Wowsers. That’ll be beautiful, but tiring.

I don’t know your entire route, but our group have done a few days at Staylittle for the past few years and headed out in that direction and done a lot of it, it’s good riding and generally rocky and weather proof, unless it’s absolutely chucking down. It’s definitely gravel/xc rather than enduro riding. There are a few streams to be forded which may be an issue if it’s been raining heavily.

It depends on the child IMV.

However the children that are most at risk are probably the least likely to be getting adequate parental supervision and risk assessment in the first place.

I also think putting an arbitrary age on things is a bit silly when full brain maturity doesn’t happen until ~ 25.

I wouldn’t be upgrading an 11(?) year old bike either.

A full sus will be much more forgiving when you ride it, and you’ll get all the benefits of modern geometry too. Plus you’d then have a choice of bikes to ride.

However, I’d like to go back there on my Moxie with its much better geometry, bigger wheels and tyres, a far better fork and bigger brakes!

That’s part of the reason I took my hardtail, just to see what it could do.

Point taken about choosing where to brake. I also found that the harder I was pushing the easier it got.

Not Ryanair, but EasyJet. I always “wear” my helmet on the plane, both when I go skiing or cycling.

As others have said, I also make sure I’ve got my riding shoes, gloves, glasses and a set of riding gear in my hand luggage, just in case my bike goes missing.

I’ve got an Osprey Farpoint 40 that I’m very pleased with. The harness is comfortable, and stows away which is handy for busy trains, sticking in the boot etc so that it doesn’t catch on things.

I’ve used it for up to a week away, including carrying my ski boots and gear, I just have to do a small wash halfway through.

It’s got an outside pocket for a water bottle, a laptop sleeve and a pocket for keys, phone etc.

It’s front loading so easier to put clothes in folded up.

It is also carry on compliant.

Fair play taking a hard tail to Antur Stiniog.

Yeah, next time I’d definitely take the full sus. But if it was out of action then I’d be happy to take the hardtail again.

It did make me think of Blake Sampson doing the Megavalanche on a hardtail though.

Mostly for me being much more careful where I brake has the biggest effect.

Yes, and that’s why I enjoy riding my hardtail, because of the feedback it gives me about braking.

@feenster – thanks – really useful stuff, fits with my (limited) understanding too.

@kormoran – other’s may, and indeed do, disagree, but it depends on what your investing strategy is, and when you may need your money.

If you’re in your 20s and it’s not money that you’re going to need for a house deposit or wedding, then stick it all in a shares index tracker because if it crashes you’ve got plenty of time for it to recover and you’ll benefit from the increased returns that go with the higher risk.

However for other people, more diversification is likely to be beneficial. What you gain from the higher returns can be eat into by volatility, and so it makes sense to have a balance of different assets in  your portfolio. So you split your investment between various trackers of stocks and bonds. However over time the different trackers grow at different rates, and so if you don’t keep an eye on them and rebalance them occasionally you’ll end up over-exposed to one particular sector.

@jimmy if you’ve not started then I’d just set up a regular payment into a Vanguard Target fund.

Trackers are cheaper, but also more work and can be intimidating if you’re new to investing.

Having said that I started by asking a mate who was a financial advisor about ten years ago which tracker he recommended for low fees and piled all my money into a FTSE100 tracker. That’s not what I’d do today, and part of the reason that I’m working out how to rebalance, but the important thing is not to let the technicalities put you off and just get started.

A Vanguard Target fund will do diversification and rebalancing for you, but will cost you slightly more.

The great thing about trackers and passive investing is you can modify your strategy as you learn more.

@dantsw13 – thanks, that’s a project that I’ve got lined up for bank holiday Monday. It’s a good job that I love a good spreadsheet.

Shove mine in the dishwasher (top rack) all the time. Probably a good idea to remove the black magnetic mount first

I do the same and don’t bother. No problems so far in two years.

1* and narrow/wide I thought.

Get it sorted and then ignore it

That’s what I have been doing. Hence me wanting to rebalance now.

Thanks all.

Interesting about the pound cost averaging not being that effective, sort of fits with what I thought myself, better to get it invested and hopefully growing than faffing about.

Anything that isn’t a solid tyred Penny Farthing is just a skills compensator

60″ ain’t dead.

Including suspension saddles.

@kerley we should have settled on standardised Penny Farthings with solid tyres and avoided all this new-fangled nonsense. ;-)

@jameso

We need options for axle OD and spacing like we need options for BB types, headsets and other aspects of bikes imho because a summer best road bike and a DH race bike are so different.

I’m pro sensible commonality and anti waste, anti planned obsolescence (if you change something it’d better be for good reason), but areas where a fixed industry-wide spec for parts fit works .. grip/control area OD on bars, saddle rail fixings, upper steerer OD and cable entry sizes is all I can think of at the mo.

As ever on this site, the one post of sense in the thread by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

I also think the NHS/GP’s have a role to play in by taking a more holistic longer-term view of a patient.

We’ll be needing more GPs then.

