Formatting gone wrong?

Lots of info on the South Downs Double site, such as locations of water taps, distances, GPS plots etc.

Don’t feel obliged to do the double though :-)

Seriously, no-one really knows what you mean by “Trail Tracks”, and your clarification didn’t clarify it.

Describe the trail conditions a bit more clearly and I’m sure folk will help, although you’ll still get plenty of different recommendations.

A bit further away, but Ockham Common/Chatley Heath a couple of miles east of Woking also have plenty of heather, and gentle terrain.

Plus you’ve also got Chatley Semaphore Tower, the disused Wisley airfield, and the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens to explore (albeit you have to pay for the RHS gardens).

Surrey Wildlife Trust info

c_klein, glad you’re ok enough to be posting on here! Healing vibes…

Didn’t see you crash, or the aftermath, you were in the ambulance by the time I reached the scene. Helped shove the ambulance backwards up the muddy slope, that took a few attempts, can’t have been that comfy for the patient :-s

I asked a similar question about Dual Air Rebas on this thread a few weeks ago. Bought the eBay seals for £8.75 and they were fine.

That was for Rebas, but I think he sells Revs kits too – they may be the same anyway.

Is that just because a little bit of air loss from reattaching the pump is magnified in the negative because of the much smaller air volume?

Yes, exactly that.

If I’m correct in my assumption, is it safe to assume that the pressure is lost on reattachment rather than when I’m removing the pump?

And that.

Do I need to of registered to race or can I turn up? where do we start from?

All the info is on the Gorrick website.

I didn’t think there was any camping at the event? Never has been in the past as far as I know.

You could always try the Basingstoke Canal centre, not too far away although you’d need to drive in.

Today’s Ups and Downs sportive has been cancelled now.

Yes I was going to do it as well, probably riding to and from Farnborough either side of it for an epic day out. But I don’t think my bike and I are up for quite such an epic day as the weather promises!

Big shame, as I thoroughly enjoyed the last event they put on.

Wouldn’t have thought the Peaslake MTBO will have a huge impact as it will be a relatively small amount of people over a wide area, all following different routes. And the organisers are local so will probably not put checkpoints in the very worst bits.

I’d imagine today’s Wiggle Ups and Downs MTB ride will have had more impact, as everyone will go the same way.

Way to knacker your grips/GPS/stem/lockout lever!

Bar ends solve that :-)

I paid £8.75 for a full set of O rings for my Rebas – via a recommendation on this thread. I assume the guy also sells the equivalent for Revs, it may even be exactly the same set.

As others have said, the oil will do many services. Its a bit nerve-wracking the first time you take your forks to bits, but when you’ve done it once you’ll find it very simple the next time. Just follow the instructions in the Rockshox service manual. Nice and slowly, with a cup of tea, making sure you don’t miss any steps and remember the order you took things apart in.

Do invest in some circlip pliers if you’re opening up the internals though, mine cost less than a tenner.

And the best way to avoid stanchion wear is to do the small lube service every few months. That’s even easier, and completely unnecessary to send them away just for that.

Toilets in the solo area is a great help, especially for the ladies. Unlike team riders, soloists don’t have the luxury of queueing while a team-mate is doing a lap.

The French equivalent of OS maps are IGN (Institut Geographique National). I have the Les Arcs/La Plagne one sat in front of me.

It is code number 3532 ET, so a search for “IGN 3532 ET” should show you plenty of places to buy them in the UK.

You can also get IGN mapping on some GPS units, Satmap certainly do them.

As for trails, they may or may not show up on IGN maps. But if you’re going there, you can pick them up at the tourist office when you arrive. Search for “Les Arcs VTT maps” to see an example.

+1 for the Chemin du Soleil stuff. Ridden there twice (with olaf_hansen) – happy days.

That could partly have been because everyone was off work due to it being Xmas!

Agreed there is always more traffic immediately after an event, but it tends to die off again.

The rise of the internet and particularly GPS means that most bits of land with good trails quickly get publicised these days, so people can ride far more places without needing willing locals to show them around. I’m not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but its a phenomenon that won’t go away. “Secret” trails are a lot rarer than they used to be.

Pete – I think you’re wrong to characterise race organisers as greedy. Putting on races is time-intensive and doesn’t generate vast amounts of cash.

Good venues are hard to find, and it happens that most good venues round here are on MOD land. Events on MOD land are always vulnerable to being bumped at short notice by training needs deemed more urgent. This makes them even less lucrative than non-MOD venues, due to the extra work in finding an alternate venue at the last minute.

I’ve done a couple of Ride-It events, although not the one from Milton Keynes.

It will pretty much all be on bridleways and byways and the odd bit of road to link it up. So if you’ve got some pretty gnarly bridleways round there, then 140mm of travel will be great, and if not, it will be overkill.

On the other hand, if you like riding that bike, you’ll have fun on it anyway, so why not?

Turnerguy – that is a very dangeous attitude. what happens when you drop your gps in the river?

