Good shout. I’m teaching myself Spanish classical guitar at the moment. I’m going to make this my next piece to learn (after Malaguena, obvs)

Oh dear fatmax you may have lasted 5 mins in the srea of Liverpool I was in today.

Yeah. Some bastard once shot me in the leg when I was waiting on the platform at Walton station.

Go to Colombia. Check FCO advice for Liverpool.

Oh and get it engraved. I couldn’t think of a better 18th present from your dad than a good watch.

My eldest will get my watch, but he’ll have to wait until I die. I’ll be getting my youngest a watch for his 18th that will last him a lifetime and he will pass on to his kids.

With that budget you’ll be looking at quartz movement.

The fashion houses (Boss, Armani etc) all have nice-looking watches at that price point but personally I wear a watch made in Switzerland by people who just make watches, not suits and jeans.

Tissot are one of a few Swiss watchmakers who have watches at this pricepoint. Something like this?

The reality is that the rules do not cover everything. As we all know.

Well OK, but the rules for drivers do cover checking your nearside mirror before you turn left, keeping a proper lookout, and checking that the way is clear before manoeuvring.

Yes – from the right.

There aren’t many cycle lanes round here so no, I’ve never put into practice that advice about merging from the left!

Even cyclelaw says you should treat the lanes as filter lanes , slow and careful and then merge back from them into the traffic flow when traffic moves !

Can you imagine the uproar if you did that ?

I do that every day. Never had a problem 🙂 I always give a thumbs up to the driver whose vehicle I’ve merged in front of.

Yes, I’m saying they both she, & another colleague blue lighted because his baby was sick.

Mate I’m not sure you’ve thought this through. I’m sure you don’t really think it’s OK for the police to speed, use their blue lights and go through red lights, for their personal business?

Sick baby, yeah. If it was a medical emergency, the mother would have called an ambulance. Otherwise, are you suggesting that the families of police officers should get preferential treatment from the emergency services? “Don’t call 999 despatch – just call my personal mobile and I’ll be straight round, having endangered lives by crashing red lights with the blue lights on”.

From what I can gather from your post:

You were left-hooked in the cycle lane this morning.

Yep – I’m certain that riding up the left of slow/stationary traffic is often not the safest place to be, whether there’s a line painted on the road or not. Like you, I filter on the right when possible.

I don’t get your reference to gratitude. Are you saying that Denmore is being ungrateful that his colleague broke blue light regs, drove too fast, went through a red light and crashed the car he was travelling in?

We’ve put a pinned post on the Facebook page to see what interest there would be if we hired a van for bikes and we’d take them to Carlisle.

Heh – this is how the Dunwich Dynamo started off! Give it 3 years and you’ll have a fleet of coaches 🙂

I’ve had some 2nd hand bargains from Mifsuds over the years.

There’s a Canon EOS 400D on there for £99. I sold many pictures with that camera and the kit lens. I can recommend it.

Knock yourself out.

Just google “HIIT routine kettlebell” or “HIIT routine home”.

Also, Joe Wicks is the current housewives’ favourite for achieving results through a high-protein, low-carb diet combined with HIIT workouts. As a note of caution, you should be aware that he hasn’t achieved his own god-like body through HIIT workouts – he lifts weights.

If you want to strength train without weights, then you need to read up on calisthenics. It’s basically strength training using your body weight as resistance. It’s all very enjoyable, very convenient and fun. You’re never going to be breaking any Squat or Deadlift records without a power rack and an Olympic bar, but if you really are averse to joining a gym then it’s a good option. You can do it in front of the telly.

Kenny,

I’ve only just found this thread. Congratulations on your weight loss!

I haven’t read through the whole thread, so forgive me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but it looks like your exercise is all steady-state cardio work. That’s great for adding some “calories burned” to the daily MyFitnessPal calculation, but if you want to accelerate your weight loss, you should consider 1. lifting heavy weights, and 2. HIIT sessions.

Forget your perceptions of the gym – poseurs doing bicep curls to impress the girls – you need to do big compound lifts to recruit all of the big muscle groups in your body. Lift heavy and your muscles will then continue to burn calories as they recover.

The Stronglifts 5×5 programme is widely considered to be the best strength-training programme for beginners. It’s simple to follow and its emphasis on progression ensures you keep motivated, and that your muscles are consistently overloaded, thus growing and burning calories whilst they do so.

+1 for Joe Blow.

Birzman are pretty

Spa Cycles. They’re touring specialists and a good bunch of lads. They have full bikes in your price range from Raleigh, Dawes, Ridgeback etc. They also have their own range but they’re more money.

Knock yourself out

Yeah – they have a bad rep but I’ve always found them fine.

Tube, multitool, phone, wallet, powerbar.

Ride.

Prices are about 50% of rrp. Jerseys £55, bibs £80, cap £10.

Get there early! I got there at 8:30 and got through the door at 10. It was worse later on – people on Twitter talking about 3 hour queues.

