Frog website says make sure you get two sets of tyres from the shop as that is what is supplied with the new range (knobbly and smooth).

Stevedoc – yup, that was me and Chris – good to meet you!

One of the bits I read on the way up was “make sure you don’t end up on Swirral”, so I had a tidy GPX file loaded into the phone to make sure we were definitely on the right route!!

We had a blast – set off about 9:45 from the Aira Force car park (after our first puncture repair!), as SWMBO was taking our 3 smaller boys on a walk around there. Gentle ride down to Glenridding, and then began the climb.

Weather didn’t look too hot, considering we’d promised ourselves a dry day, and had a little drizzle after we passed the YHA in Glenridding.

After making sure we did take the right route up (!) we more or less pedalled our way up to the steeper sections of the Keppel climb, where we both decided walking was definitely the best option.

After overtaking some walkers who looked bemused that we would even bother taking bikes up, we got to the flatter section just below Raise / Whiteside and mounted back up for most of the way up Whiteside.

Our first descent from Whiteside down to Long Man was fun, though I was a way behind Chris. He was practically salivating as we climbed up Long Man though as he plotted his route down what to me looked like unrideable terrain. This was definitely the hardest park of the bike a bike, but nothing unmanageable.

A quick whizz down and then up to the Helvellyn peak proper and we took the obligatory photos and discovered all of the walkers who were coming up Striding Edge. I guess we sat down for lunch about 12:30 ish?

Time to descend, and the wind was really picking up, though no more rain showers. Chris took the more northerly route down the Helvellyn summit, and when I caught up with him at the bottom his bike was upside down with a rear puncture, pinched on the stones. With bitter fingers, we got stuck in and were back in the saddle as we crested Long Man.

He then positively flew down the boulders and craggy terrain of Long Man, whilst I perched myself on the bike at the top, pointed it downhill and promptly got off again! I know my limits.

With Whitepeak and Raise still to be pushed up, it felt like the descent never wanted to start, but we were soon at the crossroads at the top of Sticks Pass, and off we went. First section is almost like a trail centre, but it soon turned into trickier single track. Again, Chris was in the saddle all the way, but both my long 29er and my own talents meant this wasn’t truly for me for large chunks.

He thoroughly enjoyed outclassing me the whole day long, and we even had time for him to session some of the drop offs at from the old mining buildings near the YHA.

A quick whizz down the track, and we managed to time our ride into Glenridding perfectly to meet SWMBO and the 3 boys outside an ice-cream shop – fortunate timing, as O2 seemed to have zero coverage throughout the whole of the valley!!

We were staying in the Patterdale YHA (recommended, good breakfasts, great location) and as Stevedoc says had a little chat about our successful trip up.

Nice to know we’ve been as high as we can legally go in England on a bike, even with poor kit and talent!!

Chris then had the time and the energy the next day to do half of the Ullswater single track from Patterdale to Howton, and also ride up and down the track to Boredale Hause a couple of times – his report on the descent from Boredale was that it was awesome!

Strava ascent here – https://www.strava.com/activities/369524670
My descent – https://www.strava.com/activities/369524611
Chris’ descent (plenty of waiting for dad!) – https://www.strava.com/activities/375041122
Photo album – https://goo.gl/photos/sJiG6etiGTTTkwW29

Are Frogs universally priced the same as the RRP on their website? I’m in the “can’t justify the extra for an Isla” camp and got birthday’s coming up – Frog is looking like a likely candidate.

OK, so the weather looks good for tomorrow, and you lot reckon this middle aged bloke on a heavy 29er can do it, so we’re up to Glenridding first thing tomorrow.

I made the mistake of checking out some of the descent videos so know what I’m in for!!

Any hints for a likely timescale for the up and the down? Packing plenty of tubes, can see punctures a-plenty on the way down too!

Yep, advice is sound above – you won’t get covered for an expensive bike under the £2000 heading.

Now, if you bought the bike for £1999 (albeit second hand), there is a strong argument that you could (and should) tell them that, they may enquire no more about the bike and if it is stolen they would pay out based on the price you paid (though if you bought it from a “mate” that might not work).

Best thing to do is tell them a full and honest story and see what they come back with.

Insurers are not bound to pay out where a customer has under-insured, so you could potentially end up with no insurance at all if their interpretation of the £4k bike value differs from yours.

My wife (only follower me and my son) gets Kudos regularly from some guy in Scotland for her running. Some people are just weird.

[Oops, idiotic post now deleted]

Yup, seen posts about ending up on Striding Edge or Swirral Edge in error. I knew you were talking about the YHA at Glenridding though!

Cheers – I have no problem with pushing, I had to do that with an old Toys R Us BSO at Llandegla a few years ago when the chain snapped about 0.5 after starting the red descent!

