It’s absolutely astonishing (though given Kilian’s pedigree it shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise!)

I keep looking at my splits and comparing them to his. He could have given me a head start to the Langdale fells and still finished first.

When we toured up the islands last year the golden road was the best bit of the whole trip.

Back there last month for the LAMM with an overnight at Crabhadail beach… stunningly good.

Can’t imagine horses would have coped any better with the loose eroded gullies that the Dollywagon path had degenerated into before it was rebuilt in the 90s but in all the (several) decades I’ve been walking runing mtb-ing and climbing in the Lakes, I can’t remember *ever* seeing a horse on the high fells. It’s a bit of a red herring.

(Although to be fair many of the bridleways have that status because they originated as packhorse routes…)

> Unique in that there’s 276 peaks over 3000ft in the UK? Of which only 30 you aren’t allowed to take a bike up?

> There are plenty of hills that are also very busy that have no restrictions on cyclists.

But it’s the only one with a train delivering thousands of tourists to the top and it takes “very busy” to another level on fine summer days.

Torver area is nice but a long way round from Bassenthwaite – the natural loops around the back of Skiddaw are generally pretty amenable and a lot more accessible. (Yes the railway path is still out of action, the old back lanes through Brundholme woods are now the usual connection from Keswick to Threlkeld. Last time I was there those also still had barriers and “road closed” signs but thats just to keep cars off, it’s fine to ride along.)

If you do fancy heading up the M6/M74 then Ae would be the obvious place to start or you could probably manage Glentress as a day trip (couple of hours each way).

For the applied side of things Stroud’s Engineering Mathematics (followed up with Advanced Engineering Mathematics) were the default intros when I was an undergrad.

Is the reason mining is so hardware intensive simply because if mining were “easy” then by implication the market would be flooded with bitcoins and devaluing them entirely?

Yes, it’s to regulate the supply with the further twist that it gets progressively even harder as more and more coins are mined.

There’s not much really … could go to Ambleside and back via Jenkin Crag I suppose.

If you take the ferry over the lake I reckon you could do a quick loop over Claife heights and Sawrey, and still get back in that sort of time?

I did the LAMM this year and thought it was brilliant.

I’m actually quite jealous, wish we’d been there. What a fantastic area to hold it in.

Know what you mean about the OMM, this year was based in Langdale though so proper hills and also very familiar turf for me. I’d forgotten how much fun it is running random MM lines all over the place!

Mountain marathons. GF and me did the OMM together last month and enjoyed it, so next year it’ll be the Saunders in the Lakes, maybe the OMM again on Dartmoor and hopefully the LAMM if it actually happens again.

Bear in mind chaps that the walkie talkie linked to above isn’t the license free PMR446 type…

It’s one of the newer digital handsets (DMR stands for Digital Mobile Radio) and that one will need a license to use. You can actually get PMR446 compatible DMR radios but with the same limitations (0.5W transmit power / 446MHz frequency band / fixed antenna). Some of them might also have a GPS built in, I don’t know.

I’ll be there stumbling around in the clag somewhere. Hopefully there won’t be three weekend hurricanes in a row…

Evening menu will be couscous lentils & chorizo with a nip of Highland Park to keep the cold out. GF is threatening to bring fairy lights for the tent!

Incidentally, spoke to a boy in Balmaha who was planning on doing it on foot on three days, his dry pack weight was under 10kg!

Still way too heavy!

Rucksack = 500g
Warm top, hat, gloves = 500g
Mountain marathon tent = 1kg
Light sleeping bag + mat = 1kg
Stove + pot + mug + coffee + flapjack = 1kg
Phone, map, headtorch, toothbrush, spare socks etc = 1kg

What on earth do you need that’s another 5kg on top of that? :?

Still do most of my work in assembly as well (low power DSP/comms stuff). Except for the actual assembler for the DSP we use, which I wrote myself in nice clean portable C :-)

And since unbelieveably no-one’s posted it yet, here’s the obligatory XKCD[/url] …

I believe its interference causing me to lose the signal, as its doesn’t matter what radio station I’m on.

DAB works by multiplexing different stations together into one combined digital signal – the receiver demodulates the whole lot and then picks out the data stream for whichever station you actually want to listen to. So it could be localised interference, but doesn’t rule out just being a dead spot in the coverage.

Mendip Heights near Cheddar gorge? Nice quiet well-organised site with a farm shop and decent facilities.

The thing that is annoying about DOT fluid is it absorbs moisture from the atmosphere ** so you can’t leave it in a half empty container. You end up buying it in small amounts, expensively, and having to throw away the surplus.

Mineral oil you can buy cheaply in bulk and keep it on the shelf for ever.

** except DOT 5.0, which isn’t compatible with SRAM brakes anyway…

If we can observe a galaxy that is 13.76bn years old and therefore existing only 400m years after the big bang, does that not mean that the areas of spacetime we cannot observe (because they are receding too fast) are only those areas that came into existence and have subsequently evolved between time point zero and +400m years?

You might be thinking (at least residually) of the big bang as something that happened at a specific localised point, with everything then receding away as the universe expands.

