Stuartie_c, it would be an honour, I had planned a two day dash from aviemore to blair athol via glen tilt and potentially the ‘secret’ howff, will be in touch…

The worst thing about that descent is the knowledge that once it was singletrack all the way down :cry: Thankfully the guys i was with were a little too tired to lynch me, and at least two of us had had a lot of fun on the climb up Allt Nam Fang.

Sorry, did the old edit-a-roo while others were posting.

Jojo, it was nice to see you at the weekend, can I just apologise in case i wasn’t all there? A week of broiling sunshine, various alchohols and other substances may have left me a little insensible.

no kilt, just some specialized baggies. Riding in a kilt would certainly be pretty cool though (or perhaps precisely the opposite when i think about it…)

geoffj, who was FIL? I’ve only read a few bothying/climbing books and don’t really follow climbing much, although i knew enough about the Creag dubh to feel a little sacreligious standing there with my fancy lycra gear :D

the photoshopping was in the last pic, the foreground was almost black so i had to try and select it and adjust the exposure, if you look at the edge between land and sky its a bit sudden!

I had Salsa bars in mind, if only so i can run my mini bar ends without the fashion police coming calling. Druidh, cheers for the offer, but I’ve already got some ancient Woodman stubbies that I’m really happy with.

HH, no. :-) Train to Bridge of Orchy, riding to Ft William, then train back from Ft William (possibly the most memorable view of the week was looking out of the train window down to loch treig from corrour. It was like a cauldron of mist but the sun was illuminating it while the mountains were rearing up either side etc etc

…wanders off to read some poetry and weep at the beauty of it all…

Just filled my hip flask with some of my gf’s dad’s best sloe poitin, that should see me through 7 days in the highlands :D

Don’t think so, i got a 2.2″ on the basis of how good my 2.4″ was, and it definitely doesn’t seem as sticky or soft. A little disappointed given how much the bloody thing cost. :?

Yep, another Laserdisc success here!

Yep.

to be sure of doing a good job, build the inside of the rim up with cloth rim tape/insulating tape, so that the tyre is a really tight fit.

It will make it awkward to get the tyre on (and you’ll have to fish the rim strip back out again) but it makes it all the easier to inflate, and i reckon helps prevent burps.

Lots of soapy water is your friend!

Oh, and Joe’s Noflats latex is the best i’ve used, stays liquid a lot longer than the others i’ve used.

OK, forget the touring thing, i was just using that as one example of why low gears were good (circumnavigating the globe on a fixed gear, do you honestly believe they climbed every steep off road climb they came to? I like to ride my bike, not push it).

Everyone will have a gear setup that works for them, but low gears are totally valid, however fit or otherwise you are.

If its any consolation, I’ve found that the tighter the tyre is, the better the resulting tubeless set up.

I make mine fit tight by building the rim up with insulating tape. I then coat everything in soapy water, wrestle the tyre on with my thumbs and then re-align the rim strip.

This done, it inflates dead easy, and I’ve never had a single burp or leak since.

sq225917, are latex tubes less prone to pinch flats? I understood they resisted thorn/glass punctures better..

Really? :roll:

I wasn’t trying to imply it was, i was responding to the suggestion that low gears are just a fitness substitute.

Mrmo, don’t talk arse.

While there are still climbs out there that I can’t ride up, I will stick with my 22 x 34 lowest thanks.

Sure I could get fitter, but that just means I’ll be able to try steeper and sillier climbs with my nice low gear. Also, try touring with a trailer up and over scottish hills and then decry the low gears.

Horses for courses, if you don’t need low gears, try riding harder trails! :wink:

Earthworm Jim!

Or (maybe doesn’t count)…

Haha, and for that matter, which shop would be foolhardy enough to deal with a singletrackworld co-operative? Words “hornets” and “nest” spring to mind…

Have had a cheeky swim in Loch Lubnaig, a lovely transition from slippy slimy rocks to weeds to unfathomable black inky depths… Was my first swim in several years though so felt fantastic!

Keep an eye out off the side of the sustrans path once it reaches the falls of Leny, some perfect singeltrack following the edge of the river, and great views into the gorge.

Haha, good point ooOOoo, I have a bit of trouble explaining myself in my day classes when I call it ‘ghetto’…

Hard lines!

I run a 2.25 ADvantage on 717s, and run it at about 30 p.s.i. Its never even hinted at rolling off, even though its a fatter tyre running softer (which should make it more likely to roll i would have thought?).

Maybe the difference is that i’ve built the rim bed up with insulating tape (five or six layers of it at least). My theory was that by removing all the slack in the tyre (its really tight to get on) it won’t have anywhere to go.

What have you got beneath the split inner tube?

I hate the fact that I don’t want to shop there but do, for much the same reasons as ahwiles.

Plus they keep trying to I.D. all 26 bearded years of me when i try to buy a bottle of Deuchars. Its 4% and sedative ffs, how many bus stop fights am i going to start on one bottle of Deuchars??

Whisky and smokeables in Glen Nevis for us! Got into the hostel by the skin of our teeth, there for four nights after cycling in from bridge of orchy, gonna be good!

Midgies are going to be savage though, apparently been some quite spectacular rain then sunshine on the west coast, just how they like it!

Eh? badlywireddog, you reduced your gearing by grinding off teeth from your chainring? Or was that an example of bad advice?

I’ve had plenty of great trail/camping advice from the likes of Druidh, Tandemjeremy, Stuart_C and a couple of others, always appreciated!

Mr Kelly’s tubeless guide was helpful too, I already knew the basics, but it made things a little easier for me.

Great pics!

I reckon the first picture is part of the single speed world champs course in Bagaduish?

