It’s got to be Ling?

Offshore Windfarm construction is really ramping up in the next few years, with lots of projects moving into the construction phase. I’m working for a ship owner with several offshore support vessels and our main focus this year will be assisting the construction. The main countries pushing this forward are the UK, Netherlands and Germany, although there are projects going on in most countries.

This website has lots of useful information on it showing all of the current and planned windfarms:

4C Offshore[/url]

If you dig around in it you can find out which companies are the main ones involved, and which ones you should be contacting.

There are also several exhibitions and conferences each year throughout Europe that are worth going to so you can meet lots of people from different aspects of the industry.

I also used to play Ice/Roller Hockey until I left Uni, I got a new pair of ice skates off ebay for about £10 a couple of years ago. They were Bauer and I don’t think they had actually been used, they definitely had never been sharpened. I was gobsmacked when I first picked them up as they were soooo light compared to when I had last bought a pair of skates. Try ebay and narrow down the search area so they are local if you want to try them on.

We got married in September and used Moritz Schmittat. He’s based in Guildford and was absolutely brilliant, not too pricey either.

Moritz

You only need an MRI if it is medically indicated (e.g. suspicion of cauda equina, other insidious symptoms) where the exposure to radiation is outweighed by the benefit the diagnostic test can give.

Just want to point out that MRI machines don’t use ionizing radiation to produce the images, its magnetic resonance imaging, you are thinking of CT Scans that use x-rays to produce the images.

I know how painful it can be at times, I found that an Osteopath helped me loads when I had a few slipped discs and reduced the pain to manageable levels but in the end I still needed surgery.
It took a long time for me to get the surgery I needed, and first they tried to give me a steroid injection, but that didn’t help much, and the effects were short lived.
I eventually got the proper surgery, which was not nearly as bad as I was expecting, as I foolishly googled the surgery and as always only found the bad stories. The surgery was not nearly as painful as I was expecting, and the start of the recovery went a lot quicker than I was expecting, although the whole process took longer than I thought it would. Several years down the line though and I’m a lot better, and it’s only when I do silly things that I get any pain which usually goes away within a week.
Top Tip I found online at the time to get things moving quicker: say you have woken up a found you have wet the bed a few times, that really got my doctor moving things forward.

Been trying to sell my 2013 Vauxhall Astra 1.4 Turbo privately for a few weeks now, but I haven’t had a single enquiry and picking up my new car next week.

The best offer I have had is from wewant[/u]anycar which is £900 more than the trade in price I was offered, but they don’t have as many branches around the uk. Motorway.co.uk offer a good comparison for all of the car buying sites.

Mint Leaf just off Pall Mall, expensive but was the only Indian restaurant an Indian guy I used to work with would eat at because it was so good.

Also +1 for Tayabbs but bring your own beer.

Have a look on Slim Wallet Junkie I got one of the A-Slim wallets from there and it is perfect for my needs, but they have plenty to choose from.

My soon to be wife has just got an Ateca after a well-to-do woman in an AMG V8 sportscar thing pulled out of a t-junction into the side of her Fiat 500. The Fiat was a write-off so we went on the hunt for a new safer car.

After looking round a car supermarket it was the compact SUV’s that took her fancy, a bit of research later and she had settled on the Ateca because of all the 5 star reviews and decent price compared to some of the competition.

She managed to get her hands on one of the only ones available in the country on short notice. It’s a 1.6 oil burner with fairly good options package for a very reasonable price.

She absolutely loves the thing. Much prefers the higher driving position, feels really good on the road, decent acceleration, great fuel economy and she does 18k per year so will be noticed. She also works on a farm so feels the ground clearance will be useful. Overall we are both very happy with the purchase.

I’ve got a 63 plate Astra 1.4 Turbo SRI and think it’s a great car, had very low mileage when I got it almost 2 years ago, only 5k miles.

It’s a very comfortable car, I used to give one of my colleagues a lift quite frequently and he said its one of the most comfortable cars he’s ever sat in, but the seats are SRI specific. The dash is a bit basic as it doesn’t have a fancy colour screen but you can do anything you need on it.

The engine is pretty good, 0-60 in about 9 seconds, but I get 40 mpg on my commute to work which isn’t bad for a fairly quick petrol car.

It has a massive boot, I can easily get 2 bikes in the back with the front wheels off and the seats down. Also the front seats can go back far enough that I can sit comfortably in it which I found very rare for hatchbacks when I was looking for cars. I found the Focus to be an appalling driving position for myself as I couldn’t get the seats back far enough and just had the B pillar in the way when I looked out the side. Had a couple of Focus for hire cars and found the steering wheel to feel completely disconnected from the wheels, really disconcerting as no idea what the front wheels are doing. The steering on the Astra doesn’t have the best feel but it goes round corners really well.

On visibility in the Astra, the A Pillar is E-normous which can be annoying when going round right hand bends, and the view out the back is pretty rubbish for reversing.

