And did wife and dog have a nice time?

All good yeah – they were happy wandering around on the walking trails for a couple of hours, then a rendezvous at the cafe, then away for another wander while I was dragging the wee one around.  Now we know there’s enough to keep everyone amused at GT there’s more scope to try out other areas, safe in the knowledge that we can always head back there for a couple of hours.

Cool- I bought my daughter a Beinn 24 which came with a Blackjack on the front but the standard tyre on the rear- I had to chop down the side knobs when I fitted a rear Blackjack..

Cheers, i’ll keep that in mind – no qualms about trimming them to fit!  This is hopefully just a stop-gap to squeeze more life out of the 20″ bike then we’ll see which way she goes with the next size up – seems to be plenty of options with the 24″ stuff.

Cheers!

It’s a 20″ Beinn – had a look around & they seem to be a popular replacement, next on the list is a dh jumpsuit

Hi all – cheers for the advice, she had a great time & looks like we’ll be back sooner rather than later!

We did a couple of laps of the lower green (pretty fun tbf) then back up to the lower blue as she was feeling bold by this point, had a great time on Harry’s Blue but came unstuck on Turn & Burn as she was trying to go round the inside of the berms and washed out on the loose gravel a couple of times, overall she did great though & absolutely loved it.

Felt her little Islabike was a little underequipped for much more than the green routes tbh so i’ve ordered her some Schwalbe Blackjacks, I can remember when 1.9″ tyres were DH spec so should keep a 7 year old rubber side down for a while.

J

Thansk for the suggestions folks – fingers crossed now for a couple of dry days!

There’s another pump track in Victoria Park, on the other side of the river. It’s right next to a playpark too.

Is that the new skatepark or something else? Might squeeze my board in the car too – the playpark there looks huge & exactly the sort of thing she’ll tear round for hours

Sounds good, to be honest it looks like the new lower green route will be enough for her, just been having a quick look & 2.5 ish miles of that will probably keep her amused – I vaguely remember the old one was just like a random forest path.

Was wondering if there was any easy access to BB / BBB as those were always favourites of mine – have a tow-rope thing so i’ll see how she gets on with the green & can always drag her up if required.

Cheers!

J

Recent highlights of the Scottish game:

Also recent highlights of bbc’s football coverage tbh…

A few mates who know far more about football than me reckon GvB would be a good shout & so i’d be inclined to agree with them, maybe Rino Gattusso as a wildcard but I think we need some stability & no risky stuff – the league this year & CL £ is a must. Crazy outside bet – Barry Fergusson & Bob Malcolm double act to keep the loyalists happy with Coisty & Gazza randomly turning up to at training to show the team how to hit free kicks at each others bare arses for £100 notes.

Aye, a lot of people have been saying how we’re looking at CL next season but in reality that’s just £££, unless we got a highly favourable draw it would most likely be a horsing most games – Slavia ultimately made us look pretty ordinary after a string of great Europa League performances last season. The racist ****.

Yeah, he’s obviously spoken with a few people down south though & a decent run at a mid-table premiership club might put him in a better place for the Liverpool job in the future than a few years at Rangers, even with the European football… could still be a gamble if initial results don’t go his way & Villa end up in a relegation battle.

A few of my mates are hell bent on Gio – be interesting to see what transpires in the next few weeks!

I was thinking about this on the walk to work this morning after hearing various rumours – will we get to see the legend Murty back on the touchline if Gerrard does go?

My cousin’s son plays with the under 10’s & everyone absolutely loves him.

Ex-Display in Decathlon? Most people treat Decathlon as a kids play zone.

Ha, yeah – think the £250 one was ex display, which would be fine if it was one of the ones propped up as a display piece, not one of the ones on the floor for kids to use as a trampoline! The one at £300 was maybe a return, had “as new” on the tag – would have taken a pop on that one if I was looking for one.

Was in decathlon @ Braehead last night getting a couple of things & they had 2 ex-display 11 footers for £250/£300 if anyone’s in the market for one.

Was out at the weekend with a mate for a quick paddle, he has one of the coolsurf ones – said delivery was more like 8 weeks when he bought his earlier in the year, dunno what the lead time is now but it put me off anything I couldn’t just buy in person.

If it’s deep it makes a difference – Castle Semple is only 5/6ft deep so it warms up quickly, was at Loch Lubnaig at the weekend with the kayak, lovely there with a wee takeaway cafe & toilets but get in early!

Cheers mate – i’ll probably go for the Itiwit one, read a few reviews saying the extra width is really handy & the wee one will be jumping on too at some point… and maybe also the dug but she’s only wee

Castle Semple is like pea soup some days with algae – mouth closed if you ever fall in there!

