Thanks Kormoran, will take a look around for that.

A squint at the elevation profile up there^^ tells you all you need to know. Lots of up, same amount of down, very little ‘along’.

OMG. Never heard of it until opening this thread. Googled FODMAP and just read the bit about non-coeliac gluten sensitivity and it’s the first time I’ve read something that explains the why, for the last 22 years, I’ve felt so much better eating a non-gluten diet (but not being coeliac).

Al-fayed was contemporaneous with Saville tho judging by much of that coverage.

Was about to say the same myself, but Fayed only died last year – that’s 12 years after Saville. There was plenty of time for justice to be served – even if he wouldn’t have seen the sentence out.

I wonder how many more are hiding in plain sight for the lack of action……

Has anyone with an EV ever said “Do you know what I’d like? Less range” ?

We’ve now had an electric Mini with approx 125 mile range (on a warm day, 100m on a cold one) for 3.5 years. Number of times we’ve realised that we can’t complete a journey without stopping for a recharge…..Once (trip to Anglesea).

125 miles is fine thanks, and if increasing the range to 250 is going to make the car heavier, less efficient and more expensive then we’re not interested.

Incidentally, we test drove the new electric Mini the other day. Hated it – terrible all-touchscreen controls and felt cumbersome in comparison to the older one.

Had a successful exchange today, but the experience was shockingly bad on an iPhone. Split screen / scrolling nightmare / return sends the message rather than start a new line, but with a delay posting so you end up sending the same message 5 times by accident / all the text lined up down the right third of the screen. Lord knows what posting pictures would look like.

Our dishwasher stank the house out every time it was turned on. I did all the under-sink plumbing/fitting valves/u-bend mods etc etc.

Turns out there’s a condensation tank that takes up one complete side of the dishwasher – I guess it’s part of the drying cycle in that steam heads out of an outlet at the top of the dishwasher and condenses on the side of this tank. A valve at the bottom lets it out at the right point (but it easily jams open). Our condensation tank had filled with the kind of white crumbly stinking (fat?) that causes fatburgs. Any water condensing in there would immediately stink of the drain / fart emissions of the devil. I took it apart and cleaned it as best I could (bleach in there for about 3 hours and careful rising through a teeny tiny hole). It cured the problem.

So I say do the bucket thing mentioned by NeverEnoughBikes ^^^ up there before you begin dismantling the plumbing.

Cycle.Travel (no dot com or dot uk or nuffink)

Best route planning I’ve ever used. It’s the opposite of Google Maps / journey planner. It prioritises quiet roads over busy ones. Only issue is sometimes it’ll take you on a 5-mile detour to avoid 200 yards on an A-road.

Most easy load to Wahoo bike computer ever (download your route as a GPX file to your iPhone, send it to Wahoo)

I’m still getting used to the app – it’s set up to act as a satnav but I’ve not used it like that yet…..

Edit: I should say there are route options you can set ‘any’, ‘paved’ or ‘gravel’ but if you’ve selected two points then it’s likely to be majority road around here….

A proper 500mile range EV at a sensible price point will be a game changer.

Absolute bobbins. Mine does 280miles to a charge. No way am I driving that far without a break, and if I’m having a break I might as well charge, and I’ve never had an issue charging.

Buy the car. Use it.

A quick squirt of the accelerator is fun and helps get around traffic. I use it once or twice per commute I guess (yes, the ability to accelerate amazingly fast is turning me into a bit of a nob).

Really not noticed a significant impact on range as a result. Don’t forget that the increased speed will get scrubbed off by regen braking, so used charge is recovered somewhat.

If you’re that troubled by it, most electric cars have an Eco mode which limits the max acceleration (they also have a sporty mode which opens it up more).

I think you’re overthinking all this. Buy a car, use it.

Worcesterite here….

Mountain biking: Usual ‘urban’ stuff of woodlands and waste ground with interesting stuff, Malverns (20 mins by car), Wyre Forest (40mins by car), Flyup 417 (35 mins by car), FoD (1 hr by car), Cannock Chase (1 hr by car), BPW (1hr40 by car) etc.

Road riding: Vale of Evesham to the East, Cotswolds to the South East, Hills and country lanes to the North and West. The council have installed a number of cycling routes which include bridges over the busy 60/70mph bypass roads, making getting out of town on relatively traffic-free routes very easy. Once out of town, the lanes are pretty quiet.

Sailing: I sail at Trimpley (in the Severn Valley just West of Bewdley – 40 mins by car) and Bartley (just south of Birmingham – 25 mins on M5). There are other options at Top Barn (small gravel pit – not really worth it IMO) Upton Warren (shallow gravel pit), Arden (narrow bit of the river Avon near Upton), Midland (Edgbaston) and Barnt Green. There are many more to the North/West of Birmingham if you’re willing to travel, Cotswold Water Park and I think there’s a watersports place over at Evesham.

Windsurfing: Catered for at Bartley. Not sure about anywhere else. I had mates who used to head to the Gower for windsurfing, but that’s a bit of a drive (shorter than from Essex of course!)

Rowing: There’s a rowing club on the Severn, and at Bewdley (on the Severn). Not dabbled in that scene so can’t comment further.

