RIchard Bertinet is my go to for bread. His simple white dough recipe has 350g water to 500g of flour which is wetter than most recipes and he doesn’t add any more flour when he works the dough. It starts out really wet, but creates a really soft light bread. He starts the oven at 250 and for large loaves drops to 220, but smaller loaves stay at the high temperature. He adds steam depending on the different types of bread he is making. Working the wet dough can be quite tricky, but a mixer solves this problem. It works really well for me.

His sweet dough bread recipe is amazing and makes awesome burger buns!

The weather couldn’t look better. I’m off to find some sunscreen – which wasn’t what I was expecting.

It’s great when you’re (patio’s) straight…. Yeah!

You’re twistin my melon, man.

What an absolutely wonderful thing to be doing!

Awesome work @welshfarmer!

I’m not quite as far away as I think Matt is but still generally too far for me to come down from Lancashire.

Do you know if there is a network of people doing similar things or how to find someone local to me?

Cheers, Mike

Thanks for sharing that Matt. It was a boost to a grey day here.

Now, who’s got land that we could do a big STW tree plant on?

The meltdowns followed very quickly by seeming like nothing has happened feels very familiar to me. It is something I find very hard to cope with personally as the feelings that build up inside me when my little lad has got completely disregulated take much longer to subside. Especially when he has a series of meltdowns which continually knock me down. It’s like you are left holding all that negative emotion with nowhere to put it other than take it on yourself along with a big side helping of guilt that you can’t just wrap them up and hug it all away.

I’ve very much gone for the chocolate this evening! I hope things feel brighter for you in the morning.

We’re a long way into our adoption and our youngest still finds the world around him such a tough, tough, scary place. Even when you do all you can to almost take on and absorb their emotions it still never feels to be enough.

Big support coming from me, fostering is such an amazing thing and it sounds like you’ve got a kid who has come from a place where they really needs it. Best wishes.

A big thanks for all the posts – it’s been my go to read for the tour news again this year!

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing to this thread. I have been active in climate action for a few years now and despite the general gloomy feeling in the thread it still feels positive to me that there is debate and thinking alive.

One of the real things that I think we need are more stories of positive change. As humans our ways of life have always changed with time and that is OK. What we need to figure out is a different way of living that as a society we are happy and believe in, but which has less impact on the planet and the nature we share it with. This does have to be different to what we know now, but this doesn’t need to be worse. Even better would be to find a way of living which works with the natural systems that we are part of rather than simply using them as commodities. Perhaps, finding positive things to do which help our natural environment can provide a positive feeling alongside the reductions in emissions which can sometimes still feel disheartening.

For anyone keen to think about how they can meaningfully contribute to climate action, I have find this web page and video really helpful – https://www.ayanaelizabeth.com/climatevenn

I also enjoyed this podcast recently which isn’t directly targeted at climate action, but does explore some of the way our current society works and impact on climate change  – https://fromwhatiftowhatnext.libsyn.com/episode-49.

Only one in three phones went off here. Anyone else not get it?

A well done for thinking about this from me too. I think the link that blue72 has posted up there is going to give you the best way of simply working out the carbon emission impacts.

Another thing to throw into the mix is which form of transport do you want to support – consumer power can change things in the future. Do you want to support the future of short haul flying or ferry crossings?

I was there too funkmasterp and it was a good day. Fairness seemed to be the word that I heard most which is a good thing in my book.

It was the green climate summit today – there were only good things happening in Manchester.

It’s quite a tough gig as a parent – but then most things are. We’re building towards high school at the moment with our youngest who has similar/different challenges and starting to see their friends drop away a bit. Not sure what life is going to look like in a few years time. I’ve come to the point where I try not to worry too much about how other parents are about him. Invite kids over and if they want to come that’s great, getting angry doesn’t help me or him if they don’t. I’m sure the frustration will build a bit as we go on though.

I hope things feel a bit easier for you at some point soon, enjoy the good moments where you find them.

Go to the zoo! (Biased opinion alert – I was part of the team which designed the elephant house)

I remember Nyhavn being a nice spot to eat.

I’m going to add some sustainability thoughts which or might not help you weigh up the options. Concrete fence posts are durable and that is why they have been used lots for many years. But that was before we became aware of the impact of the greenhouse gas emissions of concrete production. This largely comes from the process of creating Portland cement which globally accounts for around 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. I appreciate that a few fence posts are a tiny fraction of this, but if we all generally stopped using concrete for fence posts it would begin to add up. Timber from sustainable forests uses a renewable material with significantly less environmental impact and with good installation can last a good long while. However it is not perfect as it still needs chemicals to provide protection.

Whatever material you use remember to make sure there are plenty of gaps in the fence at low level to allow hedgehogs and other creatures to get through.

Concrete has many important uses, but I hope we start to use it less in places like gardens where there are other options. In the next few years it might be seen like the use of peat is now.

Hi,

I’m interested to hear about this too as we have a similar problem with paint peeling off too.

