Would have missed this but for Markenduro sending me a txt earlier so got my entry in.

Will be a nice week visiting family and riding around. Sure I visited those woods about 25 years ago as well.

Nice chair Olly;-)

When May arrives just tear off the ‘offending’ pic and keep the April pic for an extra month.

Only downside is you can’t back-check any dates you may have written down.

I also subscribed in the 5 for the price of 4 offer at the start. Had rarely read a mag in a few years as nithing much interesting. It appealed to me as even then I was a middle aged mincer….

Doesn’t seem like almost 10 years though!

My amps and tuner sit on some Isoblue, think I paid about £50 a shelf as it was ex dem and matched the speakers. My LP12 and CD sit on Mana Acoustics stuff which I bought second hand.

I did try swapping my LP12 between the two stands but was not sure there was really a difference. Maybe slight but I certainly could not say I preferred one over the other.

Have a listen somewhere and if you can’t tell the difference by the cheapest.

Will miss that,off to Brixton to see The Pogues final gig ever…

Stoner – what you gonna do with a field full of ponies?

I got my decals for an old Kona from gil of this parish. Try gil AT thecycleshed DOT co DOT uk Good service.

2:1 ratio is the usual ratio, 32/16 for instance.

Arrived in Derby this morning.

If I could have bothered to vote AP would have got mine. His achievements over many years are oncdible. I have not checked the stats but very few have managed 1,000 NH winners. Terry Biddlecombe was the first when I was a lad and therre has a been a couple since. AP has managed 2,000 plus an elusive GN this year.

Thought it interesting that ‘minor’ sports got 1st and 2nd this year.

Cav is probably going to have to win an olympic gold to have even a small chance I’m afraid. He has an excellent chance of winning the World Championship next year and the general public will have no interest in it.

Another tip for Lucinda Williams – though some of her lyrics would have her busted in this place within 5 minutes! Try ‘World Without Tears’

Gillian Welch, also mentioned, has a nice album called ‘Soul Journey’ that I prefer to ‘Time, The Revelator’ She worked on the first Ryan Adam’s album ‘Heartbreaker’ as well.

I also like Josh Rouse, got a couple of his albums as well as Jim White, Kurt Wagner, Whiskeytown, Lambchop. Also The Pernice Brothers, ‘Massachusetts; is a really nice album.

Heard St George is nice though bypassed it myself. Zion and Bryce are well worth a visit. If you get to Springfield, an entrance to Zion, there is a bike shop there that does hire bikes. Aim for Gooseberry Mesa or a (Horsethief?) bench ride – the shop can help. Certainly 2-3 days riding here. Not sure about horse riding but would be surprised if not available.

Also look out for the ghost town of Grafton which you can drive to from Springfield. ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ was partly filmed here (The ‘raindrops keep falling on my head’ scene)

Thanks for update Mark.

B’Bob – I am also waiting for something from Play since the 7th.

Still not here in Derby. To be fair the first 61 all appeared promptly and my life does not depend on it. It will turn up sometime and sure I will enjoy it when it does.

Not sure what he says; but of the final 5 only 1 has been to university. The others left school at first opportunity. Saved themselves a few quid in tuition fees.

Mine has still not arrived. Bills have made it through without any problems I’ve noticed…

Will give another week or so before I do anything about it.

Not arrived in Derby yet. Not to bothered as loads of reading material to hand. but clearly a problem some where.

Cannock

‘Ghosttown’ by Fun Boy Three

I Fought The Law, And The Law Won – Saw The Clash, The Men They Couldn’t Hang and later Joe Strummer when he lead The Pogues for a spell when Shane had been sacked do this little ditty.

TJ – thanks for clarifying that the 5% was our parents generation. I missed that.

Elfinsafety – your model does not work as countries change over time. I mean three years before I started work VAT was introduced which previous generations did not have to pay. In addition at that time income tax was around 33% and my first mortgage in 1980 was a 15% mortgage rate. Maybe we should go back to those policies as well!

We still have to ‘buy’ much the same things as a nation but it how we pay for it changes over time.

One of the interesting things is that although cuts are being made in many places pensioners so far do not seem to be effected. Is this because they vote? (I thought free bus passes would be amended in line with state pension as a start)

In my day (I am 51) a lot of people went to work and studied by day release or similar to get qualifications – mine was in accountancy, no degree needed to get started. I started work at 17 and gained my qualifications some years later while earning money and paying into a pension etc.