Its not, its the moment when all of spacetime came into existence and it happened *everywhere in space*. Just because that space was compressed to a tiny distance-scale doesn’t stop there having been an arbitrarily-large amount of it outside our accessible “event horizon” from the very beginning.

Mont Ventoux has to be the grand finale, it’d be rude not to really.

No need to winch all your touring kit up the mountain if you stop off in Bedoin (the municipal campsite is fine, or there’s a couple of others I haven’t used). It’s a nice little village with plenty of options for pizza or steak frites and a bottle of wine. Straight up and down the mountain from there in the morning, or descend to Malaucene and return over the Madeleine, or down to Sault and loop back through the Gorge de la Nesque for a longer day. Either way it’s only an easy 30k spin from there to Orange to your final finish point.

Langton Matravers near Swanage, you’ve got Toms field (quite small, good facilities, likely to be booked up) or Acton field (a bit more basic, but more likely to have space at short notice).

There’s also a large but very basic (portaloos) farm site up the road in Worth Matravers which opens for a few weeks every year during the school hols.

The Kings Arms in Langton is a very serviceable local pub and then you’ve got the one-and-only Square & Compass over in Worth…

The nukeproof semi metallic pads work fine for me. The only downside is you don’t get a replacement split pin with them so you’ll need to reuse the bolt or split pin you’ve already got.

Langdale pikes loop is a classic outing and also easy to extend / cut short depending on levels of enthusiasm.

And you’ve got the Stickle Barn pub to sit out with food and a pint afterwards, perfect!

(3) is a boggy trudge and not rideable in any useful way.

There are 11 net contributors to the EU budget, out of 27 countries

If there were 27 net contributors then the EU would be sitting on an ever growing cash mountain. They have to *spend* the contributions somewhere.

I’ve found that my rear tyre is 7-8mm taller than the front and I lack the trigonometric expertise to calculate the difference this makes to the head angle over the wheel base, but I shouldn’t think it makes 2 degrees difference.

It’s worth about 1/3 of a degree.

Each series nominates one event from theirs

Those events then count towards an overall “national/British” title

Its a good idea and already in use, the British fellrunning championships are done that way.

I don’t want avatars or signatures

+1, they’re awful pointless screen clutter.

@elliptic – the RH side has the “Don’t miss” block at the top so that’s what’s causing that column to remain in view regardless of whether there are ads there or not.

I know. But previously I could squeeze the browser window and it fell off the side (with a scroll bar to bring it back over).

Now I can’t, the site switches to mobile instead.

Widen the window to 1000px (which on my monitor is about half the overall display width) and you’ll get the desktop version

On my laptop it needs to be at least 3/4 of the screen width to get “desktop” which is much wider than I usually want the browser. In mobile mode the different format isn’t a problem but the monstrous font size definitely is.

The other thing is that (logged in as premier) in desktop mode 1/3 of the window is taken up by the blank strip down the RHS where the ads aren’t, which I can’t get rid of becase it switches to mobile when I squeeeze the browser window down…

Quite a steep winch up on tarmac through the woods, then gravelly farmtrack over the top of the moor.

Photos of Helvellyn today showing the snowline around 2500ft: clicky[/url]

Weekend weather forecast is looking a bit rough for the high fells, I’d be keeping options open but the low level riding around grisedale / claife / tilberthwaite is always a good fallback plan.

What are wtb rims like when it comes to mounting non wtb tyres? I know TCS tyres won’t play with Stans rims but how do Schwalbe or Maxxis tyres play with WTB rims?

GF has WTB wheels on her Process, can’t remember what rim exactly but Maxxis tyres work fine on them tubeless.

Other than that its a fair old winch up the road to get to the trailhead at Lydeard Hill, but from there you’re on the main trail system along the ridge line which is easy to follow – could just trundle out towards the coast as far as you fancy enjoying the view, or take your pick of the descents into the combes off the sides. (Prolly avoid Cockercombe and Great Wood though as that’s where the near-death inducing DH stuff lives!)

No need for them to be lawyers. They could just be trained lay people.

This system already exists, they’re called “magistrates”.

[oops… bit premature]

As an aside is a chain guide really needed on a 1x setup ? I thought part of the benefit was better chain tension / retention ?

Depends, many people do without, but I still get occasional chain drops on chattery fast/rocky stuff especially when the chain & rings are a bit worn. Less so on the hardtail than the FS though.

What tja said, and also to quote myself from another thread a while ago:-

I’ve had them in both shoulders for rotator cuff and bicep tendon problems.

It’ll take a few days for the joint to settle down from the disruption and the cortisone to take full effect.

After that, bear in mind it’s not a magic healing agent by itself, it’s just a strong anti-inflammatory which stays active in the joint for two or three months. This buys you some time to heal and re-strengthen the tendons progressively while in a less aggravated state. If you don’t do that systematically (ie do your exercises!) you’ll be back at square one when it wears off.

I’m sat at my desk in rural Somerset with all the doors and windows wide open, bit scared that I’m going to have to step outside soon…

Kirkstile Inn if you don’t mind driving over to Loweswater (20 mins or so).

Pembroke for me too, proper wild coastline facing out to the atlantic, big beaches, little remote villages.

Dorset is… very nice, but not exactly away-from-it-all (although it does have the Square & Compass as a trump card!)