Any train strike would be announced 14 days before the event so solve that problem when you need to. No point worrying about it until it’s planned to happen.

In case you don’t know about it, the Bayern ticket gets you a day ticket for all but the fastest trains within Bavaria for €25 for the first passenger and then €8 for each additional one. You can actually get to Kufstein or Salzburg which are both just over the border in Austria.

Kufstein is pretty close to Kitzbuehel. Salzburg if you haven’t been is a must visit.
Erding (home of Erdinger beer) is on the S-Bahn probably 30/40 minutes from the centre of Munich.
Neuschwanstein castle is an easy day trip by train although I still haven’t been.
The Riedel beer makes me want to visit Augsburg.
Dachau concentration camp is near Munich and I’m sure January will make it seem especially grim.

Personally, I think 7 nights is too long in Munich but as a base probably makes sense.

Has anyone else ever thought about Singletrack radio? In my mind it would only run 9 to 5 through the week and be slightly less of a distraction to working than the forum.

Knock knock
Who’s there?
Europe
Europe who?
No, you’re a poo!

Tried and tested on my 8yo nephew, get’s him every time.

Take the Salamanca route, avoid Madrid, stop in Bejar would be my choice. After that Extremadura is quiet and beautiful.

Alternatively stopping in Madrid would actually be good if you like cities.

Argentina, mainly Patagonia and Iguazu Falls before flying home from Rio. Any advice welcome as we’re just trying to plan out the Patagonia part. First time going out of Europe for about 4 years.

Also off to Copenhagen for a weekend, mainly chosen as the only place with reasonable times and prices on the bank holiday weekend and car hire not needed. We couldn’t stomach paying £500 for 3 days car rental in Cork.

An afterthought on what makes a proper London pub. I like to imagine that I’m sat in a place that has had some proper shady deals made, murders planned and celebrations made.

The Guinea on Bruton Place does a decent Guinness and chips in beef dripping.

It’s maybe worth planning for re-bushing the radius arms along with subframe replacement.

Looking forward to the body restoration. I’ve been following paulwigintonclassicvehicles on instagram who does seem really lovely work on minis, providing an almost daily commentary on what he’s up to.

I once heard they were linked to fluorescent lights. I’d love to know more about this if it’s proven one way or the other or if there’s any actual science behind it.

nailed it trail_rat

I hadn’t really thought of it like that but I’ve never exposed myself to debt excessively and I reckon it would take an awful lot for me to end up worse than going without luxuries.

I found yelling f-off at 2 of them whilst sitting on the toilet as they ran across the bathroom floor worked for about 3 months but they eventually came back and it was the super sensitive plastic neck breaker traps loaded with peanut butter that eventually got them. They were too smart for chocolate as it was easy to just lift off the trap and the humane traps were an expensive way of catching spiders. Unfortunately, I found one injured and had to go outside and finish him off. Inside a bag and heavy brick. Not the nicest but the amount of food they got into was costing a fortune.

The neighbours had a little pond and I went to investigate a noise outside and it was a mouse attacking a frog that had strayed too far from the pond and was struggling to get back. Maybe we just had really bad mice.

Lost days in an office environment should generally run under 2%. A fair bit higher for medical / food production / construction. That puts a price on it so you can decide what you’re prepared to tolerate or how much would be reasonable to pay for a good occupational health person to deal with it. OH would be my choice – I was skeptical but it was a real eye opener as to just how effective they can be when dealing with people working for me.

I’ve stopped being bothered by it. If I’m sat on the train I find something else to amuse myself with. I suspect I’m not the only one.

I pay – I want it to work but I won’t keep trying forever.

360 Ski School in Samoens – Nicolai (I think) had me doing 360’s very quickly. Worth skiing over for I think.

Also Gunpowder or Dishoom if you haven’t tried them yet. Or you’re only a couple of stops from Brixton Market for lunch which can be quite interesting especially if you’re not from London or maybe other cities have similar stuff nowadays.

Hawksmoor again and get a Shaky Pete. For budget steak Flatiron is also really decent.

Market Hall in Victoria if you want an upmarket food court type place for lunch. It sounds terrible but it’s quite good really. Roti King is an option in here. Much better than all the chain places across the road.

I thought Kefalonia was a bit limited after 2 weeks. Myrtos beach is consistently listed as number 1 and it’s very photogenic but it’s made up of large pebbles. I came away thinking Greece has probably got better islands. That said, it was still a great holiday.

TfL bikes and avoid the Thames path. Head for a big site, drop the bike off and have a look round before grabbing another and moving on to the next. You’ve then got zero commitment to a bike but access when you need it.

In general, if people go to walk it’s frustrating to cycle there.

Hope Hoops
Giant Defy

They were 2 of the best but there are many. I seriously trust the research that people have done followed up by the real life review. The arguments can get into the real nitty gritty. This to me is, and has been, worth the subscription fee many times over.

