I’ve used snow socks on a previous car (a rear-wheel drive Merc) and they were very effective but not really useful for longer use.

Now we have a place in the Cairngorms and travel up their each week I’ve fitted Michelin CrossClimates to my current rear-wheel drive Merc and so far I’ve been impressed by them – enough that my wife’s SLK will be getting a set too.

For something special it’d be in Ti from Enigma, however I bet the Roubaix is better in practice.

What about a 2nd hand Roadrat?

I just bought one of those kits recently although haven’t tried it yet.

Wow. Your heaviest bike is 28lb?! That’s good going.

Most of my other bikes are hardtails (and not particularly light ones, ranging from 24 to 26lbs) and my other two full-suss bikes (a Specialized Epic and an S-Works Enduro) are lightish. It’s the S-Works Enduro that’s 28lbs. All of my mountain bikes are very also old!

Actually I forgot one that’s heavier than the S-Works Enduro! My BFe is about 30lb.

My RX100 Mk3 has survived a lot of mountain biking trips as well as getting used on hillwalk and dogwalks (which in my case are pretty much the same thing) etc. – in all sorts of conditions. For mountain biking mine doesn’t live in a case but instead gets wrapped in a freezer bag and goes into one of the side pockets on the waist belt of my hydration pack. I’m a wuss so don’t crash a lot but it has survived a few offs including one quite heavy one.

If I broke it I’d definitely get another one.

All my currently Strava KOM’s (not that I have many!) were set on my 26″ wheeled Soul (one of the early ones) so it’s definitely not slow. It does depend on built though. Prior to its latest rebuild (back to a sort of XC spec) my bike was running heavy wheels, types and coil forks and while fun it wasn’t quick.

Mine is on 100mm Fox Floats, very light Hope Pro-3 wheels, Specalised Fast Trak tyres and a 1×11 build with a 36t up from and 11-46 cassette. It’s not that light at 25lbs but it’s definitely quick on XC type trails (until it runs out of gears, which is one reason why my 3×9 Epic is faster than it).

I use a Sony RX100 Mk3 and the main reason for getting that was due to the EVF (I’m older and having the diopter adjustment with theEVF which it saves me having to stick my reading glasses on – that plus screens are crap in bright sunlight). It also has a larger sensor than most compacts and is a very capable camera. They’re quite expensive new but the mk3’s (which were the first ones with the pop-up EVF) aren’t that expensive 2nd hand.

Yeah I’ve done this too, was a great ride. Didn’t follow the Ride to the Sun route, but instead went through Longtown, Langholm, Eskdalemuir, Mountbenger, Inners, Temple etc. Once past Longtown/Langholm hardly any traffic at all

I followed the B7076 up to Moffat, which has a cycle path alongside but doesn’t need it as all the traffic is on the M74. From Moffat I followed the A701 up over the Devil’s Beef Tub and onto Broughton then hacked over the back roads to the west side of Edinburgh and home. Very little traffic on any of it and generally decent road surfaces as well.

The route over Eskdalemuir etc. I’ve driven (and ridden the motorbike on) many times but never cycled – should be great on a bike though. Might do that route next time.

From the central belt you could always do something like get the train to Carlisle and ride back – I did that a few years back and it was a decent 100 mile or so route, on quiet roads.

Rega Planar 1 is the default recommendation for a 1st proper turnable – easy to set-up, low maintenance, sounds good and is cheap. I’ve bought them for both of my kids.

I’ve converted several of my 26″ wheeled bikes to 1x now – some 10 speed and some 11 speed. The best option at the moment for me is the 11-speed 11-51 Deore cassette and matching Deore mech, as that means you can run something like a 36t chainring (or even bigger if it’ll fit) and get a very decent spread of gears. Given the mech is designed for that size of cassette it’s very easy to set-up.

The stuff can be a little difficult to locate in the UK however I’ve just had a cassette, rear mech, chain and shifter arrive in China (bought via Ebay) in 3-weeks for something like £107 (including delivery) and that’s all genuine Shimano bits.

I’m using the 11-51 Shimano cassette on one of my bikes at the moment but for that I decided to get the very long cage Deore mech that’s designed for it and that works well and was easy to set-up.

One of my other bikes is 11-speed using the 11-46 and I think that has an XT mech so I might try that with the wheel with the 11-51 to see if it works.

Alternatively, my wife (who’s only been biking for a couple of years now) absolutely loved cycling in Holland, and if you asked her she probably doesn’t even recall mopeds, petrol or electric, in the same space as us (they were!)

On the outskirts of Amsterdam it was fine as the cycle paths were pretty quiet, but near the centre it was horrible – one of the worst cities I’ve ridden a bike in which was a surprise.

