There was a big cat in the new forest a while back, one of the rangers found a bit of fur on a barbed wire fence. Cant remember what it belonged to too though.

I spent last my last birthday in hospital with the wife. She was having the remains of a miscarridge sucked out. I’ve had better birthdays.

Deuter comfort 3. Its a bit big, our daughter seemed to like being in it. Used it on holidays to france, italy and australia and regular walks voer the new forest. Prefer it to the pushchair/pram thing.

Weight limit? Bummer. Mud X it is then

Viewranger will do what your asking, OS maps the lot. Garmin have their own app called Garmin Fit, but it uses google maps to view teh routes. Not sure how weel it works to navigate by, ive not used it in that manner.

Wood Guide

Found the above guide quite useful. Personally i use ash as much as i can, simply because is very easy to split. If you dont have to split it though, it doesnt matter. Of the wood mentioned on that site, id be a bit wary of cherry. I found it needs to seasoned very well in order to give of decent heat.

Just in case the link doesnt work: http://www.stovesonline.co.uk/woodburning_chart.html

Is this an upgrade service that you can offer for other joysticks? If so, id be interested, as im sure many others would be.

Pretty much what julian said above. I have a problem with stuff that who’s main selling pitch is “yours for just 24 monthly installments of £….”

We started introducing baby rice to ours at around 5 months, with the bottle being the main feed (sadly, breast feeding wasn’t an option). From them on, she sat at the table with us when we ate. We would grate some cheese or similar for her and put in front of her which she would shovel in after a fashion. By watching us, i figured she would learn what to do. Certainly by the time she was a year old, she ate everything she could get her hands on.

On the other hand, at 2 and half, just getting to eat anyting is an acheivment….

I must admit i find the grease nipples on my tracer a pain. I struggled to get grease through them after a few months riding and ended up replacing the bearing with sealed enduro bearing shortly after. At the time it seemed a big feature, but having lived with using them i could easily go without them. Its reletively straight forward to fit the new threaded nipples in to the rockerlink, surprised that this hasnt been offered yet.

I ride a single speed around the South downs during the winter months, if i have to walk a hill the geared bikes are travelling no faster.

I rode with Aidan Harding in the Pyrennes a few years back. I ride about 200 miles a week, mix of road and off road, so considered myself reasonably fit. He turned up on a single speed, which i though was ambitious to say the least. He then procedded to open a 6 pack of whoop ass on every climb. It was rather humbling. I ride single speed because of that, Aidain pretty much blew out any reservations i had about single speeding in one fell swoop.

Gear wise, its set up as 32/18 but thats with a 29er which is similar to a 32/16 on a 26er. Its rigid too, proper retro-niche me. Its proabably one of my favourite bikes (out of a choice of 14 or so), purely for simplicity.

Peanut butter/nutella on a old kitchen tile or similar. Something they cant carry off to eat basically. Put it down for a few days, let the rats get used to it, then go for the kill.

Have one and its cool. Not used a huge amount, but its a damm fine ride when i do use it. Carried everything from a marquee to chicken feed. Handling gets a bit interesting when heavily loaded, i ve had 100kgs at one point and its a bit wobbly in the turns.

Forest local too, Mrs is a ranger in the forest. The offical line regarding cycling in the forest has changed recently, it certainly doesn’t support the verderes case now though. Maybe this is what is sparking off the vitriol against cyclists?

I might drink a couple of ciders during a week, possibly share a bottle of wine with the missus aswell/instead. On the odd occasion i polish off a bottle of wine in one sitting, which just about gets me feeling light headed.

I thought i had a bit of a problem, but that seems fairly light consumption, compared to the OP and his GF.

As for why you sleep better without alcohol, theirs loads of studies out showing the true effects of alcohol. Its a depressant etc. One of them being that whilst its may help you fall asleep, its prevents you from falling into deep sleep or some such thing.

