The Pennine bridleway starts just up the road from Matlock at Middleton Top and round Stoney Middleton,Eyam,Bakewell and Over Haddon.

Although be aware that the first 15 miles or so of the Pennine Bridleway are basically a converted railway path, so not at all technical (6 foot wide and flat).

Joe

Some good rides from Matlock pretty much, although what do you mean by 'technical'? Jacob's Ladder level of scaryness, or more like the stuff around Ladybower which is mainly not that hard except for the beast?

There is lots of the sort of long xc riding that is nice round there, sort of similar level to Ladybower, and there is proper hard riding, but it is hard to direct people on much of that.

This is a nice route (anti-clockwise if it isn't obvious)
http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=20299
probably a couple of hours. Starts very close to Matlock. It has some nice singletrack and a nice fast rocky climb / descent to start and finish.

There is some great riding around Cromford (couple of miles down the road from Matlock, although I can't map it, all the best bits aren't on the OS map, maybe someone will post a description of a ride round that way.

If you're coming up from the south and have time to spare, this is a great little loop, starting from just off the A6, although I'd skip the first climb if it isn't frosty, as it will be a mudfest. Two good technical descents with rocks and roots and things and a load of nice stuff in between, and if you hurry it can be done in well under 2 hours.

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=24048

It is also conveniently near this very nice cafe / delicatessen (and a very nice chocolate shop/cafe opposite) if you happen to have someone waiting for you (and it isn't a sunday, Belper closes on Sundays).
http://www.freshbasil.co.uk/

Joe

My Dealextreme torch was fine last night (for a 2.5 hour ride home, on one battery, although on low & medium at points). I'd be more worried about camelbak tubes freezing up – I had no drinking water after about half an hour's riding.

Joe

I'm not 100% sure what the Nike+ kit is, I thought it was a custom protocol, in the same frequency as Bluetooth, ANT or XBee, but I think not the same protocol. Wikipedia says that it is ANT, but looking at it, there isn't any evidence for that, and the fact no one has got it talking to other devices suggests it isn't ANT (and the fact the Nike+ units don't appear to talk nicely with a standard ANT receiver).

Oh actually a little digging, and it appears that it is a non-standard protocol, so no luck there.

What you need is an external receiver – there is one I know of:

http://en.pedalbrain.com/pricing

These people have an external ANT transmitter that talks to things like powertap hubs and suunto heart rate monitor straps and all that gubbins.

Not cheap mind, $200 for the bit to connect to the iPhone, plus a subscription that you have to pay to use it.

Or a bluetooth heart rate strap. There are a few of these, but they are all either very expensive medical things, custom built, or the Nokia thing, which is not possible to buy separately, and probably locks itself to only talk to Nokia phones.

Joe

20 miles each way for me today.

Off road obviously.

Although the main road from home to work is gritted, so I'd have been fine on the road bike (and saved myself 4 miles either way), but I just love riding in snow.

Joe

I've ridden all the snowy days so far I think.

My ride to work had between 1 inch and 3 inches of snow, which seems to me to be the perfect balance between lovely crunchy snowy noises, and too much effort / sticking in the snow.

I have to say though, 20 miles (the offroad way to work) was not at all easy, really felt like hard work.

There is something great about descending a completely featureless track knowing that underneath there are roots and boulders and all that, and praying that you won't hit anything too big, or fall off any drops that you can't see.

Now riding on sheet ice covered roads – that *is* rubbish. One of the roads near my work has speed bumps and complete sheet ice – that was a bit scary, back wheel spinning on the uphill bits, I ended up riding on the pavement after a couple of slippery moments.

I guess I don't have the problem you have with the road riding to get to the off road though – my closest trail is under a half mile away, and even the slightly further away ones I rode yesterday start 2.5 miles from my house.

Joe

If you take into account the time spent commuting on a normal day there's an obvious solution – commute to home.

Yesterday:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=177714&id=635999387&l=d03f7c7311

Although today I actually have to be in work. Hmph. The A609 on a mountain bike is not quite the same as the local woods.

Joe

Compact is just a triple in disguise.

There is a 50g or so weight difference, plus to some people's eyes it looks nicer.

The disadvantage is that you can't have nice close together gears – triple with 12-23 gives you a very wide range of gears, but with small gaps between them.

Joe

Oooh, almost an inch more snow here. Lunchtime ride on fresh snow I reckon (probably in a blizzard too – bonus!).

Joe

Round us,

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=24048

is fine in pretty much any weather (you could probably push through it in a few inches of snow even), although it is only a 10 miler.

The stuff up at Cromford and Ambergate is all a good bet too, as long as it is cold enough to freeze, although that is mainly naughty riding and I can't plot it on bikehike easily. You'd need someone who knows the area to get the best riding (the canals, high peak trail etc. are great for getting from one bit of trail to another, but the good stuff is the stuff that comes off the top of the valley either side and heads downwards).

