I’m not a sufferer but Mrs Jerseychaz is and has been for about 8 years, almost as long as we’ve been together. We finally ruled out Lyme last month at some considerable expense! Over the years she’s tried a variety of things including Graded Exercise (if anyone so much as mentions it now she punches them!), CBT (helped a little), Acupuncture (has been quite positive) and now we are on to Body Stress Relief which appears to be having a positive effect (anyone else tried it?)

The last eight years have been interspersed with some trauma – divorce, moving house (twice) breaking a wrist and a moderately serious knee injury. She’s gone from being able to cycle, surf and walk like me to housebound and depressed but last year when we went off on a European tour in the motorhome was back to moderate cycling, swimming and being much more active. Bit of a relapse over the last year or so partly because of the knee.

She’s tried all sorts of food/diet options hampered by being Gluten/Egg?Dairy intolerant but having cut out soya recently feels better.

So far as we can see the key (for us) has been to cut out the root cause as xcracer says above – travelling removed the day to day mundane routine which left a load of time for “worrying”, being immobilised with the knee injury bought it back….she had some very stressful experiences as a child – Dawson Field Hi-Jack by the PLO anyone? Bullying and more recently the death of her father.

Its early days, but I feel we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

+1 for finding someone to talk it through with, not only for you but also your partner, try to vary the routine and give yourself “other things” to worry about in a nice way if that’s possible.

BTW its ok to shout and scream about it occasionally – It does apparently help!

Had a GII listed house in Ashburton – usual stuff about windows, external appearance etc. but significantly an internal staircase between kitchen and bedroom was listed and couldn’t be touched. Bear in mind that for any alteration not only will you need planning consent but also Listed Building Consent which can be a real PITA!

We were there last May – the campsite gave us a card which allowed free bus and train travel in the local area – services are, as you’d expect excellent! River Steamer trip to Brienz and back by train or vice versa. I went Paragliding – expensive but I loved it. +1 for the Trotti bikes at Grindelwald.

Chap called Mike Martin. He was a member of the same Sailing Club (Gurnard SC) as me. I’ve not got any further info :-(

Royal Mail?

Thanks Rob. I’ll relay that – she’s a sensitive soul! We’re in the process of eliminating possibles to try and get to the root cause of what is a debilitating and frustrating issue.

58 here. Got in to road cycling when I was about 47, had my best season at 50 and swapped to MTB XC racing, hoovered up Vet & Super Vet titles for a couple of years. I’ve fallen out of love with the road bike bike but love my Spesh Enduro and the Scott Scale XC. Can’t see me stopping until I cant get my leg over or see well enough to miss the trees. Dinghy racing is my other passion – my wife continually frets about whether I’m drowning or crashing. I’ll agree with all those who say you take longer to recover/mend. I seem to ache 24/7 these days
:-) (I come from a background of Climbing, Scuba Diving & Competitive Rowing with my fair share of injuries….)

Deffo yes. Used ours on our trip to Spain in Feb/March. 4 Star sites, pitch & hook up for a 7.2metre camper 16 euro max. The handbook is very good once you get your head round the way they organise it.

There’s a few firms who deal in LHD motors – worth a google!

FWIW we’ve got an Elddis Autoquest 180 – 6 berths, 6 travelling seats, shower etc for just the missus, me and the dog. However, we do tend to use it for 5 to 6 weeks at a stretch. I’d be loathe to have anything smaller, the overcab is not particularly practical for full size people so use the rear double made from the settee – left made up as a bed most of the time. With small people, the central dining table conversion isn’t really practical as a bed – access to the fridge/cooker is compromised. We have a 4 bike rack on the back with a big cable to the chassis for security and a cover. The bikes live in the awning when we are stopped. Rear garages take up a lot of space internally and can compromise the layout. All our storage is accessed internally – secure but a bit of a faf! Best tip is trawl round a load of dealers and imagine yourselves in some.

