The Wiggle and CRC websites are still up and apparently accepting orders. Are they somehow still functioning? I’m after a Brand-X dropper post which as far as I am aware no one else sells, although there are some on eBay. I assume I’d be stupid to risk buying from CRC/Wiggle…

I still don’t watch ITV

Yep, I agree @mattyfez, the same principle applies, although it’s rolling so the return would be blocked for 90 days after the initial 90, after which the allowance would start creeping back up. 

As others have said, **** Brexit…

@mattyfez – it’s 90 days in 180, not in a year
https://www.gov.uk/travel-to-eu-schengen-area

My custom made Daleboot ski boots. I have nonsensically wide feet, and until I bought my Daleboots every ski trip was an exercise in either pain, or boots flapping around so much I couldn’t control my skis. I now have a pair of ski boots that fit perfectly, and are literally the most comfortable footwear I own. Seriously – I just tried them on in advance of a trip to France next month and it was like putting on a pair of thick socks.

They were eye-wateringly expensive, but they perform a function that was impossible with cheaper options – all of which I had tried. I have had them since 2011 and will get a few more years out of them yet. I fear I will have to shell out for another pair at some point, but if skiing still exists by then I’ll find the money somewhere.

And +1 to good bread!

Alfa Spider?

I’ve had this bookmarked since first spotting it, but only finally got around to making it for the first time this evening. My scones needed well over 25 minutes, but that might be my fault for adding extra cheese…

Absolutely delicious. Took a while, but will be doing this again soon – perfect winter food!

I just found this thread about Vecnum stems started by @kaiser earlier in the year. The video posted by @cookeaa answers my question clearly at 2m 15 – you were spot-on @oldnick!

Thanks all!

@oldnick – that makes total sense, you explained it perfectly! It seems really obvious now you’ve said it. I’ll see what Vecnum say in response to my email, but it looks like I’ll be getting one of their stems. In the meantime I’ll follow your suggestion @5lab and try my existing Shockstop stem with some On One Mollymawk bars I’ve got lying around – I wouldn’t want them long term, but they should help answer the question.

@matt_outandabout Glad you like it! I’ve had it for more than 25 years so while n+1 is always appealing I’d like to keep this one going if I can :-)

@5lab I think you’re right, and it’s about the distance from the pivot. Perhaps a really swept back bar will work in combination with their shortest stem…

I agree that I *could* try a suspension fork, but I really don’t want to if I can find a reasonable solution without. The Shockstop stem on my Camino is great, so I’d like to see if it’s possible to repeat that success with a more upright position that gives me better brake leverage than I can get from the hoods.

@avdave2 it was that review of the Vecnum stem in the Cycling UK magazine that inspired this question. I’ve emailed Vecnum about it but no reply as yet.

(apologies for lichen, weeds etc)

Thanks all. @bedmaker I’ve had the same experience, but I don’t understand why. The stem pivots up rather than down (and vice versa) when one’s hands are behind the pivot, but the stem can be used either way up so I can’t see why that’s a problem.

@thols2 I’d seriously struggle to find a suspension fork to fit a 25 year old Roberts Roughstuff, but even if I could it would be overkill – I just need to take out the road/pothole buzz.

We had a similar problem, to the extent that we were getting damp walls in the rest of the house. Hugely improved by fitting a fan with a constant low level trickle as well as a humidistat – it comes on once things start steaming up and remains on until everything has cleared, although I would generally try to give it a helping hand by opening the window. The problem was of course eventually solved completely by the kids growing up and moving out…

I had a delayed flight with Lufthansa in April – the first plane from Frankfurt had to turn round because of a fault and we eventually landed at Wrocław 3h 15m late. I filled in the online claim form on their website, which was straightforward, but Lufthansa just kept denying the delay exceeded the 3 hour threshold. In the end I paid for a month’s subscription to FlightRadar 24 to get screen grabs of each of the flights to prove the delay, and after that the airline capitulated and paid me €250. It was worth persevering!

I wrote about the single most important intervention to tackle obesity a few years ago, building on the findings of the 2007 Foresight report I was involved in.

Public, media and political discourse is overwhelmingly focused on individual level behaviours, but this cannot explain the rise in the prevalence of obesity over recent decades. Educational interventions are an extremely weak mechanism for driving change; obesity is not a knowledge-deficit disorder. The obesity epidemic has been, and continues to be, primarily driven by a complex set of interacting changes to physical, social, economic, commercial and political environments, not fundamental changes in human nature, biology, or genetics. The existence of people who have been able to buck these trends does not negate the overarching picture, any more than Aunty Doris who smoked 60 a day until she died in her sleep at 102 disproves the risks of smoking.

My exceptionally tatty old singlespeed commuter/shopper is my favourite bike! Bashed about old Genesis Day One frame, On One Geoff bars, parts bin parts, mudguards, second hand hub dynamo, frame lock, and a front rack. I tried a SRAM Automatic 2 speed rear wheel for a while but prefer it as a singlespeed.

I would be gutted if it was stolen, but given how crappy it looks I hope that’s pretty unlikely. I very much recommend something similar, albeit perhaps with gears if you live somewhere hilly.