Not knowing what sort of company does this sort of job has put me off though. You mentioned one company is a decorators is that the same for both or is the other a specific external render company?

YES!

Just simply amazing.

I’m a bit too late to help, but Tarty Bikes sell individual and pairs of coloured Magura caps so you don’t need to buy a full kit of different colours.

I just wanted to add a message giving some support.

I have suffered with IBS for a long time and it can be pretty debilitating and downright frustrating to live with and for others to live you living with it. It took me a long time to understand it for myself and be able to explain it to those I loved around me who were frustrated with what it prevented me from doing.

In beginning to understand it more, I have found I can start to manage better with it. Mine is mainly stress driven, but the stress that largely drives it is that which it has locked into me. Being generous with yourself and being accepting that it is a bit crap can help to reduce the symptoms in me.

I hope it eases up for you,

Mike

Thanks for the link to the tyre recycling article – the company involved in it suggest that 30,500,000 tyres and 152,500,000 inner tubes are disposed of at landfill in the UK each year!

Thanks Hannah for the link to your article, I think I remember hearing about that at the time. I’m interested to dig into that a bit more, that’s a very real example of taking responsibility for what happens to what you produce, I hope that they are managing to make it work for them. I like the way they link it into being able to get the next size up when your kid grows which really keeps the make, use, return cycle strong.

Cheers all for the thoughts.

I’ve just built up a Camino Al with 650b wheels relatively cheaply. The price of hydraulic road shifters made my eyes water so I’ve gone with an On One Geoff bar to use an old set of deore brake levers I had lying around.  The frame and forks have flat mount brakes, so I had to get a new set of calipers but these weren’t too expensive and work well with the mountain bike levers.

It does feel nice at the moment but I am still thinking of getting some road shifters and flared drop bars when I’m ready to spend the cash!

Glad it worked out Matt.

Not an answer to your question, but I just bought my daughter a Giro Tremor. Apart from some different colours it looks very similar to the Verce minus the tax.

The second half got even better, but so so dark. Very glad my little lad only watched the first part!

Half way through from last night. It is awesome!

Somehow my 8 year old watched it and didn’t have nightmares after it!!

Awesome, proper community thread – thanks Chipps and everyone.

WEJ – Coffee ordered, looking forward to it!

I just managed to get through today after 40 odd attempts over 3 days. Refund should now be being processed and I have received an email confirming it. So don’t necessarily give up just yet!

Oh and –

Peter Bunzl – Cogheart series.

I’ll stop now.

We’re similarly looking for books. I got my 13 year old to look back two years and these come recommended:

Sophie Cleverly – Scarlett and Ivy series.

Lauren St John – African Adventure Series

Kate Maryon – A Sea of Stars

Amy Alward – the Potion Diaries: Going Viral

I’m just reading this with my lad and I think it’s great with a female protagonist:

Struan Murray – Orphans of the Tide

3 days in and I was having to take it easy. I’ve identified muscles that I didn’t know existed! It appears you don’t do much sideways movement riding a bike.

I think it’s an awesome thing to be doing.

Thanks for the responses. No evident show dates then.

I found this problem recently. I’ve not tried it but 26″ are meant to be fine. But having too much time on my hands I found that Conti have a big look up table of all their tubes and I got a Conti Tour 26 (650C), Conti show this as suitable for 44-590.

Hi,

It looks like you’ve hopefully got enough responses, but if not then drop me a pm and I’ll see if I can help out.

Mike

Land sideways really hard to burp the tyre and repeat😉 It would get easier to do as you dropped the pressure out!

Or

Could you actually just unscrew the valve nut and push the valve itself upwards to unseat it? You might be able to push that a bit harder than something small through the valve and it might let the pressure drop more gradually.

Are you sure you haven’t compression buckled the rim? Before now I’ve added a uniform extra half turn on all the spokes of a wheel and gone from within a mm of true to easily 4-5mm out. Backing off a bit of tension and the rim came back towards true again. My conclusion was that I’d just pulled too much compression into the rim and taken it past it’s compression bulking limit and if you’ve got beyond the buckling limit you’ll have a nightmare trying to hold it true.

I know you’ve got the numbers from the spoke meter and compared those with the recommended values, but if the reader isn’t accurate could you be a bit high? It should be a pretty robust rim though at that size which might buckling unlikely.

I’d give it a try and give everyone a lesson in how to keep their tyres firmly glued to the dirt!

There’s a few You Tube videos to see what it’s like. Harry Main (the BMXer) rides it on a DH bike and it really doesn’t look ideal at all.

I had one person so keen to give me their opinion on my lights last year that as they squeezed alongside me at a junction and wound their window down they crashed into the car in front.

As I pointed out what they had just done they continued to tell me about my lights.

The person in the car in front then got out to challenge my about why I had crashed into their car. So I had to explain the above situation. Unsurprisingly they weren’t very impressed.

Super, I’ll hold fire for a bit then. Cheers!