Oragel worker for my acute tooth ache last month. Rub on the gum and the tooth. Doesn’t need much but works instantly. I’m in the middle of a series of root canal surgeries.

Thanks.

+1 for going direct to the Cape if you’re only going out for a short break. IMO SA is great for the ‘big landscape’ beyond the cities but you need a long/several visits to do it properly.

We flew to JB (direct) a few years back to see some mates but apart from going to a steak house and eating half a cow for the equivalent of a tenner, there wasn’t anything drawing us to stay there and explore on our own.

We then flew to CT (and returned to the UK from CT), walked up Table Mountain via the botanical gardens where they often have gigs. Ref the route mentioned further above, which we did, it’s not particularly hard (despite the vertical scale), but is very rewarding, however do take plenty of water/a full camelback bladder in a day sack.

We also stayed in Franschoek for a week or so and visited a few vineyards for their wine tasting lunches. Not much else to do there though although it is *sobering* to acknowledge the township the whites do their best to hide. In Franschoek, if the bike hire place is still there and the owner offers up his brother to take you on a guided walk in the gorges up in the hills, don’t take up the offer like we did. Because we almost ended up in a ‘127 hours situation’. And you really don’t want that.

Enjoy the biltong/droervors and braais (if you’re not veggies).

Ok, great. Just saved me some beer money (until I *have* to upgrade to a proper one too).

Tacx Blue Matic Smart

@johnw1984: does it auto-adjust the resistance on the turbo in response to whatever is happening on the zwift course? If not, then presumably it simply has a speed/cadence sensor that comes with the turbo but is in fact no different to an after-market s/c sensor such as Garmin or Wahoo?

In terms of using exercise to lift your mood, this:

“something new which is both physically active and sociable”

As an example, I took up swimming last year, swimming regularly with a club. Had my first swimming gala yesterday in a very busy leisure centre, loads of activity around me, a really full-on event for the whole day – plus a lift share so chat/banter there and back. Totally lifted my mood and I felt great today too (if a bit stiff!).

By comparison, I find riding great for unwinding or just getting out and doing some exercise. It can be rewarding as well. But when riding solo (most commonly), there are no distractions from whatever is on my mind. Also, riding in winter can be a bit of a slog/mud-fest.

@vickypea, when you ride, do you get back and think “I still feel rubbish” or “that was great, I feel totally refreshed and haven’t even thought about x/y/z”? If the former, do you have something that you might be willing to try as an alternative to riding, that you can do with others?

Judging by many of the comments here, this was a fan’s film and the detailed intricacies of the SW story that evidently was told in a way that appealed to fans of the wider story and background. Reading these comments makes me wonder if I watched the same film. Can someone explain where in the timescale of the SW series this is supposed to be? There didn’t seem to be much Jedi stuff going on.

So when I browse to http://www.singletrackworld.com I just see the stories tiles. Pre-design weren’t there links to the forums and loads of other stuff from the home page? I know there are forums, so click on the drop down menu in the top left. But would new visitors know how to find the forums?. (Old tech: iPad 2, Safari, iOS 9.3.5).

I can do Thursday morning and would be on a rigid 29er.

Bump … Anyone ride these places?

Some lads I knew at uni were film extras in SPR. That bit where a few American soldiers are sorting out the dog tags and some soldiers are walking past looking at them. One of them looks directly at the camera. Him! I knew him! Others were dotted around or in scenes that didn’t make the final edit.

Always thought the scene in BoB where the forest gets mortared for about twenty minutes rivals the opening scene of SPR when they’re in the boats.

Interesting reading about some people not watching the film because of TH being in it. Of the actors of that time, who would’ve been a better lead for SPR?

A mate dated a girl who lived in Lickey Square, which meets with Mearse Lane and Twatlington Road. I was just looking at a potential ride route today, passing through Thickwood and Blue Vein. It also goes through Box which, in the context of this forum thread and the combination of the aforementioned place names, is highly amusing.

Recent late afternoon midweek solo hack, first attempt on ‘The Gap’. Been mtb’ing for thirty years and never done it. I almost bailed ‘cos it was foggy and stormy looking. Hung around, did some trails lower down. Then the storm moved on, the fog burned out, leaving warmth, dry’ish trails. Night-time attempt up next… (might not do that one solo though).

^^^ we got a yank in the ranks, omg ^^^

So a few questions:

1. The best of the two choices is Trump?
2. No lame duck situation because there’s no strong contender for the next election?
3. There is no other choice.

Buy a new neck. Or if you want to save some money, have you tried oiling your neck? Need more information.

