Try the web page rather than the app, its under your profile, last 4 weeks, best efforts and year to date.

Red wine – I like the idea of a glass of red by the fire but I always feel like I would rather be drinking something else.

City breaks – I like architecture, photography, sitting outside a pub watching the world pass by but I always feel like I would rather be in the countryside somewhere.

Nice humblebrag.

Relax and enjoy your holiday, perhaps head to the pub ;-)

Exercise works best for me, having tried most of the other things posted here.  YMMV.  Needs to be frequent though – several times a week, for me, or it doesn’t work.  Heavens, the best discovery for me was 15 minutes of interval training several times per week was like owning ‘sunshine in a bag’.

And absorbing personal projects, too.  The more complicated the better.

Pretty much this – dog walks, trail runs and MTB rides all make a massive difference for me as I’m not thinking about work/home or worrying while trying to get down a sketchy descent. It gives my mind a break from whatever I’m mulling over and when I get back to it, I seem to have a bit more perspective. Being physically tired helps a lot when trying to sleep too.

I also keep my mind busy planning something, a holiday, a bike build, a DIY project or anything else.

I always take a lock and either lock the bikes to something or at least to each other. It isn’t just the pain and cost of losing the bikes but it ending the trip early and on a bad note.

Riding a bike is supposed to be fun, if it isn’t fun then there is no shame in knocking it on the head and doing something else.

Nice bike, I like how Spec have gone more understated with their decals in recent years. At one point their bikes looked like a rolling advertisement board.

Which CTW scheme? I think some charge a small percentage at the end of the agreement to transfer ownership to you. Not a huge amount but tips the balance a bit further.

With your example, it is not as much of a saving as something not on sale but I’d still take a £450 saving and 12/18 months to pay it off versus no saving and paying up front.

Looks great, I really like that colour too.

A day of lift assisted riding is going to get you at least twice as much riding as any UK van uplift, which itself is 2-3 times more than any pedal up rides.

I was curious about this so did some Strava digging, my last Morzine trip was 18 to 20k feet descending per day, Bike park wales a bit under 10k and Antur gets me about 14 odd k. A pedally day at somewhere like FoD gets me 4k.

As for tyres, personally I just run my normal Assegai/DHR that I have on all year but make sure they are in good nick and have plenty of sealant. I do make sure I take a spare tyre or 2 as I’ve seen the prices in Morzine bike shops!

Bournemouth, it is free and you can sit with your feet in the sea while watching the planes overhead. It does get pretty busy on the Saturday but if you get there early and don’t need a pee you are good. Friday much quieter and a similar schedule.

Changing the wet belt is about a £1k job so not much more expensive than having a normal cambelt done so if it worries you too much then get it done ahead of the service schedule or knock that off the price you pay.

People definitely have bargain fatigue IMO.

Many of us have probably already scratched our new bike itches via previous sale offers.

And post-Chiggle fire sale, there’s a bit of my brain that won’t get out of bed for less than 75% off.

Agree completely. 20 or 25% off seems pathetic now, mad when you think we were all paying RRP and over a few years ago!

I can see the stock dumping thing making sense. When Evans had five tens for £40 odd, people grabbed 4 or 5 sets so I cant see them needing new ones in the next 5 years! Even if they do need new ones, RRP might be hard to swallow.

There seem to be a lot of high horses around here, lets hope nobody falls off and injures themselves ;-)

Not mine but Abigales birthday ride today. Wish I was on it with her.

That looks absolutely, bloody brilliant!

I use them, they are fine. Merlin used to have them for £2.50 a set, not sure if they still do.

Perhaps you shouldn’t need to do it as often but it is simple and cheap to refresh CB pedals, I find the plastic bushing wears first so I always have a few spares. I’ve used this set before and it is good for the money.

Saying that, I have some Shimano pedals on my hardtail that must be 10 years old and they are still going strong with zero maintenance ever. Cleats seem to last longer than shoes too.

I think it’s the retailer who need to contact Royal Mail, you didn’t receive the item you paid for so it up to them to sort it with RM.

I was thinking about this a bit more and I would have thought with e-bikes getting more popular, the xc loops would get more use as the long draggy climbs wouldn’t be such an issue, especially as more middle aged blokes are ending up on e-bikes now and I’d assume those were the same people using the xc trails a decade or so ago.

As a side note, Inners is more than just draining puddles, the diversion has 2 or 3 pretty large trees down blocking the fire road. That needs forestry with chain saws and some moving equipment.

I get the impression that riding long xc routes has gone out of fashion. People want gnar, jumps and steep stuff with minimal climbing. I guess places spend their limited cash on the trails that draw visitors in and it’s not xc.

I exclude myself from the above, I love a good xc loop with big views and earning some good descents.

You don’t need me to tell you how ugly those crocs are but I agree the most comfortable footwear in the world is new crocs with socks. 2nd most comfortable being Birkenstocks and thick socks. They need to be worn in though so that’s a good 18 months 😀

I run up the stairs at home, 2 at a time. Have done it since I was a kid. No idea why I still do it but I do.

