Most weekends now, on the road or cross (with road tyres) bikes, I did do 110 miles in a single ride last year on the full-suss, which was with hindsight stupid and left me unable to walk down stairs for a day.

I love Rapha parcels, my last one was all black but for the address label and had been sealed with ‘Kings Of Pain’ hallmark tape. Those glasses are a bit grim although I’ll withhold final judgement until I see them in real life.

Sprinters Jeans – They didn’t have any when I popped in but that was about 6 weeks ago i think, they had some team sky jeans in the slim cut at 50% off but only in very small sizes. They do apparently get them in as i know a chap who picked a pair up but he is skinny and not very tall.

I’ve been in once in late May, picked up a medium orange hardshell for £130 and a pair of half price jerseys for the girlfriend. Medium kit was in short supply for men beyond the waterproofs, some jerseys and a fair bit of sky kit. They’re super friendly in the shop and if you give them a call they’ll give you an idea if they have a specific item in your size but it did appear to depend on the deliveries they had recently as to what sizes were left.

Fin25 and Molgrips have made the points wonderfully, they don’t have any place in cycling or other sports. Speedways a good example of the offputting impact of it, plenty of the old men at Poole Pirates provide a running commentary on what they would ‘do’ with the ladies on display, the signal being sent is that women are for leering at which creates a grim environment for all women.

Got through without incident but was caught up in the walk/push through Celtic Manor while they cleared the tacks, was a great day although there were rather a lot of triathletes in my wave demonstrating their famous bike handling early on, sadly it took the crash just after Celtic Manor (hope the chap is okay, looked bad) to calm some people down.

Edit: aerobars, **** aerobars, on a sportive, FFS

I can totally see the appeal of these in a bike park scenario, or in an area with seasonal lift closures, so far I’ve solely encountered them being hooned around bridleways and trail centres by fat lads in troy lee kit.

I spent 10 days road riding on Ibiza last August, its lovely – got my hire bike from Kandani.es – they deliver round the island, was an Orbea Avant with 105 in really good condition, they also did Giant and had MTB’s from hardtails up to high-end full-suss. Not sure about MTB but certainly lots of quiet roads with little low speed traffic and I did see a fair few MTB’s on the back of cars – there are camino roads that lead into the interior.

Up near Portinax is the hillier bit but nothing is too extreme, we did the ’round the island’ ride which was fun although traffic in Ibiza Old Town and Sant Antoni was a little slow, also did lots of 50-100k road loops around the interior.

Veloclub Ibiza are worth a look on strava – they do road guiding, or as mentioned above Ride Ibiza

La Pavoni Europiccolla Professional here, wonderful machine but can be a little challenging if you don’t take the time, as Convert says I adjust my grind, tamp, etc more or less subconsciously now but it took a bit of practice. It was an ebay bargain but needed some work as the previous owner was mechanically challenged.

A friend has the Gaggia Classic and its very nice but it lacks key features like a massive brass eagle on top of the boiler.

It makes me very angry – was out on the road bike doing the IOW round-the-island yesterday, stopped once at a carpark to use the facilities, found a (fat) family stuffing McDonalds in their car then chucking it out of the window – they had driven from Newport or Ryde (only ones on the island) to the south coast for the view, then chucked their shite on the ground.

Didn’t manage to intercept them as they sped off and the wind took the wrappers into the sea. :(

15mph kind of limits their use to off road or really hilly rides. I can see there uses though and the technology will only improve

Yeah but your reseller will usually offer ‘tuning’ to illegally uprate the system by removing the limit, my local ebike shop advertises ‘modding’ in the window. A quick google reveals Marks haibike could easily be altered to higher limits at the expense of battery life. Both the chaps at my work with e-bikes have had them altered so they are technically road-illegal.

If you’re concerned about the traffic then take the NCN route along the service road by the docks, its slow and badly potholed but a lot less hassle from cars, do watch out for trucks however, drop down into Eling after you cross the bridge on the shared use and take the toll bridge (free for cyclists) then ride via the lanes beyond it through marchwood and into the forest proper.

Contact them and tell them you’ve got an issue with an order, they’ll stop immediately

Edit: beaten to the punchline

My fluoro pink long sleeve Rapha Brevet was the talk of the office the first day I came in wearing it, its good to give people something to discuss.

What was the pricing like? I may be in london so may pop by, the Vulpine one was stupidly busy but well worth it.

Thanks for posting this – just picked up a Campag Zonda wheelset for the girlfriends road bike – £210 with the offer and BC Membership

I swore off Fox for the foreseeable future when I found out about the maintenance expectations, used to see them as the premium brand but Rock Shox have raised their game and Fox seem to have had a few issues recently. Hope you can shift them for a decent price however as they are nice forks.

When you forgot to lock your back wheel for the first time in years and some scumbag helps themself, last night, FFS

I hear they’re 0.017% more laterally stiff than stock and they ‘bring the drivetrain alive’

Missed this – I’m 5’11 and with 32 inseam, I went with the 57 XLS and its definitely the right size for road riding/winter training but is a little big for chucking about offroad, Its happy offroad but I’d not want to race it at the pointier end of a CX event.

FYI the wheelbuild was utterly shocking, the back has needed constant faffing and i’m spending today stripping it down as there’s loads of play, I may have been unlucky with a ‘friday build’ but PX are cheap for a reason

Just buy something that you’ll want to ride, bought my Bianchi as it was the one that made me most want to get out on the roads, it sees more use than any of my other bikes as a result despite having an ‘inferior’ groupset

Had Shimano’s on both the mtb’s since 2010ish, much better than the avids they replaced, girlfriend has hopes on her full-suss – they are slightly better modulated than the shimanos but not that much better, they do look very nice however. Had no real mechanical issues with either of them.

