The rich powerful elites of the world are rich and powerful through selling us stuff.  Why would they want us to go back to the stone age?  They are already rich and powerful, they don’t need to pull any kind of scam.

Did they get to be rich and powerful by ever being happy with their lot, or do they want more, more, more?

Plenty of opportunity to sell us even more stuff if we need to ditch existing oil infrastructure to replace it with mostly new renewable energy systems.

The author mentions that there are plenty of scientists, several nobel prize winners, who disagree that we have a climate crisis that needs fixing, see here:

World Climate Declaration

You have gone down a rabbit-hole of misinformation.

Thanks, if you could let me know which bits are misinformation, that would be great.  Otherwise your post is not very useful to anyone.

I’m guessing that you’re not following the Covid enquiry directly? They’re asking your questions of decision makers and their advisors.

I don’t believe they are.  Can you give me an example of where they have asked any of the questions I asked?

Continuing from my post in the other thread which was going off topic.

So far, from what I can see, the Covid Inquiry seems to be heading in the direction of a pre-determined outcome which is ‘we didn’t lock down soon enough’.  But why are they seemingly not asking the very important following questions:

1. Where did Covid-19 originate from and why was the lab leak theory (now regarded by many scientists, with the lack of any other credible evidence to the contrary, as the most likely) covered up?

2. Why was the Uk’s thoroughly prepared and long established Pandemic Preparedness Plan abandoned at short notice in favour of a hastily assembled and untested lockdown policy?

3. Did the benefits of this lockdown policy outweigh the considerable costs and downsides?

4. Why was no impact assessment of the harms of lockdown policy (particularly for children), ever produced by the government or its advisers to aid decision making?

5. Why were highly divisive policies like mask mandates, vaccine passports etc. introduced despite there being little credible evidence of any efficacy in the real world?

6. Why was there such a high reliance placed on very speculative computer modelling to drive pandemic policy, rather than a higher emphasis placed on real world data.  Modelling I might add, that has subsequently turned out to have been wildly inaccurate – some would say total garbage.

There is loads more we need to ask, but rather than the current blame game and tittle-tattle of WhatsApp messages, surely the inquiry needs to look very thoroughly into the fairly basic stuff above as a matter of urgency.  Particularly to avoid making the same mistakes again when the next pandemic arrives.

Given that there’s been more or less uninterrupted debate since 2020 and a Wikipedia page devoted to the controversy generated by Sweden’s response to COVID, I’m unsurprisingly going to disagree, but it is thread drift.

You disagree because Sweden has had the best excess mortality in Europe between 2020 and 2023 and perhaps a country with more deaths did better?

I believe that there are also now very high levels of excess deaths in Australia and New Zealand if it was these countries you are trying to compare to.

Very strange, can’t quite get my head around your reasoning that less deaths is somehow worse, but let’s agree to disagree and leave it there.

Have you forgotten that COVID was really really poorly managed in this country? That there’s an enquiry going on right now becasue of that failure? That out of most developed nations bar Italy and some others; we had the worst outcomes and the worst excess deaths? That the Chancellor actively devised a scheme to help spread the disease? that the people in charge vacillated daily between lock down and “letting it rip” that our doctors had no PPE etc etc…

Comparing the UK with pretty much any other developed nation is going to see us coming off worse I’m afraid.

Comparing Covid deaths is problematic as all countries counted and measured in different ways.  In the UK for example it was initially any death within 60 days of a positive test.  Later this was dropped to within 28 days.

As for ‘eat out to help out’, there were identical upticks in cases after the summer of 2020 in almost every European country, so I think we can say that this isn’t even a factor worth considering.

So the only real comparable measure between countries is by measuring excess mortality.  It is not perfect, and there are several ways of doing this, but it is the best we have.

Sweden has come out not just better than the UK, but better than every other major country in Europe in terms of excess mortality between 2020 and 2023.

I think we can therefore agree that it was Sweden, who treated it’s population like adults, and did not impose strict and damaging lockdown measures, or ineffective mask mandates, that has proved to have had the best approach at pandemic management.

But perhaps going slightly off the original NHS topic now so maybe I’ll move this to another thread.

Then if that theory is to hold water, why no excess deaths in Sweden?  They had less critical care capacity than the UK at the start of the pandemic?

And believe it or not, Sweden has a denser population than the UK (89% of the population of Sweden live close together in towns and cities, compared to just 84% in the UK).  So this has little to do with it.

