3rd gen Pipedream Sirius has sliding drop outs if that serves your purposes…

https://www.aeightbikeco.com/ are made in the UK…

I’ve switched to X01 on both my Enduro bike and Emtb, they’ve lasted way better than the originals (probably NX).

Most noticeable on the Ebike, the original lasted less than 2 months, the X01 replacement, with a similar amount of riding, lasted 18 months or so.

Make of that what you will…

Regarding the Lock Picking Lawyer, he’s certainly informative and a good source of entertainment – but since I’ve never seen him struggle much with any lock, if you go on his advice, you’d probably never leave the house without having a front door worthy of Fort Knox, and windows to match!

I use Idrive, it’s better value than Dropbox for bulk storage of backed up files.

It does both back up and Cloud Drive, but I only use it for backup.

The only downsides I’ve found is the Web portal is a bit slow and clunky for individual file access, and you can’t select multiple files for download easily, you have to “Restore” files – but you can control where to, they don’t have to go back where they came from.

Idrive pricing

I’ve used LSR on and off since the ’90’s.

They’ve always been very helpful and professional, and I’ve been very happy with the results.

I’ve used them for Rucksack repair, Gore-Tex reproofing and Scarpa boot resoling.

however, if you measure it at the tank, its about 10-15% less.

I used to keep a spreadsheet from when I first bought the car, and the guage was close enough to call accurate, using a spreadsheet is only as accurate as the consistency of the cut off on the pump allows….

The DPF wasn’t cheap, but wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, but the number’s meaningless because it was done after I’d moved to Switzerland with the car – prices here are wildly different from the UK, especially for anything with labour involved!

I have a 2012 model, diesel, that I’ve had from new.

It now has over 120,000 miles.

It needed a new DPF after 8 years, and earlier this year new exhaust and wheel bearing.

Other than that, it’s only needed routine servicing, brake pads last 40,000—50,000, tyres 50,000-60,000.

The quoted combined fuel economy was 44.1 mpg, and I still get this nowadays on the average tank with a mixture of driving and 50+ on long runs.

It’s a very comfortable motorway cruiser or open road car, but the clutch is a bit heavy, so it’s a bit harder work than the usual in traffic and town.

As above, interior space and load capacity is excellent.

Definitely worth considering!

If you’re still looking, my former employers might be able to help, they primarily specialise in Catering equipment (often at the sorts of weights you’re looking at), they have a variety of equipment for lifting and moving, with suitability trained staff, and a 7.5t lorry with a 1000kg taillift.

They’re based in Kent, but cover the whole country..

Iac Delivery Solutions

Aeight Bike Co in Sussex, frame building, wheel building, servicing, and various race support services, based in Sussex.

Aeightbikeco

Floating rotors don’t work with the adaptors, at least in my experience. The spider is too thick for it.

They’re great with standard rotors, been running one for a couple of years – once I gave up on the floating rotor…

Try The Grange

Great accommodation, bike cleaning and storage facility, run by cyclists, does a great cooked breakfast and has a cellar full of craft beer…

@toofarwest I’d appreciate that gpx, if you don’t mind – alaricdarmon@gmail.com

Is it really still closed? MBWales shows it as closed in February… I live in Switzerland at the moment, but am visiting the UK in a couple of weeks, and was planning to go to Brechfa, but there’s no point if that much is closed, I’ll go to Afan instead!

Thanks!

Why not Thule? I get that they aren’t cheap, but the quality is excellent. I just bought my second after nearly 10 years – the old one was still in perfectly servieable condition, just not long enough for modern bikes.

I now have the EasyFold XT3, my Kona with a wheelbase of 1258mm fits with no issue, to get my Nicolai on I needed the additional extra long straps to accommodate the 1363mm wheelbase.

Not really trying to convince you to change to Thule if you don’t want to, but at least that should give you some idea on the length that they will accommodate.

Pretty much what Beaker said, I had my Nicolai ebike supplied with the Powunity fitted, so I can’t comment on the fitting.

It was a proper PITA to get the app to connect and complete the initial set up, but you only need to do that once, after that there’s no connection needed between your phone and the tracker, it’s all handled over it’s own data connection.

