Yes,I do get the brothel analogy, although I think of it more like going to a restaurant…

Going to a trail centre in the Lakes is like going to Pizza Express. Nothing stunning, but enjoyable enough and perfectly inoffensive.

Going off piste somewhere I don’t know is more like going for some dodgy looking backstreet joint. I might get something worthy of a Michelin star, but I might also get something with all the appeal of regurgitated KFC! :)

I’ll take a look at those loops when I’m back on a laptop, thanks. I reckon 23 miles in the Lakes might be pushing my fitness a bit, but that site looks good in general!

Thanks Murray, but I don’t think that’s the right model. According to the specs I can find, mine (which came on a 2015 Stumpy 650 Evo Comp) takes 4 sealed bearings, whereas that how to, excellent though it is, is for a model with 2 sealed bearings and 2 loose bearings?

Although after further investigation, I’m now wondering whether it’s even worth fixing this hub? They seem universally loathed! :(

Thanks for the offer Mark.. I’ll drop you an email if you don’t mind plodding around with a mediocre middle aged fat knacker!

I’m staying in the Hilton, btw. We’re Were limited to what we can book through our work booking system, but I’ll have the car with me, so not a problem.

I reckon I should be able to escape to ride by around six on Wednesday or Thursday, with Wednesday being probably the better bet.

How DH are the trails in Grenoside? I like a bit of fun, but being a bit rubbish and middle aged, nothing I can’t roll if needs be!

As for where I’ll be staying, nowhere booked yet, but probably the Hampton on West Bar Green.

Ooh, that looks ideal, thanks!

Grenoside is 5 miles from the hotel, so that works out nicely. :)

Success at last. It seems Spesh had helpfully changed the part number to something completely different!

Tried Evans at lunchtime. They were also completely stumped as to which hanger is needed!!

They did, however, provide a certain amount of entertainment, by way of their delivery truck driver managing to somehow lose his keys whilst there to make a delivery, leaving his truck locked on a Waterloo street, and half the shop staff ripping the place apart to see if they could find it! I’ll be interested to see if the truck is still there on my way home. :)

Cheers guys. It seems odd that it’s such a complete mystery!

I’ll probably pop into Evans at lunchtime and ask them. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t answering the phone at 10:30 last night though! :)

It rather depends on where I am.

When I’m at home (Epsom), I do make a point of avoiding them, but that’s because I’ve been able to map out a 20+ mile XC route from home which is all bridleways bar a couple of miles of unavoidable (ie, there’s no footpath either) quiet roads, plus when I’m looking to more trails riding rather than XC, Swinley & Bedgebury work well with the kids, plus there’s all that lovely right to roam on Holmbury & Pitch Hills, so it’s a bit academic, and I just figure why risk upsetting anyone when there’s so much to ride without needing footpaths?

If I’m down at my parents’ in Ilminster, on the other hand, it’s a totally different matter! For such a rural county, Somerset is staggeringly bereft of bridleways unless you’re going to stuff the bike in the car and head over to the Quantocks or Exmoor. There are literallly just a few hundred yards dotted around here or there, most of which seem to be either dead ends, or have a footpath as the only connection at at least one end. Down there, what choice is there?

One thing that does surprise me on this thread is some of the early comments about “tossers in 4x4s” churning up byways where they have a perfectly legal right to be whilst arguing in favour of riding on footpaths, where we arguably don’t! Yes, a 4×4 can bugger up a byway, but over the years, so many byways have seen motorised traffic banned in recent years that they’re only now legally allowed to drive on something like 2% of unsurfaced tracks, so it’s hardly surprising that they get churned up, is it?

Think of it from the other perspective. If the Provisional Wing of the Ramblers’ Association succeeds in getting motorised traffic completely banned away from the tarmac, you’ll be freeing up a lot of time for the narrow minded bigots to come after mountain bikes instead, so live and let live, I say! :D

I’ve been commuting on a Boardman CX Pro for the last 3 years or so, and the brake discs (once the awful Avid cable discs had been replaced with TRP HYRDs), rack and muguard mounts & fatter tyres make it superb for that.

I can’t imagine ever wanting to use it anywhere significantly off road though, as my MTBs are just too much fun! Even on something deliberately planned to be XC, I’d rather an unexpected rooty descent or something comes as a pleasant highlight of the day rather than potentially get off and walk! :)

Thanks for all the inputs, chaps. We’re looking at regular trails more than full on DH anyway, so sounds like it’s worth a go, but not worth paying for. :)

Anybody? :)

I’m not sure I’d manage two nights on the beer, BPW and the Gap before driving back to Surrey from looking at it! :lol:

Gap ride? What’s this? We’ve been debating what to do on the Sunday! :)

Isn’t the nature of polarised, tribal politics in this country an absolute joy?