Two black cats here, both getting flecks of grey hair. Makes them look more mature and intelligent, suave and sophisticated. Just like me. Might be something to do with where they grow up. Where did you get your cats from? Ours spent a lot of time in the woods in Hertfordshire.

A couple of years ago I was doing the JoGLE and was emerging from Okehampton around 5pm. Weather as I recall was sunny and blue skies. There’s this bit where the road goes through a small woodland, rises up and turns sharply right, so I wasn’t going especially quick (towards the end of a long day). I’m aware that sometimes going from bright light into wooded areas does involve a temporary period of visual adjustment primarily when operating a vehicle. Nonetheless, I was surprised when the fellow in the hot hatch that pulled up next to me, having approached at mach-3, wound down the window, pointed out to me he was a cyclist and that I should be taking more precautions to ensure my bike is visible (although I was wearing a fluorescent chest/waist cycling strap). He then proceeded to inform me that:

“I can’t see you in the forest when I’ve got my sunglasses on”

Did the Wiltshire Air Ambulance sportive – entered the 100 miles of road with a merry group of three other riders from my lbs group rides. Normally I potter around at 15mph, but this was 20mph+ on the rivet and chewing stem for the first fifty followed by a spectacular bonk then pealed off and went home to the pub for beer and pizza. Happy enough with 80 miles on a very windy day.

Join a club. Try to get out with the faster group, get spat out the back, ride back home alone, committing yourself to stay with them longer next time.

My offer is the Gore Active shell. Bought it for running but have also used it for roadie and mtb in some truly biblical rainstorms and remained dry in the core. Having not had gore-tex before, I was impressed with how breathable compared to all the other so-called breathable jackets I’ve had. Sleeve cuffs are zips where-as the latest one below is crimped. This isn’t necessarily ideal for cycling alone, but to have it as a do-all jacket, I’m happy to deal with a bit of damp around the wrists. It wraps up small enough to stuff in a cycling top back pocket. Nice looking jacket too.

Sunwise[/url]

Designed and made in the UK. I’ve recently bought a pair with the swap-out clear/yellow/dark lens’, but mainly to have the clear lens. All sorts of deals on t’internet or many local sports shops have them. They look good imo – and include narrower frames for narrower faces that would otherwise leave too big a gap on the Oakleys. Nice frame colours and plenty of different designs. Have had the B&Q £8 safety glasses – nice look but ventilation was non-existent (although a tip from a biking forum resulted in drilling a few holes into the edge of the lens, which helped).

This thread is impeccable timing and very interesting experiences showing similarities is proving to be quite a relief (“at least I’m not the only one”).. It also shows that some people are more susceptible to self doubt than others. Never heard of ‘imposter’s syndrome’ until now and reading I can see parallels. I had a meltdown a couple of weeks ago but reflecting on it, it was principally work-related through a combination of events over a three year period leading to feeling as though I’ve had a massive ‘fall from grace’. Having been driven like the wind and a workaholic as a junior consultant, then promoted to team leader role (which is fine) but now the expectation is for winning new business which went great for a while. Picked up new clients through early successes but after several months on and I couldn’t meet their expectations = massive self doubt, getting more confused about what I needed to do to meet the client’s brief despite these being well within my comfort zone = stress and increased anxiety. So then getting more nervous and anxious, drinking a lot of coffee (generally don’t drink coffee), having a beer every night after work to calm down. To combat the anxiety, I upped my riding to/from work from a mid-tempo potter to high tempo with hilly intervals in training for a SDW sub-24hr double. Straight out of a meeting, long day travelling back, late night then next day at 4am I was on the SDW. After that (bailed on the return journey but did manage a sub-12 hour one way), then a few days off and now booked some time off to re-evaluate my career. It sounds corny but I keep thinking about Cougar ‘throwing in his wings’! This thread has helped to put the experiences into context.

>> Edited. Found what I was looking for. Please could someone delete this.

An Everesting attempt should be off road anyway. There’s not a road going up the side of Everest. Molgrips, if you’ve got a near continuous climb to gain 700 metres, then great. But part of the challenge is to use a local hill and most of us don’t have access to the perfect hill like you describe. There is an Everesting website that lists the rules.

We had a similar situation, only the garden between us and the garden with the Leyllandii was disused. First I asked the owner if he’d cut them down or at least cut them in half, but he wasn’t interested. Then I left it for a year or so, but they were getting so tall they were twice the height of our house – and his garden is 3m lower than ours. So I called the Council’s tree officer who was helpful and said that one consideration of the High Hedges argument was loss of light during the day. That swung it for us and I was getting ready to do the paperwork, when he cut them down. Which was nice. Also I recall the request to cut the trees down is sent to an independent body and not handled by the Council, but check that in case I misunderstood.

