have a look at slovenia.

bikepacking.com has an article on it. magnificent scenery. quiet, especially the gravel routes.plenty of hotels and bob’s  can be hilly but that’s what gears are for!  komoot was great for planning a gravel route.

I bought a tempest frame 2 years ago, built it up with flat bars, triplechainset and good wheels. I love it, on the road, bike packing, gravel sportives and a blast on red mbt trails. thoroughly recommend. rarely use the mbt now!

i have a flat bar gravel bike, use it for the weekly gravel rides, bike packing holidays and gravel sportives. i built it using a 26′ titanium frame, 700 wheels and parts off an old full sus. it rides brilliant. the only downside is that it isn’t as cool as flared dropbars, and my mates slag me riding a hybrid !

every body has different fit, the speed cross just don’t suit me. on the other hand the saucony peregrine are perfect. i’m on my 4th pair. i use them for trail/gravel runs as they have a bit of comfort on the hard stuff, and used them today on a 20k open mountain run. i find them virtually as good a grip as the mud claw or iroc on the proper mountain terrain.

thanks for the info, i just fancied something different for a change ! Rotor do a crank with 24mm axle, but a bit more spendy

thanks simon, as dovebiker says, some have bigger (better) bearings? but after that what are the negatives?

https://pawpalsshop.com/products/double-shoulder-pet-carrier-backpack?variant=32861451452502&currency=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gclid=CjwKCAiAsaOBBhA4EiwAo0_AnFWbIFMSJn-WEHP6o_EepnDshFObNiYPjpgbiAF4f_1o9LKYNCi08xoCkI8QAvD_BwE

i use this one for an old dog that used to love galloping about in the hills. at 14 years old she gets a lift to the tops and is happy to trot downhill!
she sits inside, no paws out. she’s delighted with it, gets to look about. sometimes to the extent she doesn’t want to get out!

both my wife and daughter ride a 26″ mtb with 700 wheels. most of the 26 frames have space for a 700×35, and occasionally 700×38 or 40. nice pair of carbon forks sets it off!

i used works components 1.5 on a santa cruz hardball. it really did slacken and imo improved the ride for me. well pleased with the result. prob should have got for the 2.0 !

i have an Ican gravel frame and forks that was originally gravel setup for adventure races, before gravel was a fing. its now my road bike. my wife’s gravel bike is an ican 29er mtb frame and forks with hunt gravel wheels. they are now 6 or 7 years old and get a lot of abuse, used for light bike packing too. cheap, light frames built up with quality components.
I’m delighted with them both. needed a wee bit of frame prep before building up’ i remember having to face the brake mounts slightly.
highly recommend them, I’m just wondering now when i need to think about replacing them

thanks for that,
my problem is more specific, northern ireland is supposed to remain in the single market (eu), with a ‘border’ down the irish sea, and subject to eu regulations rather than GB. i have no idea how this affects online sales and suspect that most suppliers will have little interest in the intricacies of of northern ireland protocols !

anagallis – the driver with half a brain will benefit from as much help as possible, maybe we should all just wear camouflage and leave it to the drivers to work it out

wearing dark jerseys when road biking, especially in the winter is nuts! when the sun gets low you often just can’t see cyclists until you’re almost top of them. years ago a car driving pal pulled up in front of me and said, ‘you realise I didn’t see you”, I had a lovely black gore jacket, now only used on the mountain bike.

Especially with a low sun and wet conditions drivers can often miss cyclists particularly near the hedge on country roads. I always wear fluro colours on the road with a decent flashing LED, incidentally a lot of LED lights have a poor strength and many riders are wearing dark gear under the misapprehension that they are clearly visible with the LED.