The thing that has transformed my experience of running in recent years is using the Jeff Galloway run-walk method. I use the run/walk setting on my Garmin watch to buzz at me on a 3 minutes run, 1 minute walk regime, and I stick to it on all my runs.

I was fine in my youth, but once I hit my 50s I used to give myself some sort of calf/knee/ankle injury every 3 months or so.  But I now 3-4 5k runs every week, and have done both a half and full marathon in the last year, all without any problems. I’m slow, but I really don’t think I’m any slower than I would be if I ran continuously, I’m definitely faster than someone who can’t run because he’s allowing his legs to heal, and I’m happy being slow anyway. 

Many thanks @PhilO – I was being dim so this is very helpful!

Excellent point @stumpy01. I do have some 26″ wheels but they’re old so I wouldn’t mind replacing them. The question was mostly motivated by the decision on the forks, and given that I now know that 650B will easily fit in the 26″ Exotic forks I could always just go with the old 26″ wheels for now, and switch to 650B if I ever need to replace them. But part of me would also like to try something different 😃

I just tried out 28×1.5 / 40-622 on  700c wheels and it looks a bit tight…

As far as I can tell from this Cycling UK page 27.5×2.0 / 50-584 650B tyres would give me 702-684=18mm more clearance, which sounds fine to me.

Thanks all. I’ll see if I can cobble something together using parts borrowed from other bikes before I commit…

Many thanks all – looks very positive! And yes, I’ll be using narrower tyres – something like the 47mm you suggest @PhilO. I don’t know what year the frame is; I bought it second hand from here several years ago so it may well be older than 2005…

@Andy_Sweet – what was so bad about it?

@the-muffin-man – very reassuring to see basically the same frame! I don’t suppose you recall what the forks were do you? I have the 26″/100mm corrected Exotic forks on my Tinbred so will measure that up to see whether I should buy the same again or get the 650B/29er version.

@inbred853 – thanks for the link. I’d done searches for ’26 650B’ and ’26 27.5′ but not ’26 700′ :-)

@drlex – what luxury, 512 programmable steps!

My Acorn System 1 had 1k of RAM, but given that it only had a hex keyboard, an 8 digit display, and a hopeless system for recording onto cassettes it was quite a challenge to fill it up…

The Casio fx-502p I used for my O-levels. I was such a geek that I wrote a programme to solve quadratic equations that somehow fitted into 256 steps.

I still have it somewhere but wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start these days.

Murdoch and his vile hate rags are a stain on the planet. From what I have read this is not news, in any meaningful use of the word, just tawdry clickbait put out by vermin with the aim of harming a competitor organisation while ruining someone’s life.

I have Airpod Pro 1s and they’re excellent for travelling. I have no doubt that Bose or other decent over-ear noise-cancelling headphones would be better on a flight, but not so much better that it would be worth the additional size and weight when travelling with just hand luggage.

The original in-ear tips were fine, but I bought some third party memory foam tips that are much more comfortable, especially when using them for several hours.

I think I joined in 2002 – my wife worked with Biff and I found out about this place through him. Used to spend a lot of time on here before family and work took over, and old man wrists stopped me from cycling. Still drop by though, and still enjoy the magazine.

Lucky you – I’m envious! You might like this pannier.cc piece about a ride from Trondheim to Narvik.

The Avid SD7s on my Roberts Roughstuff are great, more than enough for touring. I tried Magura HS33s for quite a while but they were a real pain to adjust and I’m not convinced they were any better.

I’m with you @esselgruntfuttock, but the Norwegians will be requiring fully electric ships, albeit not initially.

The ferries across the fjords are already increasingly electric – most of those we used this summer just blast in the charge while the cars are loading.

Apologies for the thread hijack, but has anyone tried a Redshift stem with a Jones H bar or On-One Geoff? The Redshift FAQ says it’s good for all positions except out at the ends of the bar, but I usually ride with my hands a bit inboard from there.

In my case the problem is pain from arthritic wrists. I’ve already fitted Ergon grips, and fatter tyres, as well as having surgery on both my hands. It would be good to know if there’s even a bit of benefit from a Redshift stem when using the forward sections of the swept-back portion.

The Hurtigruten has been running as a coastal steamer for over 100 years, and still serves local communities along the coast in addition to providing a cruise ship function. It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s really not a dreadful cruise liner. Incidentally, from 2026 two of the most-visited fjords will only be open to zero-emission ships, although I suspect that will mean hybrid rather than full battery power, at least initially.

Personally, if I were looking for a short trip to Norway to include seeing fjords I’d probably:

1) spend a couple of days in Oslo
2) take the train from Oslo to Myrdal
3) then take the funny little Flåmsbana train down to Flåm
4) take the express ferry from Flåm to Bergen along the Sognefjord. If you’re tight for time you can do it all in one go, but I’d suggest…
5) stopping for a night at the Kviknes hotel in Balestrand, having booked a fjord view room in the old part of the hotel
6) then take the ferry on to Bergen, which is well worth a couple of nights
7) if you’re up for another boat trip Cornelius restaurant is on an island, and a fun place to visit, but there are plenty of good places to eat in the city
8) then take the train back to Oslo before returning home. If you just want to return home from Bergen you can watch the 7 hour film of the train journey to see what you’ve missed…

Inspired by the reference to here on the show tea towel thread we’ve just polished our toaster. Only got so far with stainless steel polish but bar keeper’s friend fully sorted it.

