Nick those gels are going to be a ball ache of the highest order (and possibly literally) :lol:

richardthird
Oh yeah, when you get to Firle after the never ending climb from Southease, that town nestling by the sea over your right shoulder ISN’T Eastbourne

Yeah after Itfold you just have the Bo Peep drag, bottom climb out of Alfriston, Windover Hill, the Jevington climb and then you’re done! :twisted:

Ned, that Enigma is the only ‘winter’ frame I know of that’ll take 49mm drop road brakes.

Don’t think I’ll get anything bigger than 28mm on there!

Not sure I can really engineer a £2K+ Tripster purchase for the full excursion but will try and do the roadie bit up to thatthere M25 or so.

Bikebuoy you’re a nutter but big props to you 8)

I’ve personally had faster / nicer rides on my full sussers and I’m not sure I’d be able to cope with the battering of a CX.

Views wise (subject to weather)
Temple valley as you cross the A272 after Chilcomb
Butser descent
Across the Arun valley coming down to Amberley
Turn round at the sty gates above Chantry lane and look back at Arundel Castle
View across the Adur Valley
Black Cap
Views from Itfold Hill (takes your mind off the climb)
Heading across Ebo golf course
The run down to the end at St Bedes

:D

A man of your calibre will be fine. 8)

There’s a few variations on the routes, in particular starting with the Beacon Hill – Old Winchester hill section. On my Strava route above I took the ‘new’ route.

Back in 2009 I did the old route – https://www.strava.com/activities/13331324 – Shows how popular Strava now is when I went from 6th on one climb to 115th!

My SDWiaD ride last year was pants so here’s my write up from the year before; – http://www.egcc.net/south-downs-way-in-a-day/%5B/url%5D

I wear a Camelbak Mule for the water and take a 500ml on the bike (just in case).

Defo recommend some savoury food for variety as I find you can only eat so many gels and energy bars.

Enjoy and I’ll stalk you on Strava

jimjam

…… but if I happenend to be at a race and a photographer took a picture that was “Dirt Magazine Cover” worthy I think the sky would be the limit. £100, maybe £200 if it was good enough.

Chatting to some pro sports togs that help us out from time to time, they’re lucky to get a ton for a back page picture in a national paper 8O

Quote from one of them; “Sports photography is probably the only industry where the customer decides what they want to pay”

I shoot for fun and have been freelancing with a small local sports photography business for 7+ years.

Bomberman has summed the situation up perfectly with regards what’s required and associated costs.

I’m lucky that I can dip in and out of this as I like but my friend’s are only just about breaking even. I think they’re effectively getting minimum wage once they’ve factored in all costs.

Using a local 10K run of 500ish people as an example, we’ll typically rattle off 10 – 15000 shots. Every one of those needs to be hand checked before uploading and that takes hours. Shooting the run will take about 4 hours rough and dirty. Post Processing is usually treble that.

Tell me again how £6 is expensive?

Just finished Lawrence IN Arabia by Scott Anderson

A dense book covering a lot of ground but a great intro to the Middle East in WWI.

Not classic by any sense but I’ve liked Ben Aaronovitch’s Folly series[/url]. Potter for adults? :?:

What gear range did you go with? (Still faffing over a adding a Gnarmacmobile to the collection)

Skimmed through this thread and did initially wonder why don’t you MTFU and take a couple of lenses? :wink:

I totally get the travelling light thing but I’m a bit OCD with camera gear and would rather carry the extra ‘tools’ to cover most eventualities rather than do the who ‘what if’ teeth gnashing.

My fave lens this year has been the Canon 24mm TSE which I’ve been using for shift panos, often with focus stacking and the compulsory HDR bracketing. :roll:

#toomuchtime #toomucheffort #allthegearandnoidea

eddiebaby
You lot seem to like aviation pics. Check out Laurie’s website.
The Mach Loop stuff is amazing.

Some great stuff there. Ben Stacey also on Flickr[/url] has some excellent photos, especially the slow speed pans. Would love to visit the Mach Loop but tis too far away.