I’m planning on doing this in July-ish. By that stage, would the trail be best suited for mtb or would a cx bike with knobbly tyres be ok?

I’ll be there, along with a few others all wearing our new Bertie Maffoons bike shop kit. None of us put down the shop name as it’s not a club, so start times are all over the place. My reading of the rider brief was that the final route gpx was supposed to be sent out today (thursday), but I haven’t seen it. Anyone else got it?

Short two day mtb tour: Ivybridge to Taunton via Dartmoor then across the badlands to Exmoor, Porlock and across the Quantocks.

Maybe with bikehike it defaults to walking mode, so when you plan a route the cursor goes where you point it? On ridewithgps you can can click on ‘walking’, ‘cycling’ or ‘driving’ and that’ll then determine where your route will go ie in driving mode, your route won’t let you go the wrong way down a one-way street and it will generally only go down roads and tracks defined as roads (click through the drop down map options in the upper right corner of the browser).

However if you have ‘walking’ highlighted, it will work as the website route maker ignores the rules of the driving mode. If you’re mtbing, cycling usually works but only for following marked off road routes (click map option to osm cycle), but select ‘draw lines’ (something like that) and do just that for bits where there aren’t any routes or roads. Useful if you’re plotting a route over open access places like the moors, where there are no defined routes (and so also useful to have the aerial map showing).

I use an Oregon 450 for biking and adding GPX files, so the interface might be similar. I don’t have any other Garmin unit so can’t compare them. The 450 was a bugger to learn to use for cycling because the Oregon is primarily a hiking and geocaching unit. It works fine for cycling though, just not quite as intuitive as the Edge series.

I may be sending them to the wrong bit of the memory but no where can I see where to send them. On the 800 ist to “new files” but that doesn’t exist on the 650. Any ideas./quote]

>> When I plug the 450 into my computer (same on PC or mac), two ‘drives’ load up: one says ‘Garmin’ and the other is a serial code. I click on one that says ‘Garmin” then the folder called ‘Garmin’ then the folder called ‘GPX’. There are three folders within that: Archive, Current, Nav. There are also a bunch of timestamped gpx files in the root of that GPX folder – those are the files I create after I finish a ride and on the unit’s menu. Click ‘Track Manager’ > ‘Current Track’ > ‘Save Track’. I then click ‘clear current track’ if I’ve finished the ride completely (the unit auto-archives anyway).

Anyway, in that GPX folder is where I drag and drop my custom-created gpx tracks (doesn’t matter which website I’ve used to create the gpx file). So delete all the existing timestamped gpx files out of there (if you’re done with them) and drag and drop your new gpx routes there. Disconnect the unit, switch it on and then in the menu, there are two buttons you can press to find the route. Either, a) ‘Where to’ – and then select the route and then press ‘Go’ or ‘Track Manager” and select the route. I tend to just leave one or two tracks in there.

Also the screen on the 650 shows hundreds of way points. It looks like a track that has saved every few yards but t has been sent as a route. (course isn’t an option ) and is saved in routes . Nothing in tracks.
The problem with this is that the unit appears to have used its ration of waypoints. Eg it will only show 5 miles of a 25 miles route and then nothing. That was created with just 6 clicks of the mouse as the software follows roads. Nothing complicated.

>> Not sure. But …

1. Go to the gpx folder the way I showed above and see if there are lots of gpx files in there. You may want to delete them all;

2. Delete the waypoints: on the 450 start-up menu: press ‘reset’ then ‘Delete all waypoints’. Before each ride, I also always press the other options: ‘Reset Trip Data’ and ‘Clear Current Track’, that way I start with a new gpx file and not start where I left off (cos if I load the route onto Strava it creates a ride from the full GPX file).

3. Check what kind of gpx file you’re setting up: ridewithgps

Other things worth tinkering with if you’re going to use it for biking:

1. start-up setup menu: click on ‘Map’ and change the orientation of the map while you’re riding;
2. setup menu: click on ‘tracks’ and play with those settings. I’ve got mine set to ‘Record Method’: Distance; Interval: 0.01mi; Auto Archive – ‘when full’;

That was created with just 6 clicks of the mouse as the software follows roads.

>> Are you saying the route when you create it on your website? That’ll be down to how you’ve got the website configured to follow a route, not the GPS unit. There are a bunch of different profiles on the 450 – click on setup and scroll down to ‘profiles’ and then select ‘Recreational’.

Having grown up in the shadow of Liddington Hill, the comment that beat relates to riding around here is that it’s a bit ‘mint sauce’. It’s great riding, but like most places in the UK, depending on the weather, it can be fun or hard work on endless bridleways, countless routes to explore, countryside rich in historical interest and the Ridgeway provides fantastic views. Swindon itself gets a bad rap but most good cycling is outside towns.

