dont get me started on “the rules”….

and I know you’re joking but being serious, thats the problem I am predicting, its going to be a fixie hipster hangout and everyone else gets snubbed, roadies are made to feel unwelcome and dont come back and the place goes from being a cycle cafe to a fixie cafe…. how much money do the owners lose out on because some customers treat it like their own private club and mock the others for not being in the clique….

ah sorry, thought it was a sportive, just enjoy it, there should be a few petrol stations on route for mars bars and pepsi, just enjoy the quiet roads and the countryside! a good meal the night before really does help too!

when i did my first century, i just went at my own pace, after ten miles or so i found a bloke who was happy at my pace and we stayed together for the rest of the ride give or take a few miles where he dropped back. the best advice i can give is to stop at the water/feed stops only if you need to and not because you want to and only then for a short period of time. Five minutes at the water stops and fifteen max for lunch. eat a little and often and keep your fluid levels up. keep the cadence up and your legs spinning.

100 miles is surprisingly easy, resist the urge to set a target time and just enjoy it.

I’m sounding like a broken record here, but the people buying the cake and coffee are not necessarily the ones who need bikes servicing cheaply.

but you havent given any indication as to who is buying the coffee and the cake?…. seriously, i just cant see people giving up their usual cafe to use this one wherever it is. if they arent a cyclist unless its slap bang on a commuter/shopping street. as i said, people are creatures of habit and like their usual and niche cafes wont survive unless they can appeal to all demographics. go back and do the “mum test”, would your parents or your partners parents use it if there was a “chain brand” on the same street…. now, be honest?!….. its a good idea and deserves to succeed but thats not enough 99% of the time.

Because it’s cheaper? Because it’s friendlier? Because they’ll be paying their staff properly? Because the coffee actually tastes like coffee and not a milkshake with 7 extra sugars added

bar the cost, the vast majority of people dont actually care about any of this, particularly when there are companies going under, the threat of redundancy looming and zero economic growth. you’re a coffee snob who can afford a conscience, good for you. I’m not and I can’t. The fact that the likes of starbucks and costa are always busy suggests that people at worst tolerate the coffee.

the fact that the pop up cafe will be outside Hamilton House say it all…. i still wish them all the best but now I’m definately coming, i’ll be the one wearing the pro tour team lycra… hell, its a cycle cafe after all right? ;)

the bunkhouse run by the cwellyn arms is good, we normally end up their either in the bunkhouse or cmaping. its handily placed near enough at the foot of the ranger path and five minutes from the pub. the YHA is just up the road too.

there is a truly ghastly place in Betws called the Vagabond which is well worth avoiding.

Are you saying Bristol has so many cafes there’s no way another one can survive (regardless of bikes or not)?

No thats not my point, If the workshop element of the business can not generate enough money to subsidise the cafe, to survive, the cafe must subsidise the workshop and thus it needs to attract more than cyclists alone because for the reasons stated earlier

We the cyclists alone, are not going to generate enough custom for the venture to survive in the long term. As I said, who goes there when we are at work in the week? The critical factor is why would a non-cyclist choose this cafe over Starbucks? Call it the “mum test”, why would my parents, both retired with too much time during the week, go to a cycle cafe and not starbucks or costa if there was one within the vicinity. They know what they are getting at a Starbucks, it might be average but its reliably average the world over. I just dont think a cafe with a cycling bias will generate enough custom to sustain both a cafe and a workshop.

Regardless of the bike element, a new cafe has to offer something above and beyond the existing choices to make it sustainable, it doesnt have to be unique, it could simply be location on a busy street. Whilst there is room for more cafes in Bristol (though I’m not sure where!) they can not rely on wifi, organic flapjack and fairtrade Peruvian coffee to survive…

forgot to say the German National Museum was well worth visiting too http://www.dhm.de there are a few war exhibits but loads of other interesting stuff too if you are compromising!….

Having been in Berlin for a long weekend last week I have a fair bit to share! :)

Hotels are everywhere and all reasonable prices really, we stayed in the Hilton in Mitte which was nice but business bias but we got a good deal on expedia so cant complain. there are others available and anywhere around Unten der Linden will be well placed and lively. The Oranienstrasse area was good for bars and resturants, german cusine is utterly awful based around pizza, pasta and sausage… the beer is awesome though.

the u-bahn/s-bahn tickets are really cheap, a 7 day zone A/B/C card was 33 euros, you will need at least zone A/B. its a big city and the u-bahn is very reliable. its all very well signposted and there are maps on the platforms.

things to do.