And normally following a deadly pandemic we would expect a period of positive mortality data, since many of the old and vulnerable have sadly already succumbed.

So this is highly unusual.

But the report points out that excess deaths are of people who’re vulnerable to covid effects, those being cardio-vascular disease, other heart diseases, acute respiratory failure and diabetes, all of which are known risk factors of covid, and says that more research is needed. You can’t just say they’re not covid related.

Same would be true in Sweden too surely.  But they, and a few other countries do not seem to have much in the way of excess death.  But then again some do.  According to the Euromomo data, Germany for example has a higher spike is excess death in 2023 (14.44%) than it did in the first year of the pandemic (12.06%).  This is very strange.

And anyway, we have all (well mostly all) been vaccinated now against Covid, so surely this should be dramatically reducing risk factors for those who are vulnerable.

Many ways of looking at it, many potential factors at play, but which is correct?  This is why it very urgently needs looking into, but no-one seems to want to do this., least of all the media.  Why is that?

I can’t help but wonder which one of the previous trolls have registered here again as alex22…

A troll, on a bike forum, are you serious?

Rather than calling people you clearly disagree with trolls or tin foil hat wearers etc, why not just engage with the discussion at hand?  If you think I am wrong just say so, but be prepared to back this up with evidence.  In this way we can keep the discussions civil.  Thanks.

There’s a long tail of damage from Covid, you wouldn’t expect excess deaths to be zero in this period we’re calling “post pandemic” which isn’t really “post” at all. And Labour have promised to investigate anything left outstanding from the already ongoing enquiry, and specifically how money was spent and who it went to. Now pull your anti-vax tinfoil hat on tighter and shut up now please, there’s a good fellow.

Many countries seem not to have the long tail of excess deaths from Covid, Sweden being one of these.  Sweden with the lowest excess mortality in Europe throughout 2022-23.  So how do you square that circle?  Yet Sweden is also a heavily vaccinated country, so is it the vaccines?  Maybe not, although we do know that since Sweden did not lock down to anywhere near the extent that many other countries did, then the lack of collateral damage from not shutting down the country and it’s health service could be balancing the books here somewhat.

Saying that Labour will investigate in 2027 when the enquiry looks likely to conclude is a bit late don’t you think for the 150 people a day needlessly dying?  What if one of those deaths was from your family?  Would you be so blase about it all then?

Still, you sound like you know exactly what is causing those deaths, so why don’t you give us your reasons backed up by data, even though the actual data shows that only a small proportion are related to Covid.  But wait guys, no need to investigate – kelvin on the internet knows!

As for being anti-vax, you are clutching at straws.  I’ve had two plus my booster.  I needed to with work as I travel on an almost daily basis.  I just want to get to the truth – so why don’t you?

Who else could be responsible if the Tories have been in charge for 13+ years?

You really are talking nonsense.

I think you have missed the point, which was about excess deaths.  Why would Labour seemingly not want to investigate the ongoing large number of excess deaths across all age groups, particularly when the outcome of such an investigation would no doubt mean the Tories were made to look even more awful than they currently look?

According to The Lancet, they state that: “in the period from week ending 3rd June 2022 to 30th June 2023, excess deaths for all causes were relatively greatest for 50–64 year olds (15% higher than expected), compared with 11% higher for 25–49 and < 25 year olds, and about 9% higher for over 65 year old groups”.

They also state that: Deaths involving cardiovascular diseases were 33% higher than expected, while for specific cardiovascular diseases, deaths involving ischaemic heart diseases were 44% higher, cerebrovascular diseases 40% higher and heart failure 39% higher”.

This likely equates to somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 excess deaths more than would be expected during the June 2022 to June 2023 period.  That’s 1,050 extra deaths a week a week, 150 extra deaths each and every day (equivalent to a Boeing 737-700 aircraft full of passengers going down every single day).  And the vast majority are not Covid related.

These numbers of deaths are a long, long way above normal parameters, and very unusual after a deadly pandemic where your would usually expect mortality rates to improve somewhat.  Yet unlike the daily Covid death toll, we don’t hear much about this on the news, and our MP’s simply do not seem bothered enough to make it a priority to find out just what on earth is going on.

I have written to our Labour MP about this and was fobbed off by him.  Seemingly he didn’t even want to acknowledge that there could be a problem.  And one thing he was sure of was that it couldn’t be anything to do with the vaccines.  So that’s a relief!

