Thanks folks. From what you’ve all told me option 1, the big loop on the cross bike is looking most likely. I rode the tarmac from Devil’s Bridge to the Claerwen dam on my motorbike in July and met a lad touring on a cross bike at the end of the gravel road so really want to do a route that takes in that gravel myself.

I started my own LBS 14 years ago now and a lot of what’s written above seems quite at odds with my own experiences. I’ve moved with the times. When I started it was worth keeping a full set of XT componentry ready to go, now I don’t stock anything higher than Alivio and I’ve also stopped stocking bikes for sale so the repairs are the mainstay of the business

The repair work I do now is typical of what’s been written in this thread but I don’t find myself on the receiving end of nearly as much grumbling as others here seem to. I try to treat people as I would like to be treated and stay late if the backlog gets to more than a couple of days. For all that I appear to be earning a slightly above average wage and I have a loyal bunch of regulars, all of whom are very nice folks. And to qualify that, I’m not based in an absurdly affluent area. When I moved into my current premises my landlord who had previously run the place as a butcher’s shop told me if I could make a business work here I should be able to make it work anywhere.

There will be a prologue up over a hill with ‘refreshment’ and big views at the top. The decider will be on the beach, which will be flat. As per the website, anyone caught with cheekily high gearing will be penalised.

Hmmmm. 15 years old you say. I guess that makes all my kit well and truly retro. Mistral Vision, Bic er yellow something or other. It hasn’t left the shed in a few years but I live in hope.

Work Bike by Keith Whitten[/url], on Flickr

My regular commute is only a mile each way but I have ridden the following on this:

Dunwich Dynamo 110 miles

London to Brighton night ride and home 146 miles

4 day french tour 320 miles.

The Turfcutters at East Boldre has nice food and a more ‘independent’ feel but is in the wrong direction.
The Red Shoot and High Corner Inns at Linwood are both popular and sort of at a mid point between you and your friends with pleasant after dinner walking roundabouts (if the weather’s a bit better than it is today).

Careful buffing with progressively finer abrasives, wire wool, fine grit wet and dry will make them look better for a short time but they will have originally been anodised or lacquered to protect them so without that they’ll look scruffy again much quicker.

EDIT: When I remember to charge the bloody thing.

That too is user error. (-: It’s part of my routine when I go to bed; TV switched off, laptop locked, fire off, check doors are locked, put phone on charge, etc.

With my little e1200 when I get down to 2 bars charge I know I’d better plug it in sometime in the next two or three days.

You can set the screen to auto-lock after a period of time, so chalk that one down to user error.

I think I had done but it was a hilly ride and it was a long time before that ‘time-out’ was reached.

That phone is now used once or twice a week for Strava and nothing else.

EDIT: When I remember to charge the bloody thing.

Tried a smart phone a few years ago and hated it. Too cluttered with factory installed apps you can’t delete, poor battery life, too easy to mess things up if you fumble picking it up. The day I went out for a road ride with it in my back jersey pocket and forgot to lock the screen……… Well, it must have taken me a couple of hours to correct all the settings that had changed in the time it spent jiggling across my spine.

I’ve looked at upgrading my little Samsung e1200 and there are some good ‘half way house’ phones being made that have good cameras and interwebability and GPS but still use proper buttons that click when you press them. They’re just not sold in the UK.

As above. You’d have to pump it up so hard to stop it squirming that all you’d notice would be a heavier tyre and wheel.
If you’re only going to change one thing change the rim for a wider one and stick with the 2.4. I changed to 48mm rims and now run 15 PSI in 2.4s with no squirming and a big increase in comfort and grip. I run 3.0s in the summer when mud clearance isn’t such an issue.
Look around and do you see any other vehicles with tyres pinched in to such dramatically narrower rims? Cars don’t, motorbikes don’t, even wheelbarrows don’t.

Yes, cup and cone bearings may last forever in a clean environment with regular maintenance but for regular off-roading in UK conditions wheel bearings and the races they run in have to be on the list of consumable items.
Tapping out a pair of sealed units is so much less faff than stripping out axles to clean the grease and grit out of C + C assemblies.

