I fitted boots in shops (including cotswolds) for a few years. I’m not sure you got the most experienced assistant in the shop there.

Your feet don’t necessarily go up half a size when you stand. Might be more, might be less. I’d go back and get your feet measured again, ideally sitting and standing, or at the very least, just standing.

Get measured in the socks you’re going to wear. Thickness of sock makes quite a difference.

Re. Sizing, most people have different length and shape feet. Nothing odd there. I’d size, for the larger foot. Better to have a boot a touch too big than one that’s too small. Risk of blisters and movement v bruising and loss of toenails. But half a size is about 5mm so you should be able to find a boot that accommodates both.

Meindl used to run about right/maybe a touch large for the size. Subject to measuring your feet properly, I would have put you in the size you measured. Other brands come up differently. They’re also all different shapes and volumes.

Basically, go back, get them to measure you properly and then try a few. (Or just try a few, they’re on your feet after all. All the fitter can do is guide you.) Don’t over think it. If it feels right, it probably is.

It would depend on their permit but it is unlikely that a pump or similar failure would allow any water company to discharge raw sewage

Apparently if there’s a failure they’ve got a couple of hours to restore power or they start getting fined. During this time they can discharge to avoid more serious problems

You are right about storm conditions though but without this we would see sewer flooding in towns and peoples homes.

Read the rest of my post! 😉

Water companies all discharge raw sewage into rivers in the UK. They are (in theory) only allowed to do so under storm conditions or emergencies like pump failures, it’s heavily diluted and each overflow is regulated. The other option is that they don’t discharge, the sewer network can’t cope and everything backs up and floods your town with the sewage instead.

Source – OH is an engineer who works for a consultancy advising water companies on how best to avoid either of the above scenarios. Especially the second one.

Yeah, I mean on the common. There’s still some good stuff, but a lot of it has gone. Bit sad really. Edmundbyers it is then!

Cheers all. Not looking for a guide, but thanks for the suggestions. Some stuff to think about!

Nice one ta.

Had considered the Surrey Hills/Guildford but moved away 15 years ago and am not convinced I won’t get us horribly lost if I’m hungover, hence looking for something marked. Something that’s graded and thus more of a known quantity would be good too, given the group.

Will need bike hire too if anyone knows anywhere.

Edit – cheers for the sneaky bedgebury edit! That crossed my mind too. Better for biking, maybe worse for the non riding stuff. Hmmm.

All the following should be taken with a pinch of salt as I last did the mega 7 or 8 years ago…

For those who done it before, how gnarly is it? Any huge features?

It’s really not that bad if you’re a half decent rider. Much easier than most dh tracks. Ignoring the snow, there are maybe one or two tricky bits near the top of the qualifier that might get a trail centre ‘black’ grade. The main race is easier. No particularly big features, just really fun natural singletrack. The biggest problem for me is arm pump and then not being able to hang on.

How hard is it to qualify for the main race?

It seems that unless you start near the front you haven’t got much chance of qualifying?

You only get seeded if you’re good. If not, like me, it seems to be based on when you enter. I’ve started on the 2nd row and on the last row. Both times I ended up in about the same position at the back of the main race, so you can qualify from anywhere. Just aim at the little guys on the start line rather than the big ones, that way it’s not you who goes down. 😉 More accurately, don’t crash too many times, put some effort in on the pedally bits and maybe work out where to pass people in practice and you’re more or less guaranteed the B final, or the A if you get lucky and enough people puncture. When I started from the back I got lucky, all my sneaky lines worked, nobody else seemed to bother pedalling and someone crashed behind me halfway down and, I presume, blocked the track for a moment so I had no pressure from other riders towards then end.

It’s ace.

Just ride it. I bet it sorts itself out after a couple of runs.

(If it doesn’t, or it fails horribly and sends you into a tree, feel free to come back and give me some abuse.)

I’ve had something similar a couple of times. It seems to resolve itself within a shortish ride.

Otherwise they might be overfilled. Let some fluid out and see what happens.

I’ve used One Up and MRP guides with shimano cranks. I find you can force the chain off in the shed, but that it’s fine when actually riding. Both guides work better than a couple of others I’ve tried.

I always use a chain device, even with narrow wide rings. Partly because the chain never comes off until you really don’t want it to (and then it always does) and partly because I really like having a bash guard. The damage to the guard suggests I’m clumsy enough to need one.

