I can’t believe nobody has suggested The Teacher’s Pet yet, it is absolutely fascinating listening. I can’t recommend this enough based on your original list.

https://open.spotify.com/show/19LCrHZaUuWvizzJRZi8YN

I will also second some of the other suggestions above such as S-Town and series 1 from Serial (same guys that made S-Town). Those are really interesting to listen to!

https://open.spotify.com/show/5wMPFS9B5V7gg6hZ3UZ7hf

Some of the BBC ones mentioned such as A Very British Cult, To Catch a Scorpion, Worse Than Murder, Lazarus Heist (very good!) are definitely worth a listen.

But seriously, Teacher’s Pet, best one out there. You’ll be practicing saying ”The DPP” in your best aussie accent in no time.

There’s a group of riders called ‘Coast Riders’ based around Split/Omiš who have mapped and built a load of trails there. We stayed just near Omiš for about 2 months in 2020 and hung out with some of them, rode those trails and helped build some. Lots of stuff on Trailforks around there.

https://www.instagram.com/coast.riders.mtb?igsh=MTFndW4zZG1tZXlzdw==

we also did a trip down to Korčula. Nothing notable to ride on Korcula but there was a fantastic trail on the Pelješac peninsula, mountain called Sveti Ilja, we even made a little YouTube video about it.

https://youtu.be/xwdL3Lz8_p8?si=UcJ4_l9ZG9Boycl

Also been to a couple of enduro races around Istria, Groznjan had a lot of great trails then you’re also not far from Slovenia which I can write a whole new post on!

this is the former ‘@Anus’ not that I run a MTB guide company I thought I best change my name to something more respectable! Haha

i do indeed live in Norway. Disclaimer: I am sponsored by this shop but Birk is a good shop and should have what you need!
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2xFHVQPcDyajtjge9?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy

(There’s also one on the west side of the city)

XXL is more like Halfords/generic sport shop.

Mountain Morph looks like a good shout! I like that it has the flip up valve connection unlike the similar Lezyne product which always seems to unscrew valve cored when removing.

Pliers were for tightening/untightening valve cores when I don’t have the proper tool haha. That little 4-in-1 tool in the ebay link looks handy!

Topeak Hexus was actually the tool I lost, so perhaps we just go with another one of those.

Leatherman seems like a good shout but damn they’re pricey! Looks like the kind of things you’d keep forever though so perhaps a good birthday request.

Oh and reason for asking is I lost my tool recently and my pump broke!

I travelled and lived in quite a few places before settling here. Scotland, London, Grenoble, Slovenia, Sweden then here.

There’s been big back and forth in my head between – let’s go live in a place like Liguria or Tweed Valley where biking is already really developed and you can just fix in to a place with loads of trails, nice cafes, a great community and everything ready Vs. Living in a place where there’s much less developed but there’s loads of opportunity to create something.

Lately I’ve settled much more on it being exciting to develop things and see a place grow and take inspiration from those places that are already really well developed with mountain biking.

I could write a lot about moving to and living in Norway but I suspect a lot of people are not interested in that part haha. But you are right, there is a big section of the year where you can not ride, this year in Nesbyen it was from November and I think it will be until mid April this year. The first years we lived in Norway we took our campervan down to somewhere warm for a couple months. in 2021/22 we were in Liguria for almost 3 months for example. But in 22/23 and 23/24 we stayed here because we took on some projects, building the bakery and now buying a house and renovating the guest accommodation, this year I took up xc skiing and did Vasaloppet to keep me entertained in the winter as well . For 24/25 we’ll hopefully go abroad again because we’re not as keen on cold and dark, no direct sunlight for several weeks and regular -20 days! But the snow here is magic, everything covered in white, not like the dirty snow you get in the UK, and the light is amazing.

Best thing to do is as you say, just come visit for a longer period of time and see how you find it. You’re also welcome to message or email me directly and I can tell you the pros and cons of living in Norway if you want.

I do speak Norwegian but to a fairly basic level. It took me several years though as everyone, even you’re rural farmer type OAPs speak good English!

Give us a shout if you pass by Matt! If you want some riding in the Fjords a lot of it is blimmin steep and techy like I said in the video but you should stop by Sogndal/Kaupanger, fantastic scenic trails by the fjords.

Oldfart, I guess you were booked on with Cycle Active? Sorry you missed out, it was a bit of a shit show with the floods! My house is far enough away from the river we were all good but there are still plenty people out of their houses. Trails survived though!

