We were there last week, camping on the islands and beaches S and W of Rotterdam. We did Delft, The Hague, Leiden and Amsterdam last year, following advice from this forum. It’s all easy, just do it. TJ’s advice re. the weird numbers is correct. It sounds daft but it works. And even when it doesn’t, you’ll still get there.

This year we bought a map from this series

https://www.holland-cycling.com/extras/reviews/125-anwb-fietskaart-series-reviewed

It was nice to not look at phones, and to get lost, and to arrive at a town hoping there’d be accommodation, just like the olden days. An eye-opener for our teenager, I think he liked it.

I have bought two of these in the last couple of years (my daughter stole the first one):

https://www.needlesports.com/Catalogue/Clothing-Footwear/Technical-Clothing/Waterproofs/Mountain-Equipment-Mens-Odyssey-Jacket

They’re like my 1990s Sprayway 3-layer Goretex, which was fab for many years until it rotted. The pit zips work – lots less sweaty.

We did this last summer (me, Mrs DJPower, and our 15 year old son – first time cycle touring for the latter two). We’ll be going again this year, it was a big success. We just ambled around Holland, coast, Leiden, Amsterdam. This year we might try to head for the big islands south of Rotterdam.

Camping was easy, we just turned up. Cycling was very easy, but slow compared to here – lots of wonderful meandering routes and lots of scope to enjoy getting lost, so I’d not be planning big distances.

Lots of good advice here: https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/family-cycle-touring-netherlands-august/

I did York (joins E-W TPT at Selby) to Liverpool, overnight with friends in Stockport, last weekend. All on the TPT. Loved it! Some thoughts:

I was pleased to have the MTB (Sonder Broken Road hardtail 29er)  rather than the 700c tourer. If dry it would be fine on a gravel bike or hybrid, but I’d have been rattled around a bit without the front forks. All very rideable, but definitely rough and muddy at times.

It’s all quite flat, but not boring. Spectacular section across from near Doncaster up to Penistone and beyond. Grand across the Pennines, and I was glad to avoid the busy main road across the tops. These high bridleways were the only real “mountain biking”, and would still be rideable by most people on most bikes (with maybe a few pushes up/down steps).

Route finding was very easy, and you’re always close to facilities – I know organising these things is a challenge, but the infrastructure is in your favour for this one.

I was in no rush, but York-Stockport (Hazel Grove) took me all the available daylight. This was mid-November. I imagine you’ll be fine in September unless there’s mud or mishaps. Lots of non-TPT road shortcuts in the Selby-Bentley section if necessary, although I enjoyed the diversions.

I’d suggest going to your local shop, setting a budget, and seeing which one makes him smile the most. These things are subjective, I think it’s hard to buy a bad modern guitar. Our then-14 year old tried a load of very pretty Squier, Epiphone, Ibanez and G4M guitars. He ended up with one of the cheapest (Squier strat copy) because for him it looked, felt and sounded the best. He still loves it, and he knows it’s “his”. (Our local guitar shop happens to be Gear For Music, which helps. But all guitar shops are excellent.)

We’re back! Thanks again for the advice. We didn’t follow a lot of it, but it gave us the confidence to do our own thing. Here are some things we learned:

We took a train from Selby to Hull, which was easy and friendly. There’s a cycle path along the Humber all the way to the terminal, no need to battle ferry traffic. And there’s a superb pub, The Minerva, which I’d recommend. I love pubs me, and this is a good one.

Google maps shows the Rozenberg-Maasluis ferry as being closed. It’s not. The car/lorry ferry is closed, but there’s a free and regular passenger and bike ferry from the same place.

Camping was easy – there was always space and a warm welcome. We stayed near Den Haag, Leiden and Zevenhuizen; Google maps and word-of-mouth sent us in the right directions.

Dutch cycling infrastructure is brilliant, and so is the culture. Please can we make it compulsory to employ Dutch people in all future UK road and building projects?

TJ’s complicated numbering system made very little sense to me when he described it, but on the ground it works a treat – thanks. We also sometimes just followed what seemed to be sensible/interesting routes based on the red signposts. I can imagine it being frustrating to be in a hurry, but we weren’t.

I wish I’d learned just a bit more Dutch before we left. Northern English + German meant I could understand most things, but I couldn’t say a lot.

