Fair enough. Out of interest are you LA, HA or MAC?

just cleaning it up and repairing the concrete is just turd polishing

You’d be amazed at how many bridges in the UK this is whats done!

If the Staircase is connected to the balcony you will be able to notice if the balcony has shifted by cracking in the staircase.

Looking at the stonework under the balcony its doesnt appear to have moved much, but ince again hard to tell as not a totally clear view.

If theres no visible cracking I would agree with wwaswas, you want to prevent further conrete deterioration to the slab so some cover it over to prevent/slow down the amount of water that can get at it.

Maccy D’s is one of my favourite drunk foods. Back at Uni I used to polish of 40 chicken nuggets and the free cheeseburger!

Now ive trimmed down a bit its just 20 nuggets plus those tasty chicken strip things! 8O

Same as others.

I ride my bike because I enjoy doing it.

I exercise for a number of reasons: So I am faster and can go further on my bike; So I can try and get in buff 8) (vanity); So I can eat and drink what I like most of the time (I dont think i could ever diet).

To kick start me into in last year I entered my first Endurance type race – Gisburn Dirty Dozen. Im thinking of Entering the Kielder 100 this year as my new challange to myself!

Oh dear, Oh dear…….I blame the weather! 8O

I dont get what was wrong with what I just said!?

You wouldnt over take a car unless you were totally confident you could get past them would you!?

Never said I havent had a crash, but you are right about my god-like skiing! :lol:

Unless youre totally confident you can get past them then no you probably shouldnt.

Saying that I scoot past people all the time so am probable being fairly hypocritical! :twisted:

To me it seems a bit crazy that it could be outlawed to ski fast or ski after having a beer or two.

There is no skiing test you have to pass to allow you to ski anyway so to penalise a potnetially good skier for either of those things, which could still mean they are skiing at a much more controlled level than other skiers seems daft to me.

Its like allowing people to drive on the road without passing their driving test and to try and reduce accidents starting to inflict serve penalties on someone who drives at 80mph on a quiet motorway.

I know this was a few pages back but earning £40,000 does not make your family the rich elite. In fact according to this from the BBC in November 2011 (with its source the ONS) the AVERAGE household income is £40,000.

So is the average person the rich elite!?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15197860

Guess which ones the proffessional and which one is the drunk uni student…….

Has Keswick got some good pubs!?

Not meaning to Hi-jack but myself and 4 mates were looking to head up in February, ride whinlatter one day, Borrowdale the next and stay at the youth hostel for the night. Was just wondering if theres a few good places for some grub and an Ale or two.

Can I ask a question in here?

When people say you should put in half your ages as a percentage does that mean the total going into the pension or my contribution?

Im 24, I currently put in 4%, company puts in 6% so each month 10% of the value of my wage gets paid into my pension. Does that mean that im nearly at the right level for my age?

2 people in 3 bed terraced house is about £60/month direct debit.

Dknwhy – did I sway it for you on the other thread then!? They should give me a job with the tourist board! :lol:

If youre after scenery, sight seeing, hiking then the Jungfrau region has to be on your list to research.

Staying wise there are option from Interlaken (down in the Valley between the two lakes) upto Lauterbrunnen (my favourite) and Grindelwald if you want to have a car with you. If not you can try Wengen and Murren up the hill for hotels and guest houses that you get to via train or cable car!

Theres no end of scenery to take in and hiking to do.

I cant see it being the most energetic of nightlife in May/June however the Horner Pub in Lauterbrunnen always has a few Skydiver type people going in for a beer in the evenings. If you are looking at the Campsites in Lauterbrunnen these both have bars too and are popular with backpackers so might have a few people in.

Well I would hope that with a deposit of 25% that we wouldn’t have to worry about negative equity. I knew what it was but didn’t really know how it would effect us, surely if ours dropped in value then others would have too so it wouldnet have Such a big effect.

Surely you have to start paying it off at some point so if I put it off a few years we will still have the problem that your mostly paying off interest and we’ve spent a few more years giving money to a landlord first?

I know where you’re coming from but I think our circumstances do actually mean that buying would be the best option. Unless people have any other ideas?