Labour get in, shore up their position by buying the votes of the poorer elements of society, screw up the economy in the process, and throw more at the poorer elements of society to hold on to their position for as long as they can.

Eventually, it goes too pear-shaped, and the Tories get in.

The Tories then have to try and fix the economy, but to shore up their position and keep in power, they need to bribe their core voters, and do so by clawing back from the poorer elements of society.

Eventually, it gets too harsh, and Labour get in. Then the whole cycle starts all over again.

To my mind, the real cause of the problem is that for decades, BOTH main parties have refused to recognise that the average Brit has been living for longer, so whilst our average time in retirement has rocketed, the contributions made to support this retirement have lagged miles behind.

Labour want to rape anyone middle class or above to get the money to pay their bribes, the Tories want to cut funding to any groups who don’t vote for them anyway so that they can continue to pay their bribes, and it’s all getting harsher and harsher in both directions, because neither are prepared to tackle the problem of the old age benefits bill.

@cakefest, thanks a lot for that offer. Sorry I’ve not checked in more recently to see it! I’ll drop you an email. :)

@drofluf, it does make sense, thanks. Will it also display GPS mapping, or does it just do the bike computer side of things?

Thanks everyone!

CYB is about 90 minutes to NyA’s hour, but might be the best bet by the sound of it.

OK, not going to try and reply to people individually, as there were too many :)

What happened to my Garmins? One was my fault (fluke accident dropping it to land on the screen right on the corner of a brick), but for the other two, the power button failed on one, and the other stopped being recognised by my PC over time. Both known issues on the Garmin 800, both issues which would’ve cost Garmin pennies to fix, and both issues for which the only remedy was £80+ for a refurb and return postage.

Do I want to see the display whilst riding? Not all the time, but if I’m following a GPS route or focusing on cadence/heart rate to make my commute less boring or responding to my 10yr old’s constant “how far have we ridden now” then I do at least want to be able to glance down at it from time to time.

I did look at the Wahoo thingy, but I never managed to get to the bottom of whether it would support my ANT+ cadence and HR sensors, so didn’t risk it.

As for Hels… IPHONE???? Wash your mouth out!!! :evil:

Looking at those, does anyone know how a red at Nant or Coed compares to something like the Swinley or Bedgebury red? I’m guessing they’re a fair step up?

I’m wondering if the blue at Coed might be the best bet? Would that be similar to what the kids are used to?

Just to add a little bit more to this, we’re actually staying just west of Newtown in Powys, and happy to drive an hour or so each way, maybe a little more for somewhere really worthwhile. Does that put us within range of any of the big Welsh centres?

@jonny rocky, shame they’re not a 44!

I used to use overshoes, but I have 80 sets of traffic lights on my commute into Central London, so with all of the clipping in and out, the bottoms were ending up completely trashed after just a couple of months. :(

Also, my Northwave boots have been waterproof enough for all my needs – I’m riding a CX bike with full mudguards which makes a huge difference to how much water hits the boots – so not overly worried there. The only reason for not getting more of them is that I can’t get the cleats far enough back to really be comfortable with them.

Sounds like the MX145s might be better than the MXZ303s though.

Hmm.. That’s not good news about the width. :(

I’ve got a pair of standard width Lake MX237 shoes, and they’re absolutely wonderful so was hoping the same would carry over to the boots, but seemingly not.

I’ve also got a pair of Northwave Celsius boots, but they’re starting to wear out now, and although they’re wide enough, to get them wide enough I had to go up a size, which means I’ve got the cleats slammed right to the back of the shoe, and would still like to have them another 5-10mm further back if I could, so had been hoping I could avoid that with a pair of Lakes.

Thanks all. Lots of useful stuff to look at! :)

@Scienceofficer, I suspect you’re right! Most of the time, I won’t bother with waterproofing in the rain, as I know I’m waterproof underneath (although I do like my Endura shorts with waterproof seat for stopping my bib pads from getting sodden!), so this is just for those occasions when it’s nasty enough for me to start getting properly cold, which takes some doing, as I am fairly “well insulated”! At that point, I’d rather the wet from the inside but keeping warm over the wet from the outside and freezing cold approach.

Thanks guys. I’ve taken it off now, and will leave it inside out overnight, then try again in the morning – the joys of working from home! :) – and drop to 35 PSI once it’s seated.

As for Glasgowdan, I’m a Southern softie!! I don’t mind riding in 4 degrees and drizzle, but there’s no way I’m changing a tyre in it! I’m very firmly ensconced in the kitchen, much to my wife’s delight! :lol:

It is does actually seem to be holding fairly decent pressure when it’s standing still. It’s just when I make it move, either by spinning it or riding it that it seems to lose sealant and ultimately pressure. Would fitting it with a tube help, given that?

