Do I understand correctly that there is no way to download all of the UK maps for offline usage? I think you can only download 50km squares, which totally sucks. The beauty of Viewranger was that once you have downloaded all the maps, you don’t have to worry about network coverage.

Once you have to selectively preload maps, it doesn’t give the confidence that the maps will always be there when you need them.

One beautiful, easy road trip from Reykjavik is to visit the Barnafossar waterfall, but instead of going through the tunnel under Hvalfjörður, take route 47 and drive inland round Hvalfjörður and stop off for a walk to Glymur Waterfall.

Then take 520 > 50 > 518 to Barnafossar, it’s a beautiful drive. After visiting the waterfall, carry on and loop round on 518 and visit either Háafell Goat farm or Krauma Spa (depending on budget and your appetite for the smell of goat piss).

La Colina Pizzeria is a nice pizza place at outside Borgarnes which gives time for it to go properly dark. If the skies are clear, pull off route 1 anywhere between Borgarnes and Saurbær and see if he northern lights are playing.

I bought a pair of these for working away from home…

https://www.presonus.com/products/Eris-E35-BT

IMHO They are really good value for money. You can connect via bluetooth which has been working without any fuss. Also really good for improving the sound of TV’s.

I’ve just looked back at the invoice for the 25K ‘lifetime’ maps I bought in 2015, it was £225 :-(. Seems pretty rough to just to loose them.

I´d def. recommend the Diamond Beach which is a c. 5hour drive from Reykjavik. It´s beautiful. We visited the glacier cave with http://www.glacieradventure.is. The guide was great and you get 10% off if you stay at the Skyrhúsid Guest House, which was really good basic accommodation. Ditto Dyrhólaey / Reynisfjara near Vik.

Weather-wise in Feb, I´d try to leave arrangements flexible so you can follow the decent weather. Last Tuesday we went up the the Snæfellsjökull National Park and it was so windy the waterfalls were going upwards:-) You have the advantage you will be able to book accommodation the morning you travel.

en.vedur.is for weather and northern lights forecasts.

The Westfjords are totally beautiful, but you will have to be careful in Feb. Check /www.road.is before you travel. Some of the main roads are gravel on the Westfjords (https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/stephen.midgley.7/westfjords-roads-a-complete-guide) so be careful.

If you do the golden circle, leave Rekjavik at 7:30 AM and beat the coaches. It´s OK if it´s quiet, but when it´s busy, it´s (IMHO) horrible.

One thing to consider, if you are into photography, there are infrequent places to stop when driving. It´s not considered cool to just stop on a road and put your hazards on. In some areas (esp. Westfjords) you will be driving past mindblowing landscapes, and when you get to a gravel area to pull off the road to take pictures, you get a very short time to call if the pull off area is OK. I´ve seen a fair few hire cars stuck at the side of the road where they pull off and get stuck in soft mud. There is no national AA type recovery service in Iceland. A 4×4 makes this much easier and gives better ground clearance.

I´m living in Iceland at the moment. I love it but some practical things to consider…

Booze is only sold in state run off licenses (Vínbúðin) which are expensive and open fairly short hours (closed all day Sunday). If you drink, hit the duty free shop at the airport. You can use the trolleys to take the booze right through to the airport exit. They seem pretty relaxed about limits, but if you get Mrs Pop to stand near you when you checkout, it will double your allowance.

Reykjavik is nice, but it´s nightlife only really gets going after midnight. There are happy hours at at lots of bars pre 7:00pm (ish). There is an app (Appy Hour :-) to find which bars are doing promotions. Full price beer in a bar is 7-8 quid a pint, but be carful, some exotics can be 12 quid plus.

The weather is brutal, not so much cold, but the wind and rain. Buy all the outdoor gear before you come out as a decent waterproof coat will be be over 300 quid.

There has been massive car hire shortages, and 4×4´s have been something like 500-6öö quid a day to hire over the summer. I guess it´s calmed down, but book early if you want a car.

Something like YAKTRAX Cleats might be a good should as I believe the pavements (where they are not heated! – I´ve seen someone leaving heating pipes under their front lawn) can be very slippery.

Personally, if you are travelling independently, I´d leave travel plans flexible, as the weather varies greatly across the country.

It´s worth getting actual quotes from insurers. We ended up with a 1.2 Peugeot 208 for our daughter to learn in as the insurance was OK. At the time we had quotes for some other small cars and they were a fair bit more expensive, even though I would have guessed them to be cheaper to insure (If I recall correctly, I think Fiesta´s were actually quite expensive to insure).

