Yup – route publication is limited to rough mileage and height estimate. Nav is very much part of the challenge, so you get the route at the start of day 1. Not intending to race, but it would be a great experience for him and hopefully something good to share.

The one I’m looking at is Arran in June and a 14yo can participate with a parent, which is why it appeals. It is about 25 miles over the weekend, so not unduly onerous.

Been reading along this thread as I’ve been slowly converting fat to fit. I only run in the hills, or at least offroad as training for that and I fancy taking my 14yo son on a short course mountain marathon next summer. He’s been doing the odd hill run with me since he was about 10 and trains weekly offroad with his club. Anyone taken a kid on such an event and if so how did it go?

Jasmin Paris

Not so much this year for her. But i hope they at least do a segment in the program on all the mountain running records which have been broken this year.

Soup. For warming cold bodies after rides.

Jacket over bum bag so grit doesn’t get between bag and jacket and wreck the jacket. Mudguards aren’t perfect.

Must admit to being utterly hacked off with this. My wife and I have been left by our emigrated siblings to dealing with the Olds for years and, just for once, were looking forward to it just being us and the kids for Christmas. Now we’ve got the old dears asking how we’re going to include them “because Nicola says its OK”. I’m just going to have to have beer for Christmas breakfast so the wife has to decide to drive there.

Would likely be the pioneers to be that old and still doing it. Possible Dennis McCoy or Bob Haro. Everyone else would be too young, although some like Jamie Bestwick are nearing 50.

I don’t have pics, but I’ve got an Orange RX9 from when it came with orange paint and pale blue bar tape. Not really a pretty bike, but that colourscheme makes me feel like I’m riding a can of Irn Bru, which i can live with.

Rewinding the conversation a bit to info sources – I find Walkhighlands a bit cluttered now and taking longer to search. Steven Fallon’s website is what i tend to default to now, particularly as he also lists longer days with walking and running estimated times.

dazh – Had he shown any leadership qualities or humility at the point of the original report being published, he would have said something along the lines of sorry this happened on my watch and good luck to my successor in solving the problem. The entire current problem is down to his pathetic comms at the time. It wasn’t about him being racist – it was about him being the leader of an organisation which failed to tackle it properly. You know, leadership.

Leadership election is irrelevant. After two heavy election losses, you take your ideology and your personnel and you go away. Your successor shouldn’t have to use anything to marginalise you because the voters already did that.

If anyone wants to see how the Tories are lapping this up, just look at Michael Gove’s Twitter. Corbyn seems determined to undermine his own party and keep the Tories in power for the next decade. Well done. Thanks mate. Great job. I’ve got Scotland’s only Labour MP and it would be quite nice if he wasn’t alone, but unless Corbyn shuts up and disappears he’ll do well to hang on.

Giuliani is less likely to be there because he is a lawyer, because Trump’s team likely knows there’s no legal basis. But he’s not fighting on law. Giuliani’s presence guarantee’s press, live tweeting and the widespread repeating of Trump’s narrative. He’s there to tell the story to Trump’s base as part of the disinformation campaign that the election was stolen. He’ll lose, but the base will consider that that’s unfair because Trump has told them the “truth”. Once you think of it as PR or theatre in support of campaign then it makes more sense.

If your son is 5, he’ll fit it in no time. Or it’ll feel like no time.
I’m about to build up a bike for my 14 yo with a frame from a bike I bought before I met my wife. She now appreciates this is the first time kids getting bigger isn’t going to cost us any money.

15 years on from doing mine when hit by a car. Similar to BigJohn, worked it hard. We were doing the house up at the time with a wall knocked out and winter trying to get in, so not a lot of option but to carry on heavy lifting, working above my head etc. Hurt but worked. And kayaking – the paddling movement stretched what needed to be stretched. Not 100% now, but not far off.

Bottom of that BBC story says he was warned about language a few years ago. So quite possibly a case of having to go because he has previous and has shown an inability / unwillingness to learn. Not a good trait in a leader in any organisation.

Is there a bit of your memory hanging on to the pain of training too much to allow you to consider enjoying riding again? I quit slalom canoeing competition after one too many injuries and leaving the sport completely. After a few years break, lots of fun now in sea touring and surf. I suppose the translation there might be that bikes are good and there are other ways to enjoy them than the same discipline you had before.

Shortly after Channel 4 started broadcasting they did a list of the worst films ever. Which of course we had to watch. The Wild Women of Wongo and They Saved Hitler’s Brain take some beating as the worst movies, even nearly 40 years later with all that’s been made since.

Just pretend it is your second. You get all the stress and worry of rules or expectations out of the way on the first so you can be relaxed and enjoy it second time around by just taking it as it comes.

I think one of my lads is on the pearlescent turquoise Spesh frame Tracey mentioned upthread. Built it up from bits found here, gumtree, my big bucket of bits etc. He’s about to grow out of it and I’ll just swap parts around. His brother was on an orange Sub 5 built from bits and we just replace as wear out / grow out. We find that’s the best way to avoid spending silly money but still keep them using decent kit which encourages them to get out and ride.

There might have been poetic justice involved later. A couple in some small BMW parked on the muddy grass below Tarn Hows last week and got stuck. Proper spinning the wheels until dug in stuck. Didn’t seem to want any offer to tow them out and seemed more amused than worried about it.

