Thanks. That’s really useful. I’ll do a little more digging.

I guess worst case is some city bike pootling around a lovely city!

@cp thanks for the heads up on the prime wheels. They were too good a deal to pass up on even though I couldn’t get the code to work…

@fatbikeandcoffee. Do you mind me asking – how much did the 3d printing cost?

I got a Dirtskirt for mine, but it was very expensive and I’d be keen to have a cheaper alternative if it doesn’t last long…

I’m also keen to look at an option for downtube protection. I’ve swapped to the Epic Evo from a Trek Procaliber that had a nice chunky guard fitted there.

If it helps, I’m about 5’10 and have a Medium, but think I would have been happier with a Large. I tend to mostly use it as a winter road bike and if I am off-road it is mostly fire road ride so I’m not really throwing it around.

I didn’t get any confirmation or dispatch email either, but my seat post arrived yesterday and looks great.

I went back to order some bars yesterday and they showed ‘low stock’, but after adding to my basket it updated to ‘no stock’ at the last stage of the payment process. This morning the page has updated to show ‘out of stock’

I’m happy to have grabbed a bargain while I could, but if anyone gets some 720mm riser bars and decides they are not for them, please let me know 😉

Nice – thanks. Cheap carbon seatpost incoming!

Hi,

I don’t have much to add to the good advice from other’s here, but I would echo that you need to take some time to how mild or severe this is.

Both my father and my father-in-law had strokes in the past few years with very different levels of severity. My father suffered from some loss of confidence for a few months after his, but once on medication recovered well and ended up travelling far and wide on his own in recent years (against my advice!)

There is a lot of good help out there, I’d call on the free resources first, but there are also excellent, though expensive, private options too. We have used an organisation called Hobbs based around Petersfield / Liphook.

In the meantime I can only wish you all the best. Please continue to reach out for help as it is hard to know where to turn sometimes.

@Kato – loving the Tudor on that rubber strap – that looks spot on!

I’m also very keen on the Moonswatch. I’ve seen some posts on Reddit and elsewhere that Swatch have confirmed these will be for sale online at some point in the future and that they are not a limited edition. Fingers crossed!

Glad to hear the bike was recovered. I had a bike nicked while locked in front of Farnham station. It was directly in front of the CCTV cameras which when the police investigated they found that CCTV didn’t work!

This story reminds me of when I was a teenager and had my bike nicked from in front of a friend’s house. A few days later, said friend turned up at my place with my bike. Apparently he’d been walking down the road saw someone else riding my bike, pushed them off it, hopped on and brought it to me. Luckily he correctly recognised it!

Thanks PWP and Kryton57

The I1 that I had briefly was tidal blue. I quite like it!

Where did you find the instinct solar 2 discounted? I bought a I1 on a recent deal but found it a bit too chunky so returned it, I like the look of the I2s though but am not sure I can justify £200 more than the I1 cost me!

That new Addict 10 looks lovely. I have one that is a few years older with mechanical Ultegra and love it, so that would get my vote

Hi,
Weirdly I had to sell a car last year for both my father and father in law. Without a PoA WBAC would not deal with us, but Motorway were happy to and we got a great price with them for one (prestige) car. The other (a cheap runabout) I sold through Facebook marketplace. We had loads of idiots contact us, but sold it for the asking price to a very nice guy who showed up and paid for the car within 5 minutes of seeing it.

Good luck.

A quick update on the recall mentioned above for the PlanetX jobsworth jetboils. I contacted them last week as I hadn’t been notified of the recall and it apparently only affects stock that they received from January this year.
So it looks like I can happily cary on using my £20 bargain from last year 🙂

As an aside, the version I have is the larger one they did which has a pan design just like arogers describes above for the Fire Maple stove. I’m pretty sure they are from the same manufacturer

@Cletus – thanks for the email body. I never received that, but did find the recall on their website. Oddly I only recently used mine and it was great. I have the bigger size and it was perfect for making teas for four on a recent camping trip

That looks identical to the one PlanetX sold with their Jobsworth brand, they recently issues a recall and told everyone to stop using them

Do you have any more details on this recall? I have one but haven’t seen any info about this.

Thanks for the PSA – is there a code that I am missing or has this now expired?

@Kryton57 – if I have missed the boat, I may be interested in that Direto 😉

My four cases arrived in three packages over two days. I have a nicely stocked fridge now ready for the weekend – thanks OP 🙂

Thanks for posting this!

I popped in there and spent a bundle on Saturday, but just ordered some more to bring my average cost down. That’s sound logic, right?

I got mine for £500 from Wiggle & it looks like they are still doing it at that price.
And there’s a 0% finance option.

That looks pretty good – thanks for the pointer!

I’m also looking to upgrade to a direct drive trainer from a wheel-on tacx.
I was looking at an Elite Direto and google throws up some attractive prices from EU retailers, but was not sure if they now incur imports costs.
Am I right in thinking the ship has sailed on using them as a way of keeping costs down?

Ah – I hadn’t seen that component – thanks for the link.

My immediate thought is that I don’t have my HR info in Zwift, but have it on my Garmin watch. That can broadcast ANT+ to my wahoo bike computer, but I use bluetooth rather than ANT+ for my trainer connection to Zwift (as I use an ipad) so I don’t get the data in Zwift.

I’m now wondering if I can get the Garmin data into homeassistant as a live feed or if there is any component that supports Wahoo. Or maybe I’m missing something obvious…

Sounds like a weekend project either way!

that is only amateur level anorak 😉… mine is linked to my Home Assistant server, so it’s voice controlled but also goes on/off depending on what HR zone I’m in 🤣

I love this idea – how do you get your hr info into homeassistant?