I’m pretty sure it’s not allowed, just **** not following rule 1.

They are allowed in a lot of the bike lanes sadly – some peds limited to 30mph and some only allow peds limited to 20mph (and folks don’t need to wear helmets on those). Lots of people ignoring the rules as well though.

I’ve ridden in the bike lanes in Amsterdam where they allow mopeds in them and found that horrible (and my wife who’s a lot less experience on a bike than me really hated it so we ended up locking the bikes up and walking instead). So I’d very much be against this unless the bikes were registered, insured and ridden on-road rather than in the bike lanes.

We did the NC500 (or at least most of the route) long before it was called that, both in a motorhome and by motorbike. Lovely part of the world and back then, very quiet.

These days we still go up the north west coast in the motorhome at least once or twice a year, but definitely wouldn’t go in the summer as it’s far too busy and this year looks like it’s a lot worse than normal – especially as some of the campsites aren’t opening.

We’ll be back up that way again in October or November (and possibly again at New Year) and really hope this summers antics won’t have done too much damage. We use campsites most of the time up there but do wild camp a bit (without leaving any traces and we usually do the arrive late and leave early approach) especially later in the year when there aren’t many campsite options.

I’ve no particular issue with running a front mech (one of my XC bikes is 2x and the other still a 3x setup) however some folks do struggle with the combination of front and rear shifters – especially if they are new or infrequent riders. My wife is one of those so I’m going to go 1x on her bike now it’s easy and reasonably cheap to do that. She’s probably going to get either 1×10 with a 32 on the front and 11-42 on back or possible 1×11 with the 11-51 cassette and probably a 34t.

I’ve got 1×11 with an 11-51 on one of the bikes already and have ordered one of the kits from China with the cassette, mech, shifter and chain (which are all supposed to be Shimano) for about £100 so I’m hoping that does indeed arrive at some point.

Without an admission from the perpetrators then I can’t see a murder conviction being likely, and if the sentencing ends up being towards the higher end of the available scale then I think justice will have been served about as well as is practical under the circumstances.

I’ve generally gone with either Specialized or Shimano for shoes in the past but over the last few months bought some cheap Planet-X ones and initial impression on those is fine. No idea how well they’ll last compared to the Specialized and Shimano ones (which were both good).

Tyres can make a huge difference. I’ve been messing around with a power meter on my mountain bikes and have been quite surprised just how much difference tyres make to speed for similar power inputs.

Just checked and it is an XT mech and working fine with just the standard b-screw. I thought I might have to use a longer one but didn’t need it. I had a 32t on it before but it’s a 26″ wheeled bike set up more for XC so while it was good at the low end it was a bit short on the flat. Would have been good for trail centre “winch and plummet” type stuff though.

I’m pretty sure one of my bikes is using an XT rear mech and an 11-42 cassette in a 1×10 setup, with a 34t chainring.

We’ve not strayed that far from home (Edinburgh) yet and it seems patchy. The Pentland Hills are as busy as I’ve ever seen them but once away from the car-parks there are still plenty of very quiet areas.

Last weekend we did a drive down to the borders, over one of my favourite roads that runs past the Talla and Megget reservoirs. I knew there would be some wild campers there but a couple of the car-parks beside the Megget reservoir looked like campsites with a variety of motorhomes, campervans and tents. We then headed down the A708 towards Moffat and the Grey Mare’s Tail car-park (and the surrounding roads) were insanely busy – must have been hundreds of cars. From what we could see of the path up to the waterfall it looked like the pics you sometimes see of people queuing to get up the Hillary Step on Everest.

The weekend before we’d been down to Melrose (which is a lovely town) to give our motorhome it’s first post-lockdown run and the town and campsite were both pretty quiet. That was before the restrictions were lifted on using campsite facilities though.

I’ve got too many, but have been riding them all recently.

Most used is a Soul, now running 1×11 and with a lightish XC build:

Next up is one I build up mostly from spare parts I had lying around as I wanted to try out a 2×10 set-up (although it was still on 1×10 in this shot). It’s fairly light (although could do with lighter wheels) and quite fast so has been seeing a fair bit of use since I built it:

Also have an Inbred, currently on 1×10 but I’ve got an Alfine set-up coming for it and it’ll then be my winter bike.

Final one is a BFe, which gets some use but not as much as the others – probably because it’s a lot heavier than the rest and the longer travel forks aren’t really necessary in the Pentlands:

I’ve got a few full-suss bikes as well but of late have been riding the hardtails more.

You don’t have to go as far as slicks to make a hardtail reasonably fast on tarmac or gravel – something like Specialized Hardpack are decent off road without being too draggy on-road.