Gecko you’ll have to give me a clue to your real life identity? But yes, moving from Kvanndal to here has made such a huge difference, it is like life got put into fast forward compared to the fjord life. Great experience living there but I’m glad we moved.

Alpin – You can ride here from May – start of Octover. If you want to do some mountain top riding then waiting until June is best.

Don’t know how important it is to you but doesn’t it only cost about £5 to apply for the document on the Land Registry site and you get it immediately ?

Mert we’ve been out for our annual Xmas day ride in the melted slop. At least it was nice and snowy yesterday for Xmas eve.

We’re at my girlfriend’s parents but we live up in Nesbyen. we’ll be back to -10/15° in a couple of days.

I’ve Got a guiding company and bakery up there and spend any spare time I have building new trails! Come give us a visit when you get a chance, so many good trails around us! We’ve got space to stay as well 😉.

Nice to see there’s quite a few people using this forum in Scandinavia. I started using it back when I was a teenager in Scottish Borders about 15yrs ago.

God jul fra Ljungskile!

Englishman living in Norway with a Swedish girlfriend :).

Do you know about the series on radio 4 called Sliced Bread? They look into products that are marketed like ‘the next best thing’ and see if they’re actually any good. They did an episode on these. Might help you made a decision.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001f4xg?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

In case you wanted another 100 reasons to hate the Post Office, listen to this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m000jf7j

Yes I have the same and it’s rubbish. Updated to the latest app version and lost the my news section. I don’t use it anymore because of this, I like to see my local news, football stuff and a few other topics, not all I get is general world news in each of the 4 tabs.

I don’t know if the foreign version of the app is different? I’m in Norway on iPhone

Also, the Norwegian Kroner pooped its pants in the last month so you’re ££ will go pretty far at the moment.

I reckon a fairly bog standard pint would cost you about 80-90kr in a pub which is about £6-£6.50 just now

Hello! Mountain bike guide based in Norway at your service.

Take your bike! Snow in Myrdal is miles away and Bergen is by the sea so it loses snow way quicker than further inland. You’ll find some great but technical, trails near Bergen.

When are you going?

You’ll likley not find much on Trailforks because everyone seems to use an app called Trailguide here (Norwegian app made by some Norwegians that live just up the road form me ;) ). I used to live and run a guiding company in Hardangerfjord about 2hrs from Bergen and guided sometimes in Bergen, we live about 2hrs east now though, in a place called Nesbyen.

A couple recommendations
https://trailguide.net/447
https://trailguide.net/178
https://trailguide.net/178
It is particularly rocky around Bergen so I hope you like your ‘Lake District tech’ type riding and yeah, it can be pretty rainy. But the scenery and landscape is incredible so I think even if you go for a little ride you’ll just have a great time being like ‘look where I’m riding my bike!’ kind of feeling.

If you have time, then head out to Hardangerfjord or even better, Sogndal! Or EVEN better come visit us in Hallingdal and we’ll show you some trails. You can take the train from Bergen direct to Nesbyen.

To be honest I wouldn’t bother with going to Voss, the riding is a bit naff in my opinion, you’ll have more fun near Bergen itself and if you have the time for a weekend out the city then just figure out how to get to Sogndal or Hallingdal!

Just write me a message somehow if you have any questions, you’ll find all methods of contacting me here – Any Excuse to Ride (not an ad, I’ll happily give you advice for riding or touristing even if you don’t come anywhere near our place :) )

What kind of work are you doing?

Train? French national rail website is SNCF

Hello,

Someone mentioned my name???

We do have several flowy machine built trails in the valley, such as the 17km Hallingspranget we built over the last 2 years, and could probably make a multi day trip putting then altogether.

But to be honest my feeling is Austria would be best. Perhaps a couple days in one location then move in to another. For example Petzen has an epic long trail and I’ve seen many videos out of bike parks in Austria with nice gentle flow trails. I’ve not been, except Petzen, but seen a lot online!

Not sure Jon’s place at Ride Slovenia would be suitable, I used to work for him and it’s some of the best trails I’ve ridden in my life but many are pretty hard! He does guide at Petzen though for example.

My experience of all the places I’ve guided or lived (various MTB destination/area in Europe) is that it is quite hard to find a weeks worth of consistently blue grade trails in an area, especially flow trails. So I’d suggest putting a couple of different spots together for a week.