I had something similar a while back with wax build up. Didn’t hurt, but did eventually cause me the same hearing issues you get from water in your ear.

I ended up solving it by getting a dropper bottle (as opposed to post!) and using it to drip some olive oil (pharmacist recommended it) into my ear then lying down with the ear upwards for 10 minutes or so to loosen everything up, then squirting warm water in there with a syringe and a flexible hose, which cleared everything out perfectly! Just squirt the water in rather than pushing the actual hose in.

How can the police say there was no sign of the man behaving inappropriately? He was clearly a roadie!

And sorry, even though I’m planning to base my retirement location largely on the quality of local riding, I guess this should probably be in the chat rather than bike section if a mod is able to move it? :)

@Robdog…

If you think of Lynx as “nice shower gel and stuff”, what on earth do you usually wash with?!?!?!?!?

A few years ago, my mother in law gave us a salad dressing mixing bottle. Imagine a baby’s bottle with markings on the side for fill to here with oil,vinegar, mustard etc…

This year, she has clearly decided to intellectualise me by giving me a novel by the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, in the original French! OK, I do speak French, but God only knows why she thought I’d be even remotely interested in it in any language!

Still, maybe not as bad as my cousin, who, as a teenager, was given a flannel and a bar of soap for Christmas by the next door neighbour…. For three consecutive years!!

He’s not having my XT cassette! :lol: Wouldn’t get him much further forward though, as I’m happily running 2×10.

I’ll take a look at the Sunrace cassette though.

When I got the 32t, it was the smallest I could find that fitted onto Zee cranks, but to be fair to him, he might only be 10, but he get plenty of use out of 32×11, so I doubt I’d be popular for making him spin more at that end of the cassette! :lol:

I find that I watch far more content on Amazon than I do on Netflix, and that’s before you roll in the free express shipping, which is gettiing all the more handy now that they’re increasingly providing free same day delivery.

For MTB content, however, there’s nothing. Youtube and Red Bull TV for that.

And we have a winner!! :)

Thanks to Honourablegeorge for the suggestion of Leatt 3DF. Elbow and knee/shin pads arrived this morning, and are a perfect fit!

Just out of interest, what’s it like to cycle in the 20mph areas?

I’ve not experienced then in Bristol, but the one in Richmond Park really bugs me!

I generally ride at 18-20mph on the flat, so in theory you’d think I’d like it, as I should be comfortably moving at the same speed as the cars, neither overtaking nor needing to be overtaken.

Unfortunately, that fails to take into account the complete cranial implosion this triggers in the average motorist!

On the one hand, they can see that I’m riding near enough at the speed limit, but on the other hand, I’m a cyclist, so they HAVE to overtake me, coz it’s the LAW!

If there was a thirty limit, they’d just overtake and we’d both be on their way, but as it’s a twenty, the dopey wombats edge past me at about a mile or two per hour faster than me, knuckles white on the wheel, looking straight ahead, desperate to avoid eye contact!

Did you get out today then, OP?

Try Adrian Flux, the insurance broker.

I used to have cover with my bank account, but that stopped covering one of my cars – a long wheelbase Shogun – for European travel once it was over 10 years old.

Trying to find someone who would cover me for 3 weeks of European cover with a vehicle of that size and age with a bike on the roof and four more on the tail was a complete nightmare! The best I’d found was, from memory, the RAC at something like £223!! 8O

I was just about to run the risk of going without cover when someone suggested Adrian Flux. I phoned to find out if they’d cover me, and the lady on the phone said yes, and for something like £56.

I was amazed at how cheap this was compared to the next best quote, and asked to double check that this would cover me for a full 3 week extended holiday. “Oh no”, she said. “It’ll cover you for the full year, including unlimited European cover”!

Roll forwards 1,200 miles and a month, and the engine seized completely on a dual carriageway in Brittany. :cry:

At this point, needless to say, I was panicking at just what sort of help I was going to get from my cheapo bargain cover, but they were simply amazing!

A minibus was arranged to get us and our kit to our campsite, then a taxi the following day to the nearest big town (60kms away) to pick up a rental car, which was swapped for a larger one to take us and our kit back up to the ferry port. A bit of cunning negotiation around the challenges of putting the truck with bikes and roof box still attached onto a car transporter resulted in them bringing it up to the ferry as well and sending it back with us.

All in all, the service I got couldn’t have been better, and everything was paid for directly by them, with no need to pay and claim back or anything. I’ve never felt happier about recommending someone’s service.