IME car insurance costs don´t necessarily have a direct a relationship with performance. I had a V8 M3 which at the time was less to insure than my wife´s diesel estate. She eventually swapped it for a V8 Mustang and it literally halved her insurance cost.

@whitestone Good idea, thanks for the tip :-)

Thanks all :-) Min night-time temp is probably down to -5 degC.

There are probably 20 or so campsites which are open all year round.

Are the geodesic tents fairly easy to put up?

I’ve found MBP and Talk Photography classifieds to be excellent and eBay to be a total pain, so much so that I’ve stopped using it.

Superior Drummer is amazing! The base library is really good, and some of the expansion packs are great, but take up a lot of hard drive space.

I have a Roland TD-12 and in a scale of 1-10, I’d say the Roland sounds are a 2, and SD3 is like a 9. The built in acoustic sounds in every kit I’ve played are just horrible.

You will need a half decent audio interface to get decent latency performance.

Be careful of ex-demo. Sometimes Ex-Demo cars are a lot more expensive than buying new with a decent discount. People who think they a good deal are actually getting rinsed compared to buying a new car and waiting. Definitely check the brokers / forums to see how much a car can be bought new.

German cars are rapidly loosing ground to the ‘bottom end’ IMHO. BMW’s tech is an absolute shocker compared to some of the more mainstream brands. I regularly hire cars in the US and it’s amazing how many brits are stuffy about US cars and buy German without realizing how much the Germans are falling behind.

I worked in Korea a few years back, there is a lot of premium cars available over there which are not imported to the UK. I guess it’s only a matter of time before they start to bring them here, and when they do, I think the Germans will be in for a shock.

Unless you are after M/AMG/RS which don’t really have equivalents from the mainstream brands, i’d totally recommend checking out the offerings from other manufacturers.

Just to follow up on this, Tredz mailed me back about this and were apologetic and offered to refund the cost of a LBS swapping the brakes over up to the value of £35. The brakes only cost £30 for the pair! I thought that was pretty amazing service. They also offered to swap them over for me if I returned them.

As it happens, I just did it myself. No bleeding needed. All good.

Yeah, they are def. OEM, does that mean they supplied be wrong handed?

IME, both bi wiring and bi-amping offer very slight benefits. You are usually far better just buying a better amp. Using a line level crossover before the amplifiers (like Linn do with their active stuff) is worth doing, but again, you have to think about how much you end up spending in total and how the results compare with flogging what you have and spending the money on better gear. The hifi industry loves people who make small upgrades.

I’ve had a 2.2 Manual and currently have a 2.0 (163) Auto. The 2.2. manual was really thirsty, It averaged 35-36, and that’s driving it pretty gently. I don’t think the extra power is worth the hit in economy in a people carrier.

The ‘Sony’ head units sound horrible, the versions with Sat Nav built in sound a lot better (think it’s made by Blaupunkt?) The Sony ones are actually made by Vistron.

I think they are a great design of car, externally they actually have a really small footprint compared to modern cars, but they have tons of usable space. Personally, I don’t like the arrangement for roof bars, but it’s not too bad when you get used to it.

Both been really cheap to run and really reliable. I’m struggling to find something as a replacement.

Joolsburger is correct about xdrive, It has not been proven to be nonsense. if you are running staggered wheels (i.e front and rear are different sizes). It’s not a problem if they are the same size wheels.

ATC Active 20’s. I love them. Had them brought up to latest spec by ATC last year and they sound great. They have been a total bargain.

When I looked into this years ago, I thought it was better to just save up a buffer. Too many policies don’t pay out when you need them, and the premiums were too expensive.

Annies burger shack is OK, but last time we went, we tried to book, and they said all the reservable tables were taken, We tried a walk in, and the restaurant was 1/3rd full, with staff stood around chatting .Took ages to get a drink… I was stood at the bar while the staff were just chatting and watching me wait. It took 10mins to get seated, even though there were loads of tables and loads of staff.

Service was poor throughout the meal. Some people came in for a table and were turned away….like WTF! Empty restaurant…loads if free tables, turning people away? It makes no sense.

Did my head in, won’t go back!

Edin’s is great and cheap.

We had one fitted byFirst Utillity. First Utillity were a total nightmare, (they could see our real time consumption via the smart meter, but could not bill us correctly during the 18months we were with them). We just had random bills / credits (like bill for 700 quid, we’d phone them up and ask if this was correct, they would say yes, then a couple of weeks later they would credit our account with 1000quid) it was just totally random.

We left them to force them to calculate the bill correctly, but that wasn’t the end of it. British Gas had a record on their system that we had a smart meter. They could not read the smart meter information, which is fine, we didn’t expect them to.