How much of what you want to do is the bimbling about vs the keeping up with proper sea kayaks? Big difference to what you might want.
Everyone has different views on what the best compromise is, but it is hard to look past things like the P&H Delpin or Nigel Dennis Romany Sport as start points.
If you want shorter (bimbling) things but still like kayak-like Pyranha Virgo might be worth a look.

Been using Zoom for a bit at work. Everyone has found it easy. Works for voice only or video. You have to keep quiet when not speaking (or mute yourself) as it works out who is making the most noise and puts them on the screen.

Office based staff being enabled to work from home. Site staff are separated from each other enough that they can continue to work without potential impact on each other and are covered in PPE as a matter of course anyway. Travel all but stopped because all the industry conferences and meetings are being cancelled. Main concern is how to deal with the international shutdown in a business which mainly exports.

I may be completely out of line on this, but a thought triggered by a conversation in Aldi at the weekend. A woman was talking about how because of the virus she and her husband had had their hours cut and as a result didn’t know how they were going to pay the rent and feed the kids.

I hope someone, somewhere in government is calculating that the cure won’t cost more than the disease in human suffering terms. In trying to stop the spread of something which has the worst impact on the old and infirm, we are going to put lots of the strain on the working poor with a likely increase in deprivation. We know there is a correlation between that and poor health and longevity. I wonder if we’re going to save one part of the population only to damage another by at least as much.

Is it that you really want to do that route or that’s just a way to get to Fort William? Alternate route would be to turn west at Braemore junction or Garve, head for Skye and the Armadale ferry to Mallaig and head to Ardnamurchan that way.

Been using a Petzl Reactik for a while running almost all off road – woods & open hills. Works really well for all that on brightness, beam pattern, battery length.

Someone is going to have to compromise. A caretaker PM who was a senior frontbencher in the past but now a backbencher retiring from the house in the forthcoming GE should be possible to find and should be the least threatening option for all.

The border is something even the ERG is going to have to get its head around, eventually. It has to be sorted or the US Congress will not give the UK a trade deal. That’s something even they can’t blame on the EU or remainers.

Born in NI before the Troubles started and grew up there. If you think that Brexit is becoming a subject with quasi-religious polarisation, the subject of reunification would take that up a notch or several. The headbangers are already capable of civil unrest, so giving them a new cause to fight over is terrifying.

I am 6’2″ and bought a 29er (large Jeffsy) which just fits right be that long rides or steeper technical stuff. But that’s as much to do with geometry as wheel size.

My wife is a Primary teacher in Scotland and has been at it for close to 25 years. There is so much of the job she loves and it is definitely something she is naturally good at – what is needed from a teacher matches what she is like.

But even she is wondering how long she can keep going. Number of things in no particular order:
> Management part 1. It varies. And generally there’s not enough of it so managers themselves are overburdened and so miss things / make mistakes which impact teachers and kids.
> Management part 2. Discipline support, or lack thereof. There’s always an excuse not to deal with the bampots which just emboldens them.
> The council. Creates processes which are in conflict with what teachers are expected to do. Must use this software and must work online but oops, sorry it is down today when you need it. And again. And Again.
> Inclusion on the cheap – not enough additional support for those who need it. If a kid needs near 1:1 attention because their capability is that of a 3 year old, then how is a teacher meant to look after the other 30+ in P5.
> Specialisms. Things she spent time studying are being transferred to specialists to give McCrone time. She misses doing those subjects.

None of that is impossible to sort, but needs resource and policy which does not seem to be available

There are a lot of stupid people who claim that 20mph is the “wrong speed” for their car, forcing them to use a lower than appropriate gear.

Well, the car does use a lower gear doing 20 vs 30. Main impact seems to be to slow the 40 in a 30 drivers to 30 in a 20. The main road safety improvement needed round here though would be for pedestrians to look before stepping off the pavement. So many just don’t.

When the cameras came in the then Transport Minister said that the aim was to calculate the average on the single carriageway bits only. Cars have been happily doing indicated 80+ on the dual carriageway bits without tickets since, so your van should be fine.

Wise alternative to Lairig Ghru. Run past the Pools of Dee many times and mostly been glad not to have a bike.

from Loch an Eilean, head along the road to Milton Cottage and take the track past Lochan Mor as a slightly more pleasant way back to Inverdruie.

If you want more miles in your legs, from Loch an eilean, you could head south on the east side of Loch Gamhna past Jack drake Bothy. When you hit the fire road after than you can turn right and head for the road, or, if you take I think the 2nd right, a bit fire road of carry (heading just below the fire road and through a wall) can drop you back to a path from the deer farm gate which rejoins the Loch an Eilean path.

What that judgement “should” probably mean is that May has run out of mileage on the “will of the people” message and ought to recognise that it is the will of government / parliament. Which should give parliament confidence to act in the way it thinks is in the best interest of the country.

I can but hope.

Was boarding there last Monday in OK conditions – limited cover, but decent snow between the icy bits. It was gone by Tuesday. Pity, but if this allows them to keep people employed and visitors coming, great. If only cairngorm had been as sensible all those years ago.

Nope Breatheeasy – pre-pack administration, so same as House of Fraser debacle for gift cards etc.

Everyone earning over £100k loses part of the tax free allowance until at about £123k it is nil.  It isn’t well known, but neither is it hard to check before saying it doesn’t happen.  Makes the effective rate of tax on that bit of income 60%.

ECJ ruled 3 years ago that for those workers without a fixed place of work, travel time is working time.  So they can’t tell you to drive 5 hour round trip and work more than a few hours.