Austria is my bet anyway.

You don’t say how much you already understand about ASHPs so sorry if this is stuff you already know.

Each brand and appliance might have a COP labelled on it but the COP depends a lot on how the whole thing is set up. In simple terms, the COP is higher when the ASHP doesn’t have to work as hard. So for example if you have been away for 1 month and you come home to your cold house then switch the ASHP back on to heat the house the COP will be really low as it works hard bring the tempurature up. Once it reaches the desired temp and it just has to work to maintain that temp then the COP is much higher.

It is mostly all the other elements that you consider in your heating system that will dictate how good your COP is. Such as insulation, window spec, radiator spec, piping spec and general layout of the thing.

When designing a heating system it is always best to work backwards so that the actual heating unit you spec is almost the last thing. First you need to look at how well insulated your house is. If you’ve got money to spend insulate insulate insulate your house as much as possible. The more insulation you have, the less you’ll have to warm your house as the less heat you’ll be loosing. Same with your windows and doors, these are a big heat leak, seal up all your draughts. This will mean your ASHP doesn’t have to work as hard and you’ll get a better COP if it has to work less to maintain a certain temp.

Next is to consider the piping and radiators in your house. If you have small or not enough radiators then then those radiators have to work harder to maintain a certain temp in a room/house and they’l typically have to be hotter (as they are with gas boilers). Typically ASHPs heat the water in the system to a lower temp but you will have larger radiators or more of them. The best way to do this is to have a continuous wet underfloor heating system that is heated by the ASHP, one giant radiator in the floor that runs at a low temp. Same principal applies to your pipes, if you have older smaller diameter pipes the ASHP has to work harder to push the low temp water around the system more often. So larger diameter pipes allow low temp water to circulate easier allowing the ASHP to work less hard again.

These are the sort of things that will get your COP low. I would guess most ASHPs will have a pretty good COP claimed on their spec sheet.

You must not have listened to the end (or at least when I listened live on the radio he answered these points at the end).

Conclusion was that 80K miles to make up the cost difference buying a new Corsa EV vs Corsa Petrol. (this is around what I came up with when trying to work it out). CO2 wise I think it came out at 36K miles. So ultimately not worth changing your car unless you were going to do so anyway (or are a high miler) and you need to hold onto the new car for a while.

Yeah but this is answering the question of buying a new car if you didn’t have a car before.

I’m interested in the question of selling my old ICE car for a new electric car and it didn’t really talk about the savings of the idea of keeping something that exists already going.

Thought this was relevant here. You and Yours from Radio 4 have a new featuer every Thursday looking at are the lastest and greatest products really all they’re cracked up to be. They started with electric cars.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00162yr

Some quite good info in there but I really can’t believe when he said this kind of test has never been done. Surely someone has.

Also a bit annoying that he never really answered his original question of trying to calculate if it is worth getting rid of your old petrol car for an electric. There are some answers and data that could help you decide but nothing concrete.

Ha, yes i was previously Anus on here however it was never used on my social media. I used any excuse to ride as host my personal account and on a blog then when I started my business I carried on with this name. I asked the stw mods if I could change my name here to something more respectable since I was supposed to be an adult and running a business now.

Cheers for the tip, I have someone here who could manage my social media if i decided to do that.

Matt – that’s mostly my plan if I can get it to work! Haha.

Now when I restarted i had an empty FB account just to allow me to log in other things and send messages to family. Plus an empty Instagram following noone and it already felt much better.

5plusn8 – update: so I decided from this conversation it was worth restarting. Facebook was down but it turned out my girlfriend was also an admin and had access so managed to get me back on to it. This account is still linked to my old inaccessible Instagram which means I can’t link it to any new account or use any management tools like Later or Hootsuite. There’s no way to unlink it without accessing the old inaccessible Instagram account.

I started a new Instagram account and upon posting my second photo (of bikes) this was also disabled! Citing breaking community guidelines. I can only imagine this was breaking the rule of ‘impersonating a person or entity’ i.e. my old Any Excuse to Ride account. I did all the things suggested on the internet when making a new account to avoid this: use a phone number never linked to a FB account, a new email, a device and IP address you’ve never used to access fb. But seems it didn’t help.

So it seems I’m stuck. Unable to make any new Instagram account with the Any Excuse to Ride details. Any good ideas anyone?