The map does sometimes lag a little, but it’s impressively fast in notifying when the bike is moved, often takes less than a metre.

I’ll definitely be renewing at the end of the year, and also fitting another to my wife’s Liv ebike.

Well worth it given the somewhat insane prices for these things!

Maybe message them and ask what they recommend – you never know, they might offer to swap it.

Sounds unlikely but I’ve had it with both Gerber and Leatherman, asked them if they were able to sharpen the serrated blade as a paid service, they said no, but send the tool back and they’d replace free of charge…

No, really!

I have a Palm short sleeve cag in my kayaking kit, I can’t say exactly when I got it, but I know I had it when I did (most of) the Devizes to Westminster at Easter… 1991….

Take the saddle and clamp assembly off, there’s sometimes (I stress “sometimes”) a hole that will allow you to push from the top.

For me it was Bigtrak.

Possibly mostly because I didn’t have one, so I only got to play with it when my friend brought his out…

With a small, low trailer flags / aerials or something similar on the rear corners can make it easier to reverse….

Where from and to?

My friends run a transport company based in Kent, with another depot in Doncaster and cover pretty much the hole country. They’ll quote for pretty much anything, and give you a good price if you can fit in with their other work, obviously the price is likely to go up if you ask for them to go out of their way more.

Give Chris a call at IAC Delivery Solution, 01795-475222 chris at iacdelivery.co.uk

IAC Delivery Solutions

I can thoroughly recommenend The Grange. Just up the road from BPW and a cellar full of Craft Beer 🙂

The Grange

Does anything ever truly live up to the hype?

However, I saw it at the cinema when it first came out, and have seen it a number of times since, I love it.

I think it’s probably a bit of a love /hate thing, it has a non-linear time line for a start, which my wife didn’t really get on with.

The Grange is excellent, run by cyclists for cyclists. They have dedicated, secure bike storage, bike wash facilities and everything else you need (including a cellar full of local Craft beers).

I had a Vivoactive 3 before uograding to the Fenix 6X.

The Vivoactive 3 is good for recording your rides and data for up to about 5-6 hours (ish), and displaying the usual stats.

The last 20% of battery dies a lot faster the the first 20%, so I always had to make sure it was charged before exercise. Without recording exercise it lasted for a couple of days between charges.

The reasons I replaced it were:

1. I wanted to use it to display a route. Although the Vivoactive can do this, is doesn’t overlay it on a map, which can make it difficult to interpret, especially off road.
2. Using it for navigation drastically reduces the battery life to sub 2 hours
3. The touch screen is nice for operating the watch when your not using it outside for exercise, but can be a PITA during exercise, where rain, sweat or water (I also use it kayaking) interfere with it.

Whilst it is obviously more expensive, the Fenix is a much better device for what I need – no touch screen, bigger screen that displays proper maps, way better battery life (10 days without exercise, 6-7 days with multiple exercise periods. It also generates more data and has support for more sports (Vivoactive only does cyclng, not road or MTB). You can add apps for extra sports, but they don’t always integrate as well.

That’s interesting, James… Will look further at that.

But the general consensus is still “look good but have never heard of them”…

This might be obvious, but you did say you know nothing about them…

Does she have an Amazon account? Whilst the tech savvy can load books to a Kindle without an Amazon account, it’s not easy for those that aren’t…

To get the most, you really need the Kindle linked to an Amazon account. In theory you can then order books directly from the Kindle, but it’s not 100% reliable, and it’s often just easier to go to the Amazon website or App from a PC/phone/tablet, order from there and then it appears in the Kindle as if by magic 🙂

You can speed up access to Garmin Pay by setting it as shortcut – I access mine with a long press bottom left. You only have to enter the PIN once every 24 hours or when the watch has been taken off.

And, yes as previously stated its pretty quick to enter the PIN.

Are the bolt holes open or closed at the inboard end? If closed, make sure your bolts aren’t too long and bottoming out….

Yeah, Excel sharing is far from perfect, for any number of reasons…

Something like Airtable might be worth looking at as an alternative, depending on requirements. Airtable is easy to use if you’re used to Excel, but more Database oriented and deals well with sharing…oh, and it starts out free….

