And it is better than Dorking because it’s so close to two great riding areas rather than one.

Ah but Dorking’s not close to riding areas, it’s in a riding area. I can be off-road from 300 metres of my front door, and go in 3 different directions for miles and miles. I love that.

I also like Dorking because it’s smaller, more personable (but big enough to have everything I need), other folks will prefer Guildford because it’s bigger. Fair dos.

But a lot of this is subjective, they’re both good. What I am going to do one Sunday is chuck my bike in the car and drive over to the other side of Guildford to see what’s there. That’s what we’re all here for after all.

Actually I stand corrected having checked Wikipedia, it says Guildford’s a town despite having a cathedral and university.

Dorking’s great, but Guildford would be better (or even Woking to be cheaper)

Guildford’s a city.

(I wouldn’t pick it over Dorking anyway, but that’s subjective.)

Revelations (second hand from here, I think they’re 2007), adjustable travel 100-130mm, I’m currently running at 100 but will be playing about with that. Surrey Hills XC/singletrack. I reckon that’s the perfect range of travel for me, I’ll use the lower end much more than I would 130-140mm.

In terms of prices my take is they are going to stagnate and stay at the current high level.

There’s plenty of demand, that won’t change. People need a place to live.
There are plenty of people (relatively) out there with money. They’ll buy to let because they know they can rent out, that helps keep prices up. And they’ll hold not sell.
Most people can’t raise the capital to buy, they’re obliged to rent. They longer they do that the harder it is to stop.

Also people are living longer, that means the volume of property coming on the market due to residents dying or going into care is dropping.

In effect we’re returning to the pre-Thatcher era when most people rented forever, and a few people owned.

I’ve no idea re interest rates, but my hunch is holding off buying in the expectation of significant price drops is a bad call. We bought a couple of months ago.

Obviously all housing markets are local, this is a big picture hunch, and I live in the SE so that could skew my view.

Obviously there’s no such thing as karma, because determinism** rules.

And karma definitely doesn’t work if you modify your behaviour as if it might (ie in the hope of a kickback).

But obviously there is such a thing as karma, because if you’re the kind of person who helps out your buddies, it’s more likely than average that your buddies are too, and it all comes back around.

As for the karmic balance – how do you know you’ve not already had the balance in advance? (You don’t).

** my psychology teacher said to me (paraphrase): “anyone with 2 brain cells can work out the the rules of physics run the universe, determinism wins and your fate is fixed. but that doesn’t help you live a better life so ignore it”

SRAM, fairly narrow and discrete.

as i said above “seems to work well in scotland….” why wouldn’t it work as well for the rest of the uk

I’d bet demand in terms of population per square mile is a lot less than in England, and maybe Wales too.

In England most ‘wilderness’ areas are actually pretty close to large conurbations, and lots of people want to use the open spaces.

+1 jambalaya

It’s a good thing walkers have places to go where there is no other traffic at all. It’s safer and calmer.

I also think a backlash against the petition is possible and cyclists would end up with less not more.

As it is, on the whole, we all get along OK and everyone gets access. In a small country with 65 million plus peeps, we got on remarkably well.

As jambalaya says there may be places where individual review is sensible, go do it on a case by case basis. Where I ride, the balance is about right.

DFWAB **

** Don’t Fix What Ain’t Broke

I live in Dorking, it’s excellent, certainly best place in the south east IMO. Miles of XC & singletrack to ride from the doorstep. Excellent connections: an hour from London, 25 mins to Gatwick, an hour from Brighton, 100 minutes to Dover. A nice sized town (big enough to have everything one needs, but still human scaled). Geography (stuck in a valley) dictates it can’t grow.

There’s a reason it’s expensive.

Who wants to live in a city anyway? Not me for one.

Not me. I spent 3 months in Nice, which is a ‘great’ city. But it’s a prison, damn hard to get out of.

gloat all you want.

I don’t buy the New Year’s Resolution hypothesis – it was rammed on warm days in November too.

@gavin that’s reassuring, hope you’re right.

IMO there’s plenty of space out there if we use a little common sense and discretion, but there’s a certain point where herd behaviour takes over and that becomes difficult.

Anyone got a view?

Yeah: there’s a lot more to ‘Surrey Hills’ than the mile radius from Peaslake, so spread out, people.

30 riders in a group? Insanity, who’d want to do that … certainly for me it’s not what MTB is about.

I avoid this area at weekends now, Peaslake isn’t a pleasant place to be any more. I don’t blame the residents for getting a bit irate.