In the usual spirit of recommend what you have… Muckboots are great in my experience. Mine are a few years old, no leaks and I’ll happily walk 5 miles or so in them. Really warm too.

Keep an eye out for their sales. Pretty sure mine were half price.

B’ah! It’s gone up to £85 now, just as I was finally about to order one…

Thanks anyway OP – that was a good deal!

Another vote for Vittoria Corsas here. I’ve been using a set of 28mm tan walls for over 3000 miles and I think have had one puncture in that time.
I’ve got 38mm Panaracer GravelKings (not the plus version) on my gravel bike and have lots of punctures on those – mainly on the road.
Both look great though!

I used to have the v6 quattro 3 litre diesel version. It was a lovely car and the engine sounds nice and not like a tractor. It’s quite fast, fun to cruise in and very comfy. Not the best handling on twisty roads though.

I replaced it with a BMW 320 estate that does sound like a tractor but it a lot more practical…

Depending on your willingness to ‘roll up your sleeves’ and get involved at a bit of a techie level then Home Assistant – https://www.home-assistant.io/ is a free, open source project that can help you achieve almost anything that you want re home automation.

It needs setting up on a spare PC / raspberry pi / NAS / old laptop, etc and once running it essentially acts as a hub to allow different smart devices to talk to each other. It also integrates with Alexa / Google Home.

As an example, I use Sonos, Philip Hue, Samsung TVs, a PS4 a £10 wireless doorbell, various motion detectors and cameras and a few home made bits (eg a thermometer) and run various automations such as:

– If the TV is turned on early in the morning (by the kids) then limit the sonos bar volume
– If someone rings my doorbell send a notification to my phone
– If I come home in the dark and no lights are on then turn certain lights on
– Control the PS4 via Alexa – eg asking Alexa to turn on the PS4 will start the PS4, turn on the TV and start a game
– If a motion detector is triggered and no-on is in the house then send pictures from my cameras to my phone

All the above is subscription free and not reliant on the manufacturer’s apps. An added bonus, is that once set-up it removes a lot of the dependency on internet access for the smart home devices and you can set things up so that most actions will work locally – not sending data to manufacturers and continuing to work if your internet drops.

It may be a little daunting to get going but the Home Assistant forums are very friendly. The product is updated every few weeks and gets easier to use with each release.

Hope this helps.

A quick related question – we have a manrose fan that vents through our bathroom ceiling through the loft and out of the soffits. It’s only a couple of metres of ducting, but our bathroom is very steamy and in the winter we get a little condensation that drips back through the vent.

This isn’t helped by the hole of the extractor being at the opposite end of the bath to our over-bath shower, but I wondered if I’m likely to see any benefit from swapping the ducting in the loft to insulated duct?

Anecdotal Manrose feedback – we have had our fan for 8 years or so. The original did fail within the warranty period and was replaced with no quibbles. Since then zero issues to report.

I saw it last night and thought it was great. A guy at work shared this link with me yesterday that looks a good follow up – Apollo in real time

Marin – that’s interesting to hear. I’m about the same height as you. I think I’m trying to get a similar position to my road bike and maybe need to rethink that. I have a longer stem to try too so will see what difference that makes.

Another longshot, but has anyone bought a large and feels they should have got a medium? I’ve got a medium and feel it’s just slightly too small

Having spent far too much time on this recently, my thoughts are:

Option 1 – wired, no NC – Beoplay H6 v2 – get some refurbs from Beoplay on ebay for less than £100. These sound amazing and if you are happy with no NC and wires then look no further.

Option 2 – wireless, no NC – Beoplay H7 – again look on ebay. I paid £110 for some (again from Beoplay – they came sealed as new). Not quite as good as the H6 for sound quality but wireless is nice. Can be used with a cable too.

Option 3 – Sennheiser Momentum M2 – wireless, NC. I have these having sold both of the above. I prefer the Beoplay sound, but these are better for commuting having better sound isolation and noise cancelling. NC not as good as Bose or Sony, but sound quality is great. These can also be used with a PC over a USB connection which then uses the headphone DAC with no NC and sounds great – I use that in the office.

Also as Simonalex99 suggests the Sennheiser HD55x are supposed to be great. These are open back so no good for office use or commuting as I understand it. The HD559 can be had as “grade B (open box)” from the Sennheiser Outlet for £45 at the moment and I have some being delivered today!

As I said I am slightly obsessed….

@mattbee – looks good! That’s pretty much what I have in mind for mine – just need to wait till the bank account recovers before I start the upgrades!

What cages are those and do you have any suggestions for cheap stockists of tan wall G Ones?

Thanks

Thanks for the PSA. Just bought a bike that I really don’t need or have space for…

Yep – what richardk said. I used one for a couple of years paired to my phone and laptop at the same time. Works really well for phone calls and skype / webex etc. It is expensive but can be had cheaper without the desk stand and charging case (though both are very useful)

How many do you have? I had a lot from a credit card sign up and redeemed them for ebay credit for some new toys

I don’t think you can do that with the standard software as it is very limited on features. The Hub One can be flashed with Lede (an OpenWRT based firmware) which makes it far more usable. It can then be used as a repeater – https://lede-project.org/docs/user-guide/relay_configuration

The difficultly with this is it is not a simple process to flash the firmware and needs some tricky soldering – there are some guides out there if you google them…

I have a BT homehub (same hardware as the Hub One) and use it with Lede and it’s pretty good.

@wobbliscott – there is an IOS app called Sonosequencer that allows you to create a stereo pair between a Play 1 and a Sonos One. I’ve not used it yet but it may be worth a look? No Android equivalent that I can see though…

Another vote for the apeman camera. I’ve used one this summer, it’s spent a lot of time in pools and the sea and is still doing well. Pretty happy for 30 quid.