So why on earth don’t Labour want to shoot into an open goal?

which bit of the Tory’s having a big majority in Parliament are you missing

There has been an ongoing and unprecedented epidemic of excess deaths across all age ranges since 2021 and mostly it is not Covid related.  So clearly there has been some significant mis-management happening under the Tories watch.

Some of it will be delayed care due to GP’s not seeing patients face to face for a while combined with a huge backlog on NHS waiting lists.  Some will be the collateral fall-out from lockdowns and the stress, poor mental health, loneliness and financial hardship that lockdowns created for many.  Some will be due to lifestyle factors brought about by lockdown, e.g. increased drinking, less people playing sport etc.  Some will be down to doctors strikes and staff/ambulance shortages.  Some will be down to the general NHS problems already discussed in this thread.  And some, (heaven help us), might be down to the introduction of a novel medication in early 2021 with no long term safety data.

It would be an easy win for Labour to hold the Tories responsible for this utter and ongoing shit-show.  Yet Labour don’t even seem interested to look into the excess death situation.   Why is that?  Is it perhaps because during the pandemic, all Labour seemed to want to do was to call for more, longer, harder, sooner of whatever it was the Tories were proposing?

And I don’t really get this adversity to pharmaceutical treatments

Pharmaceutical treatments have their place, many are excellent, but many also come not only with significant costs, but also with potential risks too.  Might I remind you that there have been some very significant criminal fines paid by the pharmaceutical industry for fraudulent, misleading and ethical behaviour relating to safety and usage:

These are just the ones we know about

Then there are also the absolute horror shows like Vioxx, and the lack of much real-world efficacy of things like Statins, but often considerable side effects.

There is also the correlation I mentioned before.  By far the biggest consumer of prescription medication in the world per person is the USA.  So they should be by far the healthiest population right?  Wrong, they have some of the worse levels of serious chronic illness in the world.  Sure, much of it is diet related, and some is probably due to the poorest not having the same level of access to healthcare as the more well off, but facts are facts, so perhaps ask yourself how is this the case with so much access to pharmaceutical treatments?

I’m afraid that there’s a massive gap between the claims made for nutritional medicine and the actual evidence that shows those benefits.

I’m not talking about popping a load of supplements and pills.  That’s a whole other minefield.  I’m talking about what constitutes a basic and healthy diet and the latest research that shows that the previously recommended low-fat (high sugar), high carb, low cholesterol diet, is not no longer considered a very healthy option given what we now know.

One of those articles is 5 years old and the other is 8 years old…D’you not think things might’ve progressed at all?

It is very slowly changing as people become aware, but still not a lot according to my wife.  If anything, often views have become somewhat entrenched as there are many vested interests trying to ensure that medicine remains primarily a pharmacological and surgical based pursuit.  Medics and scientists who fall outside of this, or who propose treatment protocols that rock the establishment boat are frequently labelled as cranks, or struggle to get adequate funding to support their research.

Meanwhile research for new pharmaceuticals is awash with cash – because huge financial returns can be made by corporations and their shareholders.  And sponsorship of almost all major therapeutic areas, it’s key opinion leaders, and their educational congresses is by the pharmaceutical industry.  So it is not a level playing field.

Hence the growing prevalence of things like Ozempic which is supposed to help manage the symptoms of type 2 diabetes.  But type 2 diabetes can in most cases also be perfectly adequately managed, or sent into remission, through improved nutrition and without the potential side effects of drugs like Ozempic.

But like I said before, there is not much money to be made from healthy eating.

Go on?

From the US:

an average of 11 hours of nutrition training throughout an entire medical program

How much nutrition training do doctors get

And from the UK:

We learn nothing about nutrition, claim medical students

Doctors know little about nutrition or excersize

And this is just the established (and now somewhat out of date) basics that they know little about, let alone the recent developments in nutrition research, which as ever take quite some time to filter down to education programmes.

I know this because my wife is a qualified and practicing nutritionist, so she, and I to some extent are aware of how much things have evolved, and how much we now understand about how nutrition, and the very closely linked metabolic/gut health, impacts a whole range of health outcomes.

Poor nutrition and other lifestyle factors such as sleep, excersize etc. have now been identified as the single biggest predictor of a whole range of diseases and health issues, with genetics being less important than it was previously believed to be.  We really are what we eat.