I heard that university admissions has increased by 3 times in this time although TJ has suggested 10 times a couple of hours ago (5% to 50%). I do not know which is correct but a lot more young adults are now going into further education – is this really required? And someone has to pay for it hence the problem we now have.

Stuart Baggs did not go to Uni and he has done OK;-)

My cousin now lives in the USA and he is thinking of sending his 17 year old daughter to a UK university as it will be cheaper than than studying in the USA.

My daughter is 25 and it cost me £18k+ to put her through a 4 year law course, do not know how much her mother contributed. She still had a substantial debt at the end. (Never inquired as the level as she could ‘not afford to eat’ on the £35 a week I was giving her. Note I paid her rent, utilities, 2 x laptops etc so this was to feed herself)

Also agree with TJ regarding the difference over the years. My sister went to Bradford university in the late 1970’s and she lived a lot less well then my daughters generation – not sure if that was a good thing or not.

Future students will not pay until the end of there education rather than up-front which is helpful to people from poorer families. We do need to train future generations but paying for it, and the balance between student and state is a difficult one.

Agree with some of the posters above, if they let you work 4 days a week for 20% less pay then OK – if your circumstances can afford it. I went to work for money at the end of the day, though did loads of extra hours unpaid.

You might have to consider the long term as well though, the whole pay and conditions thing. For instance if you took the reduction would your pension be effected?

80m on S/S and 29er
100m on FS
Rigid on road and turbo;-)

‘The Thames is the second biggest river in London’ You learn something new everyday!
Gonna miss Liz….

I rarely look at itv schedules these days as nothing I am interested on it. Agree with Psling though, it is a commercial channel and if people were not watching it then they would show something else.

Just looked at tv ratings for last few days and ‘I’m a celebrity’ got 12.4m viewers and x-factor 15m. Coronation Street gets massive numbers so can 20-25% of the population be wrong?

Can recommend the Cambrian Way – but you won’t see many people. 3 day route but it is point to point:

http://www.imba.org.uk/WhereToRide/TransCambrianWay.html

You could look up the Ron Hill books from 25-30 years ago to see how it was done back in the day.

He managed 2.09 which the modern Europeans would be well pleased with….

Well done. Did a 15ish miler maybe 20 years ago in that area. Was going quite well until the second climb of Pole Cat. It was hard! Used to love that stuff – keep getting injured nowadays, 2km the other week lead to a calf strain. And I built up to that distance.

Its a great sport though.

The Derby shandy drinkers had a nice night out,was -2 this morning. Tissington trail was quite hard work in the snow really.

We only got to Tissington and ended up in The Bluebell for food and beer, not very rad really, and then headed back to Thorpe where Markenduro had spotted a nice building just the right size. I bagsied to be the ‘meat in the sandwich’ for the night and we settled down with Jura and Sainsbury’s own Irish malt.

Took a while to get out of the sleeping bags this morning and headed down to the Tara Buddhist centre for a late breakfast and home. Pics here for anybody interested:

Hope the Welsh contingent survived and had a good time.

£2 disappeared into a ‘Chatham Pocket’ by the sound of things….

Some dozy people about though.

Disappeared into a ‘Chatham Pocket’ by the sound of things….

Some dozy people about though.

Cheers Stuart, would have been good to catch up with you, Ian and Taylor. The Peaks beckon and no driving. Have a great weekend all.

Kimbers – its the developing world;-)

Rumour is that England out in first round of voting. Perry Groves forecast this earlier in the week. Will be interesting…

Pieface – I heard £15m quoted as the cost of the bid.

Hope England get it on balance. I did see something in a study a few weeks ago about Russia being particularly corrupt and bribery rife.

She was, so we will all be watching again next week;-)

The Derby contingent have decided to abandon the journey. Still quite a bit of snow on local roads though main roads seem clear. Safety reasons really, could be icy roads and do not want to be rushing. We are planning a local outing though, no driving involved.

valleydaddy = if you still want the MSR stove contact me via profile, would want to charge for postage at such a keen price.

Ianb – will email you after the weekend.

SSUK if you are that way inclined.

Can agree with Stuarts assessment of WRT. Despite about 50 riders on the last day I had ridden for a couple of hours without seeing anybody. Suddenly, I went round a corner and thought I could actually see somebody. So busy looking in surprise I fell off and a couple of young ladies came to my aid…. (Also got to spend a quiet night with ianb in a bothy)

It IS bad down there. Mrs B called me to say she fallen in Camden Town and banged her nose. Off to see a doctor this afternoon. And thats just a light covering. Worse is going to happen.