Shockingly, MrsDJPower admitted to having a dream about cycling last night. She’s keen to do more, and further.(The teenager might take a bit more convincing.)

Bumpits. Sadly not as entertaining, nor as anatomical, as one might imagine.

Has nobody mentioned “When we cease to understand the world” (Benjamin Labatut)? It’s a raspberry ripple of physics/maths history/biography mixed with imagination, fabrication, creativity and inaccuracy. Not selling it, am I? It’s the only book I have ever read where, after Chapter 1 (and a lie down) I had to read Chapter 1 again just to try to understand whether I had actually read that. Remarkable.

I’m currently reading Road of Bones (Fergal Keane) about the 1944 battle of Kohima, largely because I cycle past the Imphal barracks each morning I am aware of my ignorance. Horrible, and mad, so far.

Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) was wonderful, it’s one I have bought several times to send to friends. Intelligent sci-fi that gets you thinking and keeps coming back to you. He’s a worryingly prolific author – I’ve tried some of his other books, but none has hit me like this one (recommendations?).

I enjoyed The Satsuma Complex (Bob Mortimer) as lightweight holiday entertainment, he writes beautifully but it might help that my internal voice talks with his accent anyway. I wasn’t aching for more, though.

Two recent highlights:

Rome: A History in Seven Sackings (Matthew Kneale) which made me realise how utterly ignorant I am of European history. I got there via Robert Harris’ Cicero trilogy. As well as being good to read, these both opened up new worlds of political and historical understanding for me – a bit like I’d gone to a posh school. Honestly, Brexit, SNP, Trump and Johnson and Kanye and Kardashian… they’re all in there.

Surface Detail (Iain M. Banks) is as brilliant as he always is. (OK, was. Sadly.) Sends your brain in many directions, and I’m sure a lot of it went over my head, but magical all the way.

Thank you, everyone! Wisdom, practicality, creativity and kindness, this forum at its best. I will allow myself to get excited now. We’ll keep an eye on those ferry options, it’s all part of the adventure.

I love the WW2 ideas, the others might need some persuading – it might have to (appear to) be spontaneous and accidental. I’ll report back.

Thanks again.

My Mam and I went with Anderson Helicopters in Hokitika in 2015, as her 75th birthday treat. Proper NZ experience – rock up to a big shed at Hoki airport, wait around drinking tea with Mrs Anderson while the pilot got back from blowing frost off the vineyards, then set off with a detailed itinerary of “It looks a bit blowy, let’s see where we can get”.  Wonderful. Flew over the Alps, stopped at a high glacier and a deserted hut, got to places the two of us would never have reached otherwise. Improvised, but good and safe and (as I recall) a fair price.

Aye, their Mams’d be proud of them. And he’s a superb singer. I was feeling Metal Freddie Mercury, but only in a very good way.

Like johndoh, I saw Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs in York last night. Absolutely beautiful. They seem like lovely chaps and they make a monstrous noise. Great to see a band working together so well, and enjoying themselves. (Also educational for my son – also a guitarist – to spot both guitarists asking to be turned up in the mix before the first song had ended. They’re like that, guitarists.) I’d recommend them to anyone.

Alpkit Pipedream 400 has done me for many years. Being soft, I have seldom if ever used it below zero, but it’s certainly fine for temperatures in the low single figures.

My daughter went to a state school and the local sixth form college. She chose Durham because (outside Oxford and Cambridge, which she refused to contemplate) it has the best course. So far she loves it, and I’m very chuffed for her. She seems to have a mixture of friends, some appear to be absurdly rich but most aren’t. You can choose, or at least give a preference for, your college. She chose one of the new ones up the hill (Josephine Butler, opposite Van Mildert) which has a reputation for being more “normal”, as opposed to the colleges in the old part of the city (the Bailey Colleges).

We had a similar thing recently, in England. No IHT, but still needing to wait for probate to be granted before we can do anything about the property.

I bought a CUBOT Pocket about four months ago, a mainly because I resented having something big and sweaty in my pocket (fnarr, fnarr). Cost £100 including case and screen protector. 4″ screen, just like in the olden days! Honestly, it’s lovely not to have a big flat lump of plastic in your pocket when you’re out doing things. It has a bigger memory and faster processor than my previous big phone, and battery life is comparable.

