I’m from Fort William, grew up there and stayed till I was early 20’s. I now live about 50 miles north, 15 miles outside Inverness. The difference in the wet weather and amount of midges is absolutely huge! My wife still works in Ft W and commutes there 3 days a week, quite often it’s been pouring rain all day in the Fort and has been dry all day as soon as you pass Fort Augustus. Along with cold dark winter nights, you can either embrace it with good bike lights or hibernate!

The trails and bike community in Ft W are great though but I’m happy enough to spend an hour driving down and visit my parents at the same time. FWIW the hospital there struggle with recruitment so healthcare workers would be more than welcome.

The roads and facilities get busier up here in the summer but not enough to make me want to live somewhere with wider roads and even more people.

You’re probably too far away for me to buy your one but how does the Kuga work out as a family sized car?
My kids are getting a bit bigger and I’m going to have to get a sensible car someday soon 🙈

I too have a V50 but it’s the 2 litre diesel. It used to sporadically go into limp mode without any pattern at all. After a bit of searching I unplugged the CEM in the pass side footwell and sprayed contact cleaner in the plugs and CEM pins. Plugged an unplugged a couple of times and it’s run fine for nearly 2k miles now.
I do have VIDA diagnosis though and narrowing down the fault code to the signal from the throttle pedal was what led me to find the CEM plug thing.

Worth a shot for £5 worth of electrical contact cleaner:)

“So you’ve had it for all of 3 months?”

Yep, and prior to that I had a blue 3.2S that I bought for £3.5k. it had been sitting in a garden uncovered for 5 years and I brought it back to being roadworthy, getting a fair idea of what their weak points are.

A lot of price related scaremongering on here, my 3.2 was £4k at the start of winter and when fuel was more expensive.
Full history, facelift rear lights, factory Litronic headlights, sports exhaust, GT3 wheels and a few other nice bits.
Expenditure has been on servicing (9 litres of oil!) as well as a Bluetooth head unit and new speakers. Service parts are cheap although Porsche dealer parts are crazy money.
They can be expensive to run but that’s not completely why the cars are so cheap to buy. They made loads of them, they are at the bottom of their depreciation curve and they are forever seen as not as good as the 911.

Don’t be afraid of them :)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QtnYv34h1JtEKdJYA

I’ve got a 2000 Boxster S 3.2 250bhp. I’ve had loads of cars, mostly sporty. TT’s, MX5’s, MR2’s of all 3 varietys etc etc. The Boxster is probably the best car I’ve owned. Perfect handling/balance, amazing engine note, easy to work on, well built, not terrible on fuel. Everything about it is just right, for me at least.

I normally keep my summer “fun” car on SORN for winter as the weather is pretty rough up here in the Highlands. This year though, I’ve just been using it. Drove to Skye in snow and -8 degrees, heavy rain, all types of weather. I’ve commuted in it, done 200 mile journeys in, 90% of the time with the roof down and loved every minute.
Go and try one 😁

I bought some Glowworm lights about 12 or 13 years ago. The battery pack died a couple of years ago and I had to re-solder a connection inside the light itself but they are still working away quite happily. Presumably the new ones are even better than the old X2’s.

Great beam pattern and long run times, a plus vote from me…

I changed the bearings on several Stumpy frames of various years. Most were ok, just the double blind bearing on the rear of the seat stay could be problematic.

“The chips with my evening in Driumnadrochit this summer were disappointing.”

The one beside the new Co-op? They are normally pretty good, maybe having an off day…

My wife had a very similar injury after falling on ice, almost 2 years ago. We also live rurally and she travels to work 50 miles away by car. She surrendered her licence to the DVLA and had her right to drive revoked. All went well until her time was up with no medical problems. What then ensued was a nightmare. No email or contact details, forms filled in and then chased up weeks later, only to find that half the form had arrived and we had to do it all again. Contact could be made only via post or fax, chasing them up required calling a number that was almost never answered.
We got there in the end after chasing via MP, her employer (NHS), local GP plus a few other organisations that I can’t remember. Took an extra 2 months on top of the 6 month revocation. Get the forms in early and then keep hassling them!