But your average GP in the UK knows seemingly very little about any of this.  So can you see the problem?

Perhaps the government needs to look at fixing the demand side issue.  Chronic conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes (and all the associated health problems) are due to skyrocket due to poor lifestyle choices and lack of education.  Diets full of processed crap are now the norm.  And, if you follow the latest scientific research, the NHS’s heavy focus on cholesterol and low fat is now woefully outdated as a predictor of heart disease, dietary health etc.

We have been told for years that a low fat, high carb, low cholestrol diet is healthy by the NHS etc.  But just look at what has happened during that time.  Obesity is now out of control, and the number of people living with serious life-limiting chronic health conditions is at levels never seen before.  So something about this approach is clearly not working.

GP’s (if you can actually get to see one), seem really only there these days as the gateway to book hospital appointments, or as dishers out of pharmaceutical products.  Pharmaceutical products that mask a patients symptoms rather than address a patients underlying issues (there is no money in this).

My guess is that most GP’s know very little about the latest research in diet, nutrition etc. and what a huge role this plays in health outcomes.  They are stuck with the outdated dietary advise promoted by the NHS and entrenched in a cycle of prescribing endless pharmaceuticals with often very limited efficacy and frequent side effects.  Statins for example.

To prove this you only need to look at the US, where the use of pharmaceutical products per head is the highest in the world.  Yet they also now have the biggest chronic disease burden in the world, and the most metabolically unhealthy population.  It wasn’t always this way.  To see for yourself tale a look at some Woodstock photos from the 60’s.  See how slim and healthy everyone looked.  Compare these photos to the overweight and unhealthy young people all around you these days and you will see that something has changed.

But it feels almost like the huge food industry and the pharmaceutical industry wants it to be this way.  After all there in nothing so profitable as a repeat customer.  A customer addicted to processed food full of sugar and seed oils to make them unhealthy, and then requiring expensive medication to address the symptoms – for life.  Ozempic is the latest profitable wheeze.  An expensive and regular treatment to address an issue that could, in most cases, simply be managed through a better diet.

So it might surprise you that almost all members of the US Congress on both sides of the house receive lobbying money from the Pharmaceutical industry.  I expect it is similar in the UK and I am aware that 86% of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)’s budget is derived from the drug industry.  Look it up, and then maybe the penny will drop as to why we are in this mess without seemingly a will from the top to change things.

Remember, without an unhealthy population, the pharmaceutical industry makes no money.  He who pays the piper and all that.

Meanwhile, just another £1.1 billion of taxpayers money down the drain by June.

Expired C-19 drugs in the UK

No biggie though, eh?

they have the magic money tree

Don’t they just.  Apparently even though we are now the 6th biggest economy in the world, we can’t afford to fund a decent level of healthcare for our population, or decent social care for those who need it most.  Or train sufficient numbers of doctors or nurses or ambulance drivers.

But there is always plenty enough money to bail out the bankers, fight or fund wars in foreign countries, give it to our mates for dodgy PPE, fritter it away on a useless HS2 vanity project, or in Wales case, change all the 30mph road signs to 20mph at a cost of £32 million.

Did you know our response to Covid cost somewhere between £310 and £410 billion pounds.  That is nearly three times the entire annual budget of the NHS!

Public spending during the Covid-19 pandemic

And what exactly did we get for that money and where has it all gone?  Ask yourself are we healthier now as a nation after all of that spending?  Have our NHS waiting lists gone down?  Did we save loads of lives and was it all worth it?  Or have peoples lives got worse?

It is our hard earned money that the Tories have pissed up the wall (and given to their mates).  Money that we will all be paying back for years and at the expense of the vital services we rely on.  During the last financial year, the government spent £111 billion on debt interest alone.  That’s more than the entire annual spend on education!  Practically criminal levels of mis-management from our government.

Cost of national debt

And what have Labour done to oppose any of the above?  What have they done to hold the Tories feet to the fire?

**** all, that’s what!

How do you know it’s worse? If it is, how do you know if the reason is due to the Welsh Govt and not other variables? Are any differences significant when corrected for population and other regional variables?

I’m not sure of the politics, but my brother has been waiting 2.5 years to see a dermatologist in Wales for a fairly unpleasant and progressive skin disorder.  Still no joy to see anyone despite his GP trying to expedite his referral – twice.  His next door neighbour has just had both knees done as she was getting to the stage where she was unable to go to work with it.  She paid and went private in the end as the wait for her operations on the Welsh NHS was 5 years.  5 years – just let that sink in for someone of working age who is struggling to stay mobile.