@nobeer – which Decathlon one did you go for? I’m in the same position right now & it’s a toss up between the 11ft Itiwit plus paddle (£390 – have a pump already) / AM Fusion (£420) / AM Hyper 11’6″ dual chamber with a crabon paddle (£550)

Decisions decisions…

Major realism failure there. Government has given the green light for these events to go ahead – we should be directly the blame that way

Problem is that’s what 10000 odd dicks are using as a cop out right now – “it’s the government’s fault we travelled to the other end of the country for a piss up despite being told not to, if only they’d stopped the trains & dragged us back to our houses we’d have got the message…” Anyone with half a brain would have known it was a dick move but did it anyway. Hell mend ’em.

In fairness they technically didn’t need to isolate if they went to England so why would they?

Common sense / decency – it might be fine to travel by letter of the law, however if you’re putting yourself into a position where there are ten thousand other people travelling from different areas of the country to the same place (which i think at the time had a higher infection rate, especially of the delta variant) in the middle of a pandemic, against the advice of the government, to ignore all social distancing guidelines for a weekend & have a big piss up, and then all travel back to their own areas & mix freely within the community again it seems like they’ve ignored rule #1 big time.

Rangers fans’ recent title celebrations rightly got slated – the TA have made a roaring arse of it this time & no amount of fairy liquid in fountains will make up for it.

1,294 cases amongst tartan army fans returning from London, including 397 who were at the match – not a good look!

Cheers, will have a look – a lot of the “budget” sups look suspiciously similar & I see what you mean about the stock issue, looks like a load of pre-orders coming from the same factory with different graphics

I’ve got one of the decathlon 2 man inflatable kayaks & looking at a sup next – the kayak is great for taking the wee one for a spin round the loch but it hasn’t seen much other action tbh, an inflatable sup would be half the weight so would be a bit more portable & quicker to inflate / deflate for a quick hour out, would probably leave it in the car just in case whereas the kayak required a bit more forethought as to where you’re parking etc.

While i’m here anyone have any recommendations for a budget-ish sup (11ft probably)

I’ve got one of those Decathlon inflatables (2 man) – pretty pleased with it, it’s surprisingly stable & generally quite confidence inspiring when out on calm water, I take my 4 year old out on the local loch in the summer but we only stray about 20ft from the shore just in case. We went out one day when it was a little bit windy & once on the water it was evident just how exposed the sides are to the wind, such a difference that makes to handling so it’s calm sunny days only from now on.

I’ve seen folk out in some inflatables that I wouldn’t use in a swimming pool never mind open water, was a couple out in one last week – not even one of the un-seasonally sunny days – looked like a lilo with sides, was drooping in the middle with each end pointing skywards but they were heading right into the middle of the loch full steam ahead, it’s only 5 ft deep but still – f*ck that

I know you’re going to just rattle can it anyway, but another vote for powder here – if I had the option to powdercoat a frame instead of painting i’d do it every time – the finish is much stronger & the blasting process will get rid of all the old paint / surface rust too, if you want a fade some places will entertain that & a decent powdercoater will give you a finish that’s nicer that cans unless you’re going to spend a whole lot of time on it.

Here’s one I had done recently – I toyed with the idea of cans but it wouldn’t have ended up anywhere as good a finish.

That generation of Genesis steel mtbs were great – i’ve just finished a revamp of my High Latitude and get the feeling that i’m definitely the limiting factor on it, it does have a suspension fork though which takes the worst of the bumpy stuff – have you thought of sticking a cheap s/h fork on yours to see if it makes any difference to the ride? The head angle is about 69 on those I think & it’s not a long fork, even a 100mm travel fork would slacken the head angle a touch & take the sting out of the front end.

When i got mine it had narrow flat bars, 70mm stem & the forks set to 80mm travel, after changing to 2.3″ tyres, shorter stem, wider bar & upping the fork travel to 120mm it feels like a different bike – last trip to Glentress I punctured a couple of times on the rough parts of the red but that was more down to me trying to wing it through rocky sections like a full-suss bike & hoping for the best on narrow rims.

By the time you pay the extra insurance with Paisley Freight it takes the cheap upfront cost inline with Parcelforce – I used Paisley freight once & they stung me for £20-odd quid or something as they claimed the box was 2cm over the maximum size (I still don’t believe this), I told them just to give me it back but apparently this wasn’t an option as it was halfway across the country by this point, the only option was to pay it or they’d “dispose of the consignment”. Shower of shite.

for the sauce I just use a half decent passata – topping wise i’m partial to gorgonzola and parma ham, or a liberal application of razor thin slices of garlic & chilli (flakes or fresh)

So, after a nice and dry weekend, is there any lockdown anymore ? I have been playing by the rules and today had my weekly carers trip to my mum’s, she’s 88 and on her own, in our bubble, over on the west side of Renfrewshire.