Joe

No more yet. Although I'm planning on working from home having looked at the weather forecast. Snow from 9:00 till 1800 in Derby, and we usually get an extra inch of snow here compared to them.

Joe

I'm further south in Belper, and the trails round here (and up to Matlock) are just perfect right now, frozen very very hard, but not too much snow anywhere. Just come back from a quick local spin and it was ace – a few fun icy moments, but nothing too scary. Great winter riding.

Last week the Monsal Trail was just a sheet of ice – you'd probably hit that at some point on your ride? It'd actually improve a lot with a layer of snow on it to stop it being just an ice rink. Over by Darley Dale was a bit better, but still ice on the wider tracks.

Joe

There's no need for different shoes, helmet etc. unless you're racing at a high level, or have tons of money to burn. Just put some SPDs (or whatever you use on the mountain bike) on there and use your usual shoes.

This time of year, I'd get something that fits mudguards personally, as a full on road bike with tight clearances means wet cold bum in winter.

Joe

From Martin's Heron, you can ride off road through the woods. The B3430 is fine though if you don't want to.

Roughly like this link below (I just bunged that down on the web, I think I have where the gate into the woods is correct, and the tracks are quite big). Be careful crossing the A322.

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=29626

Joe

Don't bother getting one with a guarantee. They only guarantee you for 'manufacturing defects', which basically means if it is completely broken from the start. If it stops working after a few years, it is either because it wasn't cleaned well enough and has built up black stuff, was cleaned too well and scratched, or just was heated quicker than they like you to. Even if you have treated it with kid gloves for years, the company would probably suggest you must have over-heated it. The Anolon pans we have say that you have to only use a low heat with them, which I imagine means no-one follows the guarantee conditions and they never replace any. You also have to send them back to the USA, which probably costs as much as the pan.

TK Maxx often have fancy pans for a bit less money than a cook shop or cooking website if you need a new one.

Joe

In 2009 I did:

7062 km of exercise (4388 miles)
of which:
4957 km was on the bike
1326 km on unicycles
680 km walking in hills / mountains
97 km running

I also swam outdoors in a total of 18 different places in 3 different countries (UK, Italy and the USA), but I haven't tracked distance for that, as it makes no sense as a measure with the currents that you get in a lot of the places I swum. Oh and I seem to remember I've swum maybe 4 or 5 times in indoor pools this year too.

Joe (how nerdy is it that I have a record of all this?)

What type of people should be stopped? I'm guessing you're thinking Arab looking people? What about people who don't look like that who carry bombs (like the Oklahoma bomber in the USA), or people who don't have big beards or look obviously Arabic (like the shoe bomber guy).

If they started having no security for people who didn't look Arabic, it'd just be inviting people to bomb planes.

Doesn't anyone remember how anyone with an Irish accent was treated 15 years ago?

Yeah anyone vaguely Irish sounding / with an Irish name was harassed by the police, and in one case some poor unarmed drunk guy who just happened to have an Irish sounding accent was shot by the police. Oh and we locked up a few groups of random innocent Irish people for several years just because they happened to be nearby when a bomb went off. What a great advert for racial profiling that was.

Joe

All five of mine are in here on my facebook album, I don't think I can embed them from there.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=171550&id=635999387&l=7f8cb5779b

Also some pictures from mountain unicycling and biking around Belper, Ambergate, Cromford. This weather has been great for riding!

Joe

In the article she suggests that she 'just offered to pray for them', but then also mentions that she gave 'testimony of miracles' as well, so obviously she did actually say more than just 'I'll pray for you'.

So it is very hard to know how much she said, and obviously someone writing in the Telegraph has an agenda to push the particular version of the story that fits their agenda (i.e. woman is sacked for her beliefs).

Now, there are some evangelicals who will do things like push themselves on people with cancer, saying that if you believe you'd get better (a miracle would happen). Which kind of has an implicit meaning that the cancer is something to do with not believing in god, a punishment or something.

I imagine the truth was somewhere in between the extremes, but she said enough to offend them, otherwise she'd not have got the sack over it.

Joe

6 punctures on one 18 mile ride. Fortunately exactly the number of puncture patches I had with me.

Oh and a snapped frame while just riding along at Strathpuffer.

Joe

Oh, I just thought about this – is it when Orange started officially supporting the iPhone and turned on visual voicemail that it started doing this? Visual voicemail uses GPRS data.

Joe

You can use http://www.bikehike.co.uk/ to create routes. Free, and has OS maps as well as google maps, so you get the google maps goodness of being able to make the track follow roads and seeing road names, but the OS maps for planning off road routes.

