I think the Scandal has a Whitworth 8mm hex hole, as only one of my Allen keys fits it.

Yes. Been running Michelins for a while now and really rate them. Impossible to get on to WTB rims, so ditched those, fine on everything else.
They roll well, clear well, grip well, and wear well. Not insanely expensive either.

Be aware that that’s probably on a sliding scale as well. As in you’ll pay 350 per year forever, but if it’s nicked in year five you’ll get 200 back. I looked recently after having a bike stolen and concluded that I’m better off without providing I only suffer one bike theft every six years. The bit that really hurt was that the bike was covered on my home contents insurance, but when I went to claim they clarified that yes, it was covered for theft, but only theft from the house. Bastards.

Good point – we got the ferry in to Bastia and it was over two hours to the bottom of the island. You’ll need a car!
Will also definitely be going back – hopefully with bikes next time.

Honestly one of my favourite places in the world. It has such an amazing diversity of scenery and plant life in such a small space. Was there for ten days a few years back and was never bored. Worth getting a boat trip from Bonifacio just to see the stairs carved into the cliffs from the sea. Amazing hiking inland. Almost certainly great mountain biking but we never had ours with us. Great seafood and gelato everywhere, and roadside hut pizzas were amazing. We were there in April and had the pebble beaches to ourselves and did loads of swimming and surfing. Might be busier in summer…

Iveco are a great shout, providing they’re under the 3,5T when laden…
Also, you’re overthinking it. My old T4 has 200k on it and I’ve driven it to Croatia and back twice, and Corsica and most of the way back once. It’s needing an engine rebuild now due to historic poor maintenance, and once I’ve done that I’ll be driving it down to Croatia again. And maybe up to the Arctic Circle as well.
A decent sized loop of mainland Europe in a fifteen year old van with your pals? Drive it about for a week or two, fresh oil and filters, then go enjoy your road trip!

Standard practice in Belgium.

Endura shorts, got to be over twenty years old now. Bought from Leuchars Cycles when they’d just moved from their ISO container.
Two sets of Deore M525 brakes bought at roughly the same time still going strong, which made the failure of my recent Deore caliper pretty hard to take.
I’ve found XT stuff lasts forever as well.

Connect a trickle charger to the +ve and-ve battery cables and be careful. Alternatively let it go into sleep after 15 minutes or however long, and do it the old fashioned way. Your radio should still be fine although you’ll lose your stored mpg and trip mileage if that upsets you? It upsets me, hence the trickle charger. You’ll need to spin the steering lock to lock to recalibrate the steering angle sensor as well.

@tpbiker – no, it isn’t even remotely harsh. Let’s take the drunk driver as an example. It’s an evening and one of your party has driven to the pub, again. You have your catch up, a few beers, and you call for a taxi home, or to the Indian, whatever. The one who drove there turns down the taxi and drives home instead. He’s made a conscious decision to do something that he knows could cause irreversible levels of damage to others and himself, up to and including death. Maybe he makes it home fine this time, and maybe he’s caused a few accidents on his drive home. You’d kick that person out of your drinking group pretty damn quickly because they were obviously a stupid and selfish arsehole. Antivaxxers are effectively the same, except worse, because that decision to drunkenly drive is a decision to unvaccinatedly leave the house. And that’s a much more regular occurrence.

I’ve taken glucosamine and hydrocortisone near enough daily for seven years now. I Still have knee pain occasionally but it’s low level and twatty – a sort of tired feeling, but in my knee. Every now and again I realise that I haven’t noticed my knee for a while and come off them, thinking that they’re not doing anything. Two weeks later I’m always back on them…

I built a Ragley Piglet recently and it is exactly as you describe. Utter hooligan of a bike. I LOVE it.

Agree with Andrew H. Also a fellow tube user.

Agreed – Hunter S. Thompson wrote in depth about it in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.

Resigned to the fact I’ll never see my Explosif again. I loved that bike. Would love another Kona one day…

Jet Black Heart is okay until you taste a real stout and you realise it’s just thin dark pish.

You’ll be covered as far as Romania, from there on you can generally buy insurance just past the border post.

Worth an ask on overlanding forums as said, and maybe ask the Pub2Pub boy, since he’s driven most of the world in unsuitable vehicles.

Also Mondbreaker! Loved my 2010 Foxy until the cracks started appearing.

Dammit. I still can’t work this forum properly.

“aggro-gravel” – new bike category?

