I’ve got an 11-46 on my Soul and was surprised how little the B-adjuster is screwed in. Working out the right chain length was trickier though.

It’s short on high gears though so I’ve got an 11-51 cassette on order for it (to use with a 36 or 38 up front) which should give it a pretty good range.

There is a segment near me called “The Exponential” which is 0.45km long and has 48m of ascent. The main route up is actually tarmac however it has 3 off-road routes up or down – one on smooth gravel and the other two (at either side of the road) on singletrack. Something like that would be a good option as you could even alter the routes up and down to make it (somewhat) less tedious. It’s also very fast to get down if you use the tarmac option.

Of course you would have to ride it a lot of times!

With the singlespeed gearing on that bike (which does look a bargain) you’d need to be pretty sure it didn’t run out of charge ’cause it’d be a lot of work getting it up a hill without assistance.

I have free maps loaded to my Edge 810 and it works fine for navigation. I don’t use it for that often but have downloaded the routes for club rides and it’s been good when the ride leader has had to go (or hasn’t turned up) and I’ve then been able to lead the group on the planned route.

I’m using Specialized Fast Trak’s on my Soul at the moment and am finding them good for summer use, and would be happy enough using them at a trail centre.

About the only improvement I can think off for that bike is to leave it outside for the scrotes to steal

I think you’d be waiting for quite a while before anyone would steal that.

I’ve done two lockdown (re)builds so far:

Changing my Soul from a heavy 3×9 build to a much lighter 1×11 set-up (oval 34 up front and an 11-46 cassette):

Changing my Inbred (which hadn’t been used since 2011!) from a rigid singlespeed to a geared 1×10 front suss set-up:

These are the ones I’m using, although they’re 104 BCD:

I’m trying one on my Soul at the moment (got it from Amazon where they can be had pretty cheaply) – can’t say I’ve noticed a benefit or not yet, but haven’t noticed any downsides either.

I had a minor shout at someone yesterday that decided it was ok to turn across the full-width of the road to reverse into his drive. Which would have been fine if he hadn’t done it right in front of me, meaning I had to take avoiding action as he crossed onto my side of the road right in front of me to do it. Initially I only glared at him but he then shouted to me that it was his driveway he was going into. I let him know that was good to know, as it meant I’d know exactly where to find him if I decided to boot f*ck out of him for trying to kill me. Normally I’d have ignored him however I was going uphill on a TT bike at the time and that hurts!

He’s not particularly anti-cyclist as I’ve seen him do the same when the oncoming traffic was cars (right down to the shouting to folks that he was going into his driveway). For some reason he seems to think it’s ok to not wait for an appropriate gap – even if that gap would mean waiting for 5 seconds.

We’ve had our rescue dog for 15 months and he’s already been up the west coast of Scotland several times and visited 10 of the Hebrides (and it’d be more by now if it hadn’t been for lockdown). He’s massively enhanced our lives. Here’s a picture from one of many lovely days walking with him somewhere scenic.

Don’t forget 6ft fence. Every dog owner should have a minimum of 6ft fences in their large enclosed garden.

We have a decent sized enclosed garden with a 6ft fence and that didn’t help us with the majority of rehoming centres.

It wasn’t that they said “no way, never” – just that not having dog experience meant that they didn’t have any dogs currently that they’d be willing to place with us (and in the case of the Dogs Trust they had a lot of dogs). When they did get dogs in that they’d be willing to rehome to someone without experience then it was a case of first come first served if you happened to visit that day.

Personally given our otherwise excellent circumstances for rehoming a dog then I thought we’d be worth a punt (maybe fostering a dog with a view to adopting it) but they weren’t interested.

If dogs home turns you away, maybe there a good reason

Pretty much what you’re saying is that no-one without prior dog experience should be allowed to get a dog, and that no-one with kids in the home should be allowed a dog either. And that no-one, full-stop, good or bad is allowed to breed dogs.

Total shite.

We had trouble getting a rescue dog due to neither my wife or I having had a dog before. That’s despite being otherwise ideal (e.g. garden with 6ft fence, no kids at home, retired wife who’s at home most of the time).

We did eventually got this lovely chap from one of the smaller rescue places though:

What do you remember most from when you first got into MTB’ing?

Being hugely unfit and overweight and struggling to ride up anything approaching a decent hill until I realised that the 28:38:48 and an 11:28 cassette that my cheapo Carrera came with weren’t really helping.

I’ve got too many bikes full-stop, although worst area for me is 26″ wheeled steel hardtails as I’ve 3 of those (Soul, BFe and Inbred). Tempted to let the Inbred go but it’s almost more valuable as a potential source of spares.

I’ve just rebuilt my Soul (one of the early 26″ wheeled ones) with an 1×11 drivetrain and some nice light wheels (the 1400g or so Hope Hoops with the wierd 3-bolt discs) and pretty much the only bit that’s remained unchanged is the cheapo Deore brakes as they work really well.

I might upgrade them at some point but I suspect it won’t really give any performance advantage.

Similar to what other folks have mentioned, a key thing on climbs is weight – and the only thing I’ve found really effective for me in getting the weight off was running.

I still need to lose a fair bit of weight to be actually any good on the climbs though! At the moment my times on flat or downhill Strava segments are fine (as long as they’re not technical – I’m crap at anything technical!) but on any decent climb I’m usually struggling amongst the bottom half (or for road climbs, the bottom third) of all the folks that have done them.

I suspect I have the least technical ability of anyone who posts on here!

I’ve never been particularly great but getting back into mountain biking after a few years mostly road riding and even the few technical skills I used to have are now gone.