How are you medically? Headaches, fatigue, memory loss? Would be interested to compare to my wife…

If they got in illegally then it would be terrible if they got out illegally too, in fact it was probably the same person that broke the lock who also damaged the section of fence that they escaped through…

I went to see him a good few years back when I was about 12 iirc, he was doing a talk about how he’d climbed the foothills of K2 or something like that. My Mum got tickets as I loved Flash Gordon 🙈
All I remember was that he brought a huge longbow on stage with him, talked for 10 mins and then stormed off, throwing the bow across the stage.
We thought it was part of the show so sat patiently. Turns out it wasn’t part of the show, he’d gone off in a huff as he wasn’t happy with the audience.

Never meet your heroes 🙈
(Apart from Hans Rey 😁)

I’m currently driving a £900 Mk1 TT 225, it’s pretty clean and drives nicely 😁 Also in the fleet is a Mk5 Golf GT TDi, returning a steady 58mpg.

I’ve just sold my bangernomics Boxster 3.2S as it was knocking on £100 just to change the oil and filters myself and the cost of parts was crazy. I bought it cheap from my mates Dad who’d left it out in his garden for nearly 5 years. Fixed it up and got an MoT and enjoyed the crisp winter mornings with the roof down, a beautiful drive 😁

I bought a chain last year for my then 10 year old son.
Snapped on the first climb, joined it back together and thought I must have fitted it wrongly somehow. Snapped another 2 times before I took a closer look at the chain, it had already started to rust and had “Shimano HyperGlide” spelled wrongly 🙈
Fake, of course, got a refund but it’s made me far more wary.

Sell it as spares/repair and buy a better van. In the meantime buy a £500 Ford Galaxy, take out the seats and use that as a van. If you are worried about theft, tint the rear windows 😁

My wife had her licence revoked in February after a brain bleed caused by a fall. The DVLA were pretty useless in terms of contact and giving the correct information.
Eventually the 6 month revocation period was over and there was no sign of getting her licence back, despite having reapplied for it a month before the revocation expired.
We eventually simultaneously wrote to the complaints department and started an official complaint and emailed the CEO explaining that my wife was a rural working community physio and that there was a backlog of patients due in part to her lack of licence.
We got a call 3 days later to say that she would get her licence back within a week and that she could drive in the meantime.
I really feel for non-urgent cases, my wife was told that there would be no upper time limit to resolve her case, anecdotally I read that it could have been over a year!

I’ve had a 3 of them, a stock 225, modified 225 and until a month ago I had V6 DSG.
I fitted an MTB with the wheels off fairly easily so don’t worry about that.
My kids are 8 and 10 and still fitted in the back fine. The rear seats are designed to be a Cat3 child seat so kids of the right size won’t need a booster seat.

My favourite was the V6, it sounded great and was pretty bloody quick. It was fine to potter about town in auto mode and then switch to manual paddle mode for the A roads. Handling is good but without much feedback. Better than the online reviews would have you believe.
Interior is lovely, heated seats are roasting!

Overall they are an awful lot of car for the money 😁

Look up the trails at High Burnside for a fun bit of tech at the end of the Burma loop. There’s a tiny tunnel (as in you have to duck!) at the bottom of the housing estate that takes you back under the A9 and end up near the middle of Aviemore.

I’ve bumped into him a couple of times in Ft William High Street 😁
He was apparently in the local hospital after a crash (a while ago now iirc) so I suppose if you hung about the entrance long enough he might be back sometime 🙈

I just went through similar with buying a Remedy. Luckily the shop had a Med and Large so I got to try them both. Med felt just a wee bit cramped for me but the L was spot on.
I bought the L and as I went back in to pay for it someone else was buying the M, crazy corona ike demands!
I’m 5ft 10, no idea of inseam etc.

I was equally surprised by the insurance, being 40 with 12+years NCB I just assume that all insurance will now be cheap.
My other 2 cars at the time were a tuned Mk1 TT and Mini Cooper S (the supercharged original new Mini) so nothing particularly bland or averse to being crashed by Yoofs.