Worcester is a small city – more of a town really, but it’s fairly buoyant high-street and social life wise. Partly due to the university, and partly as it’s a county town and surrounded by villages (where all the wealth is). There are direct train services to Birmingham, London, Cardiff and (sometimes) Manchester and points in between(depending on which of the 3 stations you depart from!) Having the M5 run past is a blessing and a curse – most of the time it means quick and easy access to most of the midlands and the South West, but it can get very slow on summer Saturdays with all the folks heading off for their hols. The council have been addressing the traffic issues over the past few years (that was majorly chaotic) and so now most of the traffic hotspots have been sorted. The hospital gets an absolute slating all the time though.

Hope that helps.

Happy to have been of potential service.

interesting to hear that even transporting on a rack can cause problems. Will be triple-checking I pack the cable for any future adventures!

As I undertand it, If its been in a bag with the shifter buttons pressed then that will have flattened it.

Here you go – taken from my brand-new-not-yet- fitted 12spd Di2 cable….

It’s one hell of a fiddly job getting onto these terminals. Good luck getting a wire on the socket!

let me know how it goes…..

We have a Jabra 510 speakerphone in our team as we travel around to differing depots that don’t all have audio conferencing facilities. It’s amazing, we’ve even used it in rooms that have been professionally fitted out as it’s quite often much better than the installed stuff.

I’ve been around the industry for 20+ years now and it’s the one job that I’ve always thought “not for me”:

It’s a lonely job, locked in your cab for hours, either stopping every few minutes or hourly.

Yes there are safety systems, but you’ve got up to 1000 people on that train that you’re ultimately responsible for.

Those safety systems irritate you regularly to make sure you’re awake.

You have to be able to drive that route whatever the weather. Fog taking visibility down to 5 yards? You still have to drive at 90, you still stop on a platform within 2 metres. Everything to time or “please explain”.

It’s all stop/go, but if something goes wrong then every action you take is recorded, all poured over by investigators (not always safety – sometimes performance) and if there’s one thing you did wrong then it’s black mark time.

The reason you can drive 600 tonnes of metal at >100mph is because you’ve had to learn the route you’re driving (00’s of hours of route learning), and you must have driven it at least once in the past 12 weeks. If it’s been longer then you have to go through all those hours of learning again(one of the main issues the industry is still dealing with following COVID) If there are routes you don’t regularly drive, then on one of your ‘rest days’ you have to go out and ride that route in the cab and “route refresh”by sitting alongside another driver.

Drivers are a curious and mercurial bunch no mistake, but when you see even a glimpse of what their job entails I know 100% that “the money is good and look at the pension” is not going to get you far.

Definitely had ‘something’ – a real toxic feeling, came out in a viral rash, the lot. Was completely out of action for a week and if I do anything more than a gentle walk with the dog I begin to feel hungover (the best description I can come up with). Weird.

i did covid tests but they came back negative, but then they’re about 3 years old….

Yep – just paid £730 for a towbar fitment to my car. Seemed the going rate and pretty much what I think I paid the last time I had one fitted.

Custard. Don’t know why, but the thick yellow jelly-like custard of the 1970’s just made me vom, and now I can’t get over it.

Football as well. Next few weeks will be miserable, and I’ll be hugely relieved when “we” are knocked out.

Grand Tours other than the TdF: Just don’t seem to be able to get excited about them, but I try and follow the TdF each year.

Yeah I concur, you’ll have got into a fixed position on the bike and doing the stuff you used to do (moving about on the bike, riding ‘elbows out” etc) feels exaggerated and alien.

I recently went through the same thing exactly and I’m sorry to say im betting it’s you, not the trails.

I think it’s a valid point too.

i also don’t think the weird plastic netting stuff works. I’ve seen about a dozen littered around here that have been cut off and discarded in the bushes in the roads around the store.

I’ve been looking at one since visiting Helsinki over Easter and getting some decent Sauna time in. Love it.

Been looking at a Barrell sauna but figured that a wood-fired stove would be the best option given where I’d like to site it.

Alternatively, I could simply go and join the local gym for about 5 years and save myself a wedge of cash.

Yes. Wasn’t difficult and perfectly stable. Kept the rain off for about 5 hours until it stopped and I packed up and got on my way.

Bolt through?

I had a fork with a 20mm through-axle which had got worn where the Pro2 bearings located on it (I think the bearings had seized after a particularly wet ride and I didn’t notice?) so the wheel always felt slack in the forks despite everything being done up nice and tight.

One thing – check maximum rider weight if you’re at the upper end.

I bought a pair of Scribe wheels. Lovely things, but didn’t last the first week of riding. My fault, the all-up weight was around 15kg above maximum.

Recently rebuilt the rear wheel with brass nipples and round double-butted spokes. Much happier now, but not as light, obvs.

I get this occasionally, but only if I fall asleep on my back. Doing this is very rare (don’t find it comfy) but if I do it’s can be quite a panic! It’s never caused me to worry though, it’s just a daft position to fall asleep in (for me). Maybe I should start to worry……

I snore like a jet engine and ought to get checked for sleep apnea, but whilst being loud I don’t stop breathing at all, so I don’t think I have it.

