I believe cancelling your payments was the wrong thing to do. I’ve read similar stories before and the advice is not to stop paying the rent as this means you are in breach of your contract.

Not sure if GEDA is deliberately being obtuse or genuinely believes what they’re saying.

If nothing else, he/she is keeping this thread animated.

Perhaps the Olympics are like the Royal Family: they both seem madly expensive to run, but overall bring more money/investment into the country than the UK spends on them.

I live in Hawk Green, which is South Marple (roughly halfway to High Lane from the centre of Marple).

I am aware of the Bicycle Smithy (drive past it down the A6 regularly) & Sett Valley but have never acually set foot in either yet.

There’s also Freeride Cycles in Disley. Never been there either.

I do almost all my bike shopping off of the interwebs these days, only use a real live shop for those emergency purchases when I can’t wait 2 or 3 days for delivery.

But if the new place in Marple is half decent I would be more inclined to make use of it seeing as I can be there and back in 10 minutes.

No idea about Wills Wheels either actually, picked up the connection from another forum.

Marple is of interest cos I live about a mile up the road – it’s always good to have a decent LBS!

Have always used North West MTB in Cheadle as my LBS (used to live nearby-ish).

I’ve no doubt that Goodridge hoses are good, but in my opinion aren’t ‘worth’ the extra money compared to standard hose.

Avid don’t recommend it as the modulation of the brake relies on a bit of expansion in the hose (that’s what I’ve been lead to believe).

?

I’ve always been led to believe that hose expansion = bad

Sounds a bit strange if Avid really do claim this – surely the rear brake would exhibit completely different modulation than the front due to having double the hose length?

Wouldn’t believe their ‘claim’ myself 🙄

Prisoners in spin classes furiously pedalling.

Love? No. Hate? No. Tolerate? Yes.

Wind turbines aren’t too bad visually. They’re certainly not the worst things we’ve polluted the landscape with.

I’ve never seen a single man-made thing that even comes close to being comparable with what nature had preceeded it with.

What’s your hourly rate?

Before we had a dishwasher, we could easily spend an hour each day washing and drying pots, pans, etc.

If you’re on the minimum wage (£5.93 / hour) you could have paid for a £400 dishwasher in only two months. If you figure your time is worth more than that, then the dishwasher will pay for itself in a shorter period.

Eh?

Shirley your time at home isn’t costing anyone anything?

Dishwashers don’t save you money, they just save a bit of time (unless the time you save is spent earning money…)

I think the ‘oil is running out’ statement really means ‘the oil we can extract at a sensible cost is running out’

There’s loads of the stuff that is too expensive/difficult to exploit with current technology.

Plus, there’s countries like Brazil who don’t have the money to exploit their oil, but also won’t let the yanks in to do it… so it just sits there…

That’s my (simplistic) view of the situation anyway 🙂

More tea vicar?

Can somebody explain why the pump prices in my area this morning are exactly the same as yesterday morning, despite the 1p reduction announced in the bodget?

Not that I’m surprised… they’ll just say there was a planned 1p rise in the pipeline anyway…

Very very rarely I experience the Holy Grail of commutes and get clear junctions and green lights all the way… on which occasions I can get door to door without my feet touching the floor. The last time this occurred was last Tuesday.

…penalties and charges will far outweigh any savings you will make over the next 8 months from your new mortgage…

Yeh, I’ll check the details when I get home.

About 18 months left on my current mortgage deal, paying £640 per month, outstanding balance around £90k.

If there’s (for example) a 3% penalty, that’s £2700.

So to make it worth my while I’d need to find a mortgage deal with payments of <£490/mth to give me any financial benefit.

I’ll have a look around, just to see…

It’s 2 miles from Eccles to that college ffs!

Perhaps car insurance is masquerading as some kind of lazy bugger tax.

I’m sorry, but the english are conditioned to be overtly apologetic in all situations, especially those where they absolutely have no reason to apologise… I feel I should apologise for the behaviour of my fellow englishmen and women.

My Brazilian wife thinks we’re very odd in this respect 🙂

I apologise profusely for this.

If you don’t need the internet why consider a blackberry?

(Unless you mean you want e-mail but are not fussed about general interwebs browsing etc)

For the past 5 years I have lived literally 5 minutes the Roman Lakes site and have never ridden from there 😳

Facebook is more like the mail you get through your door addressed to ‘occupier.’ It’s the Internet equivalent of a leaflet campaign

I would compare it more to a small child desperate for attention… “me, me, me , hey, look at me…”

Man on internet forum complains about other people using the internet

Yep. My wife also complains I don’t make a lot of sense sometimes.

I’m a technophobe, therefore I don’t ‘get’ Twitter or that MyFace thingy, although I accept there are people who are determined to pretend they’re useful or something.

Tweeting seems to me to be a bit like opening your front door and shouting inane and boring comments into the street.

Nobody’s really listening and nobody really cares what you’re saying.

Unless you’re 9.

In which case it seems to be the most important thing ever in the whole history of the universe.

Now where are my slippers and pipe… grumble grumble…

Radio 1 censorship doesn’t seem to be working properly because when I tune in I can still hear music and talking.