Joe

I don't get why poaching eggs is hard.

Bring the water to a boil. Turn it down to a low simmer, put an egg gently in. Take the egg out with a slotted spoon 2 minutes 45 seconds later. Don't mess with it until you take it out.

If you are cack handed, or doing a load of them, then put them in gently using the corner of a tupperware box or something, but just to do a single poached egg in a pan isn't complicated, and doesn't need clingfilm or special gubbins from lakeland or vinegar or anything, just a pan and some water. The only really useful gubbins is a timer (or a digital watch), so you can be consistent with how long they go in for.

Doing two or more just use a bigger (wider) pan, and put them in at different sides. Good people can do tons in a single pan (I've only ever done 2 or 3 though, I don't know how hard it is then).

Joe

I have been charged for GPRS data transfer when I am streaming music via wifi.

Something either you or they have done to your phone is making it do GPRS data transfer. They can't detect you using wifi, they just don't have the technology to do that, your wifi router isn't connected to their network in any way, and when the phone talks on wifi it doesn't talk to them. It may be a proxy server or something weird in their settings, but that is the only way you can have the charges on your bill. Like the guy above with the LG phone described, sometimes phone settings to sort this can be hard to find.

Joe

You must have screwed up somewhere, and it isn't using wifi, it is using GPRS (mobile network) data, at least for something. Just to check, it isn't something silly like you use google maps when you're out, or you have it set to pick up emails?

Joe

I never got on with Richmond Cycles after trying in vain to buy some 29er tyres off them (them being a Gary Fisher 29er dealer, so one of the few people in the UK who could supposedly get hold of them at the time – none of the online people had them). "Yes, should get them for you by Tuesday, will call you back on Monday", of course never called back, and on Tuesday I give them a call, "should be there on Friday". After a few weeks of this, I realise that they basically aren't actually able to order anything and give up on them, what a waste of time. Filed them in my list of useless bike shops who are worse than using mail order, and got a tyre 2nd hand off a mate to last me until mail order places started having them. So yeah, might be worth popping in (they have some fancy stuff), but don't trust them to get anything that isn't in front of your eyes in the shop (or to be honest about whether they can actually get anything, or to chase anything up).

Joe

I found them the coldest and worst gloves I ever owned. Only gloves I've thrown away before they wore out. As a winter glove I thought they were pretty dangerous really.

They are 100% waterproof in terms of letting water out, they do let in a load of cold water through the cuffs even if you tighten them up, and this makes your hands freezing. They also don't let out sweat, so if you're riding hard even in the dry you end up with frozen sweat all around your hands. The moment you stop, all this wetness cools down and you lose all feeling in your fingers.

They are also bit too tight on the fingers to comfortably wear liner gloves under, so you can't even make them work that way.

Joe

Swimming. I do it weekly but only manage a handful of lengths front crawl whilst others never seem to stop.

mudsux – find out/google/youtube 'Total Immersion' swimming and you might find things improve..

I totally agree with that – it made such a difference to me. It is also great for proper outdoor swimming confidence. Nowadays I swim both crawl or breaststroke at least vaguely efficiently, it is so much more satisfying.

You can't learn to swim well without a coach of some sort watching you telling you what to do better and repeating the process over and over until your stroke is good. Then you have to practice

It's not like running or riding a bike, there is a right way and all the other wrong ways.

Not that I wouldn't have coaching if I could afford it / had the time to swim much, I think the Total Immersion books / videos etc. do a great job of at least making it possible to not suck completely without a coach.

Also, I think it is like running (and probably like riding a bike), in that there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. Running there are so many wrong ways, I did a running session with the "Art of Running" guy, who teaches a running style based on the Alexander Technique, and it made me a so much more efficient and fast, and also meant I don't injure myself, even with my very on/off training, whereas most runners I have met seem to injure themselves on a pretty regular basis. After doing that course, it is obvious how inefficient most runners are too, you can just see it in the way they run.

Joe

We went out for a big curry. It was nice, although the food was so nice and provided in such large quantities that I over-ate and actually had to leave at about 9:30, before the real drinking started as I was too full and starting to fall asleep.

It is much better than my last job, in that a)everyone I work with is nice, and b)we go for a decent curry rather than some stupid horrible 'christmas meal and disco' ripoff.

Joe

How do you stand legally if you've copyrighted your own image? surely then if a photographer uses it they're in the brown sticky stuff?

You can't copyright 'your own image'.

Whoever takes the picture can copyright a particular picture of you, but you don't own a picture just because you happen to be in it.

Joe

or the milenium dome, spectacular examples of why top heavy initiatives don't work.

