Thanks all, I know a tow bar is The Solution for a MPV but they key thing is that we’ll only pan this vehicle for a year or so while Project New Van is built.

Roof rails aren’t totally out of order – probably much easier to get working before we go on holiday in a week.

Cheers

marketing wins again!

He has previous form I believe on a few things like this – as does IIRC a few others like Maes

Maes been cutting corners? Did I miss something? Or is this Maes who had to serve a drugs ban after taking a standard drug combo from a doctor didn’t realise one of them was a prohibited substance?

Ikea Kungfors should manage a hammer easily.

We holidayed earlier this summer in Eskdale we got the four y/o to do the walk from boot taking in Blea Tarn (good for a swim), Swiney Tarn, down to Fisherground Fm and the river back to Boot.

Lovely walk.

I’ve done 4 x Graythwaite and 3 x Naughty (including one back when it was the Kidland Enduro). I think.

IMO Graythwaite is harder but has been getting a little easier – the first (2015?) was amazeballs – it was so dry – the roots weren’t as lethal as the last time I rode it (2019) when it was wet and polished.

Naughty is a bigger physical challenge – bigger transitions that need riding instead of a short and steep push to the top. Kidland was basically 2 x DH trails and 2 x Enduro trails, all steep and techy. The Naughty Northumbrian was basically 2 or 3 x steep greasy Enduro/DH trails and a couple of grassy fillers (at least was when I last rode in 2018). I understand it’s been getting harder and less grassy!

TLDR; they are both hard, NN more physical, Graythwaite more enduro, don’t split hairs and go ride them both.

n.b. Both are on private trails that you have to enter to ride, don’t go poaching the trails and jeopardising the future of the events, thanks.

@caher – there have been emails from Western Digital and news stories abound but the WD MyCloud has a security flaw and should be removed from your network immediately. Your files can be accessed by anyone.

@leffeboy – thanks for the suggestions. straight online backup is a thought, but I would also maybe like to use the NAS as a primary store for music and video (i.e. stuff I’ve collected or ripped from physical media) that doesn’t necessarily need backed-up and could be accessed from TV, ipads, etc.

I then want to backup on to the interwebs.

for reference, Office 365 is £60 p/a which gets you 1 TB & office apps too. currently we use Google apps and LibreOffice.

I think I’m pushing over 1 TB including all my photos, which do need a little cull but there’s ain’t enough hours i the day to sort out all the flotsam in my life.

Backblaze is unlimited for $60 p/a.

/edit – more replies while I was typing.

yeah I don’t expect initial uploads to be fast, but come December I can escape from my average Plusnet connection and get Zen FTTP. mmmmmmm.

We like ours but the painted finish on ours chips very easily. Would use again but only getting the vinyl covered type or a wood finish.

The 3d builder was good, but only came out of alpha after I’d done the design work.

You need more filler panels and the like than you think – get someone who has done it before to review your plans.

We really like our Quartz worktop and the price of the worktop bought through DIYK is incredibly good value.

I thought they were traps for underground lobsters

Graboids?

Wait, you guys are riding bike still?

MY proper gnar riding has been getting further and further apart. Monthly trip up to the borders started fading away in to an annual birthday trip and then stopped entirely. But my last trip there (sad wave to b_r and co.), up to Thornie humbled me a little bit. Hadn’t ridden there for a good year and thought I’d be fine…. but Turboferret had gotten worn out, polished and slippery, High Definition was great but everything else we hit was steep, steeper, barely ridden in and slippery.

I got the Ryobi one because I already had a couple of batteries and charger. I think it was around the £100 mark without batteries. This is the model that must be 4 years old now, still going strong. It has 3 sections – the base and hand where you put the battery, the cutting head which is adjustable angle for doing hedge tops, and the central sections, which you can leave off for doing stuff that’s not quite so high.

It will get through stuff 10-15mm thick easily enough – the difficulty is holding it still enough to chew through in the same place.

It’ll get loads done with a very modest amount of battery.

I’ll echo what Carlos says about the long pole ones being unwieldy and heavy. Unless you’re stacked, you’ll get tired pretty swinging it around (max length must be 3 m+) but that’s still far safer than ladders IMHO.

