Losing grip can be down to a few things, and is not entirely due to pressing on the front of the bike or lack of. As pointed out above, you get a lot of front wheel weight without pressing the ‘bars at all, because when you have rider weight carried down through the bike via bottom bracket it weights both wheels.

One thing that makes tyres lose traction is small steering inputs – if you deviate from a smooth arc the little steering inputs challenge the tyre and can break traction. It is a very good idea to look much further away – not just to the apex but right through the trail as far as you can see. Then you are much less inclined to wiggle about and second guess your line, and it will stick more.

Think about what the roads are like around you before you get some super stiff low spoke count aero factory wheels. It’s alright for the pro’s, ‘cos they can just junk a wheel when it goes, but in the real world factory wheels are more difficult to repair, less comfortable and less tough.

Decent quality handbuilts are not that much heavier, more comfortable, easier to fix and reliable.

Depends what will fit in your frame. 26″ wheel is a weird suggestion – how are the brakes going to work?! Touring tyres at 28mm offer a lot more comfort and protection, and road brakes will still work if they are the long drop kind (and there is enough clearance in the frame). Even 25mm tyres are appreciably more comfy and secure than 23s.

What bike is it?

Posh decor + new owners = muddy cyclists not welcome…

It hasn’t been overly poshed! Basically the same, but a bit straightened up and clean.

Was there at the end of last Summer, what was wrong with it? seemed like a perfectly normal country pub to me.

Unfortunately it was doing very little business, and went through a succession of managers and lost it’s direction. Compared to the glory days when Jan and Maria had it and it was a genuine hub of the village and quite frankly a great laugh it had become more than a bit sad.

Decent country pubs are a very rare thing.

The juxtaposition of church and pub (with duck pond merely for quaint Englishness) is rather classic – very good for weddings, baptisms and (sadly) funerals!

Yep – it sure is a location that is hard to beat; with the holy trinity of church, pond and pub and a nice sunny aspect. Sadly I don’t think we’ll be getting cheap food or beer, but they have spent quite a lot of money.

A bit of remedial work on BKB will be in the pipeline pretty soon, I would guess. There is an officially sanctioned group, doing things in an approved manner. Dull though that might sound, nothing else is going to be officially allowed. It’s actually way too dry at the moment though.

It is a frustrating business, because it is very difficult to get a concensus. However, being constructive and open is better in my mind – even if the scale of legitimate trail maintenance is relatively modest.

Just a little word to the wise – Pitch and Winterfold could be good places to go and sniff out trails. Possibly.

Forestry is inherently messy, but thinning is essential and will be for the better in the much longer term.

Don’t really care what anyone else thinks, but do have a self-respect issue with details such as what shoes and pedals etc… I prefer mtb (recessed) cleats and boring old Shimano touring/mtb leisure shoes. I don’t think they look wrong, particularly on my road bike, which is Audax/light tour/winter trainer style. I ride to work (12.5 miles) and just wear the cycle shoes with jeans at work – they’re kinda brown and black suede, and quite inconspicuous.

For a proper racer road bike I think I would feel obliged to get some proper road shoes – but that’s not a great bike for just riding about anyway…

As for flat pedals on a raod bike – well, a Dutch shopper or any old pub bike would be fine, but anything with drop bars deserves clipping-in. If the bike is sufficiently old, toe straps would be perfectly acceptable, ableit with the correct shoes!

That’s the point though, it’s no distance from cranleigh either, just the other end!

I’m even more spoiled – I can more or less freewheel to Holmbury Hill, or put it another way, I’m half way up Leith Hill.

Also, the shop at Smithbrook Kilns do rides, don’t they? If I were looking for new routes around Cranleigh, that’s where I would ask.

I do have to confess, it is rather easy for me to say that you can just ride to Surrey Hills, since I don’t actually have to ride any distance at all! Having said that, If I were going out around Box Hill, or North Downs to Riegate etc then I would just ride there – not worth getting the bike in the car. And I can have a few beers!