I like it lots. It’s OK for phone, text, emails, Spotify, all the Google apps, and decent enough for the OS Maps app I’ve subscribed to. I guess it would be bad for scrolling through endless TikToks and Instagrams, and frustrating to watch a film on, but that suits me fine.

Edit because I remembered the negatives: there’s no headphone socket (so you need to use the USB C output, or Bluetooth which works fine) and there’s no fingerprint recognition for (e.g.) unlocking, banking apps etc. I can live with these for the joy of having a decent sized phone.

Dumb mathematician here, not very good at the real world.

“Can we assume that 2 different shaped balloons that weigh the same will have the same surface area”
YES, because they contain the same amount of (presumably identical) foil

“… and hence the same volume?”
NOT REALLY, because things with the same surface area don’t necessarily have the same volume.

BUT, so long as they’re all basically spherical-ish (i.e. you aren’t selling helium ballons designed to look like the surface of a lung or the structure of soil ) you should be fine.

As others have said, from CP you could save yourself the drive and enjoy the Ullswater area. The views up into the hills are spectacular, and the weather often adds to the drama – you can see what’s kicking off and where, and sometimes even avoid it.

What Pyro says is an excellent suggestion. The Ullswater Way is a relatively easy low 20ish miles, all signposted, with a bus back to PB from Patterdale/Glenridding (pubs) if you’ve had enough.

If you want to get high then in good weather you could do Askham or PB to Howtown and then S along Fusedale, to the High Street ridge and a lovely run along it back to the start, 15ish miles. (I know you said you didn’t want to go high, but this one’s relatively simple, safe and runnable.)

“I’ve been having a look at your daily mileage reports for December. According to this you did sixty-three miles on Wednesday the fourth, sixty-three miles on Thursday the fifth, and on Friday the sixth, one million, twelve thousand and twenty-two miles. Where did you go that day?”

“That should say sixty-three miles,” I said. “Sorry, must have put it down wrong.”

[Unhelpful, sorry, but it’s been a long day. From The Scheme For Full Employment by Magnus Mills.]

I bought the Jobsworth one for a bit more than this many years ago. It’s absolutely fine. Go for it.

Chimney Bank is fine on an MTB, we have sensible gears. I am old and boring, but from the village I’d suggest up CB, left over Ana Cross to Lastingham (pub), then the BW along Rosedale back to where you started. Then up CB again and the old railway line to Blakey Rigg (pub) and back home along the far side of the valley.

Like many here, I’m double-jabbed and caught COVID about 4 weeks ago it via our children. I felt generally OK but I certainly knew I had it! Generally hung-over feeling, and very tired and needing 10 hours sleep each night plus a siesta.

I was able to keep working from home (maybe stupid, I work in a university and taking time off just stores up even more work for later). Looking back I really can’t remember very much of the work I did in that two weeks.

I was able to run and bike again after 2 weeks, but I’m still a bit slower than I’d normally expect to be (objectively, running 7.30 miles used to be fine for up to an hour, but now 8.00 miles for 20 mins feels hard) and I’m having to breathe slightly faster than “normal”. Both biking and running I find I can be suddenly reduced to a standstill – phrases like “hitting the wall” and “running through treacle” were things I had read about but not experienced until now.

Anyroadup, I feel like I’m making progress.

I agree with the advice about staying where you are happy, and trying to make it even better (and better paid) if you can. The Leeds job sounds grim. How dreadful is the commute? I did Otley to York by car for 3 years and it made me miserable, whereas taking the train from a house in Leeds city centre to a job in York city centre might be more enjoyable. We now live in York, and I get 4 miles on a cycle path each morning – worth it for me.

Why has nobody mentioned Citizen Khan? It’s on BBC iPlayer.

In the finest tradition of British pantomime and ’70s sitcoms, it’s riddled with lazy stereotypes and depends on casual racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and probably many other worse things that go way over my head. I bloody love it, me.

That’s local for me, too.
The farm tracks SW of Tad are all good and weatherproof. The one NW from Towton even has some gradient and scenery (by local standards). The BWs towards Aberford are generally OK, field edges etc., and Lead Church is a wonderful place. From Aberford you can get across towards the Leeds Country Way (?) BWs via Parlington and a very cool (and dark) tunnel.
I have pedalled through Grimston Park a couple of times in the last year or so, having seen a small group emerging onto the A162 and thinking “where have they come from?” Never had any bother, I think it used to be a public road.