The LSD vans have been around for a while on the xtr+ model (also raised, plates underneath, winter tyres as standard etc). I have one in my 11 plate van. I’m not sure it does much other than make the steering go a bit weird on roundabouts to be honest. I’ve still got it stuck in plenty of fields.

VW do a 4motion caddy with 4wd that should kick in when needed. No extra clearance or anything though.

Squirrelking – I meant you can’t remove that part of the bulkhead and thus the seatbelt for the bench seat, because you then have a front seat with no belt. Might be wrong, but I thought that was an MOT fail.

You can, but it’s awkward. We sleep on a removable platform with the bikes underneath. It’s a deliberately high platform, which isn’t ideal and is a bit claustrophobic, but we can get two bikes and full camping/holiday gear in there with us. Works for the odd night here and there (ie stopping on the way to the alps) but we’d not want to do more than that. I’m sure you could rig something better, but I use the van for work so I couldn’t get too fancy. One person and a bike is easy!

Lots of new Berlingos have a bench seat. As the seatbelt for the central seat is attached to the bulkhead behind the driver, you can’t remove that and still pass an MOT (passenger side comes out fine), so folding the driver’s seat down isn’t an option unless you get a two-seater. (This is all for 11 plate vans. May have changed.) My relatively short girlfriend fits behind the bullhead, I’ve no chance at six foot.

Drive up the road to Briancon. It’s ace around there. Strava/trailforks etc will show you some good natural stuff.

You’ve definitely got the mount the right way up? I’ve got that wrong before.

We stopped in Houffalize once as we were passing on our way to the Alps, purely because I wanted to see/ride the world cup track. It’s a fairly short singletrack loop crisscrossing an overgrown hillside on the edge of town. No<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>t exactly amazing but not bad either and we had a fun hour or so doing a loop of the xc and messing about on the old 4x track. I’d not go out of my way to ride it but I’m glad we stopped, mainly for the history of the track. </span>

I’m not buying more tyres. Then I’d have three to choose from.

Wet? What’s that?

The SS seems fine pretty much everywhere. Except for braking on loose trails when a walker appears from nowhere. Oops. But is it better than a much lighter tyre for a race?

We rode Chamonix-Zermatt a few years ago. There were a small number of no riding signs along the way. As we didn’t have enough maps to detour and had to reach certain places each night if we wanted a bed, we didn’t have a lot of choice but to ignore them. Most of the time there were no problems. We rarely met anyone and those we did meet were very friendly. As most of those signs were on wide trails, I don’t imagine we did any damage to anything either.

However, we did ride on trail alongside one of the ditch aqueducts mentioned above. It was a great trail in a beautiful place and a bit of a highlight. Halfway along, we met a ranger who told us bikes were banned. (In this case, we’d either missed a sign or it wasn’t there.) Luckily, he was a nice bloke, didn’t care and wanted to practice his English on us but as we left he said that if we met his boss we had to say that he’d not seen us. Make of that what you will.

EDIT – to more specifically answer the question, you can ride on ‘footpaths’ in Switzerland a lot of the time. On that particular route, some trails (a minority) ban bikes, but as far as I know you can’t tell which just by looking at a map. I’m not actually sure how you’d find out in advance either.

Having grown up just south of East Anglia, I can definitely, categorically and incontrovertibly state that it is in the north.

As I now live in an area where the word ‘the’ doesn’t exist and people look at me funny when I arsk for a glarse of beer, I can definitely, categorically and incontrovertibly state that it is also in the south.

However, both locations would agree that it is very definitely in the east.

Prompted by neil the wheel … don’t get stressed about it. Getting frustrated and angry the next day happens when you’re tired. I used to get frustrated and angry that I was frustrated and angry. Just go with it.

Hard to say how long it’ll last for. I had insomnia where I probably averaged 5 hours sleep a night for just under 2 years. It’s been better for 12 months or so and I still have sub-4 hour nights, but I’m probably averaging about 7 now, down from 8/9 before. Waking up in the night/too early rather than falling asleep was the problem for me.

Going to the doctors can help. The stuff they give you works, whereas the over the counter stuff doesn’t (for me). That said, some of the give you works well, whereas some of it makes you feel like a zombie the next day. Think I tried 4 different tablets. They took me off the one that worked best as it was messing with my heart. 😯

Otherwise, most of the stuff you read on the subject appears to be utter balls to me, but I guess it depends why you’re not sleeping. I found the key was to try not to think about anything interesting after about 8 p.m. or my brain just wouldn’t slow down and I’d wake up with it going flat out thinking about something dumb. Getting up and going for a 2 a.m. walk used to sort that out.

