This is important advice from an experienced multi-fuel stove user: DO NOT allow the seller to talk you into buying too big a stove. If the stove is too big you will be burning it turned down and it will become sooted up and the glass will always be smokey. Get a smaller stove and burn it harder, the flames will be cleaner, your flue won’t soot up so fast and the glass will remain clear. For an average to large room something like a Dovre 500 is more than adequate.

The second piece of advice is that your wood storage and drying arrangements are as important as the stove and the flue. The wood MUST be completely dry; you can tell it’s dry because two pieces will ring if you bang them together.

Finally, find a good chimney sweep and make him your best friend. He will set up the flue for you and arrange a rodding port for the annual sweep. Don’t allow some rubbish stove retailer to talk you into a liner at £75 a metre if you’ve already got a good flue or a class 1 flue; your sweep is the best judge of that.

Don’t buy a stove from the very prominent retailer in Ramsbottom, Lancs. His bloke has some kind of mental issue and we caught him urinating into a box of Mrs Gti’s possessions.

We had them in a dryer vent. If you make the place uncomfortable for them they will move on. You could start by blocking the flue for a couple of weeks, they won’t like the stuffy air. Failing that, just light a nice hot fire…..

I’m going to be 55 on 23 April but thanks to being up there amongst probably the fittest 1% of my age group I feel about 30.

This is what you can expect:

You hair and beard go grey. You have to work harder not to get fat. Your testosterone levels diminish dramatically so erections only happen once a day and you develop man boobs as the female hormones naturally present begin to predominate.Your eurethra loses its flexibility so you dribble for ages after passing urine. Your gums recede. Your physical strength diminishes so that easy DIY job becomes harder and you ache afterwards. You fart a lot after eating carbs. Sudden noises startle and irritate you. You are less tolerant of idiots.

On the plus side? Your self-assurance increases and you really don’t care a **** what people say or think about you. You seem better at avoiding trouble because you know the warning signs, you’ve been there before. Generally from a mental perspective getting older is pretty good; I wouldn’t want to be teenaged any more, those were terrible times. Your social confidence blossoms, shyness disappears and now I can waltz up to anybody who looks interesting, look them in the eye, greet them and chat about just about anything. Pity I’m married really as I’d be doing a lot of er, horizontal PT…..

Sorry if some of that depresses you.

This was meant to be a pic of Le Pont D’Avignon but some other features slipped in. *Cough*

I can’t give you a link ‘cos I’m at work and the web Police might just stitch me up but….

Google Axfords or Vollers for something that will make him VERY happy. Take this from a cyclist whose wife has already spent the money.

Just watch out for the steamer.

As somebody else wrote above, you’ll be wanting modern conveniences like halogens and heated mirrors and towel rails in the bathroom so I would bite the bullet and get it all done to a decent modern spec.

You didn’t skinny-dip in the burn afterwards to freshen up?

Used to be standard at the end of the ride when I was MTBing in Scotland.

The real problem comes later after a dry summer when the peat underneath catches fire and smoulders for days and days. Nobody can extinguish it and it creates dangerous voids in the peat.

I had the same with my Rebas. Took them back to Merlin Cycles and complained that they had started leaking when almost new and was rudely informed that I was not telling the truth and that I was supposed to maintain them. Insisted they look at them, got them back many days later – no better. Eventually I sent them to the distributor who couldn’t have been nicer about it. In the meantime I put some rigid carbon forks on the MTB so the (presumably repaired) Rebas are still sitting in my garage, unused. Dunno if I will ever bother with suspension forks again, they weigh a ton, cost a fortune, need maintaining and for a XC rider a carbon fork is plenty smooth enough.

Why not just buy an OS map and find somewhere else to ride? You’d be amazed at all the trails around your area – just look for the dashed green lines.

Just pick up some standard sunglasses and ask an optician to glaze them.

Even better, ask your optician to tell you the name of the backstreet bodger in your town where all the opticians send the repair jobs (when they’ve failed to persuade the punter to buy a new pair) and pay the bloke a visit – he will know a man who can glaze any frame for you, even cheapo ones from Decathlon. Then get a couple made up and if you lose them you haven’t lost much.