The East Side gallery is pretty unique, something like a mile of teh wall still intact and loads of murals etc. there is cycle shop/cafe called keirin http://www.keirinberlin.de not far from there too!….

huge shopping centre in alexanderplatz if its wet

The soviet war memorial in treptower park is amazing and worth a visit.

the concentration camp in sachenhausen is also worth visiting, yes its humbling, terrifying and eye opening. its on the s-bahn (zone c) about 35 minutes out of town. its always open but the indoor exhibitions are shut on mondays.

the mauer park flea market on sundays is pretty good fun, loads of stalls in the market and some musicians/street performers in the park itself.

tiergarten is a big park, worth walking through if its nice. loads of bike hire places around too, worth taking advantage of. about 10 euros for the day.

the holocaust muemorial just south of brandenburg gate was weird, the memorial itself is quitebleak and the exhibition underneath is an eye opener too. you learn all this sort of thing at school but being there really hits it home.

the absolute must thing to do is the Stasi museum, http://www.stasimuseum.de/en/enindex.htm
the acutla building where the SS operated has been kept as original, you can see all the spy equipment and the Head guys office is as it was, its an amazing place. it just looks like a 50s office building but inside has all these reminders of the stasi activities. definately the best thing there.

checkpoint charlie, well go there, but dont hang around and the museum next to it is very cramped and quite pricey (12 euros each) its worth walking there from the top of Freidrichstrasse down.

loads of good cafes, Cafe Einstein was one of the better ones though they sold out of croissants by 0930!

tahts all in the old East side, the west side, as mentioned by others, was nice and worth wandering through. In general, it was nice and safe, friendly and a typical lively central european town.

Have to say, i dont really think Bristol is “crying out for something like this” at all. I hope it works out for you and it is a success but I just dont get the business model. If you need cheap/free servicing you are unlikely to also spend £5 on a latte and a piece of organic, homemade flapjack from a cafe whilst you wait, or if you can, then you should be charging them £5 for the servicing and make them forego the cake…..

If I just go for the cake and coffee and the atmosphere, there are good cafes that already do it in Bristol, you dont need to be in a cycle shop/environment to talk about cycles.

Offering a venue to watch cycle races in a cafe environemnt is also somewhat flawed. Sure, its nice to watch a spring classic on a big screen with your mates but there are only half a dozen a year that take place at the weekend and only another half dozen or so Grand Tour stages at the weekend most people could make, given we are all at work for the rest. Maybe I’m wrong and loads of people would leave work early to catch the end of a mountain stage but who will be your customers throughout the rest of the day, month, year and why would they go to your cafe and not Boston Tea Party, Starbucks, etc etc. Given we all moan about clique-y cycle shops, how will this be any different?.

There are already good cafes in Bristol that sell aforementioned organic, homemade cake and charge £3 for a slice (when in reality, if i head for a cafe after a ride all I want is pre-packaged gloop made from sugar and oats for £1) and there are also bike shops I trust with my bike (winter hack or sunday best is irrelevant) whom I am happy to pay an appropriate fee, sorry but I dont need the two combined.

I’ll decide later if its worth £5 for my latte and flapjack just to annoy the legion of bristol fixie hipsters with my carbon frame, 20 gears and lycra.

With regards to the sponsorship/investment thing, do some research on Justin Wilson the British motor racing driver and his similar scheme in the US…. from memory I dont think anyone has received a return on their investment and thats with a global tv audience and big sponsors ready to throw cash at roundy-roundy indycar racing where the odds on a return at the time of investment appeared to be suitably high….

Cooke was the dominant force for something like ten years on the national scene and had some good international results too, obviously the 2008 olympics being one of them. i cant remember who she was riding for but the majority of the other top GB women were all riding for Garmin Cervelo and a bit of a division formed to say the least. Cooke had some really bad luck after the olympics when she signed for Cippolini only for that deal to fall through and effectively have to sponsor herself for a season which put her back a bit.

I think it was the 2010 Nationals where the women in Garmin basically rode for one person (Pooley?) and Cooke was fighting on her own, Cooke lost and she thought it was unfair voicing her opinions, some pepole agreed, others did not.

personally I think that a lot of the GB women have issues around team selection and riding as a team, its not just Cooke but Laws, Houvenhagel etc. GB need to start looking at the likes of Barker and Garner who although very young, dont have the baggage and can form the nucleus of a stronger more unified team..

then you should have typed that and not “titter”.

eurosport but steephill.tv will have feeds.

glupton1976 – Member

i have the RYA comp crew certificate so am ok on water

titter.

we all have to start somewhere…. :roll:

Armitstead should get into the top 3, I assume she will be team leader supported by Laws and Pooley and Cooke given a free role like the olympics. I’d be very surprised if Lucy Garner didnt win the Juniors and Pooley and barker should both finish in the top 3 of their respective TT….