I’ve not got a drop barred gravel bike but I do have a flat bar Roadrat with 700cx40 gravel tyres on and that’s fun to ride on or off-road and fairly capable off-road as well. It is noticeable though that my XC style bikes are faster than it (they’re also lighter though) on most off-road sections – all my current KOM’s are rideable on gravel bikes but the KOM was set on a mountain bike.

What mbike is that? Must be a Kawa with that colour… unless some Yam MT. cannot make it out ;/

Honda MSX125 also known as a Grom. It’s tiny and only weighs about 100kg.

On payloads – ours is a 3850kg van so quite a decent payload (850kg I think) but it can be an issue with the 3500kg vans.

The garages under traverse double beds can be pretty big – this is the one in our Rollerteam 600G. That one is a bit over 7m but I have seem some smaller vans with garages that are similar size.

We use a storage place to keep ours it, so that might be an option if you want a bigger van but don’t have space at home.

Our previous motorhome was about 6.5m I think (a CI Carioca 656) and it had a garage over bunk beds (the bottom bunk could be flipped up to make more room in the garage). I’m pretty sure that’d have taken 3 bikes although I doubt I’d have tried it as we used both bunks in that van as that was when we still holidayed with our kids. Instead we had a 4-bike rack on the back.

The garage in that was probably smaller than the one you listed, although ours did have doors on both sides of the garage.

The current van is a bit bigger (7.3m I think) and has a garage under a double bed and that has room for loads of bikes (I’ve definitely had 5 in it at times).

Based on personal experience with Hope’s then I’ve tended to find the best way to improve them is to take them off and stick something from Shimano on instead.

It’s not that I found them particularly bad – they just seem to need a bit more maintenance as well having a more fiddly initial set-up to get them working well.

The pie shop in Lochinver doesn’t allow dogs in the cafe bit sadly, however they do takeaway pie and mash which is excellent.

A lot of my local routes start with an initial climb of about 150-200m over about 4km, starting straight from the door with roughly a 50:50 split between tarmac and off-road (with an average of 4% gradient but with some bits into double figures). It’s never much fun doing that with cold legs but the upside is that once it’s finished that’s the worst of the climbing done as it’s about half of the total climbing on that route, and the rest is mostly pretty gradual.

I live about 600ft up on the edge of the Pentland hills and that means my mountain bike rides tend to end with a descent to home, but my road bike roads usually end with a climb.

I think e-Bikes are wonderful things, especially for folks with health issues. It sounds like they’d also be great if you mostly ride trail centres as you’re likely to be able to get twice as many runs in as otherwise.

I don’t have any specific health issues (yet!) other than being overweight and under-fit – both of which are fixable and entirely under my control – but I’d be concerned that for someone like me an eBike would just become an excuse for not getting any fitter, so I’ve no intention of even trying one at the moment. I do expect that’ll change at some point in the future though.

4 years old! That’d be regarded as new in my fleet!

Personally I’d be included to upgrade it as that means you can put the good stuff on there, not the stuff that the manufacturer put on it to meet a certain price point.

My Epic is 17 years old now and massively better (and a lot lighter) than it was when it was new, as a rolling process of upgrades has meant it’s got much better kit on it now than it came with.

Some of the M520’s I’m using must be at least 15 years old and I can’t think they’ve given any trouble in that time, despite zero maintenance.

My Epic has had everything replaced on it except the original LX front mech which is now 17 years old and still refusing to die. I’ve got an XTR one to go on in the parts bin but refuse to fit it until the LX one is worn out, but looks like that’s never going to happen.

I’ve gone 1x on nearly all of my mountain bikes now, however the one that’s still on 3×9 is my Epic and I’m struggling to see what an acceptable 1x set-up would be on that unless I went 12-speed to allow a cassette with a 10t smallest cog.

1x works fine on the other bikes as I don’t miss the high gears all that much on them, but I definitely would on the Epic.

My old Soul was on a pretty heavy build (Pikes, heavy wheels and tyres and not a particularly light drivetrain) until recently when it lost 5lbs, with a good chunk (maybe even most) of that being in the wheels and tyres. As well as being quite a bit lighter it also not only feels faster but results on Strava suggest it is actually a good bit faster in practice (I’ve even had a couple of KOM’s on it). How much of that is me riding it faster ’cause it feels better, and how much is due to the weight loss, is debateable though.

This is my argument for lightweight in general, although I would love to spend time on a good aero bike to see if aero FEELS faster.

For my road bike (which normally has a set of light Dura-Ace wheels on) I occasionally borrow the deep rim aero wheels from my TT bike. I’ve yet to be convinced if those are noticeably faster in practice but they make a nice noise at speed so sound faster! The’re a bit heavier than my normal wheels though, so don’t feel as lively when accelerating etc.