great effort, well done

just an update on this and yes, I know it’s a bit of willy waving but having tackled L2P in 24 hours (unsupported) two of the three above decided to tackle the M25 road route.

It’s an achievement, well in my book anyway and not actually that tough as long as you pace yerself and take on food and water regularly.

But there’s a lot of busy A-roads and some urban shiteholes on the route. Overall, glad I live and ride in Surrey.

Giro de Orbital

dawn in Surrey

Ferry crossing Gravesend to Tilbury

end of ride

you will forget about it at some stage and you will rip your bike off the rack when you go under something

from Starsky and Hutch when Huggy Bear (Snoop Dogg) sees Starsky’s car and says “you’ve just gone up a notch in my estimation, you’re now on notch 1”

I’ve tried this a few times at work. People tend to think that notch 1 is the highest :?

it’s nerves, they are unsure of what they are saying and not confident so they laugh at the end to make it seem less threatening. e.g. I hate you, hahaha!

a bit like the Aussie HRT

eBay is your friend

as they used to say during the ‘Nam era “the most dangerous animal in the world is a 19 year old American with a gun”

plan ahead and don’t leave everything to the last min…errr… hold on, too late.

My wife is fine with my spending and i often get stuff delivered to her work because

a) she works in the small office that receives the post so can keep and eye on it and
b) drives to work so it’s easy for her to chuck it in the car to bring it home rather than me bring it home on the bike or the train

However I do use a pseudonym on my orders (and other online sites) that I created many years ago to avoid having my personal details bandied about on the internet too much. It’s a faintly amusing name and this always makes the ‘girls’ in her office laugh. They even know it themselves now and will take post in for my alter ego when my wife isn’t there!

you could always do what a pretty hard core conservative friend of mine did. He’s stood for election before for the conservatives and thinks ‘Nige’ is a great guy.

He had a neighbour he describes as a champagne socialist knock on his door. apparently they had previous in terms of political disputes.

Anyways, said neighbour had her daughter with her who was collecting for a local homeless person and the daughter asked my mate, let’s call him Graham (cos that’s his name) for a contribution.

Now this obviously doesn’t fit with Graham’s views but he didn’t want to be rude in front of the daughter so he said, look, I’ve got a pile of leaves in my garden that need tidying up. If you can sweep them up for me I will give you a fiver and you can put that in the tin.

The daughter thought about it a minute and said hold on, why doesn’t the homeless guy (I forget his name) come round and sweep them up for you and you can give the money straight to him?

With a wide smile Graham said “welcome to the conservative party”.

Apparently the look on the mum’s face was a picture.

Carpe Diem indeed. Well done fella. Done a few alpine climbs myself (yes I know MV is not the alps) and know how hard they are. Ventoux is on the to do list.

Slow and steady and the tortoise always beats the hare. It is indeed a superb feeling once you get there and as you say, if you can find a riding buddy or merely just someone/a few people to share the pain with it makes it go easier.

Dunno if you have kids at all but my enjoyment is heightened by enjoying the climb with my two boys aged 24 and 22.

We all ride at different pace/speed and rarely see each other on the climb but it’s great to see them both at the top and they really enjoy it too plus I get a guilt-free cycling holiday once a year cos the wife sees it as father/son bonding experience rather than me off cycling again.

glad you didn’t embarrass yourself or put yourself on a bad footing

My advice still holds good. Get yourself another job, tender your resignation and watch how suddenly they will crumble when they realise you are serious and they will be left with a big experience gap as the brown smelly stuff hits the twirly thing.

Previous thread

there was a similar thread to this in April. AlanSD of this manor and I ended up doing London to Paris in 24 hours (well something like 21 actually) in May. I can bore you with a video if you really want.

Just three of us, unsupported and Eurostar back same day. A great challenge and really good fun and not as difficult as you would think.

We were lucky with the weather though, think it would be more difficult given the weather we are currently experiencing where summer has come to a grinding halt.

I’m looking at doing circuit of M25 next so thanks for the link onanon

Best: Mr Benn, Captain Pugwash, Magic roundabout, Rubarb and Custard

Worst: Rent-a-Ghost

all good advice above but ultimately it comes down to money, you want more and the company don’t want to give you more (do they ever?). They will have 101 reasons why they can’t but assuming they are vaguely competent they most likely WILL know your true value and if you leave do they care or not.

