The Mercure between Bingley and Saltaire is surprisingly decent for a place that often has rooms for £45 / night. That would be my choice if it was anything less than £100 during the festival.

I didn’t check but I believe the lifts are free in Courchevel this summer. Yes, I know it’s not Switzerland but still, free lifts.

I think the plan is to appoint Farage as the next ambassador and Boris will continue to develop a relationship with the Brexit party. I never thought I’d be hoping for Jeremy Hunt to win anything.

The only sensible solution for Richmond Park would be to charge an excess fee for leaving the park within 30 minutes of entering. It’s essentially the Sheen bypass and those are the people that shouldn’t be there, not people driving to have a wander about, get an ice cream or take a bike out of the car and do a lap.
Making it one way would likely turn it into a bit of a racetrack which at the moment is largely prevented by large numbers of cyclists.
After that TfL needs to be looking at fast public transport that gets you around outer London without having to go in. There’s a reason why people travel on the north circular and m25 in huge numbers. There’s no realistic alternative.

If you can afford it go ahead and get it. The only downside I can see is that you would need to give it up for certain defence jobs.

Also, the rules can change on this stuff without much notice. It will likely get harder and more expensive if it changes.

Courmayeur has pretty easy skiing and transfers of under 2 hours from Milan, Turin and Geneva. I have no idea about lessons.

I thought it was excellent in that a film that is fairly accessible to children / young teenagers there were no winners and that war is shit rather than the usual good guys win despite some hardship and there’s no mention of the millions of lives lost by the bad guys. If it was just factually correct it would be a documentary.

I thought it would be ok when the happy ending came along.

It wouldn’t be my choice. Not a bad area but could become an interesting walk into town.

there are some decent airbnb’s near the Titanic premier inn but the budget hotels are probably cheaper.

Ifyou like decent food have a look at Ox. It’s really good value Michelin star dining.

Ravenscourt Park is about 3 stops from Earls Court and usually has fireworks.

How far outside the time were the sprinters on the day a large group got eliminated? I always thought rules were relaxed in those circumstances but maybe it was a conscious decision to try and make things a bit less predictable for the remaining flat stages.

Pay your VAT on time (if you go VAT registered). All other bills are negotiable regarding payment dates. It’s just just nicer to pay them before people have to chase you.

It’s not the number of emails that are the problem. Most are read in 10 seconds and filed / deleted/ ignored.

It’s the requests for information which can seem quite reasonable that could easily result in 2 days of pulling data and manipulation only for the requestor to look at at for 3 seconds and go, ‘oh right’.

i used to spend ages stopping my team from sucking up and doing them.

Are there CBT trainers that will rent you some sort of bike and helmet?

Two experiences, the first a block of 6 flats built in clay had bricks breaking clean in half. Insurers blamed it on a nearby tree and did some pruning and repaired the brick damage. A tree surveying friend said it was absolutely nothing to do with the tree. Insurance went up a lot but not my problem anymore.

For the next one the front of the house near enough fell off. It turned out to be a collapsed drain. I wasn’t part of the claim but it seems the insurance dealt with it.

Unless your area has a real history of subsidence I’d get the drains checked first and if it is thenm work out who’s responsible before taking to insurance.

For the 2 brick and a plank method it’s generally accepted that 10 of your mates should have done it in formation before your approach leaving it delicately balanced. Approach should be fast downhill with no hands. Again, in close formation, a bit like the red arrows. Progression is on to 4 bricks and a landing ramp.

or it sounds like a good excuse to take him to glentress and do the bottom of the blue lots

Sugar is 100% fat free. This is all the knowledge you need to start an argument with the types that take food label claims seriously.

Ooey Custom in Camberly

Get a separate insurance policy and just go with the cheapest one. My experience is they really do go for the hard sell with extras in Italy. I’d avoid Gold.

Chiswick is lovely. It’s probably 25 minute on the tube from Stamford Brook or Turnham Green to St james so works on convenience.

Personally I’d take the train and book a hotel anywhere in the centre.

You want to drive from the north and end up in Chiswick?  I’d rather poke my own eyes out.  You are basically wasting 45 minutes if the traffic is good.

M1 or A1?

My first thoughts are Radlett, Luton or Borehamwood and then jump on the Thameslink.  If you need a shorter / easier commute then somewhere like Edgware Road.

I live in Chiswick and drive from here to the M1 enough to know it’s not a great idea

Troutwrestler
The standard of instruction in Borovets was very poor when I was there. Add to that there is very limited beginner skiing at the bottom of the resort. It looks like good value but it’s really not.

I learn’t more in a day in France than I did in a week in Borovets.

A semi competent intermediate could ski everything in a day if pushing it and definitely in 2 days.

I stayed in Chloraka and headed north to the Mavrokolpus dam then down into the gorge. Everything I found was fairly rocky and in May it was fairly warm but March should be fine. I’d be getting a guide / local knowledge if I went again as it seemed to have loads of potential but I never found anything really good.

There’s a guy called http://www.upanddownhill.com/mountain_bike_holiday/default.htm in the Scheffau area.