Cav’s victory last year was the result of three years effort, when copenhagen was annouced as the venue for 2011, Brailsford immediately set up a plan to ensure Cav would win it. 2012 was all about le tour and the olympics, retaining the rainbow jersey was sadly not a priority.

a Brit win will be luck, one of them needs to get into a break which gains enough time for the peloton to leave them to it knowing the terrain in the last 20kms isnt conducive to bringing them back. that said, if the break is too strong, there will be some favourities in it who could overhaul a Brit, too weak and they will be caught before the final climbs as the favourities will get their teams to bring the break back before the climbs…

Wiggo and Froome will be marked heavily. neither will make a break. No Idea what JTL is like at this level, 250kms at WC pace with tactics to consider etc, suspect he is there for experience considering the rumours he is off to sky in 2013. he certianly isnt capable of racing head to head with the likes of Sagan and Gilbert yet. Surprised Thibault Pinot isnt in the French team. he was a revelation in le tour and would have fancied his chances. Chavanel is a good call, a gutsy rider who likes a challenge but too strong to be allowed a break.

iain1775 – would really appreciate the book, have emailed you
jonba – likwise, have emailed you too

thanks for the info, we found a few guides online, including a skippers guide for motor yachts etc which was quite useful. we have done a bit of canoeing on the river wye but its very ewasy and obviously the current takes you along. i have the RYA comp crew certificate so am ok on water albeit boats not canoes. my issues were based on the timing guides and just how long it takes to paddle say 20kms (on the basis that is the average day length in the guide) at a pace still leaves time to bimble around and investiagte stuff that looks interesting. i suppose time to pack down camp, get the boat in the water etc all takes a while…

whats the best time of year? assume spring and autumn are midge-tastic? is summer really busy on the water?

Millar ruled himself out on the basis that he is knackered.
Same for Geriant Thomas, spending all year focusing on the TTT for the Olympics meant he has had little road training and wouldnt be much use. Wiggo ruled himself out of selection for the ITT too though i cant remember why.

Cav doesnt really stand a chance, those two hills in the last 20kms will really test the field but I suspect that there will be a break before they get there and Cav wont be in that break. Sagan will be heavily marked, as will Gilbert and most of the Dutch, someone like Boom or Mollema could sneak into a break and stand a chance of a win though.

Although Sagan has a massive team behind him they are not capable of carrying him and bar Velits, lack any real experience. I think the marking will be such that it could be a real surprise this year, it just depends who makes the jump and whether they are considered too dangerous to let go, the olympics will be fresh in most peoples minds! so I’ll stick my neck out and go with someone like Jeremy Roy, Boassan Hagan or Hesjedal.

At least one GB rider will probably be given free reign as they know its not a course suitable for Cav, cant see it being Wiggo though, maybe Froome or Swift.

loads of info and start lists here, (entries not down selected teams)
http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/gbcyclingteam/article/gbr20120820-gb-cyclingteam-2012-UCI-Road-World-Championships—Schedule-and-courses-0

GB Teams are here
Elite Men – Road Race
Mark Cavendish
Steve Cummings
Alex Dowsett
Chris Froome
Luke Rowe
Ian Stannard
Ben Swift
Jon Tiernan-Locke
Bradley Wiggins

Elite Men – Time Trial
Alex Dowsett
Chris Froome

Elite Women – Road Race
Lizzie Armitstead
Katie Colclough
Nicole Cooke
Nikki Harris
Sharon Laws
Emma Pooley

Elite Women – Time Trial
Wendy Houvenaghel
Emma Pooley

U23 Men – Road Race
Josh Edmondson
Scott Thwaites
Simon Yates

U23 Men – Time Trial
Sam Harrison
Joe Perret

Junior Men – Road Race
Germain Burton
Jon Dibben
Tao Geoghegan Hart
Chris Lawless
Alex Peters
Will Stephenson

Junior Men – Time Trial
Jon Dibben – 17th (+ 50s)
Tao Geoghegan Hart – 35th (+90s)

Junior Women – Road Race
Elinor Barker
Lucy Garner
Emily Kay
Jessie Walker
Molly Weaver

Junior Women – Time Trial
Elinor Barker

just back from a long weekend with the wife in Berlin. it was nice but not really very stag-orientated, given the history it was quite heavy. i’m sure you could find all the general stag stuff if you tried but it didnt seem on that kind of place. loads of good cultural and historical stuff though!

