When my mum died last year I did all the legwork myself (closing accounts, house valuation, a few shares and insurance policies to track down) but got a probate specialist to fill in the forms for me. I just signed them and sent them off. While I’m happy to do my own tax self assessment, when faced with multiple forms for a fairly complex estate I just didn’t want the hassle, or risk, of making an error.

It cost maybe £2500. Much less than various solicitors were quoting.

Mrs ETG is an Explorer leader. I get to watch crap sci-fi and eat curry on the sofa once a week when she’s dib dobing. She recons Explorers are the best fun. They aren’t cute like beavers and cubs, and yes they are hormonal and stinky. But they are by far the most interesting to lead. Last week we took them to a trail centre and had great time. Bike packing with them later this year.

I’ve had an eGolf for the last two years and it’s made a pretty good commuting car.

Range is a realistic 120 miles in the winter with the heating on but I have got 160 miles out of it driving like a granny with the heating off.

Test drove a Leaf before getting the eGolf and while it was probably technically better than the VW, I just couldn’t get the driving position to work for me – it didn’t have a height adjustable steering wheel. Maybe it has on higher spec/more recent models.

While I live in Gloucestershire I have driven it in London a lot, particularly in west London where the local councils have added charge points to the base of street lamps. And this leads to the one flaw with the eGolf – the charge socket is where the filler cap was on the petrol/diesel versions rather than centrally on the nose as with other EVs. You have to consider how you park the car so that the charge socket is on the pavement side and so that the cable reaches the charger. Not a massive problem but can be tricky sometimes.

Flat bars and a pair of RaceKings on mine and it flew round the King Alfred’s Way back in August.

Nothing specific to Nibley, other than it’s our local woods and I recall seeing a van parked nearby. Other options are FoD or Ashton Court for coaching but want to see if there is a more local option.

Mrs Eddiethegent here…

Get measured
Good shorts/padded knickers
Weight not fully on saddle… use legs too
Sit on sit bones not your super important soft bits
Chamois cream
Join velovixen cycling chat on Facebook …. they’re always talking about lady bits
It’s worth paying ++ to feel supported
Saddles different for everyone but short nose, swept up back shape works for my fussy ass
Enjoy!

Just checked back through my eBay and PayPal messages and there was no verification number or code provided.

Anyway, I think the guy doesn’t want the mattress but can’t be bothered to send me an email telling me so.

Deadline issued.

I’ve bought and sold hundred of bike related items on eBay and not a single problem. Every time I sell an non bike bit it turns into a right ball ache.

First of all I’d spend £3 with the land registry to find out if your mum is one of the registered owners. If she is then I can’t see how it can be sold without her written permission.

If she isn’t then it’s a fairly simple method to register her interest in the property. This process is usually used for couples who split up and where the family home is only registered in one name, but it should be applicable in your mums case too.

Your uncle can object to this but it sounds like the adjudicator would find in your mums favour. Once your mum has registered her interest the house then can’t be sold without her permission.

Like to others have said above, ultimately there are two options: allow your uncle to sell the house and divide the proceeds; buy your uncle out.

Hmmm, the weight is a very good point.

On one hand it looks there is a plywood layer between the mosaic and the plasterboard wall, but on the other the existing tiles have been applied so unevenly that I’m not confident they would stay on.

I’ll be taking them off and starting again.

WPD are coming over in two days to have a look.

Got to love STW!

Four wires arranged vertically. They look insulated but I’m still going nowhere near them with a bow saw!

It looks like they just feed my house and two other properties.

I’ll give Western Power Distribution a call and go from there.

Chesil Beach is just pebbles and as the others have said it is only good for fishing and bouncing bombs.

However, a ten minute drive west along the B3157 will get you to Burton Bradstock which is sandy with an upmarket cafe/sea food restaurant or drive another ten minutes in the same direction and go to West Bay. There you’ll find lots for kids to do, an ok beach with lifeguards (aka the Broadchurch cliffs), catching crabs in the harbour, ice cream and fish & chips.

Thanks all!

I scanned a random sample of 20 and MusicMagpie have offered £15. That’s got to make a few hundred pounds in total for a few evenings work. The money will be donated to a charity close to the original owners heart.

Cheers.

If it makes Ambientcoast feel any better I’ll happily donate them all to his mum!

My advice is give BA Customer Services a call and speak to someone directly.

Just before Christmas I was meant to fly direct from Dallas to London on BA. A few hours before leaving for the airport I got the dreaded ‘flight cancelled’ email. Rather than accept the alternative they offered in the email (a 4am flight to Chicago and then 10 hour wait before flying home), I spoke to a very nice lady who booked me straight on an American Airlines flight direct to Heathrow. Landed two hours before my original BA flight would have arrived.

However don’t get me started on the ball ache that was trying to squeeze EU mandated compensation out of them when another BA flight was delayed by six hours….

