everyone seems to agree
with rare unanamity
when going east-west
the north is the best
so thanks! – that’s the route for my pal and me

Fine. I knew it was the BFe, just needed someone to tell me I wasn’t being a berk.

slackman99 – Member
If you do look at a 29er check out my ad

That’s very pretty and I would be very tempted except the frame is the wrong size for me.

All 27.5, all last year’s variants. The BFEs I’ve looked at are slightly more specced but more expensive with it.

I occasionally see an otter in the sea I can see from my seaside home, but I’ll see what I can see in that bit of sea too.

Ah thanks. Might explore on foot in that case or just give it a miss. We shall check out the seafood place, thanks for the tip

nope further south than that.

Ah, perfect thanks

I took advantage of the stunning weather today and tried the Silver glen / Ben Cleuch / Andrew Gannel / Gannel burn route. It was very lovely indeed, and extremely cold. The tops were all frozen otherwise I think it might have been a bit of a bog-fest.

I also heard my favourite phrase – “you won’t be able to get down that on a hardtail mate” – about Gannel burn.

Thanks for the route suggestions – I’ll be back soonish to try Alva glen I think.

The long distance ride was going to consist of several days of about 20 miles at a time, at a leisurely pace with plenty of stops and potentially the grandparents in support following in either public transport or a car.

I’m torn between a trailer and a cargo bike. The advantage of a cargo bike seems to be that you can keep an eye on them, with the disadvantage being that you have to find somewhere to keep the Sam thing, and we’d need to find one that both me and my partner could ride.

Consider hub gears or a single speed for added bomb proofness.

I commute 20 miles each way on tow path plus a wee bit of A71 on a genesis day one alfine. It’s had very little maintenance in the three years I’ve had it (and I’ve just left it out in the yard in all weather).

PS definitely option 3

As someone who’s ridden extensively in Snowdonia… brecons are probably better

Must do trails in Snowdonia… Llyn crafnant to capel curing, dolwyddelan to pont cyfyng(+/- dolwyddelan to betws if you enjoy riding on pumpkin sized boulders), all the trails on snowdon itself (note the “voluntary” ban during the summer). All are fairly obvious on the map and and in the ground and fairly doable.

The Marin above betws is fun and allegedly there are tons of cheeky downhills if you know where to find them. Not sure if that meets your definition of will riding or not.

Croix de fer?

Audi drivers – I’ve recently moved from Yorkshire to Scotland (which is, I’m told, the logical conclusion of Yorkshire) from one biggish city to another. Audi drivers in my old city were awful and pretty much every day on my commute some fricking Audi driver would do something that made me fear for my life. Weirdly, in Scotland, the Audi drivers don’t appear to be any worse than anyone else. Notably, the road are much wider here which probably serves to reduce the number of sketchy/inappropriate/dangerous overtakes. This makes me think that a) there was definitely something about Audi drivers in my old city, and it wasn’t just confirmation bias and b) the awfulness of drivers of certain car brands is not a consistent relationship, but varies depending on place, quality of roads, probably time of day, etc.

Taxi drivers and white van **** are awful everywhere, obviously.

That said, I’ve been hit by cars three times. None of those occasions was an Audi, BMW etc or a taxi. One occasion a flat bed (I was in a car for that one) and the other two were right hooks to my bike by middle aged women in mid range saloons. Not sure what conclusion I draw from that really.

Is this open to all? I probably won’t be able to come along for the next few months but would be keen sometime thereafter.

Can we stop calling it the “grammar school system”. It’s not. It’s the “secondary modern system”.

Three to four times more kids ended up at secondary moderns – with all the sense of failure and tyranny of low expectations and other problems that went with them – than went to grammar schools. It’s like calling the London road network “the cycling network” because about a fifth of journeys on them are on a bike.*

Just because the government have started taking about “inclusive” grammar schools (that’s what we call an oxymoron kids) and wouldn’t touch the term secondary modern with a barge pole doesn’t make it any less about condemning kids at age 11 to years of mediocre expectations from their press, parents and teachers.