Nonetheless, you’ve got Victoria Hill for a decent road/Strava hill, link-ups through old town to the downs, cycle track Strava segment from Chissy to Marlborough. And my mate Sean at Bertie’s in Marlborough does a 7am Saturday morning road ride before he opens the shop up and you can get a coffee and cake. Molgrips, get a GPS unit with OS map and start exploring…

Thanks all for the posts. It looks like the micro 4/3 camera with option for interchangeable lens’ will work best for our needs. Obvs not as robust as the sealed units without interchangeable lens’ so will have to be a bit more careful. Suggestions of the Sony a500, Pano GX7, Canon etc all look good.

Ah, why didn’t I see this … (mods, please close my thread):

Going to see the Mary Rose and Golden Hinde in primary school. I can’t recall anything mischievous happening.

Then at secondary school …

Holland: flicknives, ninja stars, a bunch of us getting a) lost after leaving the hotel and then b) into a fight with the local kids. That was the first ‘proper’ fight I’d been. There was blood and awkward should-I-kick-or-punch manoeuvres followed by running away. Also our first introduction to drinking lager.

Brittany (France, not Spears): everyone except me and a mate got food poisoning from shell fish. So just for good measure wheel fish was served the next night again. Two of us ate well that night.

Austria ski trip: during the bus journey I quaffed 2 litres of strawberry yop bought at a French service station, then promptly vomited in the bus. We arrived in our hotel room to discover a p0rn stash under the mattress in the dorm. Like good school children, we have them to Mr Matthews the gym teacher. Never saw those again and a few years later I heard he was to be investigated on suspicion of something. Then one of the lads in the dorm kept finding notes scrawled with writing about Acacia Avenue on his pillow. We finally discovered it was one of the kids who had gone a bit mental with his Iron Maiden fantasy.

Then I moved to boarding school near Oxford and the ski trip was to Colorado and would cost £6,000. So I didn’t go to that.

Strangely I don’t recall any school trips going ‘up north’. It must’ve been too dangerous.

+1 for secondsandco. Used them to source insulation panels for floor insulation, delivered to my house. Looked exactly the same as the stuff in B&Q warehouse and, despite the caveat that seconds would be a mix, I got 80m2 all the same thickness and branded.

+3 warm-up + stretch.

Go for a 10 minute ride away from the main race area to get the heart properly going/get on the turbo trainer next to your vehicle (if that’s how you got to the race). Sounds irrelevant to the actual racing, but the warm-up is going to help reduce the feeling of legs being torn off and lungs climbing out of your mouth moment in the first five minutes of the race. Also, find out where the first proper bottleneck will happen… It’ll be elbows out moment on the first lap, but could also be a good chance for a rest!

“rip your head off”

Well it depends on the nature and intent of your encounter. If it was friendly or accidental, then hand shaking and a chat are common social behaviour characteristics of the calm, non-spooked American Bigfoot. As a general observation, African Bigfoot are far friendlier and you’re more likely to get a hand shaking encounter, invitation to lunch, that sort of thing – even if you are seen charging through the woods, spear in hand, yelling fighting words. They’re just more accommodating of anger.

Some fascinating stuff here. Even the untruths are interesting.

I entered this a while back when looking for something UK based, a bit different and a reasonable entry fee (comparwd to most UK sportives). I did Paris-Roubaix in April last year, when it was driving wind and rain at the start time and the Arenberg was like a trail of icy Hobbs bread loaves. That was on a ti road bike with 28mm semi-slicks. No point using mud guards, cos they’d clatter around too much. I’ll be using the same set up for this ToTBC.

I was disappointed with the previous ToB 2014 (?) Stroud route: along the busy A46, completely divorced from the things that make cycling great: Rodborough Hill, the Commons, Winstons ice-cream and the Ladder (Rant over).

However this new 2016 route has given the Stroud Alpes the respect it deserves: after muscling through Gloucester, looks like it’ll be the climb up to Edge, which will hopefully string the pack out a bit, then the fast decent down through sunny Stroud before taking on the epic Selsley climb – which has fantastic scenery over the Woodchester valley and plenty of spectator points along the edge of Selsley Common. After levelling out in the woods, there’ll be a nice stretch of rolling road for recovery, passing Coaley Peak, before the drop into Uley – which will be the place to be if you want to watch some fast, twisty descending (hope it’s not wet) – and sample the local Uley Ales while you’re there. Then an undulating dash out of Uley to get to the front for the Whiteway climb out of Dursley and then looks like it veers down into Wotton-under-Edge for another epic descent, then onwards alongside the Cotswolds escarpment.