I’ve had one of those bike pods for the last seven years – it was actually branded dhb when I bought it but it is exactly the same model. It’s ok. Not brilliant, not rubbish, just ok.

Over the years it must have done ten transatlantic trips and is only now showing signs of wear and tear. Pros: Its light and fairly protective when packed well. Cons: The inset handholds are useless – you’ll drag it around using its fastening straps. Top tip: pad both sides with layers of cardboard and bubble wrap before putting the bike inside. It will stop wheels rattling against the frame and make the whole box much more rigid.

Was in Zakopane this Wednesday/Thursday. Beautiful place. Lots of cheap accommodation although I’d imagine it would get busy in the middle of summer.

Didnt see a single cyclist while I was there, but like I say, it was out of season.

I actually have both of those bikes, well near enough…

My Sunday Best bike is a Supersix Evo (standard-mod) with SRAM Red and Hunt 50mm wheels. My CAAD 12 has SRAM Force and Cosine narrow rim aluminium wheels. The Supersix has rim brakes, the CAAD has discs. Both are 2017 models.

Leaving aside the components and different braking methods, the Supersix is maybe a kilo lighter so accelerates and climbs better. It’s also more composed over rough roads, soaking up a lot of vibration. Conversely the CAAD feels a bit more lively but it’s certainly not a harsh ride – I was happy to do 290 miles in three days on it earlier this summer.

in short, both are great. If you made me choose between the two I’d go for the CAAD, just because of the discs.

A Supersix with discs would be the ultimate combination.

Whatever the rights or wrongs of it, it’s a standard clause in a hire car contract that they will pay any fine on your behalf and then pass the costs onto you (plus an admin fee). By the time you’ve found about it they will have already charged your card.

I did something similar.

I was staying overnight in the Travelodge in Tamworth Service station – nothing but the best for me!. I had a hire car and used the Reg written on the key fob when I checked in. I’m not sure where the error was but it was one character different from the Reg on the car. Two weeks later I get a letter from Avis saying they’ve charged £250 to my credit card. £200 penalty charge from the car park owners and a £50 Avis admin fee!

I got on the phone to the Manager in the Tamworth Travelodge and he said this happens all the time. He in turn spoke to the car park operators who immediately refunded the £200 charge. The thing is they refunded Avis who had paid on my behalf. This is when the fun started.

Avis were now up £450. The £250 they had taken from my credit card and the £200 refund they had received from the car park. After dozens of emails and calls to Avis they finally confirmed that they had received the £200 refund but even then they wanted to keep the admin fee. After another few stroppy calls they finally relented and gave me the £50 as a ‘goodwill gesture’.

I got there in the end but it was a ball-ache. Good luck to the OP.

It’s not fork lift operators, shelf stackers or even Uber drivers that will be the first to go extinct. It will be those in call centres, whether in Sheffield or Mumbai. With voice recognition software getting so advanced and ubiquitous why would you need a 1,000 person call centre when a single computer will do 99% of the work. In as little as five years time I can see that job disappear.

I did something similar with three friends from work last June.

We got the overnight ferry to Le Havre and then followed the Seine inland for about 20 miles before heading south-west to Lisieux. An easy 60 miles. It’s a bit flat and industrial in that part of France but once you’re out of Le Havre itself there isn’t much traffic on the roads. We stayed in Le Grand Hotel de L’Esperance in the centre of Lisieux. Compared to the B&Bs that we usually stay in it was quite fancy but it actually wasn’t too expensive. They also have a secure covered car park with a locked area for the bikes.

The second day was from Lisieux to St Lo. Probably 80 miles. Quiet roads again but much more rural and rolling countryside. Reminded me of Salisbury Plain but without the tanks. We stayed in the Hotel Mercurie – St Lo Centre. A typical chain hotel but cheap, centrally located and with a dedicated bike storage room.

On the third day we headed north from St Lo to join the coast road near Omaha Beach. We followed this to the ferry terminal at Ouistreham stopping at the American Cemetary, the Mulberry Harbour and Pegasus Bridge. Maybe 70 miles all in.

All in this was three days of fairly gentle riding but it could easily be done in two, particularly if you forget following the Seine on the first day and just head south towards Lisieux. No problems with the traffic or French drivers and the road surfaces were good even on small rural roads. One small issue, outside of the main towns this part of France seems to be pretty sparsely populated. A lot of villages seemed to be deserted which made it harder to find somewhere to eat for lunch. Apart from that, Tres Bon!

The stock questions above reminds me of my interview to get my Chartered Engineer status. I’ve always been a contrary bugger but when they hit me with the old “what will you gain from being a CEng” it was clear I had woken up on the wrong side of the bed as I essentially said I couldn’t give a monkeys, it was something my company expected, and not having one previously hadn’t affected my career at all.