Also it seems to be stuck on some kind of endless loop cos I hear the same music several times a day. every day.

Does R1 only have the latest ‘Now!’ compilation to choose from ?

Or maybe I just don’t get it because I’m not 9 years old any more.

…or is HRH Crown Prince Bernard of Ecclestone gradually trying to turn F1 into Death Race after he saw it on TV at the weekend ? …

earl[/url]

@binners – perhaps the cheapest option would be stick with the hardtail & have a 2nd wheelset fitted with slick tyres?

If your route involves a lot of slogging up hills you’ll not benefit as much from buying a more road-oriented bike compared to a flatter route where you can cruise along at pace.

I commute 12 miles each way on my mtb, the only change from off-road mode being semi-slick tyres (Conti Travel Contact Reflex’s) & I adjust the fork settings so they’re pretty much locked out.

Higher gearing also helps a bit – most standard MTB chansets have 42T or 44T tooth outer chainring. I have always used a 46T, with an 11-32T cassette, which suits me very well.

My route is about 12 miles, mildly hilly, takes me about 35-40 minutes depending on my fitness & the prevailing wind. It can also be a very stop-start route due to traffic lights & other junctions, which cancels out a lot of the benefit of a faster road bike.

And I can’t actually afford a 2nd bike anyway 🙂

Great picture of an early 1980s impending crash!

On a similar subject, went to Penmachno on Saturday. Whilst there, bumped into the landowner and stopped for a chat. Seems he can’t officially publicise the site as a trail centre due to having no official parking or on-site facilities… in the process of thrashing out options with the villagers…

Rhyl?

Maybe what’s needed is for ‘Which?’ magazine to do some reviews, by people with no direct connection to the bike industry…

Then we could be certain of totally impartial reviews.

@Kit

Agreed.

I always try to let vehicles pass if I am aware they’re sat on my back wheel for no reason other than I’m in the way.

Seems to me to be the considerate and well-mannered thing to do.

What’s to be gained by being pig-headed about your ‘right to be on the roads’ bla bla bla?

Plus, many motorists already resent cyclists enough without being given even more reason.

1″ copper pipe?

Last time I took my wife to hospital was for an appointment at the GP Assessment Unit… arrived, confirmed we were expected (i.e. had an actual appointment)… and finally got home a brief 5 hours later… if that’s how long they take when they’re expecting you heaven only knows what happens if you pay a surprise visit… saw 3 different nurses/doctors who each asked exactly the same questions & wrote down our exactly-the-same answers each time – what value does that add to anything? – I suppose at least they’ve got the paperwork in triplicate… maybe in a weird and twisted way I’m supposed to be grateful for being able to use what my tax/NI has been pumped into all these years for 5 whole hours, rather than the meagre 20 minutes it could have taken…

And then it dawned on me.

Problems experienced with the Health ‘Service’ in the UK make perfect sense once you learn to understand it’s not really a service & patients are just a pain-in-the-butt inconvenience.

Set your expectations low enough & the NHS is just an extenstion of whatever it was that injured you or made you sick in the first place.

Penmachno & Coed-y-Brenin are, in my opinion, the top two.

C-y-B has enough riding to fill a couple of days.

Penmachno has two loops totalling 30km (Loop 119km & Loop 2 11km) – I did it in around 3 hours last time I was there, so good for a half-day or a couple of ‘laps’. Penmachno is a seriously good trail though!

Llandegla[/url] is ok if you like fast, flowy, non-technical trails. Nice for a blast round if you’ve got a couple of hours to fill.

Penmachno & Llandegla are only about 40 mins drive apart so could be combined to fill a day.

Personally, I’d advise avoiding the Marin trail – too much fire road for my liking, and not very good compared to what else is is on offer.

Dey do doh don’t di do?

Tonight I will be mostly just riding home from work… 🙁

But, off to Penmachno on Saturday for the first time 🙂

Leave

I like to ride towards Alderley Edge in Cheshire, which has some lovely runs, round to Prestbury and Macclesfield. Given more time and more clement conditions I’ll be heading out towards the Peak District and the hills towards Buxton.

I ride around these areas a fair bit… I’ll keep an eye out!

Take a look at Loco Tuning

http://www.locotuning.co.uk[/url%5D

Not used them myself, but heard good things…

Edit: damn, beaten to it 🙂

I think the reviewer was trying to say that the complete build as tested was good value considering the Fox forks alone would cost £800 if bought separately.

What idiot came up with that ?

Tricky to pin down, the world’s full of ’em

Jacobs Ladder is best ridden in the direction of down (let’s face it, unless you can levitate, you’ll be walking almost all the way up).

As a ‘first time’ intro for your mates, go with the route as you’ve described.

The parallel dashed lines from your start point indicate a track, which should be accessible provided it’s not private land – is there any signage?

However, the track seems to peter out before your end point, and becomes a footpath… you shouldn’t ride on a footpath (of course, you knew that already), but there’s nothing stopping you pushing/carrying your bike along there…

Also, you’re passing through a disused quarry – these are often private land, worth checking out.

Maybe ask at one of the properties in Cwm Penmachno?