There not much point arguing that the driver should be paying more attention when you are dressed in black, lying under the wheel of his car,

Plenty of them around my part of the world.They travel great in a local 100k gravel race, the Lakeland Gravel Grinder. There is also a couple used regularly on the local natural singletrack. All the owners rave about them as being great fun. A local bike shop gives demo rides on them!

anyway, not a scam, he just didn’t comprehend the cost of shipping and import duty ! we reached an amicable agreement to cancel

i think nanos are hard to beat, a great, light allrounder. they spin along happily on the road and handle gravel and single track really well.
mine have worn really well too, but just bought another pair for upcoming gravelgrinder.

i bought an ican cx frame and forks about 6 years ago. used it briefly as a gravel bike, now its my road bike. it was a wee bit roughly finished, i had to file or sand a few of the brake mounts etc, nothing major
it is a very comfortable bike especially on long trips. vey light and still love to ride it. great value about £340 for f and f at the time

i have precisely that. a planetx tempest with flat bars. i just upped one size, lengthening the effective top tube and then used a slightly longer stem.
I’m 6 foot tall, went for an XL and it fits and handles great. its not a gate and it doesn’t handle shit !! i suggest you use a bike fit calculator or take the measurements from your own bike if its comfortable, and then sift through the geometry stats on the various makes and models. for a flat bar bike the effective TT + stem needs to be about 30-40 mm longer than that of a dropped bar bike

jenson bike fit is a page on jenson bikes (usa) it takes about 6 or 7 body measurements and gives you various measurements to size and fit your bike. i find it quite good when setting a bike up initially for a new rider.

as per titusrider. i made a duct tape handle for a hacksaw blade. then spent a whole weekend sawing vertical lines down the inside of the post ( having first chopped off the top ) i used a large screwdriver and mallet to prise the pieces away from the tube. it was deadly slow, the post was very tightly adhered to the aluminium. the bike was a lovely metallic painted trek so i didn’t want to use a heat gun.
i found that the inside of the seat tube wasn’t linear, it was 27.2 for about 10 or 12 cms, it then widened out, the upshot of this was that the carbon expanded below the 27.2 section making it impossible to pull out without completely sawing it into slivers. like i say, a whole weekend of back and forth. it was eventually very satisfying and caused amazingly little damage to the seat tube.
i think you should also wear a mask, carbon fibre dust isn’t particularly healthy for your lungs!

sjs cycles have a 1 1/8 steerer carbon disc (gravel) fork at present, otherwise they are very hard to track down

my wife has a set of lightweight Hunts. very impressed with them, they’ve had a right bashing for two years and are still smooth and true. i don’t think you can do much better for the money

just installed Juin tech about 2 months ago on road bike. less wooden than TRP, nicer feel.and much stronger than avid BB7. maybe not as good as hydrolics but the best cable brakes I’ve tried.

someone very kindly sent me a private message re cranks, it seems to have disappeared off the message page/ or the page doesn’t load. if you see this post id be grateful if you message again, thanks

thanks pistonbroke. do you feel a tangible difference with the oval rings?

the first frame is an old titanium tinbred, it can take 38mm gravel tyres. its a large so has a long top tube, though strangely still fitted my short mate using a stubby stem. the second is a beautiful american frame that i got disc tabs fitted, it can take 40mm nanos, and the last one is my wife’s kona hei hei. it is only v brakes because i couldn’t deface it by welding on disc tabs. she uses it as a road bike, its just on the 9kg.

thanks, every day’s a school day!

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ok, should i open a flickr account?

now this gets tricky. do i load photos to picasso and then paste link ?

yep, I have family working in various sectors of the NHS, none of them are actually in medical wards, but all are receiving emails re “redeployment” The next month or two will be unimaginable as the covid wards fill up. my very best wishes and thoughts go out to all in the NHS, they’ll need more than a clap in the streets.

thanks scotsroutes, that’s an interesting combination. if you’re riding on the road, are the jumps in gears noticably big? I have one of those chinese carbon frames (cx) with a 50/34, its a very light and well balanced road bike. this autumn I was booked to bikepack tour Montenegro and I figured the slightly easier chainset might help in the mountains

apologies ! i meant GRX. has anyone tried GRX chainset with ultegra front mech and shifters. not supposed to be compatable I know, but maybe?

@happybiker the slovenia tour is absolutely brilliant. we did it 2 years ago. put the gpx on komoot and just followed the blue line! through all sorts of landscape, much of it on white gravel tracks. if possible give yourself an extra day or two in Bovec,on the soca river, a centre for all sorts of outdoor fun.( now that i remember, on advice we diverted to go down the soca valley – very beautiful )
this year we are off for 10 days on a tour of montenegro, mainly roads i think, and going from one hostel/bnb to the next rather than camp