I would guess most riders are coming ‘out of area’, they come to the place they hear of and read about because they want maximum bang for buck on their day out, that’s natural and understandable.

All the vids on the youtube and threads on forums don’t help.

So the only solution I can think of is to stop puffing the place up. But everyone likes their 15 minutes of fame so that’s not going to happen.

Thx all.

@rewski well yes but in reality I think of Mud X as a ‘mixed conditions’ winter orientated tyre. For full on mud-plugging, and nothing else, a Trailraker would be the tyre of choice, bit that doesn’t reflect reality.

Some of my riding buddies actually ride Mud X all year round.

Hendrik, I have a small Soul with Revs that go between 100 and 130mm. I’m in Surrey. If your height and location are nearby, you are welcome to take it out and try for yourself. Email in profile, I likely won’t see a response here.

bike for the poultry sum of £2300

There’s your problem – the maths is being done by chickens.[/quote]

Well I thought it was funny.

bike for the poultry sum of £2300

There’s your problem – the maths is being done by chickens.

Solo up Wolverns Lane to Leith Hill, back to Wotton via Windy Willows and Wild Wood, down to Wotton Church, into lower Westcott and home via the chicken farm and Nower.

Lots of duffel coats at the tower, I saw almost no bikes at all, presumably all swarming around the Peaslake honeypot. Suckers.

Life is short and you’re a long time dead.

Order your bike and go ride it.

iPad.

If there are times when a ‘proper’ keyboard is needed, get a Zaggmate keyboard/case, it works well.

Don’t judge iPad 2 by Pad 1, the v2 form factor is significantly better. I had a 1 and barely used it. I have a 2 and use it every day.

OK as someone says there are no small Orange Souls, so if you want one now it has to be black. I wouldn’t let that put me off, the black looks good too.

The pics of the Soul generally make it look redder that it really is. (My pics do too). It’s properly orange. RichS’ pic is the closest to how it looks to the eye.

Though I don’t know that I’d use colour to choose between a BFe and a Soul.

If you need the strength of a BFe that’s what you should get. If you don’t need it, get a Soul.

http://www.ebicycles.com/bicycle-tools/saddle-height/mountain-bike

worked for me

twiglets with houmous dip

Everything that can go online will do. That leaves, broadly, cafés and hairdressers.

Empty retail units are going to need a new purpose (commercial or residential) somehow.

I like the more active ride on my HT (Soul), it’s more involving being up and all over the bike. On my FS (Blur Classic) I’d sit and spin and let the bike deal with trail, which is kinda the point of FS. Which it did admirably, but it’s less engaging.

I also like the light weight, agility, low maintenance and the fact I always know what’s going on with the rear end, there’s no lag. Running a steel frame, Ti seat post and tubeless I’m often barely aware the back end is ‘rigid’.

But maybe in the summer I’ll jump back on the Blur and love it too. I’ll likely keep it, I can’t see the secondhand value would make it worth selling.

I don’t ride anything gnarly, if I did that might be a vote for the FS.

Did this recently and pleased. Still have the FS, may use it in the summer, may not.

+1 TJ

Don’t buy the Hope kit, you dont need it and the bloody thing was dangerous in my experience – bad seal between bottle and tube resulted in fluid squirting across the garage.

Instructions at http://steveukmtb.wordpress.com/hope-brakes-bleeding/

It’s a 10 minute job after the first time. If anything you get a tad OCD about it. Make sure to get the calliper/pads/rotor nicely lined up.

I always said if I had a daughter she’d be Hannah. Then I had a daughter and we called her Evelyn (Charlotte). Her mum had many other ideas but once I’d heard Evelyn Charlotte it was a done deal for me and mum warmed to it.

So I give you: Hannah

Althepal = thread winner.

Waste not want not.

Been up 90 mins, little’un having booby top ups then it’s over o me.

660mm USE Atoms

Tried wider, didn’t work for me, and I have widths shoulders for my (average) height.

Someone’s going to say Cotic Soul. I have one and I like it, but I can’t swear it’s “best” as I haven’t ridden all the others and don’t know what you want to do with yours anyway.

& would putting 140mm forks on, but leaving the original shock, mess it up? (am no expert on FS geometry)

@footflaps, I have a Blur Classic that I’d like to breathe new life into, what shock do you run?

iPad.

And today’s over-reaction award goes to…

Well your reactions are quicker than mine because I deleted it within a few seconds of posting it, after considering the typical quality of non-bike threads here for a few moments. I was right.

I find Clarkson’s comments crass to the extreme.

(deleted, changed my mind & not getting into this here)