*NB I have no idea if those figures about London roads are correct but you get the idea. Also, we should totally start calling the road network the cycling network.

What’s old in your book? 2014 or 2004 or 1994? I’m fairly sure the forks are about 2012.

Roadies” is a description I only ever hear used on STW. Given that most people who ride on the road also ride other types of bikes its pretty passive aggresive as with this op.

I think the term you’re looking for is “good natured piss-taking”.

The stretch of downhill, is it the flattening out of a steep descent following a climb?

What often happens is that riders are in a low gear going up the climb, they crest the summit and then, on a very steep section they won’t be needing to pedal so they just freewheel down and once the road flattenss out they’ll start trying to pedal – while still in the gear they’ve just completed the climb.

Interesting… That describes the terrain perfectly.

I’ve tried spinning it in lower gears for the past couple of days just out of curiousity. I think that I am, to my surprise, somewhat faster, although I can’t be bothered to measure that so I don’t know for sure. This whole thread is making me think a bit more about my approach to gearing anyway. Thanks everyone!

Pedalling a big gear slow as opposed to a small gear fast (spinning).

Is it supposed to be pejorative?

Depends what OP considers a fast cadence though doesn’t it?

I reckon 120ish. Downhill. In a low gear. For no good reason.

Were they in a chaingang?

No, I’ve seen maybe 7 or 8 people in the last couple of weeks riding solo doing this. The only time I saw a chaingang on the same stretch I didn’t notice what they were doing.

mashing

What is mashing? In Yorkshire it means making tea.

Are you sure they weren’t riding a fixed gear?

Yes.

This is all interesting. My steely commuter (allegedly a CX bike) has a very low top gear such that I can often find myself wanting higher gears on uphill stretches, let alone downhill. I’d been considering getting a bigger chainring, but maybe I should embrace my inner spinner instead.

Zee mech… they only seem to be available in short cage versions. I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that you need a long cage for wide ratios / bigger sprockets. Am I wrong about that (too)?

There is an interesting video on YT (search for a channel “Smarter Everyday”), where a guy learns to ride one of these “wrong” bikes. He tries everyday, then finally is able to ride it – but looses the ability to ride the normal bike!

I was referring to that video above when I said it was that which set me off thinking about this.

If I were being really mean, I would say that the larger point(s) that he was trying to make – that we rely on muscle memory for lots of things and that there is a large gulf between knowledge and understanding, or between knowing what you have to do and being able to do it – didn’t strike me, as someone who has, for instance, learned to play the piano, as a particularly profound insight.

The correct answer is a pair of clipless pedals, plus a pair of flat pedals.
It doesn’t take 2 minutes to swap them over.

I don’t think this is a valid argument. I have a do-it-all bike which I commute 20 miles each way on, but also nip to the shops / down the pub / to the train station / etc on. Those 2 minutes would all add up. I don’t think I’m unique in the way I use my bike.

I also asked this recently – http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/platform-spd-combined-pedals

Would be interested to hear more opinions.

That Streetglider up there is one of the most stable recumbents I’ve ever ridden

Eyeballing them, they both have strongly positive trail (if that’s the correct term). The backwards pointing forks means that the tyre touches the ground well behind the steering axis.

The negative trail in itself will make the bike dynamically unstable – once moving, as soon as the bike moves off vertical, the steering will want to turn away from the lean, not into it. Maybe not un-rideable, but must be pretty damn close, I would guess.

It’s this effect that I was driving at. The positive trail (I understand the concept but didn’t know the name for it until just now) of a bike is something we all use intuitively and I don’t think I really had an appreciation of until quite recently. Some things, e.g. riding fakie, involve “unlearning” it, or at least using it in a different way.

Now that I’ve learnt the term, i just had a quick look at wikipedia and it says these bikes are rideable but feel very unstable.