I once took a 2.35 tyred singlespeed to a fatbike beach ride. I felt ‘woefully underbiked’.

Donated.

I rode many times with Keith, mostly as part of a local group but occasionally just the two of us and never remember him grumbling about anything, not even my less than reliable sense of direction.
I last saw him 10 days before he died. Three of us went round that evening to say goodbye while we could and over a few beers we swapped news and Keith told us of the trials and tribulations he’d had dealing with bureaucracy in preparing for his own passing. He appeared to have taken the task on in the same way he planned for events or renovated his house. All or nothing. I got the impression he was perhaps being a little too thorough for George’s liking but that was Keith and he had obviously gone to great lengths to try and make the transition as smooth as possible for his family.

Running tights over regular lycra cycling shorts, topped off with a pair of baggies to keep the wind-chill from the sensitive regions. At the bottom, winter boots with home made neoprene cuffs to better seal the tops to my legs.

With all the layers overlapping I can strip off the outer ones outside the back door after a night ride and be clean enough underneath to leave showering until the morning. I’ll add that this time of year I hardly sweat at all on a ride, because I’m sure some of you reading this will be having visions of me sticking to the bedclothes. Lucky you…………..

If you have 11 different cogs at the rear of the bike and rarely use the largest or smallest ratios then the difference between 32 and 34 will hardly be noticable. Any time you don’t feel you’re in the right gear there will still be another to change to.

My lightest bike (Ti XC/trail) is the one that’s been responsible for breaking me the most but I do still love riding it in dry conditions.

As above, take both summer and winter kit. In the four times I’ve been to the PPDS I’ve riddeen in 30 degrees and sun and 2 degrees and sleet. Friends have laughed but I always take mudguards. Even if it hasn’t rained there will be snow melt and if you have far to ride back to your accommodation or you just want to sit in a bar before going back it’s far nicer with a dry arse and your backpack not full of grit.
If it’s really wet ditch the full suss and get a rigid, plus tyred bike. That’s what I was wishing I was on last year.

EDIT: When it’s really wet a mate of mine swears by his motorcycling waterproof onesie.

We did the day trip 9 years ago when our lad was 6. We spent the night before in a hotel close to Gatwick and he lasted the day quite happily. It is a long day but more than half of it is in a coach or plane seat where most kids can nod off for a bit.
Tips:
Take snacks. They feed you adequately but no more and a day in the cold gives you quite an appetite.
Take lots of photos. Nine years on our boy hardly remembers any of it unprompted.

Never really liked the tiny buttons on Blackberrys.
I’d be quite happy with another 12 button plus arrows keypad.

Ryde, Isle of Wight?
House prices would work but the 1.5 hour commute might be a little stretched if the ferry and trains don’t mate up.
Road and off road riding is good there.

Take what you would reasonably want to spend on souvenirs and buy the best of what that gets you.
We went 10 years ago and I can’t remember what we bought back but I can remember just about every minute of the time we had there. Sadly our now 15 year old son remembers very little.

Gone full circle here. Bought a 29er 5 or 6 years ago and loved it. This year I put 50mm rims on the fully rigid (26 inch) winter snot bike and the 29er has hardly been touched since.

I’m now convinced that wider rims and their ability to keep tyres stable at lower pressures make far more difference to ride quality than different diameters.

For me ‘plus’ sizes seem to offer the best compromise between the rattliness of traditional skinny rims and the bulk of fatbikes.

My Surly 1×1. Nearly 10 years of ownership now and for most of them just the ‘winter snot bike’ but putting the 50mm rims on this year has transformed it into the bike I want to ride everywhere ahead of my 29er, fatbike and even the geared Ti frame now running 27.5.
Gearing is 34/17, it’s not particularly light, mid 20s but feels soooo smooth and fast now on either 2.4 or 3.0inch tyres run at 15psi

Cross the New Forest to Fordingbridge then out through Alderholt and Sixpenny Handley to Shaftesbury. A30 from there to Exeter. Mostly single carriageway but in my experience off a lot of folks radar. Quite scenic in daylight.