It’s still quite heavy and long for doing close work on hedges low to the ground, so you might find you still want a small one, but maybe get corded for that.

We were always planning on upgrading our camper for a newer one this year or next… prices for a base van to convert have gone nuts though.:-(

What I thought should have been £20-£25k now seems to be £30-£35k 😬

Did no one else get a shock when they googled “pompino” from work, when researching a new commuter bike? Just me?

I have an Alfine geared commuter bike, I use Putoline on my chain. Maybe 2-3-4 months between applications?

My wife has an Alifine geared commuter bike with Gates belt drive.

I only need one more incident of a toddler grabbing the chain before I get a split in the chain stay to go with a belt drive!!!!! My chain is the mankiest thing in the garage and is at perfect toddler height – I’d love to be shot of it.

n.b. We’ve also gone down the Early Rider belter route for little bikes – cleaner, less rust, faff, safer…

Now to go and read the thread in case anyone else has ctually converted their frame. When I chose a new frame for the commuter I did have to chose between two similar models – one without a split and saved me over £200…

Good grief TINAS. Where is your nearest fire extinguisher?

Life is too short for swapping chains.

On a trail in Verbier… Stu knows the one. Nice contouring path in the woods leads you unsuspectingly into Euro hop madness of awful corners. Think he called it Kiddie Fiddler but on my map it was called Chateau-Crie.

https://www.trailforks.com/trails/chateau-crie/

Anyway, rock flicked up out of nowhere and smashed my mech.

Easy enough to remove and I had a spare back at the campsite but I had no chance of even attempting that trail. Or if I’m being honest, my mechanical helped disguise my technical inability to ride the trail ;-)

it’s a schooner!

I thought the DPM camo wraps were to disguise new body panels and shapes. No point drawing attention to the vehicle like that if the development stuff is hidden underneath the bodywork?

@shorty121 no – Vic Park is a typical park with some formal gardens and walking tracks and heaps of volunteer built and maintained mtb trails. Plenty of flow tracks and gnarlier tracks. A few jump lines but they were never my thing. I don’t know if you have to pay to ride down through CAP or if they just charge for the uplift.

No Transporter Van based on this, the T6.1 is to continue a while longer.

road training

I trust you mean riding laps of Dyers pass road or the Rapaki Track then back down through Vic Park? :-)

Do you every ride with anything much gnarlier than a Spark? You might find you get overwhelmed on a lot of the riding round ChCh. You’ll love the long loop out from Castle Rock, John Britten, Greenwoods and Taylors mistake on that.

The Lost Words? Lovely book.

Matt please confirm, I would like to buy this for the kids myself :-)

What’s that? You want to be given keys to my house but won’t verify your identity? Please, go ahead an cancel your booking!

If you still get an automatic feed of news when you open up a Chrome tab… now is a good time to turn it off and prevent spoilers. Also customise your news homepage if you can. You’re welcome.

I really hope that as with the Critérium du Dauphiné, that ITV have the program available on the ITV hub as soon as the programme is finished. 7pm is kids bed time, then the program goes AWOL for some unknown length of time before being added to the ITV Hub. The result is that we’re often fishing around ’til gone 10 (which is too late for SWMBO) waiting for the highlights to be added to the hub as a “watch again”.

In conclusion, the campers have now murdered the OP and are wearing his skin for a suit around his (now their) house.

It’s the only way for millennials to get on the property ladder.

If turning the key is doing the wok to compress the seals, then I’d expect it to get easier in time as the seals become more compressed.

But anyway, no idea why your wife insisted on that style. Tell her she’s wrong. That’ll get you a new door (and house…).

I don’t do fashion caps, I’m not a Yankee that’s not my style.

However I do have a cap for walking in t’hills. It’s made by Kathmandu and the peak has an edge down the centre so it can fold up and go in a pocket or get tucked in to the waist band of a pack. Definitely smaller than fashion cpas but it’s not adjustable, I normally wear a medium helmet. The Mrs has an even smaller Mountain Research one.