Unfortunately the only surefire way of finding this out is to offer your resignation. Don’t just threaten to leave, loads of people do that without following it through. You need to have an actual job offer from somewhere else.

It’s amazing then how, if they value you (presumably they do cos you have worked there nine years and know lots more than just how to do the one job you were employed for) then the 101 reasons disappear and you get offered a pay rise to match to keep you on board.

I do know an ex-colleague who mocked up a job offer letter using MS word and some competitor logo’s downloaded off the web. Printed it out, folded it a bit and then took it to his line manager and said what do you think? Boom, instant pay rise. But you need ballons of steel (or loose morals) to do something like that (and it’s probably illegal too).

For me, it’s tighten it up to ‘hand only tightness’ and then when you get to that point it won’t move any more nip it up a bit more using your biceps and a bit of shoulder force.

I have to admit to googling this bit but apparently “if your wrench is 20cm (15cm at hand pressure point) then 40Nm equates to around 27kg, so you gotta put some force into it”

~I’m sure if your wrench is a different length you could do the math

Alternatively I just use my calibrated elbow…

Don’t think it’s a box set but am I the only one who watches and enjoys “The Last man on earth?”

Available on ‘Dave’ (catch up too[/url]).

don’t talk to me about heroes

EDIT – link error

the only trouble with the Madisons is that you will find your personal info and predilections released on t’interweb by hackers for all the world to see your private peccadilloes :wink:

just sold mine on ebay with a starting price of 99p. Was a bit twitchy for the first few days but got a reasonable price for it eventually.

Sold a previous car on Auto Trader, had loads of calls and the first guy to come along bought it. As far as I was concerned it was a knackered eight year old Zafira which burnt oil like nobody’s business but people went wild for it.

don’t forget London rules apply to drivers for lights:

– Green means Go
– Amber means Go
– Red means ‘oh go on then, just five more cars’

(thanks and royalties go to Jo Brand for that one)

me again. I already replied on page one or something and my recommendation is still to ignore him if he’s being pleasant and hasn’t raised it with you.

However another approach you can use which I sometimes use with people who bandy around lazy stereotypes about cyclists is to throw stereotypes back against them e.g.

– to the bloke in the German car who makes some comment to me during my commute “I’m surprised that a BMW/Audi/Mercedes car driver even saw a cyclist”

– to the girl at work who accuses all cyclists of jumping red lights “yeah well all you drivers/pedestrians are on there mobile phones anyway”

– to anyone telling me I’m not insured “looking at all the police roadblocks around London it looks like none of the car drivers are insured either”

– to the miserable dog walkers who moan about me being off-road ” Well at least i don’t leave dog sh*t all over the place/where’s your black bag, you weren’t going to leave it on the ground were you? or my latest one “where’s your dog licence?” (yes I know they no longer exist, that’s kinda the point)

Oh and there’s always

– to the taxi driver as we both watch a cyclist jump a light who says to me ‘that’s why people hate cyclists”;

“just cos we both ride bikes doesn’t mean he’s my friend”

and on and on. Depends how argumentative I’m feeling.

How come in America they can go right on a red, yet we seem unable to do so?

Good answers above but also they drive on the right. If anything we would want to go left on a red, not right which would take you across the traffic.

another vote for the Thule 929 G6 Euroclassic here

you’ve got to work with him not cycle with him.

he doesn’t seem to have brought it up with you so why should you bring it up with him?

Perhaps in a parallel world he is posting on Pistonneads.com about how he is working with a guy who seems very friendly and quite a nice chap.

However, he has recently learnt that this fine gent has quite a well documented history of cycling.

Not wanting to pee on anybody’s chips but doesn’t the broken bike belong to the insurers?

absolutely it does. And i guess they are really keen for a bag of broken bike bits to be knocking around their (virtual?) office.

Best approach is to advise them you have it back in pieces and get formal acknowledgement that they don’t want it back.

It was Wogan who had the different length syrups (probably still does)

:lol:

post-Sagan having a hissy fit how about this one?

Gaaaaahhh! Can’t make it work. Here’s the link

ernie_lynch – Member

And also to the Bullingdon Boys, even though they like to claim that we’re all together in Greggs or something.

I don’t really give a chuff if he wins or not but you clearly didn’t see this on Twitter 8O

(yes I know it’s photoshopped)

For those of you who think Mike Brewer is an annoying cockney (I don’t actually. I stopped him when I saw him crossing the road in Canary Wharf and he seemed one of the few celebrities pleased to be recognised and we had a nice little chat for a few minutes) you clearly haven’t seen Bruce Crompton on Combat Dealers

yup, knock down ginger where I was from. don’t know why though

The thing about France is that there are so many beautiful, unspoilt towns that you are very rarely disappointed when you stop.