I’ve never been but was always semi interested as I’ve skied around there a lot.

I know an Austrian local who rides and things in that area seem to be more about e-bikes with endurance rather than enduro.

The biggest concern I would have would be HR types checking stories on LinkedIn in the future. Getting one over on them is going to be remembered. Depends if LinkedIn is important in your line of work.

Winter Wonderland – as Johndoh says, expect a crowd and Hyde Park tube station to be exit only or closed due to crowds.
Skating outside the Natural history Museum
Last 50 minutes of the natural history museum
bus from marble arch along oxford street and regent street to see the christmas lights. The 94 is a double decker and would do nicely although there are plenty of others.
Paddington 2 locations – the antique shop is on Portobello Road (tube is notting hill gate) which would then work for getting the bus. Will likely be very busy on Sunday.

Same recipe cooked in the oven as opposed to on a griddle. I think it depends who you ask.

Soda bread is proper easy

200g of white, 50g of wholemeal, 5g of salt, 7g of bicarbonate of soda, 50g of nuts or seeds or whatever you have around, 250/260g of buttermilk.

Fold it together, don’t work it too much, just mixed and no more. Turn it out of the bowl and form into a fat round burger kind of shape. Put it in a baking tray and sprinkle a bit more whole meal over it then 22 minutes in the hottest oven setting.

When it’s done check it sounds hollow on the bottom and let it cool for 20 minutes.

Rain alarm, met office aviation services and AeroWeather app.

Rain alarm and reading a chart along with not understanding how forecast accuracy goes from 90% to 10% fairly quickly seems to work. It depends what you’re doing but I tend to look at morning / afternoon / evening / overnight to get a general idea of going out in the morning or afternoon or just finding something else to do.

As people have said above just seeing the intensity of rain and movement / speed is most useful.

1. Don’t buy boots that are too big
2. Don’t buy boots that are too big
3. Don’t buy boots that are too big

They’ll slip on easily, feel comfortable and the lazy boot fitter will take the cash and move on.

If you’ve booked a trip tell us the resort and we can maybe come up with a good fitter. If not SnowHeads will know.

I don’t think it’s the black art it’s made out to be – more the difference between Saturday boy at Halfords flogging you the first bike you look at or someone with a bit of pride taking some time to get it right.

djglover
the lifts serving the nursery slopes at the top of the GME are clunky, slow and prone to break downs. The plus side is they work round in a circle so you can keep varying the run. The local racing clubs will often use Plateau so expect to get bumped in the queue at the weekend. The sooner you get them capable for the likes of zizi panpan (very easy blue) the better.
The only tricky bit is the way back in at the top of Chariande – mainly because it’s busy with crap skiers so choose your moment to attempt that carefully, e.g not at 3pm as the masses return from the Flaine side.

Try and sort your lift passes before you arrive in the morning as there can be a long wait then another wait for the GME. I think it can be done online. Parking also gets busy so again careful planning to make sure your kids haven’t been stood around for an hour before doing anything.

igm, the rolling slope is all about the snowplough. It usually takes decent skiers a few sessions to progress to parallel turns and for that to happen the speed needs to be higher so you can’t share the slope with anyone who is slow / snowploughing. I found it very unforgiving on parallel so no room for sloppiness which I thought was a good thing.

The most useful feature for me was the mirror. I had a tendency to watch the tips of my skis but you practice looking at yourself with no bumps or traffic.

Contact Mango first. There’s any number of things that could have gone wrong but at least give them a chance before the financial protection route

We drove down to sofa sofa and thought it was complete crap. To be fair they seem better than others of similar price.

The Sofa Library in Bristol seemed very good and we’ll probably go there when get the cash together.

Don’t some credit cards give a better interest rate with a positive balance? Open a credit card that gives you a cash incentive to do so.

Play about with funding circle type investments is a possibility for a little bit of it.

Also, I don’t really see why instant access is important as long as you’re not planning on paying cash for stuff and I wouldn’t see any sense on doing that when getting through £14K, at least for most of it. That should make a 1 month notice work.

I marshalled at the RAC years ago. For a single stage this meant being there hours before and after in Wales in November. On the plus side you didn’t pay, spent the day with like minded people and got to drive on and off the stage.

The single venue stuff was generally more entertaining as the stage would be used more than once.

Look up your local motor club and see if they do any marshalling. It will be cold but it’s giving something back that allows events to run.

Tell us about Courchevel. That is one place I really want to land.

The fact that the people who live there who would like this to happen aren’t pushing for a referendum to allow it to happen demonstrates the above posters complete lack of understanding.

I don’t think I’ve seen Flint, Michigan mentioned yet. Americas gateway to hunting and crystal meth combined with a ticket problem causing the flight to be held and then the gate agent walking me on personally made for interesting inflight conversation with the locals. Sitting next to a Denny’s area manager made me feel like I was in the real life Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Another is El Paso, Texas where this happened while I was there.

El Paso incident

Another thought, and it really depends where you are, but plenty of proms don’t sell out and are actually relatively cheap (<£20) so if London is easy for you go along.