Now I can tell if I’m going to have a bad night and if I wake up I can tell if I’m going back to sleep or not. If not I don’t even try, I just go downstairs and watch some crap TV (screens have zero effect on my sleeping) until I fall asleep.

This popped up on Facebook this morning – a 94-year-old man climbing a rather large rockface on a Swiss Alp. Bonkers.

I’ve only every had one non-payer, for copywriting, coincidentally. They began replying to my emails remarkably quickly once I told them that unless they paid up pronto I would, regrettably, be adding a late-payment fee to the invoice.

Winter tyres definitely feel less ‘tight’ on dry tarmac to me. I’ve noticed that both in a car and a van. Even when it’s relatively cold. I keep them in year round as I’m in and out of muddy fields in my van but, having just driven an identical van with summer tyres for a couple of days, I’m not sure the winter ones are worth it.

Yes, an MRP AMG. As much for the bash guard as anything else. The big chunks taken out of it suggest I’m too clumsy near rocks to consider taking it off.

When’s the work being done? If it’s now, it might be a bit cold for lime (depending on where you live) and it could potentially fail. Might this be why they’re not using it?

Coincidentally, about a year ago and just up the road from there the passenger leaned out of a white transit and tried to slap me on the head as he went past, at about 30. Did it to a guy behind me too. Wonder if it’s the same van.

Wheeeeee!

I’m not sure my parents had even met.

I didn’t even finish the original trilogy!

😯 😥

Stupid double post

It’s hate that needs to be outlawed.
I don’t allow my kids to hate.
I teach them a wider lexicon to enable them to express themselves more truthfully.
Why should we allow adults to hate?

Because people will hate. It’s part of being human, judging by history. Your kids don’t hate because you teach them not to. Same thing with adults. They won’t necessarily address, think about or even realise they have an ‘internal inadequacy’ until it’s pointed out to them.

No.
Hate precipitates violence.

Been watching Star Wars recently?

I think it might be better to let these things fester and for in dark little holes, rather than allowing it to be normalised.

But surely such views only become normalised if they’re voiced and nobody challenges them.

If they’re festering away and then someone like Farage or Trump comes along, up they come again, as is happening now. Or at least they’re in the headlines again.

Now they’re here again, there’s a lot of angry reaction, and stories like the one about hosting, which shows how much strength of feeling there is against such views.

Dunno. It comes down to how people react to things. I kind of think these views are never going to go away and that it’s better to have people condemning them than pretending they aren’t there

Not that long ago if an individual put forward hateful views, they would be challenged.

Is this not a key point? If hateful views are never aired, they can’t be challenged and so potentially just fester in the background unchecked?

(Obviously it would be nice if nobody held these views!)

Shimano DX as in the big DH ones with the black plastic cage? They definitely feel very different (and way better to me) using Shimano AM9s and Teva Pivots. Less so with stiffer shoes. I can feel much more shoe/pedal contact. They do feel better unclipped if I’m riding around the car park in flip flops, but I’d never try to ride them like that.

If you’re not feeling any difference, maybe try some of the DMR ones if you like Shimano style clips. Or try Mallets. Or just stick with the smaller pedals or flats?

Cheers guys. I’ll see what I can find locally. Don’t suppose you’re near Matlock are you pinder318?

Hi simmy, thanks for that. it’s a 2011 berlingo and it is a compete side panel. I’m guessing replacing it might cost a fair bit though.

That’s an impressive video!

The dent isn’t on a panel as such. It’s the entire side of the van, running from the front wing, around the sliding door and to the back of the van, full height. I’m not sure I care enough to have that replaced!

All I want to do is what Troutie’s suggesting – a ‘rough’ repair to keep it looking respectable. But I can’t weld or use fiberglass filler.

EDIT I can whack things with a hammer though. I think I can get to the dent from the inside and whack some of it out. I’m not sure how to deal with the ‘lip’ that’s formed as the dent was pushed inwards. Whack a bit out, whack the lip back, whack a bit out etc etc?

Bump to see if anyone’s got any ideas this morning…
Looking at it today, I’m not sure it’s repairable.

Ta. Yeah, it’s really awkward. I’ve no idea how you’d get behind it and I think it’s too deep to pull out.

It’s not a panel you can replace either – that bit’s basically the van.