I dont think anyone here is under any illusion that we have to reduce energy consumption, we take that as a given. Whats under disussion is the time scales i guess. TJ, forgive me but you did say ramp up the cost of petrol/diesel to £5 a litre over 10 years. I dont believe 10 years is enough to implement an alternative. Look at the proposed high speed train service, HS2. As a concept began around 2009, if it gets the go ahead, its proposed to open around 2018.

You mentioned about cars that are capable of 100mpg, with rising fuel costs i suspect manufacture would be quick to respond, maybe a car capable of 200mpg? or 300mpg? Rasing the fuel cost wouldn’t have stopped people from using their car less, just made them ditch there un-economical car for new car. You’d be back to generating the same tax from fuel as before, but then have to deal with the scrapping of the un-economical vehicles.

I was banging the same drum 10 years ago TJ, not much has changed since then. Since i started working in the oil industy, i see a different side to the “oil is running out” picture. Without going in to much detail, i have to hand various facts which indicate that we have quite away to go before we run out of oil. Its expensive to get at for sure, but there’s plenty left. Cars gone in 25 years? Maybe, but not because of a shortage of oil.

Its a going to take a couple of generations before we are weened off from cars and i suspect in some goverment think tank thats the plan. Can you imagine the ramifications if you were to drive people off the road over the course of ten years? For instance, at £5 a litre of fuel, im looking at £300-400 to go visiting my parents. I simply couldnt afford that and i rather doubt that public transport would be in place within anything like 10 years. Where would that leave me and anyone else in that position? Now, you could in hindsight say that shouldn’t have moved so far away, but you know what they say about hindsight. What about when people start moving from the rural areas to be closer to work? At £5 a litre thats going to be a typical knee jerk reaction for some, you’ll have a lot of wealth being transffered in and around urban areas and i think it would create a big rich/poor divide.

Ive said it before, but the 100mpg car existed over 10 years ago (audi a2 3L, VW Lupo 3L) nither were offered for sale in the UK.

Id say £5 a litre for fuel would be crippling, without a serious investment in alternative transport. Even if ramped up over ten years, most people would find that very hard to swallow.

Thing is LHS, you get paid to work those hours, based on you retiring 50. Theres a lot of people out there that work those hours and dont get paid.

If your happy with that LHS, than fair enough. But that is living to work, in my opinion.

So how do you work 11-12 hours a day and still spend time with your children (Assumning your office based, not working from home)? I’m there for my children when they get up and when they go to bed. Our neighbour works long hours, he rarely sees much of his 6 month old daughter between weekends because of it. He’s pretty miserable as a result, all because of the doing the extra “bit” every day.

I work in the oil industry, where the mentality is to work more than contracted hours. I choose not to, end of. I have on occasion worked extra, but i can count those occasions on one hand. And i get paid way over the national average.

If you work extra hours, its because you choose too, you swallowed the propoganda, got suckered in to the work more for less ethic. Your a sheep.

My father was in the military and spent a lot of time away. All the jobs he had thereafter involved long hours and being away. Whilst it was very nice having the Bentleys and Rollers parked on the drive, when my father died when i was 18 i would have traded it all to spend more time with him.

You can always earn more money, you can never get more time.

Currently work about 35. When i have been approached to work extra, its always been on my terms, particulary now with children. I’ve worked in industries where you were expected to work “extra”, but i didnt partake. There was alot of pressure to do the extra hours, but it just looked like bullying to me.

If you get ample reward for doing, such as tiger6791 eludes too, then you might be able to justify it. But for many (salaried anyway)earning average wage, their still going to get average wage whether they do 35 hours or 60 hours aweek.

When my 2 year old daughter waddles into the bedroom, climbs up into the bed beside me and snuggles up close. If i doze off, she will gently stroke my face, where i open my eyes to see her staring at my face.

Do you think the populace of iran worry about us doing the same to them?

Given our history i suspect, as has been already pointed out, they have more to fear from us then we do of them.

Geniuenly stunned by kennyp “nuke ’em” attitide. Either a brilliant troll or your not running a full set of spokes…

It might have been me, but when i was in Perth the 3G connection on a uk kindle didnt work. I had signal, but no response.

tomthumb, re your picture. How ***** off does the cattery owner get when you cycle down that tarmaced footpath?. I just ignore him the most of the time, but its was very funny to watch him go bannans.

