A compromise of being near enough to my work, near enough to my wifes work, close to good schools, easy access to the countryside for dog walks and OK MTB rides, close enough to the motorway to get me to good MTBing and semi-reasonable house prices.

Site went funny and that posted too soon. 20% code above for uberbikes

Uber20 gets 20% off everything.

Don’t the SLX levers have an ispec connector to get the shifter in the right place? Assuming the shifter fits ispec obviously.

In fairness, Forest holidays are known for being daft expensive at all of their locations.

Single ply bogroll is a human rights violation.

But the money spent in Wales meant more not less money to fund social care

Merthyr Tydfil A+E dept with the “BPW wing”?

I caved on the dropper for £35, mine is slow to return and a new air cartridge is going to be £25 so it is a no brainer.

It always makes me slightly uncomfortable that trail centres have more than their fair share of nice cars/vans parked up, full of people that have burnt half a tank or more of fuel to get there and are riding multiple thousand pound ‘steads’ – but pay little to nothing to ride the trails (specifically trail centre trails)

Even worse is the expensive cars and vans that park around the corner to avoid the £6 a day car parking fee!

Another issue is a lot of places don’t get any of the money from car parking or the cafe to put towards trail maintenance and this starts a negative spiral. No money so trails don’t get maintained, fewer visitors as trails not maintained so less money from car parking etc.

I find large volume tyres and a lower pressures help a lot. The only exception is anything with drops, even trying to land as gently as I can, my knees and ankles don’t thank me.

Will the bike industry doom and gloom settle down a bit when the sun comes out and people start riding bikes?

What do you think will happen to racing over the next few years, downhill, XC, enduro etc.

I had several months of suggested items for sale in my area on my feed that all appeared to be young females in underwear – I never worked out how that was something I might be interested in looking to buy when the thing I’d viewed was a homemade ‘e-bike’ that used a battery-powered chainsaw to power itself

Aha, sure you did. I bet the algorithm is wrong just for you ;-)

I was chatting to a colleague recently about faffing and for the others it is painful waiting around, especially in winter. He disagreed with me as there were no faffers in his group…

A week or 2 later I joined his group for a ride after work and it turns out he is his groups faffer. I mentioned it when we stopped and his group all agreed with me, he went silent while it dawned on him that it was true.

It just goes to show that every group has a faffer, if you don’t think your group has one then it is you!

Plenty of the Evans five tens ended up on ebay and FB too, rather than waste the £5 postage plus pay the returns postage people tried flogging them for a profit.

I don’t know a lot about eebs but this looks good value if you are an XL? Bosch motor but fairly basic components.

https://winstanleysbikes.co.uk/mondraker-chaser-29-2023-electric-bike?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7Mrapv3hhAMVTpmDBx2-vAhlEAQYASABEgLfkfD_BwE#187=4617

That’s a nope from me, a double nope at that price.

Did someone trip over the power cable?

Cleaner unplugged the power to plug the Dyson in ;-)

Awesome, absolutely bloody awesome.

Best bit for me is the bike choice and the off-road/singletrack/fun part. I guess it would have been tempting to to just stick to the roads and chip away at the massive distance.

@stwhannah – this would make a great magazine article.

Probably, possibly. It isn’t an area I know too well but happened to be over there recently.

Ignore me then :-)

Which bit floods? I don’t recall any of the section between Reading and Goring being that low to the river?

The bit near Goring/Streatley. It can be avoided if you know where you are going but it isn’t immediately obvious due to houses and the start of the town.

I don’t know the exact route but I think it takes in part of the Ridgeway and the Thames path in Berkshire/Oxfordshire? if so, that bit of the thames path was under 4 foot of water last weekend and the ridgeway is as wet, muddy and churned up as I have ever seen it. I’d wait a bit longer if I were you.

It actually took me 4 goes to post my comment above as I kept getting the bad gateway message!

Is it just me with this issue again?

That is really sad news, I watched one of their recent shows this week and didn’t think he looked at all well.

The back end of the Norco is a challenger to Haibike in the ugly bike competition. The YT looks a blast.

The law of sod! I lost the Shimano tensioner screw thing a few years back so I ordered 3 as it gave me free postage and I figured I’d always have a spare or 2 if I lost another. You guessed it, I haven’t lost one since…

My order has shipped too, that was pretty quick so they must have a good few staff left manning the warehouse.

What towzer said but I use carbon paste rather than copperslip.

Mixed, generally it doesn’t tell me much I don’t already know. If I wake up tired and feel like I haven’t slept well, generally the data backs it up. As somebody mentioned above, I do keep an eye on my resting heart rate though. It is useful to see my overall fitness and it also spikes when I am unwell, stressed or hungover.

I enjoyed that, great scenery and hard not to enjoy watching 2 friends having fun on bikes.

For the comments about it being a terrible video as kids might watch it, trust me, your kids have heard far worse that F£$k and sheiiiite and seen worse than a bloke having a sip from a hipflask. For any kid whose development may have been stunted by seeing this, there will be hundreds more who are inspired to get out and see things while having fun on bikes. Doesn’t have to be ebikes or Santa Cruz ebikes either.

Unless I am missing something, I don’t get why people are so against the IP being sold? Obviously it would have been better if the staff kept their jobs and it was sold as a going concern but that was a big ask. If evil Mike makes a BSO and puts a Ragley/Vitus/Nukeproof sticker on it, nobody who had one of the CRC Nukeproofs is going to think it’s the same bike. People who buy a £200 bike from Sportsdirect more than likely don’t care what it says on the sticker either, they certainly wouldn’t have been aware of the history behind a brand.

It also opens up a gap in the market for other brands to move into.

I’d bin it, not because of the date but the fact that pate is horrible shite :-)

I feel like most people posting on this thread either work in IT support or get their knowledge from watching old episodes of the IT crowd.

Kitchen scales, it really shouldn’t be that difficult. Put it on a flat surface, turn it on = ERROR. Pick it up, put it back down in exactly the same place and it works. Cycle through the settings to find grams, zero it again because it has somehow found 30 grams of air to weigh in the last few seconds. Try to weigh item but its turned itself off, turn it back on = ERROR, repeat until I am tempted to lob it at the wall and guess how much flour I need.

Crazy prices deore  M6120 4pot  brakes on Alpkit eBay outlet. £90 pair and I got £8 off with a code.  Mad.

That is a really good one, calipers alone sell for £50 each normally.

Another +1 for trail vision, good bearings and reliable next day DPD delivery so I don’t feel like I need to keep loads of bearings for the various bikes in my spares box as I did during covid times when supply was tricky.

I use a mini compressor to dry mine off after washing, I have noticed since doing it that bearings last a lot longer than they used to. I used to put it in the kitchen overnight at the old house as the warmer, drier air helped but the new house has a smaller kitchen and there isn’t an out of the way corner to put a bike.

@binners, I think I might be your dad 😆

Although I haven’t finished it yet, I read a bit yesterday and I liked what I saw. I enjoyed the article on Surrey Hills as well as the custom bikes section. Some good photography and a variety of interesting destinations.

Bracelands is my go to camp site. No Vodafone signal though, I know this as I’m with them but my mate on ee did have some signal. Not sure it’s enough to work and be reliable.