I test drove one with the Mountune remap and exhaust. It felt flat, uninspiring and not all that quick. What really killed the deal was the insurance cost being 4x more than my other 2 cars together!
Ended up with a Kia Pro_ceed GT, the Korean Golf GTi 😁

I watched it take off this morning, I heard the engines start up when I was in my house so drove up the hill to watch it.
I took a couple of vids but have no idea how to host them here. I’ve posted them on the Catalina Facebook page in the comments section.
It was an amazing sight, I’ve been watching it’s progress since it landed. It developed an engine problem after it landed so they replaced it on a quay at the side of the Loch.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3463684253720642&id=233330846756015

I’m building up a bike for my eldest son, I was planning to rattle can it but a slick paint job would be awesome.
It’s just an alloy hardtail Specialized, nothing fancy.
Happy to post and cover costs etc if you have availability for it 😁

To contact people outside ebay I wrote my email address on a bit of paper and sent the seller a pic of it.
They can only scan written content as far as I can see.

My LBS trued the wheels on my Stump jumper, no questions asked.

I’m sorry I missed this, I live in Drumnadrochit and we have some great natural trails 2 mins pedal from the village. I’d be happy to show you round if you’re ever back up this way 👍😁

I think it’s an auto transformer type motor starter…

Not much help with words but I stay just outside Inverness, happy to help shift boxes etc if you need a hand moving.
Good luck!

I live just south of Inverness, there’s local natural trails, Aviemore is an hour away and Ft William is 50 mins.
It’s a nice place to live and I’ve no plans to move 😁
I lived in the central belt for 12 years, wouldn’t move back now…

Sounds like he took it home and his wife saw the price tag 😉

My 6 year old struggled with a thumbshifter so I got him a Gripshift. This had even stiffer shifting So I got a Shimano grip shifter, Tourney I think. He’s been fine with this ever since 😁

My eldest is 8 and I was idly thinking about when he would need a new bike.

I was helping my parents move house at the weekend and took an old cooker to the local recycling centre. Poking out of one of metal recycling skip were a pair of Hardrock Pro’s! The guy at the recycling place told me to help myself so I did. They have rusty chains and moss on the seats but should build Into a nice bike with a spare frame left over for my youngest son 😁

Incredible the damage that water can do, along with all the mud and sewerage that it brings too.
Made a small donation, hope you get back on your feet pronto!

If it’s a rented house then I think I’d be happier just moving somewhere else (away from the river!) and just leave the landlord to sort out the old place. Rather than move to a temporary house while it all gets fixed and then have to move back again.

Anyone got an email contact for anywhere else that might want it?

Looks like it might be staying in the woods 😂

Got an email back from the National Air Museum:

“Thanks for this. It’s a nice thing, but not in the best condition and it’s not something we would have the resource to deal with right now. All our conservation resource is tied up on a major development for the next few years.

We also wouldn’t be able to spend the time trying to establish who it belongs to and then negotiate to get it. I don’t know whether the local council are able to advise who the landowner is, but it might be worth trying. In Scotland the General Register of s would identify the landowner, but I don’t know if there is an equivalent in England (I assume this is in England?)

Sorry I can’t be of more help but I hope you are able to save this. It would be a shame to see it deteriorate away to nothing.

All the best.”

PM sent.

I got a 2008 Trafic Minibus with 9 seats and took out the last row of seats.
Loads of room for my 6 & 8 year old plus all our bikes etc.
The kids love travelling in it and my wife and I have even slept in it on an airbed when we’ve been biking.
I’d never go back to roof carrier etc.

Even when not using it for biking it’s great for shifting stuff and dump runs etc

The original design seems to be perspex with glass panels inset.
If you look at the pic of the one I found the armoured glass is missing, presumably making it a fair bit lighter.

If you look round the rim on the inside it’s got leaves in it and the edge of the perspex is green. Surely if it had been nicked from a museum it would be in better nick?
Your right though, if it had been there 75 years it would be buried in Moss and also the armoured glass sections would be lying beside it where they had fallen out due to the rivets corroding etc.

Oh, and I’d be amazed if someone had stumbled upon it before as it wasn’t on a bike track etc.
I actually stopped and went into the woods for a pee 😂