The sound of the very bottom of the argument barrel being scraped :D

One race is a very small sample size to pin down what you did right and wrong re diet, training, rest, pre-riding the course etc.

It might just have been a chance off-day, maybe the course didn’t play to your strengths, or maybe you really did perform well but you just don’t know how a good performance feels under race conditions (it hurts a lot, but you can keep the pace going).

Do a few races before you analyse too much.

Its no substitute however for being able to navigate which is a far wider thing than

No-one is suggesting that it is. The original question was GPS versus a map, not GPS versus navigational ability.

An idiot will get into trouble in the mountains with either a GPS or a map.

I like the Viking Juice lube for both MTB and road, lasts ok in poor conditions but not thick enough to promote chainsuck. And fine in the dry.

The only review I can see online (roadcc) doesn’t rate it though, so it may depend where and what you ride.

Both 12hr male categories sound like they are still very closely fought. Not found much info about anything else though.

double post

I’m not sure I understand what Si is saying

I don’t either, in relation to DOAMTB and PP.

Also, PP may refer to PorridgePot rather than a person. Or it may not. Hopefully he may clarify!

A lot of places there are only small firing ranges though and masses of safe land around them.

Unfortunately in the Aldershot training area, that the article in the OP mainly relates to, the opposite is the case.

A fairly densely-populated urban conurbation (Aldershot/Farnborough/Fleet/Camberley etc) is hemmed in on several sides by MOD land which makes up the majority of nearby publicly-accessible land.

There is plenty of non-MOD land a bit further afield, but for those living locally with only limited time available to ride, MOD land has always been the most realistic option.

TJ – I understand your point entirely. If the shared access model can work in one place, it might also work elsewhere, provided the desire to make it work exists amongst all users. Obviously, demonstrating the desirability of this to the MOD is the crux of the problem that local groups are currently wrestling with.

Not aware of anywhere you can get full current updates, XCRacer are tweeting quite a bit but only really the top few.

SIP Events twitter isn’t being updated, but I’d imagine they are a bit busy…

If anyone is giving more coverage I’d be interested too!

When the military IN YOUR SMALL EXPERIENCE are using blanks and not lobbing live rounds about, they share.

Again, the areas of contention here are NOT primarily the live firing ranges. It is the previously unenforced bylaws on the non-live areas that are under threat of enforcement.

Has anyone got some info on this, or is it an event that isn’t being run this year??

When is it? How can I enter?

Why not phone the organiser, who is one of your friends, and ask???

Yes, it really is the threat – it has come from discussions with the MOD.

There isn’t any definitive statement on the web yet as far as I know, although Gorrick’s website has something about it in their round-up of the recent Frith Hill race, and Gorrick aren’t known for their scaremongering.

The Hankley car park issue is not directly related.

it’s a pisser sometimes when you get there and find flags up, but remember it’s their land and there’s still unflagged areas nearby to ride..

The flagged areas aren’t really the problem here. The unflagged areas (“Managed Access” on OS maps) are where the bylaws are about to be enforced.

anyone know if there’s a website that tells you when exercises are happening? perhaps not for security reasons.

Has been investigated but not looking likely in the areas mentioned in the article.

This sense of entitlement will not help MTBers at all.

That’s certainly true. Negotiating to find a workable compromise is likely to be in everyone’s long-term interest, even the MOD’s.

Anyone going to be doing updates on here or twitter?

Try the twitter feeds for XCRacer, Joolze Dymond, and some of the racers. I’m not sure any of them will definitely be tweeting, but some probably will (via their pit crews in the case of the riders).

The article is somewhat misleading; the main photo shows a rider just outside the perimeter of Ash/Pirbright ranges, which is a live firing area.

But the problem we are encountering at the moment is a threat to rigidly enforce the bylaws on the non-live firing areas (Tunnel Hill, PorridgePot Hill, Caesar’s Camp, Frith Hill, Minley, Hawley etc etc) – i.e. to prevent MTBers riding anything other than fireroads.

Historically use of singletrack in this area has been tolerated, but this looks likely to change.

Thanks Elaine. I obviously didn’t look far enough down the search results!

Yes I know :) I fancy it as either a big one day ride, or a 2 day. Maybe a lightly-loaded tour with an overnight B&B or hostel stop.

Enjoyed Jason Miles’ blog on it when I first read it a while back, and filed the idea in the back of my brain. This has brought it back to the front!

Hmmm – I don’t think I’ll be doing it SS, or any time soon. Just sounds like a great UK wilderness ride!

The one you posted said “1 x rear drive side support push”, by which I think they mean the hub seal tool, although its an odd description. It does also say “nylon wheel support not included” which makes me think they are talking about the seal tool.

It had me confused when I ordered it a while back.

+1 for Kaesae’s bearings :)

Nice. That’s a ride I want to do too.

What amedias said.

Don’t forget to remove the air from the negative chamber as well as the positive, or you might get a surprise.