presented me with a helmet to use on my Arctic Ride. Reevu are based about 30 miles from me so I took the morning off work to have a nice ride down and make time to talk to them about the product and how it can benefit me on my trip. When I got down there I ended up chatting about bikes and helmets for a good hour. I also received a good education in to how helmets are built, how they are designed to protect, and how the Reevu rear vision system works.

Sporting the Reevu helmet
I only managed to use the helmet for the 30 mile ride home but the initial signs were great from a helmet build point of view and the rear vision system. Before the summer is out I will write a full blog reviewing the helmet. So watch out for that one.

That's all for this week readers. Please continue to support my Arctic Ride using the following media links and tools.

Twitter - Follow @arcticride2014
Facebook - Like Arctic Ride 2014
YouTube - Subscribe to Arctic Ride
Virgin Money Giving - Donate with all money going to charity Cerebra 

Ride safe!

Gordon

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