The problem was that we could not submit meter readings via website or the App, as they had us down as having a smart meter. Every meter read had to be done over the phone, and took 20mins, as we had to explain that although their system shows a smart meter, he have to give manual reads.

They said they could not put our unreadable smart meter down as a non-smart meter in their database as they have to keep a record of all smart meters.

BG sorted it out about 18months ago, but other suppliers may not, so based on my experience, it avoid at the moment.

I saw it too, going up to Saddleworth. They were actually Audio S3’s, both Blue. I was in lane 3 doing 75 ,in the section where it’s 4 lanes. I actually thought they were going to rear end me. I could not get out of the way as they must have been going 120+. They must have been within 3 feet of the back of my car when they overtook.

Captainssasquatach, you are a bellend. These people should be in jail right now. It is a miracle they didn’t kill someone.

I’ve had a 350D (or might have been a 450D) fail within a few weeks so it was replaced under warranty. I’ve had the joystick fail on a 5D3. It was never right from new, but got worse and had to be replaced.

My impression is that that they are not prefect, but probably no worse than similar brands, and at least they did get stuff sorted promptly.

We have a Bailey Orion (think it’s the smallest / cheapest they make). Definitely avoid them!

I’ve been looking at getting a Phantom, and reading the forums / watching youtube videos the lack of common sense surrounding the use of these is ‘toys’ is scary. It actually puts me off buying one, partly as there must be a lot of people with negative attitudes to them, and partly as strict regulation is only a matter of time. I had no idea what people were doing with them….it is bonkers at the moment.

It has rubber pads, which are less desirable than mesh, but as long as the price is OK, I think it would be a good buy.Is it second hand in the store? With anything like this, I’d always buy s/h so if you don’t get on with it you can move it on without loosing much money.

I used to make this with Boursin/cream/milk mix. I found that unless I precooked the potatoes, they would be raw, even after an hour and half in the oven. I ended up slicing the potatoes, then parboiling until they were nearly cooked as hardly anything happened once they were in the oven. It might be different if you have a mandolin to slice them really thin, or it the liquid is not as creamy?

It’s a minging dish if the potatoes are not cooked, so allow plenty of time. I used foil on for the first 30mins,then another 25mins without foil to brown the top.

Just because DD is in the consumers favour, doesn’t mean that you won’t get your credit rating trashed. I’ve been through this with the scumbags at Virgin Media. Despite them taking money they shouldn’t have for months after I’d left them, and them suggesting I pull the direct debits to recover the money they owed they still handed a ‘debt’ to an agency who tried to put a default on my credit record.

Not a nice experience, and took a long time to sort out. You hold very few cards if you need to get stuff like this resolved, so despite the fact it’s unfair, I’d tread very carefully. It’s very easy for organisations to trash your credit rating, but very hard for you to get it straightened out.

I’ve got to drive back from the station…so I won’t be drinking whatever happens:-( I don’t mind a bit of banter, but I really don’t fancy having my 4 year old into the middle of drunken football madness. I honestly have no idea what to expect. I had a pretty bad experience a few years ago when some people I was travelling with were threatened by some people who wouldn’t let them sit in their reserved seats. It was pretty ugly and spoiled the day.

Nothing against Leeds…just a quick google search threw up some stats about them being the worst behaved fans on public transport. I don’t like football, so I have no axe to grind with any team.

I was really just after a heads up, as I suppose I’m slightly worried about my young ‘uns as they are of a pretty gently persuasion.

Hob it totally unsafe as the pans slide off the supports. The burners won’t stay lit unless you light them twice as the flame detectors are rubbish.

The dishwasher doesn’t wash dishes. We had two AEG dishwashers prior to this on which were great, but this one is totally different, and it sucks.

Unfortunately it’s Leeds :-(

Not really, as our youngest is 4 he travels free, so it’s cheaper to go first class and hope he can get a seat than book a seat second class seat.

They used to be good…in the last 5 years they have become pretty nasty IMHO. We have a dishwasher and hob from AEG and I would not buy AEG again.

Might be worth chatting to your neighbours to see that their pressure is like.

So sad….a total hero. RIP Phil.

I’d also echo what Educator said…it’s very useful to get another player to play different options for you.

I had a decent Taylor and flogged it and bought a Martin. The Martin sounds like what I want an acoustic guitar to sound like…the Taylor sounded like what I don’t want an acoustic guitar to sound like.

I have a Collings electric, and if the OP played a Martin and liked it, I would not assume the better build quality of the Collings will mean it’s a guitar you like more. I’ve only played a few Collings acoustics, but TBH, I just prefer Martins.

R4 morning and night, Al Jazeera / BBC / C4, depending what’s on.