Ahh yeah, see it now. Concensous on mtb-wales.com is it's only hidden valley closed but I reckon ringing Skyline is the best bet.

Where does it say that? Only some sections of skyline are closed according to MBwales.

I've done 3 uplift days with some DH orientated mates who visit wales every now and then. What everyone else has said is bang on, everything is rollable. The only "difficult" bit is the drop over the road but if you don't fancy it you can always turn left at the road for about 200yards and you'll be at the top of the XC descent, which after riding the DH is an absolute hoot flat out :)

The black and red join together about a 1/3 of the way down so not a major decision, do the red first.
And yeah, let everyone else go first off the bus.

I've just come back from Alp d'huez last week and hired boots out there. Didn't bother booking in advance, it was 37 euro for a week. Originally they gave me some shonky Technika (sp) boots but after a day I took them back and replaced them with nicely fitting Salomons for the same price.

If it's anything like the belt on a golf tdi it's a pain in the arse and worth getting a garge/dealer to do it. My missus works at a Suzuki dealer and we get most of the work done FOC there but the cambelt we took to VW – they quoted retail price of £300 including the water pump.

Try http://www.ridepuddletown.co.uk

I've got a MK4 golf gt tdi 130 and I can just about get 50mpg if I drive like a granny! Usually 42mpg on the commute from Swindon to Taunton which is 90% motorway.

My vagcom cable has turned up so I'm going to test the MAF shortly and looking at cleaning the inlet manifold out as it's done 125k miles.

Yes, there's a soundtrack

You can buy it on the collective website, or perhaps via some other means if you google it.

I've bought tickets at Amsterdam and Bristol airports in the past. You'll be paying top whack though.

I used to park and ride (my bike) into Bath from the Lansdown hill car park and never had any problems there. I reckon you'd be fine.

If he can do the climb at cwmcarn then most of afan should be fine from a fitness point of view. I'd start with Penhydd, then the Wall and then Whites (not all on the same day obviously!)

Yeah I had one when we were on virgin. Worked great once it was setup, which was a bit fiddly. It did need "retuning" occasionally and things like the red button on BBC won't work with it.

I might still have it kicking around somewhere, if I can find it I'll let you know.

What's occurring?

I'm in work, moving 18 odd servers from one datacentre to another. Was sposed to be in at 8:30, had call from colleague at 9, I was still in bed. Nevermind, I'm here now and obviously doing lots of work…

B54's +1, cheap as chips and much better than the V12's I replaced them for.

Are you still sharing the files in your torrent software? If so it may have locked them. Stop/delete the torrent and then try.

We rode there a few weeks ago in the snow and it was good fun, I imagine it's similar to then. photos here[/url]

Not as weird as the above, but Want to be a fairy for £100?

Depends want you're going to use it for? The missus has a 2000 plate one for use on the farm and it's ok. We took it out for MTB'ing duties but wasn't too great, fairly pants on fuel, the turning circle is HUUUGE and the buck (the cover for the back trailor bit) isn't lockable on ours so always a bit dodgy leaving bikes in there. It's fairly competent off road though, took it out on the Quantocks in the snow and had a blast.

I'd get the Warrior over the standard L200, seems mucher nicer.

I'd take a mini sausage roll over a mini scotch egg any day though.

(Is that technically pastry? Probably not but still rank)

If you go into computer managment, under disk management you should the the parition. Right click on it, "extend partition" fill to the max size and let it do its thing.

Gray,

If you see this and you've still got the board/boots give me a shout as I'm local and interested.

craig . ward at gmail . com

Ta!

This was Lydiard Hill car park yesterday, would imagine it's a bit easier to get to now as we met a snow plough on the way back down :)

An independent garage is likely to be loads cheaper, have you tried shopping around?

Or DIY. I did mine on my VW transporter van and apart from having to buy a kind of funnel thing to get the boot off/on it was relatively straightforward for a mechanical novice like me.

Yeah I really like it, makes we want to go out and have a go myself.

are the Qs free of ice yet ?

We were on the Quantocks yesterday and the ridge between lydiard hill car park over to triscombe is sheet ice in places:

The rest of the ride (triscombe dh, great wood, chimney, dwd, holford and crowcombe) was pretty much ice free though.

More pics[/url]

Rough ride… there's a hell of a lot of grass!

Cheers for those, rose and crown looks affordable. Yeah I was hoping the man himself would see this thread.

Yep, tis the way they run it for the brecon beast.

No where near as fun but it's all climable apart from the very top step like slabs (unless you have uber skillage).

Mr Nutt in 850 fan boy shocker ;)

The 5:10 freeriders are ok, I don't particularly get cold feet with them but they do soak up the water. They take an age to dry out even with rolled up newspaper inside and stuck in front of the fire.

I was thinking exact same thing this morning, mpg dropped from 44-45mpg down to 38-39 on my 85 mile commute to work in golf tdi.

It was super foggy so guessing it's the moisture rather than the cold that does it? As above, I'd have thought cold air == better.

Washing up bowl with hot water in left in the freezer?

I've owned a pair of 5:10 freeriders for about 4 months now and not overly impressed with them to be honest. Using them on a hardtail with B54 pedals and I'm not getting that "stuck to pedal" feeling.

I did try a pair of impacts and they seemed a lot stickier but I couldn't put up with the 'special' look.

Anyone else had the freeriders and had similar experiences? Thinking of going back to impacts when these wear out.

No dramas, just spoke to Ian and got my name down.

robin, have you got a number for them? Dropoff website only has Ian's mobile which I tried earlier and couldn't get through to.

After much delibiration I'm gonna go. Got a room booked in Afan lodge tomorrow night so hoping to make the most of the party at the drop off!

BTW, if anyone has a spare ticket for the dropoff let me know as my missus wants to go.

Yeah, they're willing to do 7 day terms too should so at least see some cash before Christmas which is a good thing. And at least I have a job at the moment so got to look on the positive side I guess.

Right, gorra stop thinking about it now and chillout :)

Cheers crispy and thanks for the advice. Yeah it is shit and you're right its a valuable and hard earned lesson about staying on top of invoices. I was due payment on 23rd November and 5th December which would've brought me back up to date so shit timing…

Employer have been reasonable, they obviously dont want to pay for my services twice so arent going to stump up for anything they've already paid for. They're also under a legal obligation not to default on payments so intend to pay them for invoice they're going to get next week from the agency. They've offered me a 3 month contract at 5% increase (agency markup was 15%) but it's frustrating to say the least that all the work I've done for the last 3 months has been for nowt. Arrrgh.

I am the said mate, didnt want to approach the stw massive as I've spent the last two days going through the options with the end client and other contractors in the same boat by Mr Nutt is convinced you'll all have some top secret legal loophole. So…

– Invoice terms are 30 days with the agency, being crap I usually end up getting a few (say 3 weeks) invoices together and then sending them.
– I was due to get paid the 23rd for the last months work, rang em they said yep we'll bacs it to you. No sign of payment, rang them next day no answer.
– We've had loads of late payment problems with them in the past but have got paid eventually, unfortuantely I'm not (or wasn't) in a position to change my agency

So as I understand it, the money that the employer has paid to the agency for the invoices I've raised will go into the agencys pot to be dividied up between creditors with the tax man, customs, agency staff and preferred creditors all seeing a share before I do.

The only possible recourse I can see is for Novembers invoices which I've not invoiced for yet. What happens if I dont invoice them? If/When the company is wound up can I then approach the end client and ask them to pay it? Are they under any obligation or because the contract was with the agency am I stuffed?