Semolina rules for pizza shaping and cooking though. Even for those of us with just one oven for everything.

I’ve gone off using semolina, I wasn’t keen on the texture it adds- too reminiscent of Dominos! Now I shape the ball in a gert big pile of flour and shake most of it off before placing on the wooden peel.

I’m currently using Caputo Dried Yeast, though looking at date code printing on the tin it appears it’s identical to Allison’s Easy Bake.

I’ve experimented with sourdough in the past, but the hassle of keeping a starter vs. very slight difference in flavour profile isn’t worth it in my opinion. Plenty hipster points though…

I’ve tried to workout a poolish method, but not working from home I can’t make the timings work.

I’ve currently settled on Saccorosso at 67% hydration for a 24hr proof, 30mins or so autolyse, 20hrs in the fridge, then balled and left at room temp (covered) for 4hrs.

I did pick up a bag of Nuvola at the weekend, I’m looking forward to giving that a go to see if I can get some super puffy crusts.

Oh, and +1 for PizzApp!

I wired my own house under building control inspections, cost £130.

I did all the wiring for our new kitchen, an electrician came round before I started to go through what I was doing and did the final cooker connections. He said “you’ve done a really good job there. That’ll be £200 for 20 minutes work and a certificate fankuverymuch.”😖

It’s so annoying camping next to a big event and not being apart of it! We were camping near the Hague at May half-term, there was a big end of the season hockey match going on, I think it was a title decider. We got the atmosphere from a couple of Kms away! If we’d have known earlier we’d have seen about getting tickets. I’ve never been to a game of hockey in my life, but it sounded like a good evening out!

Balls to it, why the chuff is it so difficult to post photos 🙄

You’ll all have to imagine a whole pile of panniers for a 3 night trip to my sister’s. It’s less than an hour by car🤣

That’s annoying. Is it because of potential contamination from the transfusion?

Aye, when an old duffer knocked me off on my commute & broke my leg, I had something like 100ml during the operation to nail my leg. I was nearly on 50 donations at that point.

I must say, I’ve been enjoying following your journey TJ!

A couple just turned up on site. 4 ortleib bags each plus big bar bags and a 40 l stuffsack on the rack

I’ve no idea what was in a combined maybe 300lt of luggage. 🤷‍♂️

I do find it odd the compulsion to criticise people’s luggage choices, I’ve certainly been guilty of it in the past! But I’ve since come to the conclusion that cycle touring does not have to be a suffer-fest, and that one person’s idea of comfort and what they are happy to carry is widely different to any others.

I’ll be quite happy lugging my Helniox and myriad other items across 4 panniers to make our little family trip this weekend that little more comfortable. Heck, the wife is even packing a caddy of Fortnum & Mason loose leaf tea and associated paraphernalia🙄

Aye, Trangias are great, but not “Cheap as in CHEAP”! Certainly not when you can’t help yourself starting a collection…

For fuel, I prefer to buy biofuel in bulk, much less sooting and doesn’t smell as bad: https://ekofuel.org/

There’s a few companies advertise in the Cycling UK mag that I’ve never heard of like Pilgrim Cycles and Stanforth

Pilgrim’s bikes are just re-badged SPA models, with an upshift in price.

Indeed, SPA are the people to go and see.

My wife and I have got a pair of Wayfarers, looks to be what your after. I’ve taken mine, fully loaded, on some ‘interesting’ tracks in the Peak, removed the racks & put a pair of 42mm gravel tyres for the Tour of the Cornfields off-road sportive and recently did the Peddars Way with it. A very versatile load carrier, chuffin heavy but rides really well with upto 18kg in the panniers. It doesn’t have a gazillion bosses though like a Croix de Fer or similar.

https://www.spacycles.co.uk/m1b0s225p3866/SPA-CYCLES-Wayfarer-9spd-Cable-Disc

Edit: Spa don’t just sell their own brand, they’ve all sorts you and test ride and compare.

Just for the shits and giggles (and to avoid playing the everso tiresome game of ‘guess today’s opening hours of Nationwide’) I tried ‘depositing’ a cheque made out to our daughter into my bank account via the NatWest app, taking photos of it. It only bloody worked! Might be worth a shot if your bank a/c app has the same functionality?

Do you wonder if Tim Berners-Lee knew what the internet would become he’d have quietly just unplugged everything and gone to the pub instead?

Aware enough to know his name, yet not quite enough to know what exactly his gift to the world was… 😀

Driving abroad is no harder than the UK once you get into the swing of being on the other side of the road. If you’re going a long way, might be worth getting a payment tag for the French toll motorways.

I’d suggest driving on the continent (my experience is limited to driving to Switzerland via France few weeks ago!) is a whole lot nicer than driving over here! Apart from a bit of traffic round Colmar on the way back it was a breeze. Coming back up the M25 and the Dartford tunnel on the other hand…

I’d heard tales of hour long ques at the peages but in reality, even at peak holiday time, it was no bother at all. And those with tags still had to stop at the barriers, not cruise through at 30km/h that I’d been lead to believe was the case. I don’t know if motorways other than those we used are diffrent.

My daughter can’t be normal, we drove to Switzerland and back a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t hear “I’m b***d” once and she got through 3 books on the way out, we took a chance and left her Chromebook at home and she didn’t bat an eyelid. Absolutely awesome!

Also fond memories of the guys wandering round shouting “E’s, hash, trips, whizz, get yer E’s, hash, trips, whizz!”. Don’t get that at Glastonbury any more…

Nor Scousers selling nicked crates of Stella for a £quid a can, just the thing for breakfast at 10 o’clock in the morning!