Actually did about 9 miles of NCN / B/W this morning and encountered everything from horseists to a big group of ‘tourists’ doing some kind of social bike ride.

For once I didn’t encounter any doggists with those f’%kn lethal extending leads though quite a few of them were plugged in. I personally find this annoying and rude especially when you ride up behind someone. No amount of “Hello”, “Cyclist”, bells, or clacky freewheels will make any difference.

Just about everyone responded to my ‘morning!’s and ‘thank you!’s which was nice and required no effort on any party. Only issue I had were a couple of joggers who did single up only for their free running dog to dart across in my path.

Tis not difficult for us to share the roads and paths

Devinci Dexter (actually rode mine in today)

rs
On a recent trip down it I encountered a woman with a push chair blocking the path. She didn’t hear my shouts due to the traffic and I had to basically throw the anchor out and stop.

OMG, the horror of having to slow down and add 5 seconds to your strava time!

Actually I usually go 15mph+ faster down there when I use the main road but I get where you’re going with that :-). I was trying to make the point there doesn’t appear to have been a lot of thought applied to a brand new purpose built cycle lane.

Some very well considered comments here folks; chapeau :-)

There are very few cycles lanes on my commutes and I avoid them where ever possible. Primary reasons are shared use, poorly thought out, badly maintained and very much council box ticking exercises.

I’ve been actively riding on the road for nearly 30 years and I don’t have an issue with traffic volumes / average speeds. That said I completely understand the perfectly valid concerns some (new) people will have.

One of the busiest roads in Sussex, the A23, has recently been widened to three lanes south of Crawley. During the widening work a brand new, separate cycle path was constructed alongside and I have used it a couple of times. It’s on a steepish hill but not very wide. On a recent trip down it I encountered a woman with a push chair blocking the path. She didn’t hear my shouts due to the traffic and I had to basically throw the anchor out and stop.

NCN 20 from Brighton up to Crawley is close by but actually on some quite unpleasant and very busy country roads. I really can’t work out why the planners and builders didn’t make this new path much wider and a much more sensible route.

Just had a longer look at the pics and that really is a pile o’ crap and I wouldn’t offer more than £20.

If you’re looking at older (steel) bikes of this ilk, be aware that there wasn’t the massive choice of sizes and frame geometries we have these days.

I know you’re looking at a cheap commuter but it doesn’t hurt to make the effort to get something that fits. You may find the frames come up quite large and horizontal top tubes can accentuate the ‘farm gate’ feel.

Look up the local road clubs as you’ll probably find they’ll have links to local bike jumbles or someone is selling kit; – there’s quite a lot of buying and selling between members in my small club.

Totally concur with Rusty90’s summations. I remember building up similar tat when I worked in a LBS in the late 80’s.

That Dell is a Workstation (albeit a bottom end one). They’re typically designed with high end specs, be upgradeable and better suited to run high end applications.

The Quadro range of graphics cards are designed for CAD stuff amongst other things.

Oh and the Dell has a 3 year warranty

Further to Harris’s post. Gary does clock up some mileage :lol: https://www.strava.com/athletes/12020

@willard

Not watched it in years but iirc young Miss Catrell was very easy on the eye. I do also remember laughing at some of the jokes. However as I said, twas back in my yoof.

Snap

My Giant TCR Advanced SL- Tis the lightest and my Ti bike has mudguards on it :D

You should find the Ti frame more comfortable. CF will be lighter but can also be a more ‘vigorous’ ride.

I have 3 CF road bikes and one Ti fwiw.

Gary and Sarah have been members of my bike club for years and run http://www.vamoscycling.com/

Never done one of their hols but have heard nothing but good things about them.

bombjack

BTILC is an awesome movie, made all the better by the cheesy acting, young Kim Catrell, and bad (even at the time) special effects.

probably showing my age now but Porkys

P20

Yes. Works fine. I use the screen lock and just keep it in my pocket.