Obviously how enjoyable this father / son experience would be would be dependent on the weather etc too. It is meant to be a holiday after all!

He’d clearly already locked the rear when he comes into shot (he’s all crossed up), but then the front begins to bite putting him into an endo. He doesn’t appear to be putting his weight over the back wheel sufficiently (or at all) to keep the back down and on the ground, but it doesn’t look like his pads failed him – just that he was going too fast to make the corner.

Excellent news. Intuitively they seemed to be too small to do much, but as they seemed popular thought I’d ask.

Cheers

It’s still retinal scans, afaik, but now with RFID tags mandatory – if you breach the perimeter you get one warning before they open fire.

I’ve got plans for a tunnel though…

We’re stopping at the Patterdale YHA for a couple of nights first, so will do something around there – I’ve got a pass out with eldest for one day. Doubt we’ll have the energy or capability of getting up Helvellyn, but perhaps if we take it easy and set off early that might be an option.

Cheers for the suggestions.

As he comes into view he’s off the tarmac about 20m before he gets friendly with the car, so presume something when wrong with his brakes?

Ta muchly! Wife is good at finding fun things for kids to do, just didn’t want to strand her there with the kids with nothing to do but avoid budding enduro riders!

Done that at Delamere. Keener on free activities!!

If you’re happy enough with Strava on the iphone at the minute, then just invest in a portable battery to keep the iPhone going longer?

My son who rides there a few times a week says the following:-

A. Yes, the small swoopy trail with the bridges on it is still there and very fast at the moment. Around number 5 isn’t really worth doing though as its just a bit to overgrown to go fast on. If you’re around 1, there is a more interesting trail which involves going over fallen trees which is quite easy. Its the thin line just bellow number 1, with small red writing beneath it.
B. 2 doesn’t follow the same bog, and it is a bit overgrown, but a lot of Delamere is so that’s not a surprise.
C. Number four isn’t a real Mountain Biking trail, its just a narrow fire road. The best trail from the top used to be the one furthest away from number 4 but the forestry commission has recently taken all of the features down on it and it has become over grown, so the one closet to 4 is the best now. Its really flowwing and twisty, but not when wet.
D. No idea, never been there. But I take it you know about Manley Hill bike park and No Brains because they have the best maintained trails and can be really fun.

Emailed you via yours.

And there was me assuming that a Decathlon dropper post would naturally fit either of my Decathlon bikes.

Alas no, neither my own Rockrider Big RR 5.3 nor my wife’s Rockrider 520 have 31.6 tubes (the seatposts markings had worn off so I took a gamble that this would work).

Anyone interested in an unused dropper for £30?

Mines just arrived this morning after sitting at the sorting office for a week. Whilst unpacking it en route to work, I notice that there is a screw at the base which seems to be some sort of pre-load adjustment.

Should I be doing anything with this?

I doubt there is much you can do to take the fearful parent out of it, other than making sure you ride defensively behind them, kit them out in hi vis, make sure they know how to use the brakes (!), picking the safest practical route and making appropriate use of pavement cycling as necessary.

When he was three, our littlest (who we affectionately know as our in house Health & Safety advisor due to his cautious nature) rode the 400m to nursery, and aged 4 / 5 was riding a couple of km to school with my wife. Had no issues, but the route was relatively easy.

They don’t need to know the rules at that point, other than to ride in the lines at the side and stop at junctions.

Truly none of us are safe from idiot drivers, and I suppose cycling advocates have to take that measured risk that putting a child on any road at any time could result in a tragedy; I doubt many accidents are caused by the children though.

My heart goes into my mouth on descents mainly – “what if their brakes don’t work?”, “what if they forget to brake?”, especially if heading down to a t-junction. If the whole family is out we put one of us at the front and another at the back for our 5 or 6 man peleton for maximal control!

@CaptainFlashhear – or Paula Radcliffe.

But you can’t PROOVE an absence of drugs, short of sticking a GoPro on Froome for every minute of the Tour and taking blood out of him every 10 minutes.

At the end of the day, Froome has cycled for over 2 weeks and managed to cover the a couple of thousand of km in 3 minutes less than anyone else in the race. If he is the only doper in the field, those drugs ain’t working terribly well are they!

So you either accept the simplistic perspective – he’s as clean as anyone else in the race, just a bit better, or you continue with paranoia.

One is easier for me to accept than the other!

The contenders other than Froome have to take risks now; unless they are content to settle for the podium.

It needs someone with the “second is first loser” mentality to give it a go, and unless Movistar can arrange for Quintana / Valverde to work together in a death or glory mission I can’t see anyone else being able to out-Sky the team.