We have a good deposit available to us and we know that we are going to be based where we are from now on. The mrs works at the family business so were tied to where we are by that. Plus the fact her family is here, it’s handy for biking and we generally like being here!

It seems ponitless giving someone else £7200 a year when we could be paying off our own motgage.

With respect to negative equity when does that become an issue?

Bristolbiker – the heads up was that I had forgotten that there was no Stump duty ATM and that it was ending in march!

Have factored one off costs of legal fees, mortgage set up, stamp duty, moving costs at about £4-5k so hopefully that should see be ok.

DT78 – Luckily for us the place we are in now was unfurnished so we have gradually been buying furniture. We also currently do pay for our water so once again that will probably lessen the shock.

We are very fortunate that her family has a company that does soft furnishing so things like curtains, sofas etc can be sorted out with minimal fuss.

Im starting to think this is do-able. Will have a look at the life insuarance to cover mortgage and if it is required for a mortgage. Have to sort that out first which Im sure is a barrell of laughs!

Thanks alot for those so far guys.

I hadnt even thought about life insurance. I know I get it if I die at work but I hadnt thoguht about it otherwise. Do we really need to bother with it as we dont have any dependants yet. We are only in 24 with no kids so if the worst did happen the other would probably move anyway.

Thanks for the Stamp Duty heads up, have a feeling that we may already be too late for it as we dont even have our mortgage sorted yet!

Not a chance that was done for £3K! It says its got Solar panels for a start which dont come cheap! And all those odd sized glass windows will have been pricey too.

Lauterbrunnen is a fantastic place – I was just there over Christmas.

The scenery is immense and there is no shortage of things for the family to do. Lots of things to explore (trummelbache falls, the lakes down in interlaken, walking everywhere, picnics or BBQs by the river, loads of great places to eat up the mountains etc etc) so plenty to keep the family entertained. The views of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau and brilliant and a trip to the Jungfraujoch (highest train station in europe) whilst being pricey is deffinately worth it, theres amazing views, cool ice caves and all sorts up there.

There are two main campsites in Lauterbrunnen itself – Camping Jungfrau and Camping Shutzenbach. Theres also another further up the Valley at Stechelberg and loads down in Interlaken.

Ive never actually ridden my bike there, last time I went in the summer was before I got into it. I know that its not exactly the portes du soleil style riding but you are allowed to cycle most places as long as you are wary of walkers.
The guys at the bike shop in Lauterbrunnen (called Imboden Bike) is very keen biker, lots of nice bikes in the windows, so if you chat to him im sure he would be more than able to sort you out with maps of where the best bits to ride are.

Had a talk about it from Sir Brian Briscoe (HS2 CHairman) about it a few months ago. Obviously he told me all the positives about it and very few of the negatives as expected but I felt he made a good case.

One point he made that I never really realised is that the point of it is to provide additional capacity rather than just a faster train. All the news articles on it focus on the time reduction from a journey to Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds, whereas the real benefit will be the increased capacity it will open up on these busy lines.

On the other hand it is a lot to stump up (especially in these austere times) for just one project.

I was chatting to the guys who are monitoring all the internal of that at the moment at work just before christmas, if I had known there was going to be a Singletrack topic on it I would have paid more attention.

I do know that there is a heck of a lot of monitoring going on inside it at the moment, but it was a night shift so I cant really remember what……

I think theyre pretty good for keeping fitness ticking over during the winter months.

I know MTFU etc but over the winter when its one big bog outside and its dark from the time I leave the house until I get home I find it benifical to spin once or twice a week to compliment my weekend ride rather than doing nothing. I figure that two hours of it a week certainly help keep the pounds off and keep my legs feeling fresh.

It is very much what you put in you get out and a good instructor does make a massive difference. At my gym the instructors continually mix it up with different sprinting sessions and hill intervals which I find good and knackering. The good thing as well as you can make it as hard or as easy as you need to. I go with the mrs and over the session my bike computer thingy will reckon I put out 3-4x the power that she does, but with both feel like were dead at the end.

Yeah its fairly easy to link a lot of riding up.