It also says TURBO on the back :D

My prescription is -0.25 and -2.5 per eye, not sure if they will be able to do up to -5 but they are really quick to get back on the emails.

I’m sure your TV will be able to play MKV files directly from the USB stick. I have a 4 year old Sony TV and it can play most MKV files without issues. Just plug the stick in and it starts the media player.

As for MKV’s, they are just the file type, but there are lots of different codecs that can be used with them. Best description I’ve ever heard of them is think of them like a wrapper on a Quality Street, they all look similar but have very different contents.

Just to clarify; I understand that a lot of you have received good service from them, that’s why I decided to go with them.

The poor service bit was the fact that I spoke to them before ordering and was assured I would get them back within a week of posting, then to keep telling me that I would be receiving them in couple of days without even checking that the lenses would be with them. Then when I spoke to them today and they finally checked where the lenses are and were told that they have been made, but they wouldn’t get them until Friday.

I said that they must be able to arrange a courier to get the lenses delivered to them tomorrow and I would even pay for it. The lady was then very rude to me insisting that there was nothing else they can do.

I am going away Friday afternoon so really wanted them for then and that’s why I checked I would receive them by the end of last week before ordering.

It’s probably the latest android update that is causing the problems, my mates phone started playing up with strava after the latest update because of battery saver. The Strava app will need to be updated to stop the issues with the new os.

I think mine is great, all my friends call it the fallout shelter and say they are going to come live in it if North Korea kicks off as it’s so secure.

Olfi OneFive is really good value for £150.

Had some great reviews. The mobile app isn’t as good as some of the competition from the big brands, but the camera is great to use, fits the gopro mounts, and has loads of features that make it useful for commuting cam.

The size is in between the gopro hero and session.

And it’s a British company.

Marc Sussex – Which trail did you do?

If you find the trails that are there then just ride them, never had a problem up there. There were just some polite signs put up for the trails that were taken down, saying that building jumps etc is frowned upon, but nothing about not being allowed to ride off the main bridleways.

A friend who built the trails spoke to the FC and they had a nice conversation about trail building and the FC said that the forest is for use by everyone as long as they aren’t causing problems to other users or being destructive. Essentially it came down to the FC not wanting to be liable if someone hurts themselves on the unsanctioned trails, also they don’t want a load of crumbling features in the future if we ever get bored of going up there and someone hurting themselves.

Was riding there this weekend, the trails are running really well, but some of the fire roads are a sloppy nightmare, the mud ones going from the west side up the hills towards the middle, and the one at the bottom of the hill running up the east side was patchy.
Some trails at the south end have been knocked down but some new ones have appeared.

If this is the only one you think you will be going to in the next few years just hire one.

I bought a cheapo £80 one from M&S a few years ago as had a few coming up and so many guys at these dinners were wearing the same one.

If its for work and you are hiring one then definitely expense it, you wouldn’t have to spend this money if you weren’t being forced to go so you shouldn’t be out of pocket.

Plain black shoes, but make sure you break them in beforehand as you don’t want blisters on the night.

Been reading through this thread with interest, sounds like a Golden Goose situation.

Out of interest can anyone recommend a bike maintenance course in Sussex/Surrey.

I have learnt how to do a fair amount through youtube and got an ok set of tools, but would like some personal guidance on more complicated things like suspension servicing, linkage/wheel bearings, bottom brackets, etc.

https://www.slimwalletjunkie.com/products/chikara-leather-wallet-sapphire-black

Good for about ten cards, a hundred quid and some receipts. RFID blocked on the inside, but one slot on the outside for the oyster card or other contactless.

Really like it.

Thanks tekp2, this wallet is just what I was looking for, tuned up this morning!

Friend from schools dad was also called Richard Head,

Have someone in my company called Dick Long, it always puts the surname first in my email folder, :lol:

Used to speak to a guy called Gyan Dikshit at my old company which always made me chuckle.

I grew up in Horsham, I left to go to uni, then I moved to London for 10 years for work. Moved back to Horsham in 2015 and bought a house.

It has developed a lot over the past few years, with a lot more developments either in progress or being planned, including very big one North of Horsham that has schools etc being built.

It’s a very nice place to live, the are a few good pubs around but not really in the town centre, Malt Shovel is great and our usual pub just outside of the main high street.

Surrey hills are 20-30 mins away, south downs 30 mins, Swinley forest just over an hour away. Quite a few trails in the local st Leonard’s forest of you want to ride from home but only in the dryer months. Also got the downs link if you fancy a bit of mostly flat xc, that runs through southwater and goes from Guildford to Shoreham.

Yeah, there are still quite a few trails up there, just the jumps and bigger berms have been taken out, sure they will get rebuilt.

Some strava segments to look out for:
Ransom for a dead man, Room for a slim one are at the North of the forest and they are quite good fun. Dusk till dawn, Dora and Elsa, Robert Johnson are around the middle. Then there are a few that run down parrel to the main fire road like Ethan’s gone.