The Pentland hill car-parks were perhaps the busiest I’ve ever seen them when we walked by earlier. Most people still behaving themselves but several largish groups of mountain bikers out, lots of folks mixing on the beach bits at Thriepmuir including a lot of groups of swimmer. Quite a few folks camping around the reservoirs as well. Quite a few folks (walkers, runners and cyclists) that don’t observe social distancing when passing folks.

Overall it’s great to see such a great resource being well used, with just a few idiots.

Brakes pretty much the only area where Hope can supply spares that Shimano can’t?

My experience with Hope brakes via Shimano is that it’s just as well you can get Hope spares as you’ll probably need them.

I’ve started to use my mountain bikes again after most of them not being used much (or in some cases, at all) in the last 8 or 9 years. In every case the Shimano brakes have worked fine, but in every case of the non-Shimano brakes (Magura, Avid and Hope) they haven’t. So much so that nearly all the bikes are on Shimano brakes now.

The Lightning was designed to be an interceptor rather than a fighter – hence why it’s pretty much a case of strapping a pilot and weapons onto a couple of big jet engines.

While it’s a sellers market at the moment that does seem pricey to me, especially compared to the £380 I got yesterday for a 2010 Boardman Team Carbon on 10-speed Rival via facebook marketplace. I’d originally listed it at £400 but didn’t get much interest, but when I lowered the price slightly it was gone in a couple of hours.

Sold a road bike via marketplace today and it was just a case of putting me in touch with the buyer, who turned up in person with cash to pay for the bike.

I’d listed it a week back at a higher price, but when I dropped the price by £25 at lunchtime today I was inundated with contacts asking about it and it was gone my mid-afternoon.

I still have those Shimano MTB dual-control shifters one a few of my bikes, including XTR ones on my Epic and LX on my Enduro I think. I prefer them to the more normal shifters!

I’ve found PX considerably better for delivery times than Wiggle at the moment, possibly due to Wiggle switching to (*shudder*) Hermes.

My e-bike experience is that it is wonderful up to 15.5 mph and then you are suddenly on your own turning the motor as well as the bike and it is like hitting a wall trying to get faster.

I had that demonstrated earlier this week when I passed a guy on a e-MTB on a road section. He had a go at catching me and initially did ok as I was maybe doing 14 to 15mph when I passed him, however a minor burst from to over 15.5mph and he gave up straight away when his assist cut out.

In London there seemed to be loads of chipped e-Bikes being used for commuting and they were a menace in the cycle lanes – very like the situation in Holland in fact, where scooters are allowed in their cycle lanes. Not quite such an issue if they stick to the roads but if you were involved in an accident (even a no-fault one such as a pedestrian stepping out in front of you) then I’d anticipate big problems.

I was thinking about getting new forks for my Soul as I wanted a more XC build so was looking for something lighter than the Pikes that were on it. There didn’t seem to be much about new so I did look at 2nd hand however decided in the end to just stick an ancient set of 85-125 Fox Talas from my spares bin onto it. God knows how old the are, but they still seem to be working fine.

If I needed another set I think I’d be going down the 2nd hand route, however some of the better condition 26″ stuff on Ebay does look quite pricey now.

Road gravel and hardtail: A
Full-suspension: B

I used to always use a hydration pack when mountain biking but have moved back to using a bottle lately, possibly because in the last few years I’ve been riding the road bike more and that’s what I’m now used to.

If you want to be close to a doctor absolutely forget living in Poolewe or anywhere like it.

There is a medical practice based in Gairloch that covers the area.

Working on my Edge and Fenix.

After languishing almost unused for nearly a decade I put my Soul back into a more useful XC spec (really just faster tyres and replacing the Pike forks with the Fox Talas that it had on before) and it much nicer to ride like that, so should be back to seeing some decent use.

Another Halfords Pro user here, and very nice it is too.

I’m 5’9″ and a bit and tend to ride 54 road bikes although sometimes I find I prefer their 56’s. While it is of course down to personal preferences I wouldn’t have thought a 54 is unreasonable if it feels comfortable.

I suppose that depends on the kids definition of amenities, and the OP’s views on 75 miles on single carriageway to get to Inverness = good transport links.

It’d meet my definition certainly, as there is most of the stuff you need in the area (decent school in Gairloch, swimming pool in Poolewe, quite a few shops and places to eat or drink out). You also don’t have to go anything like as far as Inverness to get a train for example, although Inverness is the closest airport. The roads around there are generally pretty good as well.

Ullapool is the nearest Tesco and, as well as being a lovely drive, I can get from Gairloch to there quicker by car than I can get from my office in Leith to home in Balerno in rush hour sometimes.

Our experience with the Dogs Trust (who do great work) is that they are very conservative about placing dogs. Despite our inexperience I thought the other factors meant we were worth a try (maybe even offering fostering first), but we were pretty much told we’d have no chance getting a dog from them.

A lot of the dogs they had in had been unsuccessfully re-homed previously (in some cases multiple times) but there were definitely some that I think we’d have been fine with.

I’m looking to getting away in the motorhome however I cannot imagine what the carnage is going to be like when that’s allowed again.

I’d be looking around Gairloch/Poolewe if it was me. There are usually plots available there, although most will be smaller than 1/4 acre.

Given I did pretty much none last year (got a dog so switched to walking him as my main exercise) then despite only having done 749km this year (according to Strava) it’s still 749km more that this time last year. That’s all during lockdown and, apart from one ride in April, all in May and June.

My mileage is never going to by high though, as I’m onlu really doing 60 to 90 minute rides in the evenings.

I don’t have a privacy zone set-up, but I do have a large and very loud dog.