Roads were mobbed, local RSPB car park and lochside roads (Lochwinnoch) rammed with car and hordes of folk…

I yesterday did a 28 mile back road and gravel ride loop from home and was stunned by the number of large groups of riders on the road and once into Whitelee Windfarm, the big groups of families all stoating about in groups of 6-20 plus…

Seems like the majority seem to think it’s all over now..

ianc – i’m in Lochwinnoch, would love to say it’s generally been fine up until now but it’s been mental since the very start – early on when the advice was “stay the f*ck at home” the park rangers eventually closed the car park at the loch to deter people & folk turned up anyway and either moved the cones or parked on the blind bend just opposite it instead… and that’s even before you take into account the wee dicks cycling down en masse with a big carry oot, who then bump into another group of wee dicks with a big carry out & they all start fighting, it’s been a pain in the arse. /nimby

Of those 85k a substantial number were caused by lockdown not Covid. Not trying to minimise Covid but quoting worst case numbers doesn’t help either.

But if we didn’t have a strict lockdown (albeit too little too late…) those numbers would be much, much greater, no?

Dunno about the R53, but the R56 has a digital display in the middle of the rev counter which will show anything you like, including speed – but yeah, some people prefer the big analogue option

In today’s Filippo Ganna power news:

“Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) went around the 13km TT course at UAE Tour today in a blistering time of 13:56, for an average speed of 55.981km per hour, averaging 530 Watts.”

530w for 14 minutes? Jesus – my 5 minute is 280, I can roll along at 180-200 all day but anything much above that & i’m toast in a short space of time…

He used to infuriate me – think i’ve gotten used to it now though…

Ideal choice of radio 6 presenters would be Craig Charles / Huey / Iggy Pop on permanent rotation.

you could say that she indefatigably is

You are George Galloway & I claim my 5 barrels of oil.

I had a look at the Supercharged Cooper S (R53) when I was on the hunt for something small / cheap / entertaining last year – general consensus seemed to be if it didn’t have a full service history – steer well clear, the looked after examples seemed to be much dearer than the £1000 gumtree fodder – plenty of them ended up with shite remaps & being horsed around by scruffy yoofs.

I ended up with a R56 Cooper – 61k miles for £1900, it’s mint – bought it as a runaround & i’m actually quite fond of it now. Not as exciting as the turbo/supercharged S model but having parked my old 1l Yaris in a hedge sideways I probably didn’t need the extra 50bhp anyway

On the chance you want something classic looking, the Brooks fake leather tape is great & costs far less than the real one, it’s much nicer than any of the other “leather look” ones from Deda / Ritchey etc. too. Never used the esi one but the Lizard Skins thick version is great – perfect even if you don’t wear gloves.

It’s hard to say – if you were to clear the mortgage (or at least a good chunk of it) then you’d have more disposable income to enjoy & maybe need to work less too for the same standard of living… colleague of mine dropped to 3 days pw about 10 years ago (retired last year) and said it was a great balance, when I came back from furlough last year I did the same & could definitely have gotten used to it – as soon I as I can afford to do that I am.

Or put a bit into the mortgage, a bit into savings, obligatory new bike / STW approved 4wd German estate & carry on working as normal… decisions decisions!

The photo op in the testing centre really annoys me – there’s absolutely no constructive reason for him & his entourage to be there, it’s infuriating…

Finish the sentence competition:

Aw man. @ClassicFM's news team asked Glaswegian's how they felt about Boris Johnson travelling to Scotland to campaign for the Union. The edit is hilarious. pic.twitter.com/8B7I3Skr0x

— Ged Fitzsimmons (@gedfitzfilm) January 28, 2021

Might actually have been Autumn he was there, I was there slightly later than I thought – surface on the rock is really grippy, no way I would think about riding a bike down it though – it’s probably steeper than it looks on the video, past this bit it was a climb, not a walk up

Was up there in the summer – not on a bike though, the guy who runs the boat trips from Elgol (Seamus?) said Danny had been there shooting a new film & it would be one to look out for – if anyone’s ever up in Skye take the boat trip from Elgol & see the area, it’s stunning.

“SKIN” wall tyres.

#everydayracism

Well, looking through the pics some are almost white & others are dark brown… sooooooooo

I do like a skinwall – the mtb really wouldn’t suit them though, I know my limits