Quite a few trails to be found there that are good fun.

I can show you them once it dries out a bit.

There are quite a few trails in St Leonard’s forest, however quite a few of them have had the features broken up this past week, it’s pretty muddy up there at the moment.

In true STW form of recommend what you use,

I have a Wenger rucksack, they have a few depending on laptop size, I went for the smaller one as I have a smallish laptop.

See them in TK Maxx quite frequently and I think I paid about £20 for mine over 18 months ago and still looks brand new despite daily use.

+1 for 501, worth the extra ££

Bit of a hijack,

Is this time of year a bad time to buy pads as everywhere seems to be out of stock of the k_pact and the RF ambush?

I’m looking for the k_pact in XL and can only find overseas, and the ambush in xxl and even the sites that say they are in stock won’t despatch until march.

I’m looking because I have some older 661 rage but they slip down quite a lot and I got some heavy bruising just above my knee cap from an OTB last weekend.

Thanks

Have you spoken to the team yet? If you give then a call they are usually very helpful at working out the correct size based on your measurements and current bike sizing.
I can’t recommended the team enough, they were so helpful through the whole process and I got the perfect setup for my needs. A couple of friends that have had a go said that they wouldn’t change anything on it.
You can also mix and match shimano and SRAM if you want as I wanted SRAM drivetrain and shimano brakes, but you have to call them about that as they can’t have on their website.

I have the 29er one and it is brilliant, very secure and solidly built. Great customer service from them as well, one of the brackets that connect the piston arms to the top broke as the welds failed and they sent out a new one in a week and installed the panel for me.

Thanks for the comments guys, I think I will go and try on the bell helmets as the giro looks a bit too Moto and the laser looks to complicated for attaching the chin guard.

need to add a chainstay protector and spare mech hanger to my list

Def on both of those, chainstay protector is very good and looks great, the spare mech hanger I picked up when I got the bike has already come in useful and saved a ride from being ruined. I ordered another 2 hangers when I got home that day.

Quick review from 12 days with the phone.

I got the Pixel XL 128GB after having 4 iPhones and I absolutely love it, upgraded on my vodafone contract through Carphone Warehouse and ended up paying less per month and getting a lot more data with it.

I really like how you can customize it and make it your own, the screen is brilliant, and battery is amazing, only really charge it when I am getting ready in the morning, its so fast compared to my old iPhone but that was 2 years old. There were some drawbacks from iOS, but I have gotten used to the different ways of doing things pretty quickly.

I was really impressed that I could plug it into my old iPhone and downloaded all of my pics, contacts, messages etc. It was also really funny as when I first started using it the Photos app would take my old pics that it could see were taken at the same time and stitched them together into gifs.

Some Android apps aren’t as good as the iOS equivalent but most are the same or even better; the android version of Strava is much better as you can use satellite view which make much easier to find segments.

I went through the same recently as got one for holiday.
SanDisk seem to have a better read/write speed for the same amount of money, make sure that you get class 10 and as above definitely get from a reputable seller. I have found that Currys are the same price as the online retailers for once for the SanDisk Extreme Plus 64gb @ £29.99

Love my Aeropress, have 2, one for home and one for work.

I use the inverted method as it stops any water going through before the coffee is ready, also find it easier putting the filter cap on than putting the plunger in when on a cup.

Water temp makes a big difference, never boiling water onto coffee grounds, brings out the bitter tastes.

Also stopping just as it starts to hiss means that you don’t force out the oils that sit at the top of the brew and the oils give the bitter flavors.

My gf and I are going to be using these on our holiday in a few weeks in Fuerteventura, it’s a tour of the volcano on these bikes.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g580322-d10299461-Reviews-Bultaco_Fuerteventura_Tours-Corralejo_La_Oliva_Fuerteventura_Canary_Islands.html

It looks like a lot of fun and a great way of seeing the volcano when it’s 30+ degrees.

I don’t think these types of e-bikes should be allowed anywhere near the trails and should be kept to the roads and motocross tracks.

However I do see the benefit of mountain e-bikes if it opens up the sport to more people.

I will report back after the holiday on how good the bultacos are.

As someone who lives in that area I would go M25, M4 or A40, A406 (N. Circular), then down the A1 through Archway and down Holloway Road.
If you hit London away from Thursday-Saturday and outside of rush hour (8am-7pm) you should be fine.

Agree with this as I lived in the area for years. Just check before you travel and during the journey to make sure the North Circular hasn’t become blocked up, if it has then the M1/A1 route would be the best option as when the north circular gets blocked up then all roads around suffer.

I ordered one of these yesterday and managed to get 10% off using the following code: YJ10

Not sure if this code was for June only and will still work today in July, but you can find discounts codes on Google so hopefully will be new one if it doesn’t work now.