I would highly recommend Bennachie, and there's good (but short) riding round Elrick Hill/Tyrebagger woods. Also short but nice riding in the woods near Countesswells. Er, Scolty Hill/Tower on southern edge of Banchory which has a brilliant technical descent from the tower! Pitfichie is also a nice trail. Plenty of options anyway. I might even have some GPS tracklogs of routes I did while I was staying up there.

Cool, well good luck shifting that Shimano degreaser :?

Oh, and I was accidently telling you a complete fanny about the route. When I actually looked at the map, the route goes nowhere near Braemar (as I'd said)! I'd highly recommend it though.

Ahh you would be the chap who bought the degreaser the other day then non?

Ahh, I guess I was then. Are you the owner there? I think we've chatted before when I've popped in. Great degreaser by the way!

e_m_c – Have you looked at the route on a map or in reality? My riding buddy (pictured) has walked up Can Liath and said it was a nightmare so would hate to think what it'd be like to carry a bike too. Fair play to whoever did it, and to yourself for considering it! It looks proper scary and hard from down below…

…but what an anticlimax when you reach Glen Tilt itself.

That's exactly what we thought! All the best riding is away from Glen Tilt.

e_m_c, do you have a route for that? I'm guessing its a fair old distance…

and pressed the button

It helps that you used a very expensive camera too ;)

Very nice capture! Haven't taken a decent sunset photo in a loooong time.

Yes CM, we did. Kenny Wilson's route takes you down that way and we did wonder about cutting the corner. Not that I we looked for it specially, but there were a number of turnings off the track so not sure which one it would have been. We then missed the turning just before Shinagag, but a short retrace and it was obvious. From there, we nearly missed our turning that crosses the burn (see photo of G pushing) and from there it wasn't too difficult to pick up and once on the singletrack you couldn't get lost!

Sorry John, er Dom ;-) I've used a Powershot before, but didn't realise it did such nice quality video. Which one is it? The G10? I might be tempted to get something similar to replace my compact.

Bought a year ago:

Hi John, what camera were you using for that? Looked really nice!

As above, just don't expect to be able to get a glass of water anywhere…

I get this too, and haven't found a cure. Rebound is set as slow as I can get it without it being 'treacle' like, and I think I'm running the right pressures. I find I just have to get my weight over the front a bit and absorb the rebound with my arms… Sorry that's not much help :(

Mmmmm, Innerleithen tonight for some DH fun :D Great day for it too!

Sorry, I won't be there…

:D

I found the Reign kind of obliterated any wee bumps so just popping off things or chucking it about was pretty hard for me. Still, an ace bike and not sure I did the right thing swapping it for a Hustler…

Likewise I used Henderson's. £70 for strip and paint. Looked great (see pics), but the paint chips and wears easily.

The use of the word 'wee' by non Scots, or Scots.

Any 'Americanisms'. This is Britain.

Och, are yon poor wee Middle Class Englishmen feeling a teensy bit threatened? Bless. You should move to your nearest country border and defend it to the hilt from marauding foreign language!

MrSmith – Member

…. An abbreviation such as M.P., which is pronounced em pea, begins with a spoken vowel, and so it is 'an M.P.'

Care to tell us again why 'an mtb' is wrong? mtb = em tee bee

Just skip the sex scene and you'll enjoy it.

Glad it wasn't just me who did this.

:D How far did you get before you realised? I was almost up the next hill, convinced I could see someone ahead of me.

Kit – I'm looking at buying a similar Mondeo to yours, are there any problems, things to look out for?

I have the clunking rear suspension problem steveh noted, and there's an intermittent engine problem where I lose a lot of power and get loads of grey/white smoke from the exhaust. It seems to be an electronic fault though, and one that hasn't appeared for some time. Other than that, a great car (which I'm looking to sell).

Can we have a beach volleyball themed Friday?

Janelle Koester

Chrissie Zartman

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dipacesports/

If you're doing the loop I think you're doing, a wee tip:

After the fun bit of singletrack on the edge of the hill, you round a corner and you'll be confronted by a gate into a field, and what appears to be the singletrack carrying on to the left of the gate following the fence. I made the (stupid, in hindsight) mistake of following the track, instead of going through the gate…

Lets put it this way, I think they're OK forks, but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone, especially at full RRP. If I could afford it, I'd replace them with those Revelations, linked above. As it is, I'm stuck with them. You shouldn't (I think) have to trawl through internet forums to get them set up properly – the manual should explain this, or they should be more simply designed.

Michelle Wie, golfer http://news.sawf.org/Fashion/9468.aspx

After struggling through poor weather and trail conditions of all the Merida events I attended in 2007 and 2008, I can't be arsed with them anymore. Hope ya'll have fun, and take your mud tyres…

Hey Sputnik, sorry I've got myself some other plans now. Hope you have/had a good ride!

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To balance all the outpourings of "I heart road riding" above, personally I find it depressing, demoralising, boring, dangerous (but not in a good way) and rewardless.

I have a feeling this is partly to do with riding out of Edinburgh, which involves shite roads, shite drivers, (generally) shite scenery, and shite weather.

Its just one long grinding slog to me. I hate it. But it does get you fitter, and beats riding an MTB for countless dull miles on road.

Well I did get mine a year ago, before the recession :)

One thing I found with it, is that it tends to overexpose everything, usually by +0.5 or +1.0, and the autofocus is quite slow. Otherwise, yes not bad for the money!

Sigma DG 70-300mm f4-5.6, with a macro mode for 200-300mm, attached to a Sony Alpha 100.

The last photo was actually taken with the stock 18-70mm lens, and had a fair bit of fiddling in PS…

I got weighed at the hospital the other day – 74kg, with clothes.

So yesterday I rang up a medical trials company, they ask age, height, weight and I say I'm 74kg, or about 10.5stone (which I've weighed since I was 16 or something). The lady bursts out laughing and informs me that 74kg is 11stone 9lbs! :oops: I'm getting to be a fat bugger.

re: mikeclarke's post – there's two campsites at Castlerigg (the southern/higher one being pretty reasonable with good views), while the one in Hope (if its the one I was in) wasn't great to be honest (tents stuck miles from the shower block, issues with showers, full of noisy idiots when I went, no views).

I had 2006 Van 36 RC2's and, while they were very nice forks, if you rode them for more than a few hours solid the rebound **** up. The cartridge apparently gets hot under use, expanding the oil inside until it stops working properly. This was acknowledged to me by TFTuned, but not by Mojo. Not tried Lyrics or the basic Van R so can't comment on the comparison.

Loving the look of some of those, although white headsets, seatposts and cranks just look a bit wrong…

No longer mine, and to be honest I don't miss it one bit, although it was a pretty bike.

Here’s my holiday snaps for this year:

I know they’re not famous or anything, but I always find the front covers of Runners World rather nice :-)

Planning on Devil’s Staircase and Kinlochleven singletrack tomorrow, then Gypsy Glen (Peebles) on Sunday with a lovely young lady (who’s going to tank me on the climbs :( ).

The haar’s not just an Edinburgh thing – it comes in up here in Aberdeen too. I’ve also watched it come into Edinburgh while up in the P’lands, knowing that its going to be a long, dark and cold ride back home!