I’ve got an Altura one, which I use a lot. It’s waterproof on the chest ant tail (why not) and has a mesh back, which is great as it is nearly always used with a backpack.

If he’s a self-employed decorator then soon enough he’ll be needing a van (ladders, tools) and surely 90%+ of commercial vans will be manual?

Otherwise the OP has had a lot of advice already.

In general, yes a manual will make a more conscientious driver, more away of their revs and speed. and you can stop, handbrake and neutral like a real human instead of a dead-to-the-world goon, standing on the clutch and brake at traffic lights.

However driving an auto in a high-stress situation is a godsend. Trying to navigate Italian roads, looking out for signs and traffic lights*, while driving on the “wrong” side of the road, being intimidated by Italians in cars and on mopeds, trying to reverse a ridiculous SUV in Whistler…. I’ve had my snobbery over Auto’s beaten out of me. you can be so much more aware of other traffic and other drivers and hazards when you’ve one less thing to think about.

That said, I’m glad of my Manual licence and the flexibility it provides. We’ve only ever owned Auto vehicles in NZ where they’re much more popular as they’re all 2nd hand imports form Japan.

* In the UK we are great at consistency. You know where the traffic lights will be and their view is normally unencumbered. It’s easy to miss traffic lights when they’re in the “wrong” place.

I can process the stuff in about 10 minutes it seems, love it.

Looks very Andy Goldsworthy.

The very essence of his work is that it’s temporal and those stacks will be gone very soon indeed, through natural or human effects.

Leave.

No.

Trace

Yeah. But. This is the Lake District. Borrowdale. You can probably see the road or a pub from there. Also a hundred tourists. A dozen MTB riders. And this art will be gone by next month.

Timely thread – I just (finally) received a pair of these for the wife’s bike – the right colour, thin, grippy, and should be good for her ulnar nerve issues.

However she is a bit crash-happy 😬 so might be best going back now instead of being an expensive experiment.

New bike time!

Just secure he valve in place as usual and seal the gap with some wattle & daub, or silicone seal if you prefer.

Graythwaite… keep your chin up and keep going. Don’t fuss over line choice too much – you can spend ages analysing your options but then you’ll not notice or being in the wrong place when it comes to race time.

IMO practice is for identifying the “features” that you are comfortable with and judging whether you’re going to hit them in your race run. You’re lucky that Kev is a good chap and will mark features of consequence appropriately. there’s not too much of that at Graythwaite anyway. There’s a drop on Vinnie’s Divorce that I decided against and has the final drop been dropped form the final finish? Good riddance! 🐓

Other line choices (that might save 1-2 seconds)… maybe you’ll manage to commit one to memory but mostly you’re riding on instinct, bravado and luck.

Pray for dry conditions.

If you have a full face and elbow pads, consider taking them for Graythwaite. Kev’s guidance to riding/walking the transitions is reasonable. A fit and skilled rider could ride more. On race day most people will be walking more than he estimates, so feel comfortable to ride the lot with a FF and take it off for the walks. Don’t ever ride without a helmet 🚴‍♂️

Jon (veteran????) of 3x Graythwaite Enduros and probably my favourite.

What makes flat bike shoes different to flat non bike shoes

They need to be stiff enough over the sole that your foot doesn’t fold over the pedal, giving you tired, achy feet.

The sole needs to be tacky and sticky enough to grip the pedals and not lacerate your leg on the pedal pins.

The upper needs to keep water out and not soak it up like a sponge.

Almost never. Maybe if I’ve gone a bit fast, clumsy, and front heavy over a drop it’ll get close. Haven’t done any DH for a while and although I’ll stuck a couple more PSI in the tyres, I don’t mess with the suspension for an uplift/pushup day.

MY old English teacher was ace and she immensely resented being treated as a walking dictionary by her friends. Last thing she wanted was to be asked “how do you spell…?” when out for a glass or Rioja.

That headline is just a failure of the writer, editor and software… surely there should have been a squiggly red line underneath?

There’s quite a few who do smaller diameter grips – Ergon, Deathgrips, Hope.

Might have to move away from lock-on to get the smallest and comfiest combination.