The dog had a thorn in his paw on his walk this afternoon. I’m having a lie down in sympathy

I did this! You may live to regret it! I think we got the first kit from the local “free ads” paper ( it was a while ago), it never got sold but was upgraded bit by bit as he improved.

Be prepared to live with a whole new world of aural pain – a youngster in full flow WILL drown out everything in a normal sized house – garage or shed at the end of the garden is the way to go.

+1 for BT. The Homehub 5 is really good, our neighbour logged in to it when his BB was borked by EE! We had an issue with speed when we first signed up, I emailed the MD at BT and miraculously elves appeared and fixed it. I’m very loathe to move despite it costing a few bob more than the opposition.

You could try one of the cycling clubs – http://www.ccc.je or velo sport jersey. The proper lbs’s might help – Pedal Power, Mark Pickford, Big Maggy’s etc.

What exactly do you think physiotherapy is?

I’d expect an inspection of the problem area, however cursory and some discussion of the issues and how the exercises would address them!

I hear what you say about being skint, but we had much the same when my wife damaged her knee, brushed off by A&E, long wait for a fracture clinic appointment when we kicked up a fuss so we researched private consultants with a particular specialism and went direct – £140 for the first consultation. With an appropriate note from the consultant to GP we got on to his NHS list for the operation and after care. I have to say, we’ve been underwhelmed by the competency of the NHS Physio service who’s work seems principally to consist of printing off exercises from the interweb that we’ve already discovered – gone private there as well at £45 a pop but only when needed.

The NHS seems to have got itself into a position where it assumes that the patient has an infinite amount of time to resolve the issue without regard to other consequence hence the interminable gaps between various appointments, oh and interdepartmental communication is crap and turf warfare rife!

I rowed at a fairly high level in my late 30’s early 40’s and packed it up when I couldn’t continue to train 5 days a week without suffering like a dog for the other 2! Knocked out a couple of sub 4 hour London Marathons in my mid 40’s but really hit my cycling stride at 50 – sub hour 25 mile TT’s good run in the Duo Normand and a string of XC wins at club level :-) Since then I’ve gradually declined and find maintaining the training pain really difficult. Doesn’t stop me trying though.

IIRC the rabies jab, health check and passport issue was around £100. The worming and health check in France/Spain is about 40 Euro – slightly more in Calais and most vets are up to speed with the procedure. If you are travelling frequently, try and buy the wormer on-line and supply it to the vet – most of them don’t mind and it does save a bit :-)

Never needed the paper part when hiring abroad. IIRC the paper counterpart was a half arsed solution to the problems that arose when they introduced the photocard licence to get closer to the european standard. Now we have another half arsed fix to a problem that really shouldn’t exist!

Sandwicheater. Thanks, that’s helpful. I’m in touch with the original engineer who’s ferreting out the original documents – it was 1999 when the work was done! We were in the position of being real cash buyers, I’m anticipating the next buyer needing a mortgage!

Oh and rural crossings in France have at least bells as a warning before the barriers come down.

One day its all going to go horribly wrong! This isn’t the first time in PR or other races,particularly the one day classics. The organisers need to get a grip, spell out the rules and the arrangements for dealing with crossing closures – the break gets held at its gap, the rest are neutralised until the peloton is back together. SNCF are quite within their rights to go apeshit. Imagine Network Rails response.

I ran a 70’s SL500 for a while. Mechanically they are pretty bombproof, some of the ancillary items are a bit flaky – vacuum central locking that loses the vacuum!. Also the bodywork will be a bit frayed – behind the headlights, wing edges etc. Check the hood mechanism and get a hardtop as well. Dont skimp on tyres – they eat anything other than decent rubber. Loads of fun, hugely powerful and everyday useable.

Thanks all. I think the issue is that the ios devices can see multiple routers all serving the same network and the poor dears get confused and hence don’t do anything! We’ll have to live with it. Tough when its over 20C and cloudless :-)

Unfortunately its not that. I’ve wandered round the site to eliminate that possibility. Thanks though.

