Anyone in Talybont, Brecon? I’m supposed to racing there tomorrow night, but wouldn’t mind knowing what shape the A40 is in and whether it’s worth the risk driving there. AA isn’t showing any issues. No snow here in the balmy Cotswolds.

Not a typo and another well known sport near ‘nam then…

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Oh I know all about the farmers – that’s why when I go out riding I always carry a brace of pheasants beneath my barbour, and rub a bit of mud into my flatcap. That way they think I’m one of them, just riding a weird looking horse.

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and

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Taken whilst out on a run near Cirencester this afternoon. Sun came out at just the right time to capture the autumn colours and the striking japanese maple at the back, which Mrs Monsta had scampered over to check out.

Hi,

Moyeni is where my dad went to school. Anyway, family history aside, I’m off to SA in a couple of months, dropping by to do some riding with friends who own a farm in Fouriesburg. They’re pretty well set up there and have even hosted Mr Minaar! Unfortunately it’s private so I can’t recommend them to you, but if I find anything else out I’ll let you know. If you’re interested, I posted a similar link a while back, and got a good response here.

Steep and techy? There’s a lot of that in the Stroud valleys! There’s also a lot of that in the Chalford valley where Noahs is. I was doing an audax around Berkeley Vale today and getting excited as we passed trail after trail disappearing into woodland…

Fantastic – weather has cleared up quite a bit. Hope it has gone well – did you get seasick? I wanted to do this but baulked at the £2000 hire cost of the boat.

This thread could be easily misinterpreted…

I was in Paris two weeks ago for a two-day visit. Given that it’s a very easy city to walk around to get to places (particularly if the weather is nice, which it was for us), I managed to cram in this lot for under 40 euros:

Walk the steps to the second tier of the Eiffle: 5 euros (bargain!)
Notre Damn (free to go in, but 12 euros to go up the bell tower);
Montmatre (free to climb the hill but don’t know if you have to pay for the Sacre Couer);
Walk around the Louvre and admire the architecture and the Pyramid (free);
Lie on a patch of grass on/near the Champs Elysee and people-watch (free);
Hire a bike and ride anywhere you want like ride the Champs Elysee and live the TdF (10 euros and great fun)
Get an open top bus ride and bus-hop (30 euros +; I didn’t do this but it’s an option);
Catacombs (again, didn’t go but it was recommended).

You've at least got a headstart on a mate's best man speech for the wedding in a month: he can't red or write proply (but he's a very good bike mechanic).

I"m not expecting anyone to read this, I'm just getting it out of my system…

We're all great cyclists and they're all crap drivers. But keying cars and smashing wing mirrors isn't going to pacify the driver in the long term. If he/she doesn't see you again and take it out on you, they'll take it out on some other poor cyclist. Bad karma, kids.

Noting number plates does at least remind drivers they do have an identity on the road that other people can track them down with. I think the naughty drivers tend to think they can hide behind their wheel, giggling to their mates as they buzz us on the road.

Last week a 4×4 tailed two of us riding along a wide but quiet road and then pulled up alongside us as we rolled along. The driver leaned across the passenger (who was holding a dog on her lap) and shouted "you aren't allowed to ride like that [side by side] – you have to ride single file" whilst looking at us, taking her eyes off the road and driving one-handed while stretched across the car.

The cycling side-by-side issue is a different stw debate but one that does seem to rile drivers. In this case, we waved at her as she sped off. We debated chasing her to the next junction (it amuses me that drivers often rage at us and then forget there's a stop junction/lights 30 seconds down the road!), but figured even if we did try to reason with her, she still wouldn't change her attitude to cyclists.

I don't think that all cyclists ride that well on the road, and as a driver experiencing the situation from that p.o.v, there must've been times where you've thought "****, I didn't even see that cyclist" or, "that cyclist needs to have some lights" etc. And if you aren't, are you a hot-headed idiot cyclist with biased opinions about who's the better road user? There've been times when I've wobbled/been caught by the wind/ etc or just plainly not ridden well and acknowledged that to the driver, thinking "sorry mate, my bad".

Each one of us has our own routine for cycling on road, and reacting in different situations. Perhaps all cyclists and drivers should go to "cyclists and drivers" instruction workshops and then we'd see we're all as bad as each other.

The End.

Nice barn. Did you have to get bat surveys before you worked on the roof?

Liddington Hill is 277mm, but unfortunately there aren't any long descents down from it. That said, there're some longish descents off the ridgelines to the south such as Baydon to Preston (via Winchcombe Copse).

oh, and what time?

Is it next weekend then?

He's home. But it would've been cool if they origamied the end.