Simples.

A lot of what you can feel will be metal that’s been raised above the surface so it wouldn’t do any harm to polish it ever so gently with the finest wet ‘n dry or wire wool in the direction of the fork only then something abrasive like car polish, Brasso, T Cut, to try to smooth everything out and reduce the damage to the seal.

If that doesn’t work, off for a proper repair.

You’ll be relieved to know that the allergy will begin to die away as you reach your late forties. Probably.

Global TH 1.5 frame from Ride On built up with a medley of bits including now very rare Suntour XC Pro thumbshifters with original Hope minis (yes, it can be done!) and a rigid carbon fork, £85 off the web. The only time I miss the Rebas (which leaked oil like a good ‘un) is when you get a big hit like a brick or a big hole. Otherwise it rides dead smooth and is super lightweight.

Drafting is a skill seldom used in MTB riding as wind resistance is not usually significant, except perhaps on races or trailquest events where you’re temporarily on tarmac.

DON’T try to trim a hedge with a chainsaw. It will snag and jump violently.

Been mountain biking since 1988 and by 2009 I was getting stale; fed up with the messing around, the constant stops, the mud and worn out components, coming home filthy and the fact that every ride seemed to end in the pub… then I got a road bike and I have hardly touched the MTB since. My biggest regret is that I didn’t mix road and MTB from the start because I’m twice as fit now and would have done a lot better in races and Polaris events if I’d been this fit. There’s nothing as exhilarating as being in a small chain gang, riding your nuts off, doing “through and off” and scaring yourself to death. My obsession with cycling has been reborn. I’m beginning to understand the skill and subtlety of road riding and I’m amazed at how my horizons have expanded – if you’d told me four years ago that I would be cycling 50 to 100 miles for fun I’d have laughed at you. Now my cycling world is not just my valley and local fells but way beyond them and into the next county as well. I love it. Still enjoy the MTB but that’s just for the craic with mates.

This argument has been raging for about fifty years, since well before anybody invented mountain bikes. This is why the footpaths in popular walking areas like the Lakes are now well surfaced with rocks and steps all the way over the mountains. In the beginning mountaineers objected to footpath repairs but now that they’ve seen that it can be done sympathetically, I think most objections have died out.

Luckily trail centres exist for MTB riders who lack imagination or the ability to use a map and find decent mountain trails. In the national parks it’s said that 70% of visitors never venture more than 100 yards from the car park so if the same situation prevails with MTB trail centres it will keep most of the muppets off the wild trails where erosion really is a problem.

In the long term you don’t need to worry because teachers and outdoor pursuit leaders are complaining that kids are unfit and don’t want to go caving, climbing, cycling etc. My son’s school cycling club gets between 2 and 5 kids for its monthly rides, which is pathetic. It won’t be more than 20 years before those trails are reverting to nature.

You’re better off wild camping if you want any sleep at all; people don’t respect anybody else nowadays.

Angle Tarn above Patterdale is a lovely place and you can skinny-dip in the tarn.

I worked as a leader for Rambler’s Holidays there in summer 1980. The Buet from Grenairon depends on how much snow is on the approach; the long slope below the summit ridge might just avalanche if there was wet heavy snow and sometimes there is a big build up of old snow on the edge of the plateau. Best thing is to ‘phone the refuge before going as they will know. Technically it’s a doddle, just long and very very exposed to the sun. I walked up the Grenairon side and down a less known path to Chalets des Fonds and back to Sixt in one long day but I was pretty fit at that time. I’ve also done the Buet from Vallorcine with a night at the Refuge Berard, which is a nice route and shorter than via Grenairon. I took Mrs Gti as her introduction to Alpine walking.

TBH I wouldn’t bother taking a bike over the Buet, there would be a lot of carrying. I would take a bike from Sixt to Chamonix via a night at Chalets Moede Anterne though, that’s a fantastic route. The early morning start dropping into the mysterious green valley below Moede Anterne then climbing the Col du Brevent and the sudden stunning view of the Massif du Mont Blanc is an amazing experience.