+1 to this

I also (sadly) take mine when we go skiing

Have run a set of DA 7850 C24s since 2010. Not had any issues with them other than the low spoke count = flexy wheels when out of the saddle.

Were ‘replaced’ with some hand built Tune based jobs last summer.

Empirically I can’t honestly say the Tunes run any better/faster.

I’ve also added a TraceR to my (substantial) Exposure lights collection and thus far it’s been fine. I’ve personally preferred USE’s products though the Flash & Flare are probably their most marmite products.

There’s phenomenal amounts of detail in this pano 8) but there are an awful lot of stitching errors :?. If you’re going to that amount of effort (and it was a lot!) I’d have wanted a better output.

I also got fed up with my Flash & Flare playing silly burggers so got a Lezyne Micro rear[/url].

Very bright and not suffered with water ingress. Revised cradle has meant the light doesn’t go awol though the run time is still rubbish at 2 – 2.5 hours.

@Saccades – nowt wrong with red eyes provided you have a front light to plum them in to

DrP

Mike – I’m running 36/46 and 11-28 – TBH it’s fine all round here.. some people I know have stuck mtb cassettes on the rear for a lower gear, but I’m happy to stand and mash if need be.

RE the brifters- i’ve no experience, but they’ll be fine!

I’ve also got 2 sets of kinesis wheels – tubeless CX tyres, and tubed gatorskins for the road.
The bike is bang on the money now

You should get a tripster for the brighton-london-brighton ride in august

DrP

Thank you sir

Funny you mention that……. Mind you if I do come and join you again I’ll make sure I don’t have a 4up TTT the following day!

BTW are you running a medium cage rear mech? – Prolly worth getting one of these to cover the bases.

cinnamon_girl

……Choose your wheels wisely.

:lol: I’m a wheel whore and am not going to own up to how many wheels I own!

I see Dave at DCRwheels[/url] offers a selection though the Grails may not be the ones to go for…….!

cinnamon_girl

You might want to read this recent thread of mine:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/stans-grail-rims-is-it-just-me

They will never fit and am very disappointed. There’s little choice in any case of tubeless tyres in a wide width.

Running Ultegra but with a triple.

Thanks CG :-)

This 700c /29″ big tyre thing (i.e anything wider than 25c) is new to me (still riding 26″ MTBs) so I’d start with factory wheels.

Cheers guys

Bike would be a N+1 addition to the stable so I don’t have to worry about making it fit multiple duties.

I’m a big gear masher and my thoughts around the 46/36 were to offer a better spread of gears that would likely get more use. One of my off road commutes features some git climbs and I’m interested in seeing how I’d fair with a non suss big wheeler.

dc2.0

How have you found the Hydros? I have XT and XTR discs on’t mtb’s and like the simplicity of their set up, hence staying with Shimano.

Cheers Mark. Not sure what email I have for you. Shall I use the hotmail one in your profile?

TG

TBH I imagine that 90%+ of this bike’s proposed use will be road and ex railway tracks. Just rough enough to make road tyres a non starter.

I have a couple of 50+ mile routes immediately in mind that’ll be too much effort on a MTB and tyre killers on a road bike.

Anyone able to comment?

Bah, First time on STW in months and I miss this :roll:. I went out for Rich S’s triple effort in 2011 and thought that was barking. This is just another level 8)

We’ve had two National 24 hour (road) time trials in Sussex in recent years and I’ve watched guys smash out 500+ miles on those. However I can’t comprehend the effort required to do 400 off road AND to keep going for two days!

Champion effort sir

Lewes Bonfire procession down t’ High St

More fireworkery

Since 2006 I’ve collected the following: Joystick, Diablo, Race, Enduro, 6 Pack, 2 Red Eyes, Flash & Flare and a 3 cell Piggy Back.

I’ve had issues with the Race and Enduro (both are quite old now) and USE have quickly repaired these in the past. The Flash & Flare continue to be temperamental but that’s down to the design.

Yes they’re expensive RRP and have their foibles but they’ve generally been very reliable and I have no hesitation recommending them to folk.