The people in the class who are using duolingo are struggling with verbs as the the Latino version handles the you plural form differently. There’s some really dedicated people who don’t seem to be progressing much with duolingo

But if you went to Spain and used the American form (“¿Quieren café?”) instead of the Spanish form (“¿Queréis café?”) you’d be understood without any trouble at all. It just sounds a bit more formal. I can see it would be a problem in a class where the teacher is expecting you to use the 2nd person plural, but in reality it wouldn’t matter that much.

Mogrim, I totally agree and the class demonstrates the problem as the teacher is a Spanish native expecting to say and hear ‘Quereis’ but the duolingo people don’t even know it exists. It’s fairly beginner level.

I would disagree. I’m learning Spanish with Babbel, my South American Gf and a weekly class.

The people in the class who are using duolingo are struggling with verbs as the the Latino version handles the you plural form differently. There’s some really dedicated people who don’t seem to be progressing much with duolingo.

Thanks to my gf I can make insults either way. There’s not huge differences and it’s more cultural than language though.

Babbel will let you set preferences for which country you want. Argentinian Spanish is different from Mexican for example but the accent is probably the hardest part. When I go to Mallorca there’s a waitress I’ve never been able to understand. It turns out she’s got an Argentine accent.

Summary – get a Babbel trial

I thought it was just me dreaming about A level / uni maths exams. The problem is they get worse as I forget more and more as time goes on. I wonder if the elderly have nightmares every night?

Do you take contractors from any agencies that have an international division? Ask them if they have any options?

tjagain
Full Member
Molgrips – If you have £30 to spend on transport and spend £29 of it in london for the benefits of londoners then yes the rest of the country has been cheated

If you have £96B to spend and you build a line to some place no Londoner wants to go who’s being cheated?

Bring on Crossrail 2, the Bakerloo extension, sleeper trains to Europe or lower fares in London. They’re all happening, right?

You’re absolutely right TJ. It’s not all about you.

It is still going to the wrong London station. To be integrated transport it needs to go into st Pancras do it links with Eurostar.

It would have been better but it really doesn’t matter that much. It’s one stop on 2 different tube lines. I can’t think of many people that couldn’t manage that. Most people aren’t carrying a mountain of luggage 99% of the time either so that argument isn’t going to hold economically.

The real opportunity missed is not linking in Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester and East Midlands airports. Obviously you can get to most of Europe from Birmingham or Manchester but it’ll be a long time until you can catch a direct flight to, for example, Brazil.

You can buy new all-season tryes in that size, for £50 to £70 fitted from Black Circles. Saves having to find a place to store your other wheels.

Take 2 lanes of the M1 & M6 and build 2 tracks in each direction. Freight on one and fast trains on the other. Stupid expensive road charging on those roads subsidising cheap freight and tickets.

Or my preferred option, bore 2 tunnels under every motorway and make a container conveyor. Charge lorries off the road to pay for it. Delivery hubs at entry points to big cities that only allow zero emissions vehicles.

My recent experience is that employers are being extremely picky and then complaining that they can’t recruit. In my place some managers are happy to recruit and get the help and others seem to love the drama of having to do it all themselves. There seems to be intense competition in London for anything over £40K unless you happen to be in certain areas of IT / software etc

Twickenham Milk Stout – pretty much the best thing they do but only from the end of November roughly till it runs out mid December

Just listen to the way brummies say it – something like oyyylend. That should be enough reason not to call them islands.

I’ve heard Americans call them road circles. That’s when they can bring themselves to talk about them as they’re usually terrified by the experience of driving around one.

There’s an old graveyard behind the engineering block at Leeds. I was told by the prof that organised the landscaping of it that it was xx years after the last burial before you could do anything. They got parliamentary permission to act way before then as the place was dangerous and used some of the old gravestones to create a path and piled the rest in a corner and grew some grass over them.

I serve hand picked tomatoes and freshly poured water at home.

Fans already on their way home. Nice

It’s a long way back to Surrey.

Same with mine. Didn’t get to survey. While solicitors, mortgage brokers and banks are stacked out with work and some people still think things can be complete way quicker than us currently possible.

Who really thinks they’re going to get a better, faster offer in October?

Edit to mention I was buying only and not selling.

I had this. The sale ended up falling through even though I’m willing and ready to buy. I put it down to bad advice from the agent to the seller, possibly trying to force the seller into the auction route for which the agent will get more cash.

Depends if you want beaches or not? I’d consider Jerez if not.

For the drive down, we stopped in Béjar mainly because we found an apartment with secure parking for about €30. Not much going on but pretty and would stop again.

The whole coast is very quiet. I spent a month in Chiclana during the winter lockdown last year and would happily go back to the deserted beautiful beaches at Cabo Trafalgar and Conil but the place that is top of the list is Sanlucar for the tapas. Like a very low key San Sebastián and half the price.

And another £100 cash back for spending over £750 with Dell on AmEx. So tempting!