went to a stag party in Bratislava recently too, it was expensive getting there (had to fly from london) but when we were there it was a great place. it was a package booked through http://www.bratislavastags.com
our guide was called Natalia: http://www.bratislavastags.com/option,com_zoom/Itemid,556/page,view/catid,5/PageNo,2/key,26/hit,1.html

She was great fun and spent most of the time with us bar a few hours during the day, definately get a guide. they have some good deals with the clubs and things but also know places to suit your mood, eg the good clubs for the evening and the quiet cafes for hangovers…

because its not an obvious choice, it doesnt suffer like Prague from stag-overkill, loads of parties roaming the street etc, thus whilst you are there, the locals are quite friendly and dont give you evils. its a proper party place though, the clubs dont get full until way past midnight and in the summer, they are almost 20 hours of daylight so you can eat out quite late in relative daylight, go clubbing and walk back to the hotel in daylight, very odd!

No hassle from the locals, lots of fun on the dancefloor, just an all round great weekend. I spent the best part of £1000 all in though you could do it for half that quite easily… we had a stretched limo from Vienna (complete with “exotic dancer”), a nice hotel and some extras ( mud wrestling for the stag) and club entry…

Personally I think that motorists are slowly becoming more accepting of cyclists on the road, particularly at peak hours. Critical mass arrives like a whirlwind with the bells, hooters, whistles, 80 people riding three abreast in a city centre and in 60 minutes it undoes all this good feeling so every cyclist just goes back to being a menance.

In the last ten years the road infrastructure has been upgraded so much to support sfaer cycling on the roads that “die-ins” and sit down protets etc, hte common traits of the critical mass, are counter productive to cyclists now.

If you want to be treated like traffic, you behave like traffic.

You guys are sooooo funny, but then you obviously know all about running a bike shop too. How many of you have seriously considered doing it for a living?

ok, so alot of the comments are tongue in cheek, a lot of them are common sense to boost turnover but good customer service doesnt cost a shop anything, so if you cant compete on prices, stock range etc, dont have the money for big marketing campaigns etc why do so many shops do it so badly?

Most of us have worked in retail at some point in our lives, its quite simple to be polite. although the shop i worked in wasnt a particularly niche store (outdoor clothing etc) but we got a lot of return customers because customer service was drilled into us given the stuff was quite pricey. i think we were pretty good, to be honest, during the week we were bored silly so would talk to everyone in the store about anything, bored housewives with pre school children were graetful for an adult conversation to be honest!

as for the bike shop thing, yeah i’ll bet we have all thought about it and know how we could do it better than the shops in business in our areas at the moment but we are not so naive to know that in reality its a hard way to make a living and the industry isnt ever going to start favouring the one-man-band shops.

paragon tapes are great because the box they use is just the right size to fit through a post box thus its not left outside or taken back to a depot etc… simple things!

I apppreciate that LBS cant really compete on price with the likes of Wiggle and dont have a returns/despatch dept so cant get things out as quick as the big internet shops but where they can excel is knowledge and describing how stuff works – i mean its right there in front of them, its not hard to demonstrate things to a potential buyer….

A good level of knowledge about the products you sell is essential (which means not rummaging through the latest catalogue on the counter), a reasonable knowledge about the products you dont sell (as in why they arent as good as your bikes/stock), local trail knowledge, proof that you actually go riding, (some visible cycle related scars or trophies on the cunter help here!), some knowledge on international race series (i went into a shop in London during le tour and they didnt even realise it was on let alone that a Brit was winning!),

load of info here as a friend was looking in to it once. http://www.cateringclassifieds.com
he worked a weekend at Glastonbury a year or two back in a burger wagon and the owner said the burger being sold for £3 was costing him something like 15p aper unit all in, burger, bun, servette, ketchup, gas, wages etc etc

In my opinion, you need something different to make it a success, I would rather go hungry than eat a dog burger but obviously some people like(?) them or cant be arsed to make sandwiches first/wait till they are home. That said, at the last mini festival i was at, one stand were charging £8.50 for a pie, mash and mushy peas which I paid and was quite surprised with how good it was. I bet they were making a nice profit on that too….

as others have said, the pitch can be expensive and insurance on them is a lot too.

Just with regards to a few of the comments recently about whether its possible to beat a drugs test, ie, be dirty but show up clean, how good the tests are etc, the following is an excerpt from the CAS case aagainst Contador

CAS report said:
Following WADA’s request, the Cologne Laboratory reanalysed three other urine samples provided by Mr Contador during the 2010 Tour de France. The bodily samples of 22, 24 and 25 July 2010 showed further clenbuterol concentrations of 16 pg/mL, 7 pg/mL and 17 pg/mL respectively. A blood sample was also taken on Mr Contador on the morning of 21 July 2010. Such blood sample also contained clenbuterol at a concentration of around 1 pg/mL.