They also made the mistake of telling me who the interviewers were in advance. I googled them, found their CVs and when they asked if I had any questions I proceeded to grill them about the projects they had led and why they had been unmitigated disasters.

I got my CEng. I can only assume they like people who aren’t afraid to stand up to authority and say what they think is right. Or maybe they were scared of me…

Just use Fitfiletools to crop out the unwanted portion.

Please don’t make a new segment!

I thought that the BB30A on my CAAD12 was creaking on its second ride but it turned out to be the seat clamp. I’d go around and grease every bolt and interface before going to the effort of trying to re-install the BB.

Having said that it might still be the BB. Nobody likes BB30 and it’s the one thing that made me think twice about buying a Cannondale.

Don’t bother talking to your council, they won’t want to know as it’s the Valuation Office Agency who set the bands.

Ive put in two applications to have a house rebanded (once for me, once on my mothers behalf). Both times because a neighbour with the same size house was inexplicably on a lower band. They knocked me back but they agreed to lower the band on my mothers house. As the banding can be backdated several years her council had to cough up about £1500 pounds in overpaid council tax.

Well worth half an hour of my time one evening.

Yup, SQR Slim. After five years of daily commuting with a laptop and the occasional credit card tour it’s just getting worn in. It might be pricey and look a little austere but it does the job every time.

I had the same issue after borrowing a Synapse for a few days. After hearing all the rave reviews I was expecting something more…. but it was just a little bit dull and lifeless.

On the other hand my Supersix is a fun and exciting ride. If your back can cope with the race geometry I’d go for one every time. Put some 25mm tyres on it and it’s also amazingly comfortable.

My bike shop quoted me “about 100 quid” to get a single SRAM Force flat mount caliper. I think I’ll stick with my post mount calipers and a set of £10 converter mounts.

I’ve got a Supersix which I keep for Sunday best and a CAAD12 Disc for commuting and poor weather rides. While I can see the logic in spending the most money on the bike you spend the most time on (even if that’s a commuter) I wouldn’t want to subject my carbon wheels and SRAM Red to a typical winter. As the CAAD has the same geometry as the Supersix the fit is the same and the handling is almost as nice.

Buy a new CAAD12 or a CAAD12 frame and swap over the components from your Synapse would be my advice. Alternatively, nearly new CAAD10s are on eBay all the time.

The Black Arrow launch site in Woomera, Australia. Miles and miles of nothing and then suddenly these two massive rocket launch platforms abandoned to the desert and the snakes. What might have been had the politics been different.

Well it is threatening to burn my house down!

Thinking about it, if tiles are adequate around the back of a gas hob on full blast then they have got to be good enough around the side of my oven.

Might still swap out the plasterboard for something else though.

I like the floor! What is it, genuine floorboards, engineered wood or that fancy wood effect vinyl stuff?

I would rather Lance have the money than that revolting little ginger ferret landis. To think he’l get 25 mil out of this whole deal disgusts me.

And that’s what bothers me as well. It’s not as if Landis was an innocent bystander in the whole USPS saga. Remember, he was busted first and then spent 4 years and $1m of other peoples money via the “Floyd Fairness Fund” to try and clear his name. It was only when he was out of options did he confess and point the finger at Armstrong.

Maybe he wasn’t as bad as Armstrong in the grand scheme of things, but it doesn’t feel right that he should now profit from Armstrong’s downfall.

As above, they are tubeless in theory but not in practice.

I exchanged mine for the Protection versions. Slightly heavier but the extra meat seems to be all in the sidewalls. They work well as tubeless.

I really wanted to love my 29er and to be fair the marketing guff was true – it was faster with more grip and it did seem to roll over bumps better. The only trouble was my old and out of date 26er was just more fun to ride. The lighter wheels accelerated and handled better, the lower overall weight made it faster climbing and in tight technical singletrack it was just more engaging to ride.

If I still raced seriously a 29er would be my choice, but as I ride for fun I don’t care about saving that last 10 watts or 1 mph gain. My 26er just makes me smile more.

Cheers guys.

They’re be going on a frame with internal hose routing. Does the Avid Connectanmajig make it easy to disconnect the hose without loosing a load of fluid, or will I still need to do a full bleed anyway?

I’ve only been using the Viiiiva/Zwift iOS combo for a total of ten hours, but in that time the connection has been rock-solid.

It seems that Zwift also recommend Viiiva here[/url] for connecting ANT+ sensors.

I’m using a 4iiii Viiiiva HRM as a ANT+ to BLE bridge so I can connect my Power2Max powermeter to Zwift iOS running on my iphone.

Once the HRM has woken up and is streaming BLE data (power, speed & HR) to the 4iiii app, disconnect Viiiiva in the app and then start Zwift. All the data can then be seen by Zwift and you can pair in the normal way.

It sounds like a bit of a workaround but it’s the easiest way I’ve found to get ANT+ data onto Zwift iOS.