Where are pictures 6&7?

Another Charge fan here, although I got it frame only, don’t know if that uses a ‘better’ steel or not.

I think the only significant advantage of the charge over the others is the tyre clearance, its huge. Which means you can run really fat tyres and turn it into a cornering machine!

With 4″ forks it still descends big rocky steep stuff like an XC hardtail though, slightly bruising!

Scienceofficer, what do you reckon stops burping?

its not a problem i suffer often (or at all for that matter) but have wondered how to prevent it none-the-less.

I figured filling up the space between the rim bed and bead stopped it, as there was no slack on the bead to allow it move? The downside of course is that this makes the tyre very difficult to get on and off, but nothing some good tyre levers couldn’t cope with…

Practicality and load carrying yes, but what if you’re trying to do impractical things with a smaller load? :D

When I last used a Bob to carry a week’s camping gear, it could just as easily fitted into just a very big rucsac. So, I don’t need the capacity of a BoB. Plus, the BoB bounced around a lot, and the little wheel was just the right size to get wedged in waterbars, so a bigger wheel with a fat, soft tyre, would work much better.

I think the Ibex BoB looks a bit, well, gimmicky…

Perhaps Alpin, but the BoB is heavier, I don’t need the full carrying capacity of a BoB, and I reckon an Extrawheel with my old ghetto tubeless hope XC/717 wheel will handle much better off road, especially over the ubiquitous waterbars that seem to be popping up eveyrwhere now.

Carn Bhan Mor one day, Inshriach the next? What a plan!

I don’t think even the mighty Greg made it up (all of) the logged section, some seriously wet steep mud in places.

[heresy] I almost wonder if the Kilbo path would have been more fun the other way round? That muddy stuff would have made a cracking descent… [/heresy]

What was bad about it plumber?

They do seem really expensive, if i got one it would be the frame only, so i could supply my own wheel and panniers, but the frame only option is still £200!

In terms of function i suppose I can’t argue, but it still seems pricey….

I think 27lb for a Charge Duster. Mostly XC kit (Rebas, old XTR cranks, new XTR hubs) but with some bigger rims and tyres (819s with a 2.2 Rubber Queen and 2.25 ADvantage)

O-ho!

That looks good! Get a big fat tubeless tyre on that wheel and some tough sheets of plastic to form a sort of skid plate at the base of the panniers and that could be a winner. A lot lighter than a BoB too…

There’ll not be a waterbar in scotland that can stop me :D

Bloody bizarre website though, what relevance does a picture of two folk kissing have to mounting the trailer to the rear quick release??

Loch Fyne[/url]

Famous for its seafood apparently (I wouldn’t know, I’m allergic…)

Also near by is the loch fyne brewery, where you can stroll in, talk to one of the brewers, and pick up a bottle or two to take with you.

Maybe not ideal in terms of timing, being sort of halfway, but you could squeeze it in!

Ahem

Don’t take my testimony on the EBC trailers too seriously trail-rat, as your experiences have shown I may have under-stated their robustness!

I have subjected a BoB to similar rock sledging/1 metre in the air exploits and its come through every time. I did a slight enthusiastic drop once which resulted in a burst rear tube, but it was easily repaired.

I really liked the look of the extrawheel design, which made a lot of sense in terms of real off-road trailering, but trail_rat pointed out the inherent flaw in have elasticated mesh on the outside of something you’re going to be towing through heather etc. Some cunning adaptation may be the answer!

Whatever you choose, off road trailering is a lot of fun!

I thought i heard the seeds of an aviemore plan being hatched when we left on sunday, last i heard was big day on the hills followed by some sessioning in Inshriach or something similar.

Post midgie season might rule out much of the summer though, think I’ll be heading up before then!

Yo!

Brilliant weekend all round, but i’m with Trailrat, suddenly a slightly bigger bike makes sense, not like the short fork and titanium seatpost helped me keep up with Greg anyway!

Apologies to the many people i crashed in front of, i’m not used to being the group liability! My leg injury was nothing, small cut with some very slight swelling, didn’t notice it at all the next day.

For those who weren’t there on sunday, Greg (bow3rs) upped the crash-and-injury stakes quite significantly on the shore of loch muick, some pretty extensive gravel rash!

I did, just bunking off early now to see how much whisky and cake i can fit in the rucsac…

Next May probably.

I postponed it from this year but am now regretting it, one of the guys from work is walking some of the route and i’m very jealous!

can send a memory map/gpx file if you’re interested.

The forecast I just saw looked pretty good!

Don’t think I’ll be leaving the waterproofs at home though…

My best memory was riding the Loch Morar trail on the friday, then booting it back to the car park in order to grab a beer, a pint and a seat in the grandstand for the World Champs 4X finals that same night, still dripping mud from our ride. Brilliant.

Of course, if you did want to stay at home, I’ll be doing 14 or 15 days riding from Fort William to the north coast of Scotland, almost all off-road, camping along the way, and I’m be looking for like-minded folk to come along…

Yep!

Riding the WHW from Bridge of Orchy to Kinlochleven on the monday, dicking about in kinlochleven on the tuesday before heading into glen nevis, hopefully riding the new red route on wednesday, more dicking around on thursday (maybe that descent coming down from the North Face of Nevis) and then three days of watching the pros!

All on my new Marin Rocky Ridge, bought specifically (and very cheap) for this week. 8)

Medium works fine on a triple set up on a hardtail, just need to make sure you don’t end up crossed over (big chainring and big sprocket etc)

Muddiest!

In a bit of a state right now, sloppy brakes, wobbly leaking back wheel etc. At least the new Rebas are living up to expectations!