I remember that from Top Trumps 🙂

Longest wing span… Lost on everything else…

Plus, if you’re measuring from pin to pin, you’re not adding in the wear of a roller.

The wear on the rollers is exactly what you’re supposed to be measuring!

I’m running them in my Hope E4’s. I had a problem with them with an IceTech rotor on the rear (centrelock wheel, so my Hope rotor wouldn’t fit without an adaptor).

I had a lot of trouble with noise from the rear on any sort of longer descent, I’ve now swapped the IceTech rotor off and used an adaptor and it’s fine.

SO, having messed about a bit with the rotors they seem pretty good, they stop, last and don’t cause any issues on long descents.

Well…

Almost guaranteed to be possible, just a question of which parts for your frame.

Best option is to have a look at the Rohloff website, it’s very helpful and should show you what you’ll need.

You’ll have to look at whether the one you’ve been offered has a external or internal gearbox, axle type, what type of torque arm and how to deal with chain tension.

The Rohloff website should make this all clear.

I’ve been kayaking for more than 30 years, having started, like you, in Scouts.

I’ve had my own fibre glass or plastic boats for most of that time, and recently bought an inflatable from Decathlon.

Inflatable pros:
Easy storage and transport
Can be configured for 1, 2 or 3 paddlers
Very stable and has a high freeboard – my partner is a swimmer and can get in and out of the boat in deep water without flooding it

Inflatable cons:
The high sides and flat bottom mean that it catches the wind something rotten, I wouldn’t want to be out in high winds – and I’ve paddled in high winds regularly on the Medway Estuary in rigid boats without issue.
It’s very wide, so developing good paddling technique is difficult.
The construction on mine is rubber bladders inside heavy duty fabric, with 2 main pieces – the sides and a single skin bottom, then an inflatable base insert. These multiple layers make it a bit of a sod to get properly dry.

If you’re buying an inflatable the Decathlon ones seem pretty good for value / function / longevity.

Finally, if you’re both looking to learn / improve skills, a tandem isn’t necessarily the best way to do this.

I’d suggest going to a few taster or training sessions to learn the basics / build on what skills you have and go from there.

Equate this to what you’d say when a colleague who’s not ridden a bike for years asks what sort of MTB he should buy to get back in to it…Do you recommend DH, XC, Trail, Enduro, Trials or Gravel…

Most Euro speedos only show KMH, for the UK it has to show MPH, hence importing a car from mainland Europe requires a Speedo change for the UK.

Most UK speedos show both, so taking a car from the UK to mainland Europe does not require this.

Not done it with a van, but I took my Greek registered Land Cruiser with me when I moved back to the UK and imported it. I’ve also just taken my UK Subaru to Switzerland and imported it here.

The process was pretty easy and inexpensive, DVLA website and by phone were very helpful.

From memory :

Check what you need to do (if anything) with the local authorities.
Check UK rules as to how long you must own the vehicle or you may be liable for duty
Get a European Certificate of conformity (dealer or manufacturer head office can provide this. Both Toyota and Subaru have given me this for free).
Change headlights to dip to the nearside (this may be switchable or automatic on newer models)
Change the speedo to show MPH.
If your rear fog light is off centre it will need to be moved to the offside.
Procure insurance based on the chassis number {this means a bit shopping around as not all insurers will insure LHD or on chassis number.
Get an MOT.
Complete paperwork and submit to DVLA with receipts for work.

I had Toyota do the headlights and Speedo but did the fog lights myself and had no issue.

Admin costs are minimal, the big costs are lights and speedo (the headlights for my Subaru were about £1500 each).

My wife is Swiss, I’m British, we moved to Switzerland at the end of last year, a big factor being that it’s a great place for me to go mountain biking and her to get in more swimming…

She was hoping to swim 52 lakes in 52 weeks this year, we might not manage it this as Covid put a bit of a cramp in the plan, but that aside it’s very doable.

We’re off for 2 weeks in the (vague) area of Interlaken on Saturday, so I expect she’ll get quite a few more in 🙂

If you need inspiration have a look at her Instagram

I temped for a while somewhere like this, we’d be working from a list of cars that were needed today, we’d go round and open the boots as we found them, then work out what order to shift them around in an attempt to minimise the number of movements…