Cheers for all the feedback, very useful to hear different opinions and perspectives.

Just to be clear to those asking. I could quite easily start up with social media again and if I were to solely use it for work purposes it is effective and probably does not take a huge amount of time. I also don’t ‘want’ to loose any customers from any source.

The things is the big negative side that comes with using social media that is talked about in the media all the time. It is addictive and I end up wasting a lot of time on there, justifying it by telling myself I’m busy and do a lot so it is OK to take time out to do a mindless activity. I don’t like this and I’d like to avoid it, the easiest way is by simply not using social media so my question was trying to understand how valuable people think it is.

I know plenty of poeple can just say ‘just put the phone down’ or ‘turn it off’ but we all know it is not always that easy. I think it is definitely possible to train yourself out of it though and just use it for work purposes so my plan is that. Restart the social media chanels but keep it limited to posting work content.

The thing is that I also enjoy using social media, sharing some of my activities, watching Jesse Melamed ride some ridiculously fast trails in BC, seeing what latest ridiculous place Killian Bron has taken his bike to and I feel I actually get something out of following those people/thing. This just easily crosses over into mindless crap and spending hours on there watching b**locks.

More self control required.

Interesting ayjay, that’s about as relevant an answer as I could have hoped for!

In response to the first part… Originally set up for mostly international guests then Covid came and we aimed at Norwegians. This year will be the first year able to welcome back international again so I expect is going to be a bit of a mix.

By all my accounts I mean my personal one, my business one and on Instagram and Facebook. So 4 in all.

I have already lost them, that’s the point. To get them back I have to put all the work in to social media again.

The obvious answer is as you say, train mtlyself to keep it work related only. Easier said than done but not out of the question! I’ve trained myself into several behaviour changes recently so I’m sure it’s possible.

I’ve searched as much as possible online and just mostly find dead ends about getting the accounts back. If you have any good links then I’ll be happy to hear about them. It seems you have 30 days to do something about the account I’ve they suspend it then after that it’s permanently deleted, I’ve passed those 30 days now.

Couple years ago a friend got married in Urrugne so I packed my suit, my tent and my bike and flew over for it. Managed to get three asecents of La Rhune in whilst there including one on the morning of the wedding!

From the top of La Rhune (mountain) down to Moanttobaita (small village) via the GR10 (trail) is a great ride! There is a train, I don’t know if you’re allowed bikes on it, to the top. Otherwsie I cycled up on a pretty nice gradiant gravel road mostly on the spanish side, I started at Olhette. You’ll find that on the Geoportail website

Nice, thanks guys. Perhaps will make a few more then.

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be going back to that trail in a hurry. I like to just scan the map a whole and plan a route that seems to flow in terms of ups and downs and a but of a circuit, rather than pick the best looking trail on Trailforks. It fit in to the ride but it’s not a good riding trail! The rest was brilliant though.

I had a big ride of about 40km around Monaco, Gorbio and Peille the other day which I recorded. A bit less hairy scary but I ended up back after dark!

Doggo is called Nora, she’s a failed working collie from near my parents in Northumberland. She’s a fantastic trail dog! Insanely fast, goes all day and as someone mentioned she seems to have an inbuilt GPS, always manages to find the right track. Often when the way isn’t clear where to go I just follow the dog and she’s usually got her nose on the right track.

Sorry to hear it.

I’m in exactly the same position, this has also removed my guiding business accounts on Facebook and Instagram which have thousands of followers and basically where I do all my advertising so it is very valuable to me.

I’ve done exactly the same as you and this was on the 14th Feb, heard nothing from FB and tried any kind of contact I can find online via apparent customer service emails. Any other method suggested by Facebook just takes you to a facebook page and guess what, I’m blocked from Facebook?!

I also apparently broke community standards but I barely use my personal account and just post MTB content on the business accounts so it is either hacked like you suggest or a mistake. I’ve read in several places that this kind of thing is automatic and mistakes are made so we could have been targeted by some kind of automatic algorythm by mistake, especially given your password comments.

Either way, not fun for several reasons and I’m following here in the hope of some answer for both of us.

The context for this makes quite a bit of difference so if you’re able to explain a little bit about your house – location, construction, orientation etc. it will help give some advice/relevant replies.