PS – The reason we got talking about it was because of a video where someone built a bike where turning the bars one way turns the wheel the opposite direction. Surprise surprise, it’s very difficult to ride and (in the video) comedy ensues. I thought doing a similar video, but with a bike that looks (to the untrained eye) like a relatively normal bike, but is very difficult to ride because of a facet of bike design/bike mechanics that probably isn’t widely known or appreciated would be quite interesting.

Alright thanks. Will LBS it for now I think. Glad to know it’s fixable though.

Thread hijack – I’m thinking of doing this next spring / early summer with the girlfriend and the baby, who’ll by then be about 6-8 months. Suitable for riding with a little one in a trailer?

Ta, but I can’t seem to find a tool for less than about £50. Could you suggest somewhere?

Scotland voted to remain part of the UK, warts and all – no preconditions were made, no caveats were offered, no offers of another vote if things changed. A simple one time only deal, are you in, or are you out? They chose in.

From the SNP 2016 manifesto:

We believe that the Scottish Parliament should have the right to hold another referendum if there is clear and sustained evidence that independence has become the preferred option of a majority of the Scottish people – or if there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will.

They stood on a promise in the 2016 Scottish parliament election – which they won, and have formed a government alongside the pro-indy Greens – to hold a second referendum, or at least to look at holding one, in the event of Brexit where Scotland voted to remain, which is what happened.

That’s apart from the fact that during the run-up to the first indyref there was a lot of talk about Scotland being ejected from the EU in the event of leaving the UK, making their membership of the EU a big part of staying in the UK.

The SNP – and the greens – have a strong democratic and moral argument for holding a second referendum based on those two facts.

* NB – Despite being an English resident in Scotland, I don’t really have a firm view on Scottish independence.

Theres a Edinburgh MTB Meetup group and also a Central Scotland MTB Meetup group as well, on the Meetup website.
can’t do links, work computer won’t let me

Do you mean this:

Edinburgh Mountain Bikers

Edinburgh, GB
621 Mountain Bikers

We like to think of ourselves as a friendly group of extended mates to go mountain biking with. Often it’s hard to coerce your friends to take up biking or others things come …

Next Meetup

Beginners ride at Glentress 14th March

Saturday, Mar 14, 2020, 11:00 AM
10 Attending

Check out this Meetup Group →

Just how mad do you think it is?

Not mad at all. Just a bit wary of punctures making me late for my super important job (I’m kind of a big deal) </s>

Cheers guys.

You won’t need extra salt unless your working out in silly hot conditions. Your diet provides all the salt you need

Do you have some evidence to support this?

It doesn’t really tally with my experience – I’d explain why in detail but my phone is really difficult to write on.

I also have a Ragley bluepig (again, the older 26″ model). I struggle a little bit uphill but one of my mates has a steel onone and frickin races up hills so it probably says more about me than the bike.

I think that the extra weight actually suits me on downhills – it feels a bit more solid and allows you to carry momentum over obstacles a bit more easily. I’ve not found that it limits me in terms of e.g. jumps, hops, skills, etc.

It’s a very fun bike, although I’ve relatively little to compare it to, having never owned a full suss.

I’m assuming the STW demographic is from the South East and Scotland!?

Or just under 50.

Not sure if we’ve done this, but I think it bears repeating at this point:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-a7074311.html

It’s not just the EU and immigration we’re wrong about. The thing that always gets me about these sort of surveys is that the direction of travel is always so bloody predictable, i.e. people are always wrong in a way that fits with the right-wing press’s agenda. On immigration, people think that there are more immigrants taking a higher proportion of benefits, because it suits the media that people would believe that. On crime, people think that the country is a vastly more crime-ridden place than it is because the media would prefer us to be afraid of our fellow citizens. On welfare recipients, people believe that the amount of fraud is vastly more than it is, because the media and their paymasters want to cut the welfare state. Et cetera, et cetera.