It’s not really mountain biking, as we now think of it, but the Downslink will get you to the South Downs in a couple of hours – turning right and riding to QE Park and then into Petersfield gets you to a train station to get back to Guildford. Nice long day out of the old school variety.

Blimey. Have to drive to Peaslake?

Have you looked at a map at all? Just ride out of Cranleigh, turn left up that road up to Winterfold (which is a bugger on a road bike, but a doddle in the granny ring) – hey presto you’re there.

I had one, back in the days when I used to drive too fast! Brilliant backroads car. The pedals would have been really good for heel and toe, but the brake bite was too low.

geetee – nothing extra but have a look around and they are bearing fruit – hurts mainly

OK i really don’t get that! The Hurtwood is so named for the hurts. That’s the local name for the bilberrys, which are characteristic of Pitch, Holmbury, Abinger Common woods. The prevalence of this heathland plant in woodland here is unusual, and evidence of the more open less wooded character of the hills in previous times.

As or the OP – get in there, please do. As always there is misunderstanding and conflict and it can only help if we get on the inside and be known as normal people that care about the countryside.

Got PRO Vibe carbon bars on my road bike – really like them. Also got alloy stem and seat pin – also very nice, but shiny finish is a challenge for clamping.

And I still get loads of abuse from twatooed 29ers and fat blokes on never ridden off road Patriots at Peaslake.

Thanks for that – put a smile on my face!

The OP really describes what used to be known as going for a ride! Now we have great legions of people who quite literally never bike on a road and think that mountain biking by definition involves putting the bike in the car.

Each to their own, but mountain bike rides with new places to discover, views, pubs, places etc are a great thing – it doesn’t have to be singletrack all the way.

It looks to me like the best they could do in that site. Pictures and videos flatten things down quite a lot – at race pace with riders all round some of the steeper lines look difficult enough to me? I can’t quite figure what people are expecting?

I don’t have a ‘crosser, but I have ridden my road bike offroad a fair bit… The thing about hoods vs drops is a tricky one, because the ever present problem with general riding offroad is being way too far over the front and not being easily able to get back on to your feet, rather than riding on your hands. Braking from the hoods isn’t as good as in the drops, sure, but that only becomes a problem every now and then, whereas riding too much in the front of the bike is a problem all the time. So my preference is for weaker braking but better weight distribution front/back.

So – very loose on the ‘bars and let the bike jiggle through, and think way ahead ‘cos you don’t have the brakes for last gasp situations.

Seems to me that the majority of car drivers already prefer the car in front to do the driving for them – going so close that all they can do is constantly react to what the car in front does; always on the brakes because the car in front dabs; unable to see the road ahead so relying on the other driver’s view.

If you are really enthusiastic about driving your own car yourself, then do everything you can to get away, further back, from the car in front.

As for the OP – things like this will come in more and more as we realise that our car is not part of our castle.

I have to add a confession that I have run fully into the back of a parked car at night, nevermind strayed too close to a door. Accidents happen, glad you’re ok.

and cycling 3 feet in the middle of the road isnt something I would do with or without lights

What? 3 feet is nothing. Guideline is no closer to the edge than 2 feet, and I find that’s a little snug. Seriously – get in the road, not the gutter. (Actually, guideline is to be right out in the middle of the road, and then move to the left if you judge it safe to allow a car past.)

Glad you’re not injured by the way, but seriously – it is defensive riding to take your space and get noticed. Snug to a line of parked cars is in the blind spot of those cars – he maybe wouldn’t have seen you with lights.

It’s the noise – so satisfying.

All you naysayers either didn’t watch last season, or have extremely selective memory of any other period of F1. Overtaking has always been difficult in F1. It is supposed to be difficult!

Only a few more days – I can’t bloody wait!

Oh – and I did try and watch the Moto GP. Jeez.

So the law of entropy, ie that entropy always increases, signals the “arrow of time”.

So – in the early universe, when clouds of particles were swirling around and forming into lumps, was time running backwards? Entropy was decreasing as things formed into stars, planets, other lumps.