I usually do a route that will go from White coppice around the resevoirs, up rivington, down belmont, along the weavers way to darwen, a bit of up and down around darwen tower and the resevoirs there then back up great hill and all the way back down to white coppice.

Some great sections of down hill in this loop!

Binners, are you in a different North West to me*? Granted Saturday was fantastic for a ride but yesterday was grim all day and today isnt much better!

But at least it isnt torrential rain at the moment so in that respect its fantastic!

*My observations are based on longridge fell for a bike ride, then chorley and warrington yesterday and today.

you cant trust a fart. :?

Yes Europe is different people there use their public transport and it goes through every one-horse dorp on the way to a town. It’s maintained as a fantastic resource for everyone, regular public investment and renewal. There is a lack of will here to do what our neighbours do maintained by the “little Englanders” at the top.

I do agree with this, however it is amazing to see that despite this alot of a european neighbours who we think of like this still have a higher number of vehicles per capita than the UK.
Clearly it is not just as simple as saying “better public transport”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita

I think there is an element of truth to the graduate salaries thing.

When I was choosing the course I was going to do I was told they were crying out for Civil Engineers and that the starting salary was right up there.

As much as I know the recession hit the construction industry very hard im sure that the uni was just trying to entice us into doing civils there by telling us that.

I can now say that its a good job I didnt go into it for the money!

To be fair flashy I see where youre coming from……. :roll:

I post this in the youth employment thread but I think its very apt to this thread. I* acknowledge that the age of cheap cheap fuel is behind us but by increasing the prices more than we have to its going to cut a whole generation of young people out!

Myself and my girlfriend graduated from University last summer 2010. She graduated with a 1st class degree and I graduated with a 2.1 but top of my year.

We are both fortunate enough to have found jobs however there is not the luxury of being able to choose a job in the exact location we want as there are just not enough people recruiting for my particluar skills close to where my girlfriend works.

The result is that I have to either drive 50miles each way to work every day or live apart from my girlfriend (meaning we would both have to rent seperately). As well as this graduate salaries have dropped as there is more and more graduates for fewer jobs.

If fuel was to keep going up at such a rate then one fo us would have to quit theyre graduate scheme and get a “lesser” job near by. I know it is our choice to live together and want these jobs but seriously is there not a chance we could end up with a skill shortage as less and less people can take the career path because they cant afford to get to the jobs.

If youre after the £50 price then just get some Hunters, theyre nothing special but theyre well made, comfy and mine have seen me good for years now and still as good as the day I got them (just a bit muddier)

This is an interesting one for me and ties in with the Fuel Prices thread quite neatly. Myself and my girlfriend graduated from University last summer 2010. She graduated with a 1st class degree and I graduated with a 2.1 but top of my year.

We are both fortunate enough to have found jobs however there is not the luxury of being able to choose a job in the exact location we want as there are just not enough people recruiting for my particluar skills close to where my girlfriend works.

The result is that I have to either drive 50miles each way to work every day or live apart from my girlfriend (meaning we would both have to rent seperately). As well as this graduate salaries have dropped as there is more and more graduates for fewer jobs.

I dont want this to sound like a kind of ‘Woe is me’ whine but when people talk about putting up fuel prices it makes in increasingly hard for young people to start getting a foot hold in the working world and housing ladder.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/flash-rip

it appears they were. :lol:

mccett – I know what you mean about that one. The number of times vehicles either take the works access or simply choose to ignore the fact that the road is closed it just staggering.

Working on a job on the M56-M53 link road one night a few weeks ago we had 4 vehicles do that very thing in 1 evening. Taxi drivers tend to be the worst at this IME.

Circuit training.

haha, as if driving over the highest bit of motorway in the country wasn’t exciting enough in itself!

Oh dear, I think you need to get out more! haha! :lol:

Kenya’s cycle team at the Manchester Commonwealth games 2002 on a training ride down the M61

Ive heard a similar story at work. Apparently they were looking for a nice road to practice on, they found a big loop which looked spot on and low and behold it was the M60!

Also when ive been out at work ive seen far too many people with hazards on in the hard shoulder reversing back along to get the correct junction. Its scary how many people actually do it!