From what I saw, if you’re an XS, S, XL or XXL you’re laughing. Or, if you’re a woman, or you really like Team Sky kit. Choice in M or L was more limited. Luckily I’m an S in jerseys so I found a classic jersey. I also found a pair of M classic shorts, but only because they’d been put in the S section by mistake; there were no shorts in M or L. I was in the market for a Rain Jacket but no luck in my size.

Plenty of Trade Team and Country jerseys, wind jackets, Hard shell jackets, pro team shorts, Lombardia jerseys. Plenty of accessories; boxes and boxes of caps, socks, overboots, mitts and shoes. Also lots of their city kit; jeans and chinos and stuff.

TBH it’s a bit of a jumble sale – they replenish the stock each day so what you see in Glasgow might be completely different to what I saw in Leeds.

Lots of people on here are making it more complicated than it needs to be.

You don’t need an “endurance bike” (whatever that is) and you don’t need disc brakes. Yes, you can use your MTB pedals and you can wear what you like.

You don’t need to overthink it. Go into 3Peaks Cycles – they have a couple of bikes in your price range from established manufacturers. Try them out.

Once you’ve been riding for a bit you may or may not decide to get lycra clothes and road pedals. You might decide you’d like to upgrade a component on your bike. You won’t know all this until you start riding. So take the plunge and have fun.

Try Impsport

I’m up for this this year. Looking forward to it, in fact, although I couldn’t think of anything worse than chips/kebabs in the middle of a century ride. I’ll give the chippy a miss!

I love mine. For the money you can’t do better. Yes there are lighter, stiffer frames out there (for much more money) but it does everything the average club cyclist will ever need it to.

It seems to me that the rider took to the road because he needed Lane 3 to go straight on at the junction. Perfectly legal and legitimate.

I don’t know what he did that was dangerous.

He hasn’t got off with it – “the trial continues”, according to that article. Unless you have an update?

Mondeo here – 2.2 TDCi. Huge boot space, and you’d get a newer model with fewer miles than a similarly-priced German car. Very economical and with an 8sec 0-60 time (if you’re bothered about that).

I don’t know what you’re all on about.

To (reluctantly) continue the masturbation metaphor, this thread is a bit of a circle jerk.

I think Bez has nailed this thread.

If you continue insisting on her wearing a day-glo yellow thing that research shows will make no difference to her likelihood of being taken out by some simpleton in a Range Rover, all that will happen is that she’ll stop cycling. Probably for ever.

By the way, I think it’s BRILLIANT that you have your daughter cycle to school. I wish mine did (they’d love to) but not logistically possible.

Sigh.

No.

They don’t.

I went for a ride on my bike too

Seaside Ride by Simon Barnes, on Flickr

Nice pic mate.

Today’s ride (with pic)

Yes!

ok, let’s turn this around and take a slightly different perspective on this:

1. If you send your frame back and get the cheaper one, they’ll likely be selling the one which is currently yours at the new, lower price seeing as how they’re discounting it. That means a little less profit for the business, and a little less in the pot for payrises for the employees (prob not earning a huge amount if working in a bike shop) or for investing in future growth which would generate a few more jobs in area of the UK which ain’t that well off, overall

2. At work, you do things usually at a certain speed. One day, you manage to be super-efficient and do something at twice the speed. Your boss now expects you to do everything at twice the speed but won’t be paying you any more or reducing your overall working hours (ie: halving the price of your labour). Feeling good or feeling exploited?

I honestly don’t know how we’ve become such a bunch of calculating consumers – we know the price of everything and the value of nothing and then wonder why wages have gone nowhere for 10 years and the economy’s stagnant…

😆 😆 😆

I’ve changed my mind. Jim, send the frame back!

So you got a shock pump, a bottle cage…

..and £420 off RRP?

I should imagine said £50 certainly effects me more than said company

Steady there. It sounds like you think they’ve done something wrong.

Just been to Worsthorne Reservoir on mine, for its first “proper” ride, with my seven year-old.

Bags of fun, never felt under-biked on the Singletrack.

But the seatpost is wobbly as hell, despite the collar being so tight I was rounding the Allen bolt.

Coke can shim it is 🙄

No haters. You asked for opinions and got them.

You must have been happy with the price because you bought it. I don’t think you have a legal or moral case re the extra discount, and I wouldn’t bother.

Go for a ride instead.

Not expensive at all when he wins Olympic gold, does some breakfast cereal adverts and pays off your mortgage 🙂

Rate my build…
“Superstar”
“She”
= Hard Fail
Sorry

What’s wrong with you man ? 🙄

The bike looks ace. You’ve got a great build for the money there. Enjoy

I really like that gold covered london road.

Thank you 🙂

mlpinto – was wondering the same thing, look like Schwalbe CX Comp to me:
Chain Reaction link to them.

Yes – that’s them. I got them because I read lots of reviews saying they had excellent performance and were the perfect balance of reliability and weight*

*not really. I got them ‘cos they were cheap