Me and a couple of mates had the misfortune to go to Leeds in 2000 as Glastonbury had a fallow year. I don’t recall it being as bad as Richard upthread, but it was such a contrast to Glasto. So much more commercial (I had no idea other festivals had camping areas separate to the arena and that you’d be searched on the way in!) and so many more oiks around, and my first two Glastonburys were before the fence went up!

Nice one, cheers! 3 pairs of bib shorts for less a £ton. Oh, and a new Gore-tex jacket from the Sigma PSA 🙂

Free returns, so looking to order both L and XL, as Italian sizing.

Indeed, I ordered small as well as medium. Surprisingly I’ve a pair of Castelli bib shorts in small that fit, so hoping they’re a similar cut.

At Easter we went up the PYG track after getting the Sherper bus to Pen y Pass then walked down the Watkin path to the campsite we were staying at Llyn Gwynant. As mentioned before, the Watkin path has a lot more (~300m) height gain and very scrambly in places, I wouldn’t want to walk up it with our daughter. The PYG track was much more enjoyable for her.

I found with our uuni 3 that you needed to keep the pellets topped up all the time, to the point where it made singlehanded use a real faff. Needed someone on pellet duty really, if they got too low you’d get smoke and poor heat for a while.

I’ve not used an Ooni 3, but with our Unni 2 it really isn’t a ballache to add a scoop of pellets when you remove a pizza before stretching, topping and launching the next one…

I’ve been using these for a few years with my Uuni 2 with no issues, much better value that the Ooni branded ones.

feels extortionate for a few bits of thin pressed steel and a floor tile.

Could the same not be said of a few bits of carbon fibre sheet thrown in a mould with a smattering of spinny and springy aluminium bits hung off it, being sold for many, many, many thousands of pounds???

R&D, staff, overheads, yadda, yadda

That’s weird seeing as they sent me an email yesterday giving me a pre-emptive nudge that the battery may have gone in mine and offering a replacement!

I assume that’s just an automated email and not linked to the stock control system.

Today, as the man says above, they’ve run out.

Bugger ☹️

After speaking with a mate on Sunday’s club run, and him regaling me with tales of 1 hour queues at the pay booths, I was looking into getting one for our trip this coming Friday. I had a webchat with Emovis yesterday morning and they are currently out stock of tags.

When I was knocked off by old duffer a few years ago I contacted, I think they were just transitioning from the CTC then, and asked if I joined then would I be able to use their legal services. I could, and did, and all was sorted with very little hassle.

Might be different story now, but see what CyclingUK say.

It’s the Fen influence along with being a dormitory town for Cambridge and London.

More so the after effects of being given over to overspill from thatthereLondon in the 1960s.

I found Clipper Minitube available at my local temple of tat and bad taste, Poundland.
https://clipperofficial.com/us/our-range/utility-lighters/minitube

Up the A1, turn off to Huntingdon…
Not sure I’d recommend looking round the rest of the town though.

You really don’t want to subject yourself to a tour of the town. The Old Bridge hotel and wine shop is about all the town has going for it. It truly is a god-forsaken part of the world.

Not sure I have a worst but a guy at work puts EVERYTHING on, even shopping trips. Thing is his rides are quite impressive too.

It can be tiresome to edit every ride to the shops or the school pick up to ‘Only You’ can see after the Garmin automagically syncs to Strava.

Timmy Mallett

He did a great talk at last year’s Cycle Touring Festival about riding the Camino trail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqmWBpj-oDM

It would if you didn’t reject the cookies 😆

I generally click on the recommended set of cookies 🤷‍♂️

Shirley this could be the only benefit of Brexshit, getting rid of the annoying pop-ups?!?

It wouldn’t be so bad if the site remembered my choice instead of asking me every. single. f***ing. time.

We put in a lower range Bosch HBS534B.0B when I did our kitchen last year. No complaints, baking results are a marked improvement on our old slot in oven but that was a cheapo jobbie we had for 16 years from our first house!

I did a faux-commute in lockdown v1.0 and managed it a couple of times this time round. Then I got what I believe to a be spurious test & trace app ping so that was out of the window for a few days. Since then it’s rained and I’ve not been arsed!

’tis a shame as I nearly managed every work day last year, was hoping to better it this year.

Raspberry PI in a box with a USB power cell?

In almost all cases when someone mentions using a RPi, a microcontroller based solution is far more appropriate…

Are you school staff and wanting to run it yourself? BC would probably point you in the direction of Go-Ride clubs run by BC affiliated cycling clubs.

really expensive in the UK (perhaps less if you can look to the Far East)

Tooling is China can be an order of magnitude cheaper than tools made here! Peice part cost also a lot less. I’ve got a couple of contacts I could pass on.

It’s a bugger trying to find volunteers to do marshalling & greeting.

What are all those who are still furloughed doing 🙄 Another example why I’m getting so very f***ed off with the vast majority of this country.

Depends on budget but I’ve got a Mountain Equipment Xero 250 which have now been replaced by the newer Helium range but same design generally.

My wife has a Helium 400 which is lovely. I think I might get a 250 for touring.

An utter nerd would have a little RasPi monitoring the humidity level and then switched the fan on when it was above a certain level

Nahh, a proper utter nerd wouldn’t dream of designing such an over-the-top system 😉 They’d design a custom PCB with an ATTINY5 µC and DHT22 sensor. If there was a desire to have a web interface for such a contraption, you might stretch to an ESP8266 based design.

I feel a project coming on…

My first name is James. But family have always called me Jamie.

I get the opposite! Jamie is my given name, when introduced to people and they immediately call me James right boils my piss!!