As a Dad I would strongly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Toddler-Taming-bestselling-parenting/dp/0091902584/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302171843&sr=1-1

It explains clearly how to train children with reward and punishment, or reward and no reward if that’s what you prefer.

My belief is that you simply don’t have the right to cycle on a footpath. Which is not the same as being prohibited.

I’ve read most of the Ian Banks books and recently started on M with Consider Phlebus, which was excellent. Full of imaginative imagery and some unexpectedly gruesome bits and gave me a really good understanding of the immensity of the universe. The final battle in the tunnels didn’t do it for me though; I though he’d run out of ideas by then.

The cities are bliss compared with most of the countryside. People are living in unimproved Victorian and older houses all over the place, struggling to make ends meet and not heating their place properly. Just walk around any county outside the ones surrounding London. We mistake the squalor for picturesque rural quirkiness.

The High Street circuit is excellent but quite hairy-arsed as you’ll need to shoulder the bike up 1000 feet of hillside. It’s worth the effort though.

I’m told they are good for hangovers.

Is it cable or pneumatic? I have fitted three Geberit pneumatic flushes in our house and all three are performing fine after seven years.

Can’t help you on cable though.

Seconded. Buy the OS maps and get out there, the Lakes is almost unique in having hundreds of miles of ancient bridleways, which never got turned into roads and all well-surfaced and well drained. If a horse could do it, you can on your MTB.

Brisket should be quite fatty and loose in texture and the best way to cook it is to braise it very slowly; a slow cooker or Aga bottom oven is perfect. It should then be cooked all the way through and should just fall apart when you try to cut it.

I’ve had four articles published in STW, does that count?

I’ve got a carbon Spesh Roubaix roadie that’s got a witness crack in the thick brittle paint on one chainstay where the carbon tube joins the alloy dropout. I ride it with the tyres at 110 lbs, the wheels are pretty stiff Ksyriums. Local roads are shite, with loads of worn out top dressing and the odd cattle grid thrown in. The witness crack hasn’t grown at all in 2 years (I have close up photos) and the frame still rides like a dream, smooth, light, fast and flattering. I don’t worry about it breaking because I reckon it’s waaaay stronger than I think. If I ever hear creaking I will inspect it again (often do) and make a decision. Until then I will carry on thrashing it as I struggle to keep up with my riding buddy.

The cheapest option would be to buy lots of tape and go round taping all the gaps between the floors and the walls.

Calderdale, home of STW. It’s Britain’s best MTBing area by a long shot. Cheap beer too.

The clue is in the overhead costs. Ask anyone at STW about the cost of operating in the North West.

There’s a story that the chairman of Airtours, one of the UK’s most successful tour operators at one time, went to London to make a presentation about his company at some big ABTA conference. When he got to the slide of the company’s offices in a converted cotton mill in Helmshore, deepest Lancashire, the audience guffawed patronisingly. “You may laugh,” said the chairman, “but the difference is that the land on which my office stands costs one tenth of the land on which your offices stand!” The story goes that the meeting went horribly quiet as everybody considered the implications.

That Metronomy drummer looks like a very good tranny to me.

How would she say that in tweeting language? She doesn’t have many words at all, just chip chip chip chip chip endlessly whenever the cat is around.

Cleaning a year’s worth of Mrs Gti’s long hair out of the shower drain makes me heave; it’s always mixed up with scum, grease, black stuff and all kinds of nasties.

Crawling under the floor and rearranging the plastic soil pipes when I wanted to move the downstairs bog was grim, I was working in a 12″ space with my head right next to the open drain inhaling the fine odours rising from the street sewer. Floor is concrete on beams so I couldn’t do the job from above.

Yes – find the stopcock on the pipe from the header tank to the cylinder. If not, look for an isolator on the pipe to the tap.

You’ll be fine, your ankles hardly flex at all cycling, much less than when walking.

I walked up the summit cone of Mount Keen in my SPD shoes, it was fine though a bit gratey when the cleats were on rock.

Edit: those shoes look useful; what are they?