My boys are 24 and 22 now so Dijon is usually our first stop rather than our destination but there’s always something to look at assuming you like castles, old buildings and architecture. If you want modern shopping malls then you will be disappointed.

Assuming you are taking the Autoroute des Anglais then places to stop are:

– Arras. Fantastic WW1 history, buildings, military cemeteries, tunnels etc.
– Bethune, a nice little town square with lots of history
– Saint Quentin, the Basilica or battlefield tours
– Reims, as above
– Troyes, a beautiful medieval town centre. restaurants and small shops

more info here

Cornwall

I love it. I like cars but I’m not a car nut. I think both MB and big Edd are great. Both big characters and entertaining to watch

as already mentioned, in no particular order:

– primarily it’s an entertainment show
– it’s grown over the years from cars for 500 quid to buying and selling 15k to 40k so som of the original meaning has been lost as it’s become more and more about the entertainment
– it shows you what you could do yourself and often quotes the costs if you were to get it done in a garage
– Mike is a proper businessman. He has decades of real experience buying and selling cars and knows what he is doing. Yes, some people hate him but he’s a self made man with real life experience. He’s a south London car dealer. What do you expect?
– But the best bit for me is that you see the whole lifecycle from buying to fixing up to painting to selling in an one hour show. I have watched other shows and they have a whole series focused on just one car. It gets boring.
– Plus other shows spend tens of thousands on a V-Dub that at the end of the day is worth say 10k. At least wheelr Dealers tries to inject some realism into the show and stick to a budget even if there are bits that are brushed over

Highlights for me were the Porsche Boxster S that Mike bought for a ‘bag of sand’ cos the tiptronic gearbox was up the swannee. Edd solved it with an oil change. Or how about the Audi TT that was ‘missing’ two gears. edd opens up the gearbox and finds a selector that has fallen off. He retrieves it and fixes it with a 50 bolt and nylon thread nut.

Quality.

beej
I’m assuming it’ll be the second week as they should be going clockwise.

Yep, that should be correct. Pyrenees first then alps second in 2015 and the reverse next year.

I have done the Pyrenees too. 2014 TDF week. Stayed in Lourdes which has been described as the most soul-destroying town in France. Lots of nuns and people in wheelchairs.

rode the Tourmalet, Port de Bales and Pla d’Adet. All superb climbs but really difficult in different ways.

The only thing i found with the pyrenees was the famous climbs were a bit more spread out and i needed to drive between them rather than access them via bike as per the alps.

a few more pics to inspire you:

A well composed shot on the Port de Bales. Check out the fans all looking at slightly different things, even the professional photographer and his moto man are getting in on the act

Geraint on the Port de Bales

Sagan struggles up the Pla d’Adet

Up close and personal with Nibali on the Tourmalet

I stayed in St Michel de Maurienne this year while the TdF was on. ~It really is in the centre of a lot of climbs[/url] with the Telegraphe starting literally from the crossroads in the centre of the high street which then leads onto the Galibier.

Other climbs within easy distance are the Lacets de Montvernier, Col de Glandon and Croix de le Fer, La Toussuire all ridden on this year’s TDF.

Alternative locations are St Jean de Maurienne which is about 15 km further down the valley.

I have no idea what the weather is like in October but it was 35 to 40 degrees in late July although some big ole thunderstorms too.

At least I was in a chalet in the valley unlike my cycling buddy who was in a tent a klick from the top of the Croix de la Fer 8O

The Maurienne valley is really massive. When I left St Michel to drive back to Blighty we descended on the motorway for over 40 miles, yes forty MILES at a noticeable angle. Amazing place.

Edit: pics added.

That’s my youngest son (age 22) in blue following me up La Toussuire. The town in the valley far below is St Jean de Maurienne which we had ridden through on the way up

Top of the Telegraphe which is actually quite an easy climb

roverpig
Veloviewer does this very nicely, but you have to pay for it now. Shame, why can’t (other) people work for free

Yup, interestingly enough I was watching the Vuelta highlights yesterday and they showed the last climb profile with the tag ‘supplied by Veloviewer’. thought that was interesting and great publicity.

I think it’s a one man show over at VV isn’t it?