Although now isn't it the UK's most successful music venue, so sometimes things do work out okay in the end. Oh and Manchester Velodrome, the British Cycling track teams being spectacular examples of why a top heavy initiative can work (whether or not you agree with their targets of winning olympic medals etc. they clearly did what they set out to do).

£19m would build a new school,

Is there a big shortage of school places in the area? If not, what the heck would be the point of spending that money on making a new school, it hardly benefits anyone to have an empty school hanging around?

Joe

Roller skates / roller blades would be perfect for that kind of distance as long as there aren't any cobbles. Pretty cheap, and much less pain to carry around than a folding bike. Or skateboards if you are more into looks, although they don't seem so good at going up hills.

Joe

Is the back of the cree star not insulated from the contacts? On the ones I have, it can be pressed right up against the heatsink with no worries about insulation. I know some boards may be different though. If it is, I would stick some thermal paste under, but make it as tight a fit as possible – thermal conducting paste isn't going to be as good a conductor of heat as direct contact is it?

Assuming the heat is getting to the heatsink (or you work that one out) Can you just make some holes in the casing so that the heatsink is exposed directly to the outside? That way you'd be actually using it as a heat-sink, rather than just somewhere to store up a bit of heat before chucking it out through the casing.

Joe

Those would be Dura-Ace or Ultegra hubs, and apart from the flexy rubbish*, were all built by a couple of very good wheel builders.

Surely if they broke in the way you describe, they were more likely built by a couple of not really that good wheel builders? I bet they went loose / needed truing at various points too.

my 'handbuilt' (probably by a machine these days anyway…..) wheels were never true, and never stayed true.

Again, you got badly built wheels. If they didn't come true and stay true, they were badly built. A decent wheelbuild will stay true for thousands of miles (and certainly won't need a true after the first hundred miles or so – people claiming that all wheels need that are just bad wheel builders making excuses).

Joe

Are you riding it off road? That seems like a very short time to destroy a chain riding on the road? Mine has >2000 miles and isn't worn out yet (checked with a chain checker most weeks).

If it is really that bad, can't you just oil the chain once a day if you really need to?

Or maybe cleaning it that often does bad things to it – I certainly wouldn't know – mine gets properly cleaned not very often (maybe once every couple of months – ie. every 600-700 miles or so).

Joe

If it is just a source of white noise, is there a stereo or mp3 dock or something with speakers in the room? It is pretty easy (like a 1 minute job with audacity[/url]) to generate an mp3 / wav file of white noise, you could always just play that back.

Oh heck, you can even download ones someone else has made:
http://cantonbecker.com/music/white-noise-sleep-sounds/

Joe

When I bought a halfords bike, I was expecting to have to tweak slightly to make the gears just right, maybe change the seat height / bar angles etc. But I wasn't expecting it to be completely unsafe. They'd cunningly tightened up the bars / stem just enough so that it seemed okay to ride off from the shop, but not quite enough so that they wouldn't suddenly come loose and rotate after about 3 miles of riding, leaving me 3 miles from the shop, and 4 miles from home. Obviously the rest (gears etc.) needed adjusting when I got home, but at least they weren't dangerous.

If you sell a bike as 'ready to ride', that should imply 'ready to ride without killing you on the first outing'. Even if you know they are a bunch of monkeys who work at Halfords, you can't really predict quite how bad they can be.

Joe

"Like church bells", Like to see you start ring Church Bells in Triploi where i am, see how far you get, tolerance my left buttock cheek, when it suits certain people. It has been a long day today with these characters.

It is weird, UK nutters keep saying 'Ah, but if you went to <insert crazy far out dictatorship here>, you wouldn't be able to build a church / ring bells / whatever', as if the best model for how to run a friendly, open society, is to look at what crazy dictators reigning over corrupt political systems get up to.

If you look at predominantly muslim countries that aren't run by crazy nutters (or even most of the far out ones), they have churches, same as european countries have mosques.

Even crazy places mostly have churches, there were churches under Saddam Hussein in Iraq, there are churches in Libya, there are churches in Iran. People moaning about muslims having mosques in the UK are taking a position more extremist than Saddam Hussein or Muammar Al-Gaddafi. That is pretty far out.

I think Saudi Arabia may not allow churches, China I believe restricts churches. Those are the kinds of role models that the anti muslim types in the UK would like us to follow?

Joe

Isn't it the call to worship that they sing / broadcast out?

So it's a reminder to the faithful to get their arses down to the mosque. Same as Catholic churches having the dong dong dong bell before a service, and normal churches having ringy ring bells?

So yeah, it is noise pollution, the same as dingy dong bells in a church, but given we generally accept that they are okay, I don't see what's wrong with this.

Joe

Are fire XCs okay for tubeless if I did end up going that way?

I imagine they will be heavier than the current tyres?

Joe