So pretty f**king sh*t I would say.

Cashless transactions are a perfect tool to harvest data and behavioural information about individuals by banks, corporations and the government.  So in the absence of cash, best hope that you agree with whichever government gets into power, and that your data is kept secure and is not used for nefarious reasons.

But hey, I guess that’s the march of progress and in a world of over-sharing on social media, it seems that personal privacy is valued less and less these days.

Slowly but slowly, the pursuit of efficiency and safety at all costs (profits for large corporations – sold to us as convenience), over and above many of the little quirks that used to make life rich, spontaneous and enjoyable, and yes sometimes inefficient, continues.

Hence I will always try to use cash wherever possible.  Use it or loose it as they say.  And you might miss it when it’s gone.

The NHS needs root and branch reform before more money is chucked at it.  Should still be free at the point of use for those who cannot afford to pay, but surely some sort of health insurance based type system, like in most of Europe (where healthcare outcomes are generally better) would be far preferable to the shitshow we currently have which seems to serve no-one very well?

The NHS in Wales (where my brother lives) and run by Labour, has for a long time now been far worse than the NHS in England under the Tories.  I am not excusing the Tories as they are utterly shit too, but just saying that the problems clearly run much deeper than whichever political party is in power.

I watched it, a shocking tale of cover-up and mis-management by those at the top.

The weird thing is, is that one of the whistleblowers in parliament who has since 2010/11, campaigned to seek justice for the victims, was MP Andrew Bridgen.

You know, the same crank, anti-vax MP Andrew Bridgen who got expelled from the Conservative Party for being an anti-semite after he kept on insisting that the government look thoroughly into the ongoing high levels of excess death here in the UK since the vaccine roll out.

I wrote this article in 2020, before the judge led inquiry was announced into the Post Office Horizon scandal

I will always fight for what is right. https://t.co/9Txapfdd8d

— Andrew Bridgen MP (@ABridgen) July 18, 2023

Nowt so strange as politics eh?

I have one and really like it.  Running 28 tyres though and upgraded the wheels.  No DI2 though but I preferred the manual shift for future proofing.  Done a few thousand mostly summer miles now and it has all been fully reliable with no issues.  Comfortable enough for 100+ mile rides over less than smooth tarmac.

Some great photos on here.  I’ve done a fair bit of winter hillwalking in Wales and the Lakes and some summer climbing but hopefully booking onto a winter climbing course near Aviemore this coming Feb/March to learn some more technical skills.

Myself and a friend have ambitions to have a go at this before we are fifty:

https://www.alanarnette.com/climbs/alpamayo.php

Are we bonkers, or is it an achievable objective for when we are both 50 (in 5 years from now)?

Strange how plenty of folk will happily pay upwards of £40 for a days riding at an uplift centre like BPW, but moan about paying just a few pounds to park and help maintain the trails at a non-uplift served trail centre.  But are they the same people I wonder?

It’s just same old story of naieve ignorant people getting persuaded into something by a bunch of con artists

Now I intensely dislike Brexit, and it has made my life more difficult, but this sort of out of touch and elitist comment might makes you realise why people maybe voted for Brexit in the first place.  If I had someone with a £4k+ bike and a £60k Transporter van calling me thick or ignorant because I was struggling to find well paid work in my ex-mining community then I might too have voted for Brexit just to spite them.  I suspect that a lot of Brexit voting was just a big F-off from the forgotten working class communities to the people who thought they knew better than them, what was good for them.  We should have listened to them and addressed their concerns somewhat I guess rather than assuming they were all just stupid and racist.  But ah well, it’s done now.  An own goal to some extent!

Personally I’ve had a couple of incidents in traffic of not being able to clip in quick enough with the single sided Looks to clear a junction with enough margin for error – situations where the plastic cleat has slipped clean off the shiny plastic/carbon pedal.  Left me in a rather compromised situation.  Never ever had with with my old SPD’s hence one of the reasons why I’m now looking to switch back.  Also nothing worse than trying to start uphill and not being able to clip in straight away and without thinking.

Think I’m convinced enough to give it a go.  I’ve never liked the feel of the Looks to be honest and would prefer the double sided clip I used to have on the MTB.  We do a lot of riding over in Spain and they have a particular style of stone pavement that is lethal in road cleats.