Has anyone on this thread, including me, said that it’s all genetics? Or even, for that matter, that it’s all poverty?

I tend to watch in retrospect on Youtube.

When the races are good, they’re great. Otherwise they can be a bit mediocre IMV.

Amazing bits of kit.

@peteza – it wasn’t directly aimed at you, apologies for any confusion.

Brief sound bites are somewhat the nature of forums, so complex topics like this do get oversimplified.

As mentioned previously @lorax seems very credible on this subject, and seems to broadly agree with me.

Obesity has been portrayed as a personal choice/self control issue for years now. I suspect because it fulfills many organisation’s agendas to do so, but the problem is, there’s very little evidence that this is the case.

And as mentioned by myself previously, it is strongly correlated with poverty.

I think that at least part of the problem is that the measures that would be required to reduce road deaths would be very unpopular amongst the most enthusiastic road users, including recreational motorcyclists.

 I don’t think you can claim they’re the over-riding causes for everybody as you appear to be doing in some posts.

You’re entitled to disagree.

And to be clear, I’m not saying for everybody just for most people.

As is clear from this thread, the long history of anti-fat prejudice that there has been in society and the media still has a long way to go before it’s reversed.

There’s a lot of fat blaming going on here.

@jamesoz – one of my riding buddies eats piles of carbohydrates and remains at 64kg. He also doesn’t get that hungry between meals. His brother and father are exactly the same. They’re lucky with their genetics.

 I do have very strong will power, meaning I can step away from the rubbish sold in supermarkets that shouldn’t be classed as food.

Having met you and having seen your phenotype (albeit a long time ago) I suspect that what you’re attributing to will power could be down to be genetics.

 You are talking bollocks by saying that exercise is not linked to obesity, it may be a smaller factor than diet but it cannot possible not be a causative factor unless you are suggesting the laws of physics are wrong.

The idea that it’s fat = energy in – energy used is over-simplistic.

People are not calorimeters. They are far more complex than that.

Just because I may have a different perspective to you is no reason to be abusive. If you are going to continue to do so, then you’re not worth engaging with further.

@scruff9252, sounds like you’re taking the right steps.

One point to add, stay completely away from alcohol whilst you’re going through this, it won’t be helping, and it could be used against you.

Only you can know whether this situation is due to chronic bad management by your employer, or whether you’re being set up to fail. In either case, your own, and by proxy your family’s welfare are paramount.

@anagallis_arvensis

Is also bollocks

You seem very angry about this subject, and the fact that it may be more complex than you think.

translation: it’s absolute bollocks which I cannot substantiate and I know it :) Your third point completely refutes your initial assertion, for one thing.

You may or may not choose to believe it, but please remain polite.

It seems to me that there are two of us on this thread who probably know more about obesity and public health, and that we’re broadly in agreement, it’s just that we disagree with you.

It isn’t that *only* skinny people cycle, but cycling does tend to attract a certain body type.

I’m interested to know where these endless amounts of fat people who’ve become thin through cycling are, because I’ve certainly not met them.

Really?  On my big bike ride Iost 2 stone eating 4000ish calories per day

It’s complicated.

There comes a point where if you’re doing extreme amounts of exercise per day, then it becomes almost impossible to compensate for the increased amount of energy expenditure and people will lose weight. But this is in extreme circumstances such as endurance bike rides like yours or professional athletes for example.

However at lesser levels of activity, although you will see an initial increase in energy usage, over time 3 things seem to happen to mitigate against it-

• You learn to do the activity more efficiently and so use less energy when doing it.
• You tend to use less energy when not doing the activity, so your daily energy requirements tend to return back towards their long term norms.
• Your energy intake tends to increase to compensate for any extra energy used.

@lorax – point taken about prevention vs treatment, and AFAIK there is some evidence to suggest that increasing population activity can reduce incidences of obesity.

@slowoldman – it sounds like you’re slim because you have a genetic propensity for it?

Part of the problem is that for years we’ve been asking slim people how they remain slim and for the vast majority of you the actual answer is because you were lucky in the genetic lottery.

After retiring my weight dropped quite quickly by about half a stone where it has remained. I put it down to fewer bought sandwiches, bacon butties, curries, cakes, pints whilst waiting for the train home from work. Is that moving to a less “obesogenic environment”?

Yes. It’s much easier to resist temptation if it isn’t wafting under your nose every day.

@intheborders not really, it’s come from my reading around the subject rather than one specific source, but feel free to google it.

One problem is that NHS weight loss advice is quite politically tainted (something must be done!) and IMV based on out of date research. Other doctors, including my own colleagues disagree with me. But I’m fairly confident that they’re wrong.

The line I currently use is that exercise (of pretty much any type, but a variety is best and resistance becomes more important as we age) has many, many benefits, but weight loss is not one of them.

@suburbanreuban

 Getting hold of organic/locally grown produce was a nightmare.

I feel your pain. ;-)

There’s a fair bit of evidence that the amount of movement you do has very little impact on your daily calorific requirements though.