The day after my youngest brothers wedding, I was in Hotel Chocolat at Bluewater when the previous days food and drink caught up with me! My g/f at the time (now wife) was waiting to pay and my lads (in their 20’s) were hanging around when I let go a weapons grade SBD. I sauntered off to the front of the shop leaving the g/f and shop assistant alternately glaring at me, each other and gagging. The atmosphere in the car on the way to Gatwick was tense as was my sphincter – I was left in no doubt that a repeat would see me ejected in to the fast lane of the M25 or out of the emergency exit on the plane – I’m still reminded 6 years later of the offence!

Slight hijack! How do you find mpb? I’m after a zoom lens for my Nikon D40 and they’ve got a few.

And another delighted customer here! Absolutely painless to deal with since we moved from BG about 3 years ago. Just waiting for the smart meter install (although we have one from the BG days!)

They made the team on the IoW redundant and now ship everything in from the Mainland. Result is that sessions finish early as everyone has to get back on the ferry and there’s no overtime if they are late! All the staff who were laid off now work as agency staff in the Phlebotomy Dept at the hospital!!

We’ve been thinking about it for a while. It seems to be an itch that needs scratching and we are getting closer and closer to doing it. The biggest issue we have to overcome is that its a one way ticket unless you can maintain a property in the UK and you have to accept that you are going to get old and stupid abroad. We’ve just picked up a handy guide published by The Connexion an expat newspaper – about 10 Euro for the download. As soon as we can pluck up the courage, we’ll be off somewhere down the West Coast :-)

Glad to hear things haven’t moved along much in the 20 years since I had mine done! I drove home – 20+ miles on country roads “briskly” flat out on the Sofa before the anaesthetic wore off, G&T in hand, wife and kids detailed off on life support tasks for the w/e, back to work on the Monday! No shaving for me which made the cauterising something of a fire risk! Its a weird sensation squinting down the length of your body to see smoke rising from your crotch. I was rowing competitively at the time, missed one outing mid week, back in the boat the following w/e. Spectacular bruising when it came out….

The current trend for using multi function touch screens to control the heating – scrabbling about for menus is probably worse than being on the phone PEUGEOT!

Buy a big pair of lined curtains from your local charity shop – the linings aren’t stitched along the bottom edge = large bag! Used it for road bikes loads of times.

I’ve been looking into this as I want to get a van for the bikes too. Looks like the only way to get cheaper VED and insurance is to convert it to a camper van and get it reclassified.

I think you need a bed, table, cooking facilities and a window as a bare minimum. Look into the costs of doing a super cheap ghetto conversion just to get it reclassified

My Motorhome on a Peugeot Boxer chassis is £225 – flat rate so check first….

Lidl had some digital Max/Min thermometers with indoor and outdoor sensor -£2.99 for just that! Might have some left.

There’s long stay parking at “The Triangle” about 250 metres East of the Red Funnel Terminal, sorry don’t know costs. You’ll need to be on the car ferry as they dont take bikes on the Red Jet.

Theres a Bush one sold by Argos that does the same thing. We’ve got a Beko one in the shed thats fine at -5

Jerseychaz – stupid comment. If you were committed you’d go to a different local donation site or a walk-in regional centre. Also don’t forget that people make appointments then don’t turn up.

Your comments sound crass even if you didn’t mean it. Giving blood to help others is something worthwhile

Unfortunately, on the Isle of Wight, there’s one session every so often in a changing location. Popping in on the off chance isn’t an option given the length of time you have to wait, otherwise I’d do it!

Got the same emails and texts. When I phoned for an appointment, they’d all gone! Can’t be that bad….

P F Jones carry a huge range, loads of advice and info on their slightly clunky website. Cheap as well. Their own brand range is supplied by Witter.