There is a Thursday night ride from pedalabikeaway at fod, it seems well attended and they do food and beer afterwards so might be a good place to start.

the lockring is only holding the disc onto the spline, it’s not resisting the braking force or anything, I don’t see that they need to be done up to mega torques.

I used to think that but I have had the lockring work loose on several occasions, I now check it every so often and do it up tighter than I thought I would need to.

I’m still getting the bad gateway messages, 3 or 4 times so far this morning.

2nd one, is there a recommended browser for mobile?  Chrome on IOS gives me a “site is not secure” message and Safari is incredibly slow.

Bloody hell mate, what makes you think a MTB forum is critical to the discourse on Gaza.

Didn’t you know world leaders and egotistical dictators all check in on STW before firing off rockets? Sadam used to often see if there was any middle aged rage to his plans to blow stuff up and just the other week Vlad popped in to see if we minded if he advanced a bit further. The language barrier does make some of the threads from Somali pirates a bit tricky to understand but we muddle through, not as bad as that poor nigerian prince who keeps asking for help in the classifieds.

I tip I found when I took ours apart and no longer had the spring fitting tool, a mini paint roller does a good job at unhooking and re-hooking the springs. Once those are off it is pretty easy to take down.

I would say it is time well spent, my kids used to love ours when they were younger. They must have used it for several hundred hours over its lifetime. When their friends came over the first thing they would do it head for the trampoline, we would often have 8 or more kids all bouncing together. How we didn’t get a trip to A&E was a mystery! I am pretty sure they actually slept on it a few times in the summer.

I had some fake cleats during covid times when stuff was hard to get and they lasted ages, certainly not like that. I’d say those are fake and not good ones.

I did it with an oscillating multitool, worked perfectly well for the ride or 2 until I decided they were too far back and I moved them forward again.

Save the 30 mins and go and ride your bike, you can’t see it while riding and you’ll feel much better afterwards 😀

I think you should lean into the idea and make strides despite the current market headwinds to enable a strategic synergy orsomesuchbollocks

The 111 service / contact centre will have been designed around a demand / capacity profile based on whatever analytics they have in place, just as many services are. There will likely be significant changes in demand from one hour to the next and the service will be funded and resourced in a way that is able to absorb a lot of those spikes in demand while minimising the amount of spare capacity available as this is wasteful (i.e. under utilisation). The service may also be triaging / prioritising based on risk / severity.

All very true but in the case of 111, I don’t think it meets the needs in the real world. For example, my son had a MTB crash and we wanted his wrist x-rayed as it was swollen and painful. Previously we would have walked in minor injuries but you can’t do that anymore as you need to go through 111.

2 or 3 phone calls, several hours and 2 call backs later we are told to attend A&E instantly. Their decision matrix says as he is a child and could have further injuries from the crash, he needs to be seen in A&E. No amount of explaining or reasoning could get past it so off we go to A&E. Grumpy nurse tells us off as we should not be in A&E but minor injuries, after 10 hours of sitting around A&E feeling like we were wasting NHS resources, 1 xray and his wrist was badly sprained rather than broken.

How can all that be more efficient than just having a triage nurse dealing with people who turn up at minor injuries? That’s not the only story like that, I have had a few with elderly relatives too (Not from badly timed gap jumps thankfully ;-))

Not sure about current closures but we used to do Y-Wall and then blue scar.

Thanks @intheborders, that’s really useful.

I do the 3.5 to 5k feet of climbing in a day on my manual bike and I enjoy it, I’d like to be able to do a bit more and a few days in a row to make the most of being away.

I’m pretty heavy at 100kgs kitted up so I guess that plays a part too.

I’ll see what I can demo over the next few months.

The mute option has been a godsend. Managed to quietly sack off the walk-around-the-blockers, zwifters, look at me I’m on holiday willy wavers, and haven’t offended anyone.

Pretty much that, not bothered by segments but I love seeing where mates around the world are riding, hiking or running. Photos and videos are even better. I also like to look back and see where I’ve been over the years.

I also use the heatmap and route planner to find new routes or if I am riding somewhere I don’t know.

I watched the video but as others I don’t understand what is going on.

Is it access that Highways Agency are restricting during their work – because it looks like the entrance to the park is off a country lane, not directly off the A417.

Or are they taking their land to build new infrastructure?

I also watched the video and don’t fully understand. It sounds like the issue is the park will now become insurable, not sure the detail on this.

The thread title is a bit clickbaity, it doesn’t sound like highways want to close the park. it sounds like some of their plans impact the park and they wont engage on how to resolve it (unless I am mistaken).

I like it, I cant do a bike like that justice but I still like it!

Just me again? Last few days the site has barely been usable.

As you have no relationship with him and he wont listen to reason, I’d just roundup the hell out of the flower bed and be done with it. You can shrug your shoulders and deny any knowledge if he ever talks to you about it.