>> It's the first obstacle out of my door

Do you own that obstacle? i.e. can you build a bit of 'shore or even lay a plank over it? Or maye just an inverted 360 with hand-plant off the coping.

Dunno, but it looks cold and wet there's blood streaming from his knee and he's wearing tennis daps. Now if it was a swooping freeride trail (somewhere in the UK?), the sun shining and a man with a beard riding a bike like he owned the mountain then that might be a little more July/STW-like.

Lewis has changed colour – first example of a person going white in the sun?

When I worked in a bike shop I asked the boss why there wasn't a coffee machine and area where people could sit and chat to the staff and he said "because there are some people who'd drink all my coffee and sit here all day, chewing my ear off about some bike technology they'd read about in a magazine somewhere and why wasn't I stocking it and how much better it would be for my customers. And they wouldn't do any riding and then ask why I wasn't riding. And then I'd have to do wash up their mugs and coffee rings left on my counter…"

Hendrix – Machine Gun.

4 minutes or so in, what is he doing to that poor instrument…

Set2rise – first attempt at solo 12 hr. Bright green inbred (with bits plundered from box of mystery) going for its maiden voyage…

Hmmmm, was planning on beering all day[/url], but biking then beer could work

I have found that long distance swimming has improved my stamina. Plus it has added strength to my skinny cycling shoulders.

Activator.

You kids are all too weak. About 15 years ago, before Morzine became the mtb mecca it is known today, a bunch of us went out there on our fully rigid hard tails (although someone had some Mag 21s which was pretty cool). Amongst the steeds we had:

1 Dynatech with said Mag 21s
1 Principia (when they briefly made mtbs) with carbon rigid forks
1 Alpine Stars (with elevated chainstays and cool splatter paint job)
1 Explosif with Project 2's.

Anyway, we rode the trails for the week and it was all good fun. 'Course, we were XC whippets and didn't know what pain was; we rode up the trails and not just down just to make it that bit harder. We didn't know any better – we were just there to ride our bikes and drink French beer.

These little buggers will happily graze on them.

That's the kind of humour that has me returning to stw every time.

Sprung 2-4 for some old-school, cool tunes, simple tricks and nice, funky stuff. It's not all about big air and loud music.

Nothing's changed much in bike technology then.

please can someone name the tune from the 1st half of part 1?

+1

Oh, and question how long you have been running in the same pair of daps. I use a pair for training and doing a marathon distance then they're not used for another event, usually because the support or cushioning has gone. But again, that's just something that has worked for me, based on experience.

I guess it depends on how much of a natural runner you are. Base fitness is important and if, as you say, you're reasonably fit it'll give you a positive attitude going into the event. You don't need to run the full distance in training, so if you think you can run x miles max, build on that – but don't try to overdo it if you're running out of time otherwise you'll injure yourself. Read up on how to avoid injury – I do certain stretches but what works for me may not work for you. Further to your comment above, I usually find it's the second day after the event that I can't walk… Good luck!

I had this about a month ago, selling an mp3 player. It seemed to me as though the 'buyer' was bidding me out of the market because it my selling price was competitive. Anyway, that bidder 'won' but didn't pay. I second-offered it to the next highest bidder who didn't answer. So I complained to ebay who didn't respond, so relisted, sold it for £30 less than the original 'won' bids. Feckers.

We used to park in Ealing then go via Ealing Broadway, but traffic can be a bit heavy on the drive to Ealing.

Thinking of selling my on-one. Brand new, but too much stigma associated with middle-management. Didn't even get to colour-match everything yet either. Or post my 'first pics of my new on-one' on here.

Thanks for that. None of those came up in the google searches!

Well we'll be on the tail end of a three hour drive after work on a friday night coming from down south, and don't fancy going too much further north. We've got an 8-10 hour ride the next day starting at a little place called Edlaston. But if you have some other suggestions, so do say…

I'm sure Englad will take some positives from the game…

A quick google suggests you can – but you still have to insert the full win7 version cd and run set-up:

Upgrade from trial to full

Scroll down to the section 'How do I get the upgrade key to activate?' and read through that section. I'd give that a try and see if it works.

Last week tried upgrading from outlook 2007 trial (downloaded) to full version (bought on CD) and it wouldn't accept the valid full version key, so I had to do a fresh re-install of Outlook. Then the PC had a conflict as it hadn't morphed the trial version into the full version (despite setting default clients), so I had to uninstall the trial version. But maybe it's different with a full O/S…

Edit: in response to thread answer above, see also this but I think it relates to the situation where you've bought one flavour of win7 which is different to the trial flavour.