Go for it! I learned with Ride4life at Strensall a couple of years back and I’d recommend them – they wouldn’t let me take each of the tests until they thought I was ready, and they were right. Even with your background I guess you’d still need lessons to learn what’s expected in the tests, but the actual doing it would be relatively easy.

I have the Soloist, and I’ve used it for bikepacking and climbing, always in summer. Light, tiny, easy, roomy enough, but would need care in rough weather as it’s tall – you’d just need to pitch it with the wind. I like it lots BUT I’m 5’10” and just about have enough length. I’d get the XL.

Continuing the tradition of recommending what you have already… I have an OMM which ticks all your boxes. I have used it for 2-3 day trips with the same sort of kit you mention, plus food. I think it’s this one:

https://theomm.com/product/classic-32/

It says 32l, but it’s generous.

I have a Garmin Forerunner 35, bought last year for £100ish. It tells the time, tells me how fast I’m going, and (afterwards) it’ll tell me where I’ve been, my heart rate, and my cadence. Battery is 12ish hours. That’s all I need, and I quite like it. Nice to know how you’re doing on a run without needing to carry a phone. It talks to Garmin Connect on my Android phone, and I’ve had no bother.

This sounds utterly dismal, but fair play to them for sheer comedy value. The running looks delightful, but not really something to “battle” like a “warrior”.

Sadly, I suspect each £15K client journey will be paid by the training budget of a banking/accountancy/financial services company to nurture excellence and resilience within their outstanding corporate leadership team going forward.

As others have said, ride the one that makes you feel happy! I inherited my Dad’s 1990s Honda NTV650 as my first post-125 bike. I ride like an old lady (according to my instructor) (actually, that was one of the kinder things he said about me) but even so it’s got more than enough speed and power for my needs. The step up from 125 felt massive.

I bought my first SS Inbred 17 years ago. I drove to an industrial estate outside Donny, met a bloke called Dave who gave me the bike and a cup of tea. I guess all that has changed.

The bike is still going strong, as are the 456 and 2nd hand Pompino that followed it. I haven’t bought a new bike for 3+ years, but when I did it was a Ti Spitfire and it’s a beautiful thing to ride. The pricing is irritating, but that’s the game they’re playing – good luck to them. Cheap but (basically) good.

Brand-X Trekking bars, worth a try at £15.99. I have them on my and my daughter’s sit-up-and-beg commuter bikes, and like them. They look a bit daft, mind.

Enjoy, OP! I have one, rim brakes and all, and it’s fantastic. Very comfy, and with the ability to go a lot faster than I can manage. The only thing I changed from the bog-standard PX offering was to fit some new tyres. Oh, and after 50 miles I always think “I wish I had a better saddle” and then forget all about it until next time. Have fun out there.

https://www.glencroftcountrywear.co.uk/product-category/jumpers/mens-jumpers/

Pleasant real people you can talk to re. sizes. (We got our daughter the sheep one. It smells of sheep too, but in a good way.) That, or army surplus.

If the problem is slipping in gears 15-18 (chain on middle chain ring at the front, and on the smallest and right-most sprockets at the back) then you could just shift the front to the big chain ring and see if that solves it.

This is not an elegant solution, but it’s the cheapest and it might tide you over until it all beds in, or until you know more about what you need. In general, try to avoid combining (big at front) with (big at back), and vice versa, because these combinations are kind of pointless and they stop the chain running in a straight line.

For kids, and for non-cycling parents, I reluctantly agree that it needs to be visible from the parking (<1km, a few minutes stroll). Having said that, my boy (11) and I occasionally ride 6 flat easy miles to our local pump track as a day out, and we’re not athletes.

I have several years’ experience of running mountain ultras very slowly.

Originally I used an Alpkit Gamma. These are excellent, but mine unexpectedly died on the first night of the Hardmoors 110 and I had to borrow the race director’s Petzl Myo RXP. I am now converted – the Myo is heavier but it’s much better for detail and has excellent range on full power, and battery life is good.

I carry a Petzl e+LITE as a spare.

Thanks, Weeksy. Despite the rain on Saturday AM, The Wall was just what I needed. Nice place and good people, I will be back.