Sadly samuri, that would not do the job. Its an SMK XS78, out of the box they tend to be a bit low on power. Fine for rats and short range, but to be honest you’d struggle to do more than make people very angry if you fired that at them.

Wife had a petrol lupo, nice car overall. Didnt use it to transport bikes much, one bike would fit in easy enough though. We got rid because it kept failing the emissions during the MOT and despite spending a number of days at the VW garage no solution was found. It was very economical for a petrol, around 50 mpg, but this dropped to high 30’s towards the end. Again, no fault was ever found.

The 1.4 tdi is the same engine as an Audi A2, which is a slightly bigger car, which you can easily get two bikes in.

I love how the report says that a man punched through a windscreen in one sentance, then in the very next sentance says he punched the windscreen and cracked it.

What Z11 describes isnt far from what happens to be honest. Personally, if my DPF gets blocked, ill just get the car mapped to remove it. Costs about £200 to remove.

My take on it that the question is poorly constructed. Its unusual to see a mathmatic expresion like that id say.

Using the money in the pocket/shop keeper example, would you pull out a handful of 2p and then go i have 2+2+2+2+2 etc= 48p or 24 x 2 = 48p. Fairly certain we would all count how many 2p we had, and do the multiplication.

Using algrebra, would you use a+a+a+a+a+a or 6a?

When i first looked at the question, i struggled to count the number of 2’s that appear in the question, always have done on a cumputer screen. My eyes just lose focus for some reason and i usually have to count them a few times to make sure im consistent.

Pretty much what lumionous says, horses for courses. I use exposures (id not come across luminous lights before, i would have had an S2 other wise) as the faff of taking lights off with separate battery packs during winter commutes was a PITA. Additionally, back in the early days of off roads lights, the weak point seemed to me to be the cables. Connectors leaking, cable flexing without proper strain relief etc and i still see those issues with some lights now, albeit not so often.

0. Former airspace engineer. See those planes buzzing around in the sky, i did rather alot of design work on the wings (civil) and weapon systems (military). Be afraid.

Bagaboo. I have used mine day in, day out for the last 5 years and its still holdng up.

I judge all films on the presence of a minigun. Minigun = Good. No minigun = bad.

Way to many variables to say for sure, for instance how big (what kw stove is it), type of wood, how you run it etc.

For instance, i have a morso squirrel which is rated at 4kw. That will heat a room of around 10ft x 30ft easily. Theres enough heat to warm other romms too. It will use about 15 logs if kept ticking over all day, if they are well seasoned hard wood logs. If is left to burn out, then it will use more logs to start it up again.

As for buying logs, id say maybe about 2 pick up tucks worth to last the winter for us, which was about £160 i believe. Ive not bought wood for the last 2 years though so that has certainly gone up. You can get free stuff though, woodyards often have skip fulls of off cuts that they just throw away (although this is usually pine, which will burn v.fast). Look out for the workmaen who do raodside clearing, Amey and suchlike. They often just chip the tress they fell or give away to the a farmer to sell. They cleared a roundabout of trees just up the road from me, i ended up with about 8 tonnes of birch to split.

Other than wood, there aren’t any running costs really. You shold get them swept, but you can do that yourself easily enough. Ill do mine every 2 years or so. Where we run the stove at full chat quite often, thre isnt a great deal of tar build up. Last year, despite burning a fair bit of green wood, i got about a thimble full of ash out.

One thing i always seem to struggle with is kindling, the pine off cuts are good for that as it easy to light.

It’s the same deal with giro though, i’ve sent a couple of Xen’s back and have been replaced, no question. The last Xen was replaced with a Xar.

I locked my bike to the gas main whilst in student digs as it was the only thing to lock it to in the garage. Got woken up by someone breaking into said garage, so i walked down downstairs to investigate, to find the knob hack sawing the gas main.

Went there this year, s’alright. My sister summed it up quite well though, she liken’d it to “The Truman Show”.