:)

The whole thing being discussed by Edukator and Drac. Isn’t there a name for this phenomenon? Like you improve something or create more capacity for something to run better but actually it just runs less efficiently or there’s more volume to fill the capacity.

The best example I can think of this is – too much traffic, build more roads to alleviate traffic, instead of less busy roads just more people travel.

Isn’t it the same with you create more efficient cars so now we can have bigger cars and that ‘slack’ created by the better aerodynamics is just taken up or cancelled out by the bigger cars.

Interesting reading.

I have also just remembered that my thinking for this was also for trucks and busses. Which are typically just huge rectangles pushing a hole through the air. Surely even just changing our typical UK/EU flat fronted design to the type you see in the USA more typically would be making a big difference.

People saying gains are marginal but when you add them together over however million cars and however million miles they’re doing it would add up to a lot. Improve a car’s efficiency by 2-3% x by several million cars x by several million miles.

To both OP and Boombang. I sounds like the first thing you should do is measure up and put together some existing drawings, you can do half of that yourself with a bit of guidance. Then describe roughly what you are after (make a small brief) to an architect or someone who knows how to draw/design properly. Then they can put together some measured drawings for you which you can then take to a builder/contractor to get some more accurate quotes.

It seems worth spending a little bit of money on this first step then you know where you stand with prices and regulations and you can adjust the design from there.

It won’t be a waste of money as you can use it as a base to adjust the design from later and at worst you’ll have a decent set of drawings going forward. You’ll likely need these at a later stage anyway.

If you want help with that, let me know. It wouldn’t be too much work or cost to measure up and get some initial drawings down if you’re willing to do some of the work yourselves.

If you need help drawing up I’ll be happy to help. Run a guiding business these days but I trained as an architect and still do small bits and pieces like this. I could help you put some drawings together and navigate the planning application a little. I’m not a seasoned pro but understand what is needed. I wouldn’t charge much, that way you can do a bit yourself and get a little help without the expensive architects fees. Let me know if you would like some help and I can pass on some contact details.

I’m just up the north Tyne Valley at the moment, had them flying right above the village on several occasions at just above the tree line.

We also had some of those funky helicopters that look like little prop planes when flying but they are able to rotate those propellers vertically to take off like a helicopter. What would those be?

My dad used to work up on the Otterburn ranges as a communications technician. He told me when practicing shooting (big guns) they would typically only cordon off the take off area and target and you could be moving around or working in the area in between as they whistled overhead 😳

Info about work permit can be found here

Oh and we used 220x135mm (3 x 45x220mm beams screwer/glued together) for the main structure but we only had 5 main beams then 45x220mm purlins connecting them. This is an image of the floor plate but the roof looked pretty much the same. We needed bigger spacing on posts and beams as there were some large openings on the front elevation.

(we did involve a structural engineer who probably oversized this a bit as they usually do)

I designed a garden office very very similar to yours to great detail for an old colleague. I even did a 150 page step by step ‘ikea style’ construction instructions for him to self build so I might be able to help a little bit.

[/url]

1) with weatherproof paint your OSB would be weatherproof enough as long as you coat it well. A friend designed a similar garden annexe with just painted OSB on the rear elevation to save some money as nobody would ever really see it. You’ll get much more life out of it if you use a breather membrane (Tyvek type thing). You typically don’t need to worry about UV damage if your cladding has at least 50% coverage (found this out from Tyvek on a building we designed a few years ago for Southampton university). So if you have 150mm boards with 40-50mm gaps you’ll be ok.

2) I would recommend waterproof membrane on any roof, make it nice and continuous down onto the walls as well. I think you’ll be alright with insulation between studs, that way you’ll be able to make your insulation at wall/roof junction meet nicer. Here’s a drawing of the roof on the one I did. You can see the wall build up we used in that drawing as well

3) Either insulation will be efficient enough. I would say main downside with rockwool style insulation is it will slump eventually and leave gaps at the tops of the cavities. Would you not put OSB on the internal side of studs, then batens which gives a 25 or 50mm cavity to run cables/pipes/whatever, then your plasterboard?

We changed from electric to induction recently so had to buy a new moka pot. I asked for one for Christmas and ended up getting 2 so I’ve got one spare. I’ll happily sell you it at a nice cheap price as it is just sitting doing nothing in the cupboard now. It looks the same as that Piazetti one. The only thing is it is a chonky boi, it is a 10 cupper! Yes, we drink too much coffee ;)

Where in the country are you?