It’s only a Breville, not a Dualit, so I’m too ashamed to post a photo

Given my experience of buying an imported VW T4 campervan a few years ago I wouldn’t touch an imported vehicle unless, just perhaps, it was from a main dealer. My van passed its HPI check, everything looked great, but (long story) it turned out to be a ringer: the entire windscreen surround with the VIN on it had been expertly swapped with that of a different van – and it had in fact been stolen from a family in Germany. After reporting it to the police I had to cancel my insurance as I no longer owned it – it belonged to the German insurance company that had paid out on it – and had to leave it on my drive for months until an insurance valuer had inspected it and I’d paid a non-trivial amount of money to buy it off the German insurers. In the end I did okay out of it as the van happened to be newer and higher spec than the one whose identity it had acquired, but that was just pot luck, and it involved a lot of hassle over an extended period. It left such a nasty taste in the mouth that I ended up selling it, having been totally open about its history in the ad.

It took an hour up on the ramps at the garage to confirm that it was a ringer, and the insurance valuer was clear that he wouldn’t have spotted it – I only found out because the van specialist I took it to was convinvced the person I bought to from was a crook so he kept looking for another VIN plate with a different number on it. If I hadn’t gone to him I’d have been none the wiser.

Also, as an import it was hard to get repairs done – for example neither my local VW or independent garage was able to identify particular parts that needed to be replaced.

On a different but related note a friend of mine who lives in Amsterdam recently bought a car in the Netherlands which had been imported from Germany. It all checked out as an excellent low mileage car until he took it for a service and it turned out (another long story) to have a mileage about 4-5 times what was on the odometer. Since then he has found out that there’s an entire town in the Netherlands that is renowned for dealers selling imported cars sold as being low mileage which turn out to have been clocked – apparently there’s even been a TV programme about it!

The core problem I’d be concerned about is that when a car is re-registered on importation this wipes out important aspects of its history, so this is used as a convenient approach for selling on dodgy/clocked/ringed vehicles. You may well manage to avoid this, but you might not know for sure until after you’ve bought it…

I’ve been using iDrive for a couple of years now. The initial upload takes a while (unsurprisingly given almost 1TB for my laptop) but after that the incremental backups just carry on in the background. We have multiple computers on the same account – I can’t remember what it costs but it was much cheaper than Backblaze which I was using previously. However, judging by this review that may not still be the case

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-cloud-backup

If you have the storage sorted with Apple and the backup setting switched on an iPhone should just back itself up automatically whenever it is on charge and the screen is locked

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211228

Instructions for iOS 15 here – and it also works in iOS 16
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-get-full-screen-caller-id-on-ios-15

@tthew I should have kept quiet – don’t want competition for a second hand Day One frame!
Your Trek looks lovely :-)

I love my pub bike! I bought the frame and forks from the classifieds a few years ago. It’s an old Genesis Day One with scorch marks around at the bottom of the seat tube where someone has used a blowtorch to remove a seized BB, and similar marks at the rear dropouts, as well as loads of dings. Most of the rest is from the parts bin, apart from the On One Geoffs and Ergon grips. It’s a lovely bike to ride, and the Pizza rack is great. I’ve had a hand operation recently which makes it hard to use the left brake, so had my SRAM Automatix with a coaster brake built up into a wheel. It helps me to stop, but I’ll probably go back to the original SS wheel once my hand is working properly again.

If anyone has one of these frames knocking around in a medium please let me know – I’d love to build up an Alfine version for more distant pubs :-)

My Birkenstock Zermatt felt slippers are great. The Haflinger ones @petrieboy linked to are also excellent, but the advantage of the Birkenstocks is that when it gets really cold I can swap the cork footbed for a sheepskin one…

This is yet another example of the ways in which safety on the roads has become framed as the responsibility of victims rather than perpetrators. If a driver can’t see what is in his or her way when making a manoeuvre he or she shouldn’t make that manoeuvre. If a vehicle has a blind spot which renders this impossible, that vehicle shouldn’t be on the road.

There’s a wealth of evidence from multiple contexts that information signs, such as this kind of thing, do little to nothing to change behaviour – getting side-swiped by a truck is not a knowledge-deficit problem. Signs like this perpetuate a situation that normalises the imposition of road danger on people riding bikes, while doing nothing to address the problem.

Not quite what you’re asking for, but a reMarkable tablet does reasonable handwriting to text conversion. Not much use if it needs to go directly into laptop software, but if it’s more about taking handwritten notes that eventually end up on a computer it might be worth investigating.

Decathlon do a £35 sleeping bag that’s rated down to 15°C that weighs very little and packs down very small…

https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/trekking-sleeping-bag-mt500-15-c-polyester/_/R-p-313095