Pretty much the norm with P-X I think, I wasted about £200 last year when I ordered my XLS then they immediately changed the prices and groupset.

Be sure to check the bike over when it arrives, mine had semi-functional shifting, a badly built rear wheel and was missing a bar-end plug. It did however have a nice checklist claiming all of the above had been done properly.

Popping in tomorrow, just bought a new bike but its always nice to research the next purchase…

The riding was mostly OK, couple of dickheads for sure and I had to tell some moron on a TT bike to **** off after he tried to join our chaingang. No idea how he’d got it past the marshals, you weren’t allowed tri bars or anything but there he was, full on TT racing bike trying to join our group in the pouring rain. No chance were we risking that liability.

Wonder if this was the chap my mate saw attaching tribars in the pen before the start – he had smuggled them in under his waterproof!

The RL100 facebook group has no winners at all, people whining, people trolling and lots of chippy charity types making it worse by telling everyone that they should just get their friends and family to cough up so they can have one of their places. Grim

No for me but worse the girlfriend got in so we have all the cost and hassle and I dont get to ride.

Me – I used to get the LBS to handle some jobs but i had a nasty experience with the mechanic using a very large wrench to apply an astonishingly excessive amount of torque and decided it was time to buy the tools. Not sure its necessarily cheaper and i may get the full suss bearings done professionally when the time comes but for 98% of jobs I’m confident.

Outstanding catch, made all the better by the blatant pass interference going on

Thanks Craigxxl – that helps, I’m strongly leaning towards the 57

Check if the trainer can handle a 26″ wheel – I use an old MTB frame and wheelset which isn’t ideal but was ‘free’ as i had the bits knocking around.

£160 isn’t going to get you much – I’ve seen very basic Vikings new on ebay for about that price iirc.

+1 to what Binners said, the reality is you’ll never win as a freelancer against a big company with legal muscle so you end up moving on. Once its happened a few times you get cynical enough that you start taking steps to protect yourself or you build up enough of a client base that you can avoid the cowboys.

Good job they didn’t say that then. Did you actually read their statement, where it explained the separation between the team designing the dhb kit and the people who’d spoken with Anna, and that therefore none of the discussions with Anna had any input to the designs? Feel free to suggest they’re lying if you want, but they quite clearly explain the lack of direct influence.

Sorry, I was implying that designers often do research before roughing, developing and finalising work, usually that involves looking into prior art and considering influences both inside and outside of the marketplace that could impact on the final design – mood boards and the like. Colours, fabric swatches, styles etc.

I was expressing surprise that Wiggles ‘london based’ design team managed to 100% miss the widely available Ana Nichoola range that was sold in Harrods as well as a bunch of other bike shops up and down the country, was on national TV’s only cycling show, was on display at multiple national bike shows etc

The wiggle response makes me more suspicious, not less, the Ana Nichoola stars jersey was a big success for a small brand.

It would be one thing to say ‘it was on the inspiration board, along with hundreds of other things’, its quite another to say ‘Ana who?’ while you’ve been negotiating with the designer. Google search for ‘womens stars cycling jersey brings it up on the first page but we’re to believe Wiggles design team didn’t look?

Narrowly avoided an otb incident today on the road bike when the rear decided to behave badly under braking – I missed the performance of discs.

Mud/road crud had got onto the caliper and rim when passing some farms, the rim was part coated and I got normal braking followed by nothing followed by full lock, think the crosser will be coming out for the next ride in those parts :)

TBH the actual bike hire scheme looks potentially risky financially given the funding is for infrastructure only (running costs would be another thing) but the reasoning being given that they need to keep bikes off the roads due to local sentiment is ludicrous.

I ride (road and offroad) round there quite a bit and its really not bad at all given the picture the NFNPA paint, offroad is annoying at times due to lack of routes and attitude (I’ve been told off by horseriders on a few occasions despite being on legal routes and at low speed) and onroad you do get the occasional idiot but by and large its no worse than anywhere else, the problem seems to stem from the Verderers and a small group of old horsey types who thought national park status would be yet another tool to keep riff-raff out.

Edit – just to support WCA’s stereotyping, last time I went to a pub in the forest while on a ride (the Red Shoot) a group of trophy wives turned up in 4×4’s and proceeded to loudly slag off cyclists at the table next to ours, clearly for our benefit, it was kind of ironic as the red shoot has always been one of the more cycling/hiking/camping friendly pubs and if anyone was out of place it was the permatanned second wives club,

Lovely stuff, ordered the Phoenix Gimondi one, in response to CTM you’re likely a small, I’m a medium and I’m no racing snake.

Yes – I got my first proper road bike last year, makes it much easier to just ride rather than faff, and its great for fitness, its a slippery slope however and I now find myself getting up at 5am to beat traffic and putting in far longer stints on the road than the trails.

I think I’m going to follow the general theme here and talk to the bus company, I’ll report back how it goes

So disappointed, was hoping it would end with the Queen strapped into a wicker man and Alex Salmond dancing about like Christopher Lee with a torch

I quite like it tbh, its presenting cycling as a whole in a positive light and highlighting lots of fun little things that are going on. Its necessarily focused on road/charity/celebs as thats how its going to pull in an audience particularly given its slotted directly after the tour coverage.