Unless, of course, the descent / mechanicals get in the way of Froome; but that is equally a risk for the other contenders.

sadly the wife has a tiny frame and I can’t get the post into the frame enough

I just wish I had a childish mind…

My brother in law bought a high end, light weight roadie a few months back. He absolutely wanted hydro discs, but was a little disappointed that the bike came with Di2 as standard, as he had a preference for standard mechanical shifting.

After a couple of months and plenty of miles, he’s a bit “meh” about the discs, and loves the Di2 to bits – says he feels he uses the gears far more effectively now, changing far more frequently than he might have otherwise and with so little hassle.

Son wore stripped the threads from crank arms on unicycle; realised later that we’d fitted the seat backwards, so every pedal stroke was unwinding the pedals.

How do you know the digital gauge is correct?

Only seems to have availability in store in Surrey Quays, out of stock online and throughout the rest of the stores it seems.

Not MTB’ing at all, but I did a trail running race four weeks ago, and 25% of the competitors uploaded their runs to Strava.

Proving a negative is nigh on impossible, and asking all athletes to wash their laundry in public so that we all have access to their power data would be like asking all F1 teams to show where all their mechanical advantages come from.

Its a sport, and the idea is that someone wins, subject to the rules. That means that someone has to be better than the next best person. They will do this by being physically, mentally, physiologically better than the guy in second place taking advantage of all of their natural abilities and enhancing them through training, diet, appropriate medical care, nutrional supplementation etc etc.

Personally, I don’t think that the top guys in pro cycling are doping today. It would be a suicidal tactic. There is too much sniffing around being done, too many potential weak links with suppliers, doctors, family members, coaches, consultants, teammates, etc etc. Doping worked when everyone knew that everyone was at it. Even if there was doping in the peleton today, I think it would be the exception rather than the rule.

Individuals like Brailsford have so much to lose by being involved in doping, and so much to gain by being seen to be the clean champions, that I don’t think a cost / benefit equation would put doping as the right option.

I might be wrong; but I’ll continue to watch the Tour and elite athletics (my favourite sport) taking everyone at their word until there is proof to the contrary. And then I’ll support calls for dopers to be banned for life.

My son is something of an afficiando of Delamere as we live just 5 miles away and he takes himself off there for endless evenings / weekends.

He tends to head for the Manley Bike Park area which is on the north side of Ashton Road, not too far from where the Sandstone Trail exits the forest towards Manley Common. There is free parking along there too, rather than having to use the pay and display in the main car parks.

There is also some good stuff around Old Pale, which is on the opposite side of Ashton Road and nearer to the cafes etc.

If I remember, I’ll try to get him to signpost some of his favourite areas on here for you. It’s no Marin Trail, but it keeps him occupied (15 y.o. riding a Canyon Nerve – far, far better rider than me!)

Thx all! So aero (mostly) combined with a bit of psychological.

1 in a million is long odds. But I love my wife and kids.

Bike.

Wearing a helmet makes me look like an idiot; they look utterly stupid.

But if in a 1 in a million accident happens and that helmet means I’ll see my wife and kids that night, for £30 and looking like a plonker I am prepared to do it.

Unless your GPS (dedicated or phone) has a barometric altimeter built in, elevation data will be wrong, and as pointed out above baro-alti needs calibrating to retain its accuracy (though relative ascent and descent will be broadly OK).

Unless your phone is a disaster zone for GPS (and some are / were) the reality is that most devices are more than accurate enough for the purposes of giving measurement data about long and time consuming exercises.

There is always a better GPS, just as there is always a better bike. But most are good enough.

For the record, I am happy with the privacy compromises that Strava has to suffer because I like Strava – it adds fun to runs and rides. Plus it helps that I’m not one of those with multiple (or indeed any!) £X,000 bikes, so if our garage was ever plundered for our equipment there wouldn’t be much in it for them.

The real loophole that Strava has is that it does have a setting to require you to confirm people who want to follow you (and which therefore restricts them from browsing profiles and seeing what you are up to), but it still requires you to make your rides / runs private if you want them hidden from the public, so if you are stalked via a segment (for a nefarious individual living on a major road, it would be trivial to create a segment which “captured” every Strava’d rider passing your house each day) your activity details can be seen.

The issue with fly-by is that most people didn’t really realise that in the first place, so thought that they were quite private on Strava, when in fact they are not.

It’s a necessary consequence of segments and league tables – you can’t on the one hand publish “public” league tables (and have people who want to participate in such an activity) and then simultaneously keep the details very private.

If you’re a penny pincher, SJ4000 (or clones of SJ4000s which is what I think I have) are perfectly fine for a minimal investment.

Here’s a vid my lad made a couple of days ago using the el-cheapo camera that we have.