Yep, riding by moonlight is great. Even better when there’s snow or frost on the ground.

fifeandy (2nd post) has hit it on the head.
Remember soft-tails? Those frames with an inch and half of travel and no pivots. That’s pretty much what plus gives you but with more grip.
29+ wheels are BIG so don’t discount the smaller sizes if you value agility. I went 26+ on my Surly this year and found it loads smoother than my conventional width 29er.

Honestly the only recent new bike that’s had me thinking ‘ooooh I’d like one of those’ is the latest Karate Monkey from Surly.
I’d build it B+ with 50mm Sun Ringle Mulefut rims on Chris King hubs and a wide ratio 1×10 drive train, finished off with carbon bars and seatpost. That would take me just about everywhere I’m likely to ride in the foreseeable future.

@ xyeti
In my experience, firstly a mark up of that magnitude on a frame or bike is pretty rare. Secondly, for the vast majority of shops sales of £2500 frames or even complete bikes at full RRP are far more a welcome bonus than a staple diet.

Been running 26+ in my Surly 1×1 since the spring. More comfort AND agility than my 29er and no slower either.

26+ is the future. It’s just that hardly anyone knows that yet.

Hob Nob, can you tell us any more about the lifts there? You’ve made the trails sound interesting and as I’ve done Morzine four years in a row I feel it’s time for a change. I’ve no interest in racing the enduro though.

Tis a strange world we live in where 600s with 140mph potential are thought of as ‘small’ and a good introduction to riding? Even the smallest and lightest of those are going to be twice the weight of the OP’s current mount.

Personally I’ve done the big bike thing and for the last three years have owned a CBR250R. It’s comfy, cheap to run, keeps up with traffic and is light enough that it’s handling isn’t too far removed from riding bicycles. The OP should find plenty of them available in Thailand.

Up to a couple of years ago bikes had stayed pretty much the same for 10 to 15 years with only small incremental improvements changes. 29ers became favoured by the XC crowd but another cog or two at the back and minor suspension tweaks didn’t make much difference to the riding experience.
In my opinion the recent popularity of wider rims and plus sized tyres has made a bigger difference, with the ability to run lower pressures for a smoother, grippier ride without the bulk of a fatbike. Going plus on the rigid singlespeed I used to keep for winter use only has been quite a revelation and had me riding it more than any other bike this summer.

I’m not sure what all this talk of “too square” is all about. I’ve been running 2.4s on Surly Rabbitholes (45mm internal) for a beautifully smooth and grippy ride with minimal drag and excellent stability. Limited mud clearances mean the 3.0s are summer only.

I can’t think of any other vehicle that runs wheels with the tyres pinched in to such narrower rims as a traditional XC bike. Motorbikes don’t, not even wheelbarrows.

I can vouch for the riding over Twyford Down way, in particular one very lovely singletrack descent through the woods a mile or so up from the waterworks.

I went 26+ on my Surly this summer and hardly rode anything else. Made my 29er feel as rattly as a cross bike.

Dislocated my shoulder and tore three out of the four tendons on my rotator cuff last year entering the water badly from a high dive.
As I run a bike repair shop single handed I had no choice but to go straight back to work and the consultant I saw credited the large amounts of physical work with the good recovery I made. Keeping mobile with light to moderate loads seemed to be the way.
However, every injury is different so get a professional opinion as to what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

The worst part of the injury was the two months of poor or non-existent sleep from the discomfort when laying down.

I wouldn’t have a CX bike for purely off-roading. Mine gets used for road rides with gravelly short cuts and links. If I take it properly off road I’m invariably slower than on any of my mountain bikes because 35mm tyres can’t be launched over roots/rocks/pot-holes with the same degree of confidence as bigger knobblies.

Yes, but don’t over-tighten them.

Hope external bottom brackets are not maintenance free. You will need to remove the crank periodically to clean the shaft and re-apply a coating of grease to protect against corrosion.
I’ve seen a number of cranks running in Hope bottom brackets that have worn a groove where the bearings sit resulting in the fit becoming sloppy.