The Lewis Jenson tyre thing is interesting – Jenson is famously smooth, but also famously not happy with a car that misbehaves, which is more Lewis’ forte. So the question becomes will the tyres be consistent and then go off, or will their feel constantly change throughout their performance window?

So many interesting facets to it.

As for sandbagging – not McLaren! I think it might be true that we haven’t seen a full quali run from Red Bull though, plus some teams still haven’t got all their best bits on, notably Ferrari.

I’ve only just clocked Amos’ post – are you at Williams?

Even the wheelbase could be amended – Red Bull did that by extending the wishbone angle further back to accommodate the DDD. You are right about the F-duct, because McLaren had a hole in their tub, but even that got copied with varying degrees of success.

I think the main point of the no-changy-your-chassis rule is to stop teams building cars specific to certain circuits, as has happened in the past.

Not quite – they could change the sidepods, exhausts, other packaging such as KERS and other cooling (I think – there was talk at one point about homologating radiators as well, but I think it is just the tub that can’t cahange).

So with the possible exception of the side impact structures I think they can change quite a lot. By the sounds of it they will be looking for a different exhaust solution that doesn’t cook the back of the car.

reckon Lewis will be able to do a kubica and drive beyond the car?

No chance. The car doesn’t look like it will make it to the end of the race at the moment, and to make it reliable they’ll have to make it even slower.

B-spec McLaren is already being built, is my guess.

Well – turns out the bodywork exists! Remains to be seen if it actually runs! Daft Playstation livery to my eyes.

Testing was fun, unless you’re a McLaren fan. Can’t wait for kick-off now.

– Can McLaren do a race distance? You have to assume not, unless they reconfigure the car. Double trouble for them if their problem overheats the gearbox as well the exhausts, because there are penalties for gearbox changes.

– Are Williams going to be up there? Doing well in Q3 and scoring big points? I do hope so.

– Are the Red Bull and Ferrari (and perhaps even Merc) closely matched? That would be excellent too. Got a feeling the Red Bull has got quite a bit up its sleeve though…

I’m waking up to the census deserving more than just being taken at face value.

For starters I’m not happy with Lockheed Marting running the whole thing.

In 2001, I’ve just read, three million people declined to cooperate with the census. Less than 100 were prosecuted.

I’m by no means committed to doing it.

bump

That’s a “no” then?

The why is simple – more efficient.

The how is more tricky than it sounds.

Can the season start now please? Quite enjoy the build up, but getting bored of baiting McLaren fanboys now.

I remember last year thinking that I should have taken time to understand how the scoring works – obviously I still haven’t!

It takes a surprising amount of concentration. Aim for 80-90 rpm.

Try and keep nice and still from the hips up. Some people find it helps to imagine sitting down into the saddle more hard (clumsy sentence, hope it makes sense). As you press into the saddle more it stops you from doing the stamp down on the downstroke of the pedal.

Aim for a more turbine like sensation, rather than the chug chug of slow cadence – a rotary engine, not a canal boat!

Entered. “Not From London”.

That blimin’ tie breaker – I just could not get it work by typing the colons, so in the end I copied and pasted their example and changed the time.

Quite happy with my team – I agree that Fernando is going to have a good year.

Sold his house for 3 million over it’s valuation to Kazaks he is doing business with? Hmm.

Oh, by the way, the house that was given to him gratis – in other words paid for us by us.

I’ll try it again – I was def using the same format (colons, no spaces).

OK – why can’t I figure out the tie-breaker format? Do you punctuate the time with colons, like their example? Do you need to put something in the description field?

Also what i find rediciouls is speed cameras right outside a school, drivers are more intrested in looking at there speedos to make sure there doing 30 than watching for kids stepping / running into the road.
Its ok blaming the drivers, but id say half of fatel incidents with pedestrians is down to the pedestrians, that step out probably drunk or drugged up on a Fri or Sat night.

Why do you need to look at your speedo? Just get your foot off the accelerator and roll along!