In my experience over approaching 3 years of running an EV, but with limited public charging experience, this is fairly typical. My car handles a max of 75kW and I’ve only once seen that at a charger that was rated to deliver 150kW.

As I understand it, the chargers monitor the local DNO and vary the charge rate in line with what the local grid can deliver. I’ve always taken the maximum charge rate with an enormous pinch of salt.

I got these: https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/shoe-glove-dryer/_/R-p-X8790583

They’re used in walking boots which I wear to walk the dog on a twice daily basis. They’re no good if the boots are completely sodden, but they work well if you’re simply drying out damp stuff.

The UV element to keep odours down seems to work well.

If the summerhouse is wooden, leave plenty of length for wood expansion/contraction through the seasons.

Don’t ask me how I know….

It’s a huge PITA thats for sure – both for operators and for travelling public.

Trains have such a long lifespan and refitting them takes years, so trains bought/specified 20-30 years ago at the time of initial privatisation are still running around now. It’s relatively easy to work out the income generated from a seat, but the revenue from a bike space is supplemental and not so easily understood. Given that any space given over to a cycle area leads to reduced seating (and invariably the DfT specification focuses on seats for long-distance services) then cycles are definitely a poor second priority (potentially third priority after the refreshment trolley and giving space for that).

Then when it comes to ticketing it becomes even more fraught with such a limited capacity on modern trains.

I think operators would welcome a bit of clarity on what’s expected (specification from DfT for instance) and an industry approach to travelling with bikes (or indeed any oversize luggage), but given the widespread turmoil still being experienced from the fallout of COVID and the emergency ‘renationalisation’ I think it’s a long way down the list of things to sort out.

No Kaffenback?

I thought that was well clever, me…..

Thanks Kramer – some very interesting stuff!

I snore at vol 11. Window rattling, tile shatteringly loud.

Mrs BOAS says I don’t stop breathing but reckons I can disturb myself, waking frequently but not to full consciousness. I think I know these nights as I wake up exhausted without really knowing why, but I don’t have this every night and can have a bad snoring night and the only thing to show for it is an angry wife.

Through the snorelab app I’ve been able to track it and I know it’s very very closely aligned to my weight (I would say I’m not heavily overweight – BMI is around 29 usually but I’m a solidly muscular build), but as I’m getting older I find I need to be lighter to keep the snoring at bay and it’s got to the point where I can’t maintain a low enough weight to keep the snoring acceptable.

My snoring is definitely the vibration of soft palate in the nasopharynx area – more of a snorting/gathering up a greeny type of thing rather than oropharynx/soft palate snore.

My questions:

1) Even if I don’t stop breathing should I still get checked out for sleep disorder?

2) Will I do myself long term harm if I just shrug and keep snoring (assuming I stay married)?

3) Is there a procedure that would shut me up?

Well, after a bit of investigation it appears that it is indeed the season – I just wasn’t expecting to see the change so suddenly at the end of August into September.

Thanks for your suggestions folks.

There can be only one.

Great Malvern for, erm…. Malvern Hills.

Bewdley (Severn Valley Railway) for Wyre Forest

We had City Fibre do the street. With 3 of us WFH we grabbed it with both hands.

Went with Vodaphone super-dooper package “unbreakable” wifi. It was *very* breakable. The router plus extenders was awful awful crap crap crap. The dongle never worked. My experience certainly wasn’t helped by the fact that Vodafone didn’t have me as a customer so all their automated customer help was inaccessible to me.

In a fit of pique, I cancelled the DD and signed up with Talk Talk who City Fibre said used their network. They didn’t. A couple of weeks later I had a second fibre (Openreach) fed into the house. I went with Talk Talk as they do 2 x EERO mesh routers with the package (I bought a 3rd router off Ebay knowing I’d need it). It’s been completely solid – not a single glitch or outage . Brilliant.

3 months after I’d ‘left’ vodaphone, they decided I was, actually, a customer and started to chase for payment. they can do one. 

massive insurance hikes/ refusals for electric cars.

Such a huge bunch of misinformation and horsecrap talked about electric cars. It’s become such an emotive topic and I’ve no idea why – is it Saudi bots attempting to slow the adoption down?

I changed from CMax to ENiro about 6 months ago. Insurance change cost me £70, but I took the opportunity to add my 22 year-old lad to the named drivers so I wouldn’t be surprised if the base insurance hadn’t gone down by quite a bit!

Hmmmmm. My real world figures (Cmax Vs ENiro) on fuel-only coats are:

@45mpg (unwavering average I had from the car for 10+ years) and fuel at 1.60 per litre is 16p per mile.

@4.2m/kW (again unwavering average over the past 6000 miles) charged overnight on Octopus Go @9.5p/kw is 2.26p per mile.

Saving over 12k miles – £1,640

Octopus billing problem: has anyone one else experienced this.

Yes. I’m in my third year of Octopus supply and I still can’t work out what the hell is going on most of the time.

I do get a bill once in a while and I go through it and it checks out, also the app shows me stuff in terms of usage so I know they have the data, it’s just weird that they don’t seem to have it automated.