A picogram is one trillionth of a gram or rather 1000000000000pg = 1g but as we all now know, the meat contamination theory was proved to be less likely than doping. In short, IMHO, the men in white coats in laboratories will catch you….

My Tracks will import GPX data. However, there’s no ‘open file’ option, helpfully.

If you download Linda File Manager, that gives you an “Open With…” option on files, which you can then use to point at My Tracks and Robert’s your mum’s brother.

Linda Manager is quite useful thanks, downloaded mytracks too but now when i try to download a gpx file from a website it says “no application has been found to support this file, do you want to download it anyway?”

so i download it anyway, go throuth Linda Manager to hte “complete action using” screen and sure enough mytracks doesnt open it saying there is no file found in /sdcard/download/bristoltogloucester.gpx

any idea what i am doing wrong….

that guy in red has very good table manners…

Ben Ainslie, you poke the tiger, the tiger bites back. he had an unbelieveably tough week, never seeming to get the better of the Dane nor the weather but once he was riled, he was a different man. Looking at s/h dinghies at the moment….

providing its not bare carbon you can use anything,i use regular autoglym car polish

I wouldnt worry too much, from experience of similar events, unless you are one of the keeners at the front there will be a fair amount of waiting for slower people up ahead at choke-points throughout the course, you will certainly not be running at the same pace for the entire race. If there are narrow points or obstacles, scrambles, sheep dips etc you can find yourself stationary for a minute or so waiting. As others have said interval training is your best bet. if you can get to a point where you can run two 9 minute miles followed by a 10 minute mile and repeat that three times you will be fine.

is there anything not discounted at Wiggle?!… I’m not complaining mind, you have to be pretty unlucky to want something and have to pay rrp for it at Wiggle though!

I’ll keep an eye out around Downend/Staple Hill and Fishponds…. worth calling Bristol Bike Workshop and the place in St Pauls who buy s/h bikes to see if anyone has tried selling it on? They are usually pretty good at spotting stolen stuff.

The Bobet and Fignon books already mentioned are very good.

I bought a Boardman Road Team in 2008, it was a bargain and I really liked it, it did me a few sportives and duathlons as well as general bimbling about. halfords can be hit or miss, the store i used in weston super mare were ace and proper cyclists. if you dont trust them, order it online, buy it boxed and take it home, build it yourself and never go back.

the frames are made by merida who, according to wikipedia, own 49% of specialised which is interesting…

I think there should be more fire this time, and more obstacles, fences, hungry wolves, some form of booby trap perhaps, claymores, that kind of thing, and fire, definately fire, well, it was cold last year….

of course the weak and the competitive should be allowied a detour to avoid this sort of thing but they should be heckled mercilessly for doing so.

no idea but someone has painted SLOW in big letters all over the route. I think its a protest for something?

What it seemed to boil down to was that if you’re fecked up enough not to be able to give your name, then anyone medical treating you isn’t going to arse around with pendants, wristbands or phoning your partner to tell them you’ll be late fro tea. they’re too busy saving your life (and they have to test and match your blood before giving a transfusion anyway, so blood group is redundant information)

whilst i agree, it does depend on whether the emergency services are first on the scene which in most situations isnt the case. whoever finds you calls 999, then sets about doing whatever they can whether this is calling a relative to collect the bike etc. I have no idea what happens to someones bike if there is an accident and no one knows who the guy is, and when lots of people have expensive bikes, its reassuring to know that someone can be contacted to collect the bike because i doubt the ambulance will take it and it wont be a police priority….

If the person does regain conciousness prior tothe arrival of the emergency services, being able to call them by their name rather than “mate” is quite important and whilst blood group may be largely irrelevant as they will test prior to a transfusion, if its an less popular blood group, they can at least warn the hospital in advance.

There is a restaurant called La Darsena in Como on the edge of the lake which serves the best pizza in the world. Get a table outside and watch the world go by for a few hours. Mountain biking is over rated.

i bought one from http://www.iceid.co.uk its quite nice (although a bit pricey) and mrs britsolpablo is happier now when i go off on my own for a days bimble. I bought one after driving along and seeing a friend on the side of the road barely concious. although others had stopped and were checking him over, we could at least phone his wife and let her know he wouldnt be back for tea as the ambulance was taking him away.

it has six lines, so i went with my name, dob, blood group, two phone numbers and a question asking as to the severity of the damage to my bike…

British Tdf winners: 1
French TdF winners: 36

As delighted as I am for Wiggo, BC, Sky et al, we have a long way to go before we can tell them to eat it…