Yuba Spicy Curry

What’s your normal go-to treat beer? There have been some excellent suggestions so far, but insanely varied. I can’t stand Orval, for example. But the Westvlateren 12 is every bit as good as everybody says. If you can’t get a hold of it, there’s a rival monastery stole the recipe and churn it out quite the thing. Think it’s St. Bernardus?
I love Chimay Bruin and Blonde if I don’t want to be wasted after one glass.
Supermarkets are generally brilliant for beers, but be aware that they’re not open on Sundays, unless they’re in Baarle.
Worth downloading Untappd if you don’t already have it, and you can search through whatever you’re fancying and get an idea if you’ll actually enjoy it.

…oh, and none of the cars in the Hitman’s Bodyguard are actually registered, and the baddies’ Cayenne has a plate that can’t exist.

I’m terrible for that. Also seeing if the same cars pop up regularly. Clive Russell’s E46 is part of the Paris traffic in the first Bourne film…

Duolingo is fab for building up your vocabulary, but utter toss for grammar. Some of the languages have ‘tips’ for helping you with that, but they’re not lessons you have to pass and that sucks. If they had a lesson with grammar tables, that’d be great. I found Memrise was good for consolidating what you’d already learned, because it’s timed, but the free version isn’t great and I couldn’t justify paying for two language apps.
Proper lessons with a native will help massively. As will watching Spanish telly and listening to Spanish radio. Worth searching out a Spanish translation of your favourite book.
You’re not going to reach fluency without living there, though. I’ve been five years in the Netherlands now – and have a five year Duolingo streak to boot – and while I can converse with the locals in Dutch, it’s still obvious I’m not native. The first year I was here I had lots of folk speaking back to me in German. After two years it was more ‘I can’t place quite where you’re from. Germany? Denmark?’

That’s been law in Germany for a long time, but only for vehicles and for 15 years after IIRC. It’s why you can walk into a Volkswagen main dealer and still get mk4 Golf bits the next day.

Much as I detest the CIA, I really want them to step up to the plate here.

Have done old Avid levers as well as the mid ’90s Shimano V brake ones with the short levers. Both worked really well.

Got my first ever set of Maguras for the Piglet. Liking them so far although I suspect the thermoplastic levers won’t take much abuse!

Have been introducing my boys to some of the tamer GLC stuff. They thought this was hilarious. The rest of the album’s unsuitable for them, though.

Thanks. Not feeling even remotely festive this year, but not feeling particularly depressed either. This is the first time in several years that I’ve felt so positive so late in the season. This isn’t me rubbing it in – it’s me saying that it’s not always going to be bad. This time ten years ago I was mentally drawing up a pros and cons list of different ways to end it all.
I love this thread.

@nickjb I get my chains from Decathlon. Usually 12-15 for their ‘BTwin’ stuff, which is made by – and branded – KMC.

Yeah. Always have a decent stockpile of stuff. Chains, tubes, gear cables, brake pads, often cheaper in bulk and since they get used… Will also grab tyres when I see stuff I like on offer.
Majority of our bikes are 10 speed, which simplifies things a bit.

I tried cauliflower rice once and if I could turn back time to a time when I had never eaten it, I would be happier.

Disgusting barbaric people.

WTB are an absolute nightmare. I feel your pain. Mainly in my fingertips.

Don’t be ‘that guy’. You’re getting some cash for something you no longer wanted, and somebody who wants the thing you have is prepared to travel for it. The restored worth is irrelevant given they’re not restored. Become ‘that guy’ and the next stage is you asking €1,500 for them because ‘you know what you’ve got’ and you having them forever. Like the old boy with a Cortina rotting on his driveway.

Formula and Shimano seem to have the best feel, but I’ve been unimpressed with Shimano quality recently. Or at least the quality of Deore, had no problems with the SLX brakes I had between fitting them and my Explosif going missing. The Deore caliper on the back of my Scandal is doing the microleak thing. The ancient M525s that must be fifteen years old now and are on my son’s bike are still perfect. Although they seem to have more lever travel in the cold.
Would never have Avids again – had two bikes with them and they always felt a bit ‘mushy’, were a sod to bleed, and every now and then seized a piston for fun. Hateful things.

I’m not too far from Schoorl, which has a pretty good loop. It’s in the dunes so hides its lack of real elevation with lots of ups and downs, and being largely in the woods helps as well. Some good stuff around the Veluwe and the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, too.

That’d be amazing, if postage to NL isn’t insane?

Thanks guys. Not a fan of the while cabling either, but like I said, raid on the spares bins! Had to file the spider to get a traded-for-beers chainring to fit it as well…