The Shimano XC7 someone recommended look nice.  Any other options for shoes?  Guessing either a very stiff and lightweight MTB shoe or a road shoe that will take the 4 bolt MTB SPD cleats (if there is indeed such a thing)?

My Santa Cruz came fitted from factory with DHR of the front and on the rear.  I’ve since changes to DHF front and DHR rear and to be honest I cant really tell the difference.  But there must be a reason why one is manufactured as a front tyre and one is a rear tyre.  So I’m happy to trust the manufacturer and go with that.

Also, what I’m happy to conclude from the above is that I don’t think my tyre choice is the main limiting factor in my riding ability.

I would avoid the surgery if possible – last resort only.  Sorted mine with plenty of physio and core excersizes, with a steroid injection to help reduce the inflammation so that I could get more active and do the physio. I fly jets for a living and some of the long haul trips were making things worse – basically sitting down for extended periods is a no-no. You need to keep moving as a priority. Cue me strolling up and down the cabin and doing some interesting stretches out of sight of the passengers every few hours while my first officer looked after things upfront.

Weirdly the thing that seemed to make mine better (ending the scietica) was snowboarding. Guess all the twisting and movement helped to loosen things up. I also found the McKenzie stretches really helped too. Look them up if you don’t know about them already.

Thanks all and very useful.  Think we’ll give both 417 and FOD a go if I can talk everyone into staying overnight which should be doable given that most of us have not had a weekend away for a while. Both sound like different kinds of trails which makes things more interesting if doing two days.

So a night out in Gloucester probably looms. Wish me luck 😉

Thanks, usually do BPW but fancied something different.  Would Forest of Dean be a better bet?  Assume no uplift though which I don’t mind, but a couple of the less fit chaps might grumble a bit.

Brand new ID Buzz can be had for just a little over £300 a month right now on a lease deal.  Cheap as chips.

Did my first ever 100+ mile road bike ride this year which was a barrier I’d always wanted to break.

B5 all the way for me – by far the coolest.

https://youtu.be/4HYdVXmYA-w?si=kLG1ktB2VvyAzopN

Almost all of the cars I’ve bought over the years, my choices have been influenced by one magazine or another.  But I wouldn’t be happy driving a ‘run of the mill’ type car.  Main criteria though with any car has been can I get a bike in or on it reasonably easily.  That said, I’ve had the mountain bike on my Lotus Elise a few times using a Seasucker carrier.  Works a treat.

Pretty much most secret trails can be found now using Strava heatmap.  Someone will have accidentally left their Strava on and if you zoom in close enough,  trace will be left.

What a good thread.

I often wake up with a headache and feel generally knackered for the first hour or so of waking up, never really feel refreshed after even what I think was a full nights sleep.  Can’t remember last time I woke up with a spring in my step.  Where could I be going wrong?

Sadly one of the downsides of being a pilot is the need to live relatively close to base. For many years I was based out of London Stansted and living up the road in Cambridge. Sure there are crew members who live much further from base with me, but personally for quality of life I wouldn’t want to live much further than 30-45mins driving time. The anti-social hours are hard enough at times without any extra time spent commuting.

Now Cambridge is a great city for cycling, but it’s flat, very flat and although I did a lot of road biking, I was really missing the hills, and the challenge of off road. So when the opportunity to transfer to another operator in Manchester came up I took it, and I now live within 30 mins of  the Peak, and just over an hour to the South Lakes or Pennines.  Perfect location, and although no off-road ride from the door, having such a wide variety of riding within less than an hours drive makes life so much better and I now look forward to my down time an awful lot more.

I’ve had my best days there at Glencoe and Nevis.  Lecht and Glenshee feel tame in comparison.  Proper Alps like conditions but without the prices.  On a sunny weekend day expect long lift queues though, particularly at Glencoe.  If you don’t like queueing then simply go on a day when you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you.

If you go to Glencoe try the macaroni pie and chips in the tin hut canteen – it really is a thing of wonder but be quick as they tend to sell out mid-way through lunchtime.

Anyone know if the cafe/bar at the bottom of Glencoe has been re-built yet?  And what the car park camping situation is there for vans these days?

Oh and if you do get a hire car, try and go for a manual if possible as I find that if things do get difficult, it gives me much more control over what the driven wheels are doing.  No surprise down shifts for example.