Reading the company’s response, good job they are trying to “reach out” rather than around.

Eldest stepson had a slight speech impediment as a toddler which meant he pronounced k as t with hilarious consequences when Knight Rider came on.
We had to make our own entertainment in those days.

Disregard above, you do need a smoothie mixer 1.5 in crown race, the problem is in true O-O fashion, if you order the one on the website, they’ll send you the wrong one. I’ve just done the same thing and it needed input from the senior bike builder to get the right one. Apparently they’re in short supply.

Be nice to see the U23 women do similar, go Amira! Seems a long time ago that I took her on her first proper mountain bike ride.
Hope the race is clean and not electrically enhanced this year.

Hi Chew not UK of course but FYI the road we drove up to start the Pedal Del Port features in the Tour of Cataluña in March. Sea level to 1100m in 14 km, It’ll be interesting to see by how much the likes of Froome and Contador beat my best of an hour.

Tarragona, cheap flights to Reus from several UK airports, nice city centre 10 km from airport. Roman amphitheatre overlooking the Med. Plenty of nice hotels. Train to Barcelona in 30 mins, beach resorts to the south such as Cambrils, which is popular with French and Spanish locals. Off the beaten track so you might have to book hotel and flights separately. Train to the local hills and Priorat wine region. Huge theme park Port Aventura if you like that sort of thing. Oh, and I live near there

Whatever you do, don’t try freewheeling. I managed to get the back end about 6 inches up in the air when I tried stopping. Also if your shoe comes out of the pedal, it takes about 5 milliseconds before it comes round and cracks the back of your calf. Just normal stuff if you ride fixed or track bikes.

Early meeting point for friends of Farage?
Brexit Requires Total A…holes.

What on earth are you planning to ride up on a 22/32 gear?

Totally agree about going above and beyond. When we had the solar power upgraded, I asked the guy if he could recommend someone to fit a tow bar, he has a friend with a garage and we got a price which was the most competitive by some margin. When you have a tow bar fitted in Spain, the car has to go to the MOT station to have it checked and the log book is amended. This isn’t really a job for the garage that fitted it but he came with me, together with the solar guy as translator, and spent 2 hours sorting out the paperwork to get the matriculation. I would be really struggling to do this myself.
It works both ways. Back in the spring, we lent a friend of Mrs PB her TT bike to do her first Ironman, every time we see her parents in the village, it’s hugs and kisses, they own a Moli D’Oli and we often get gifts of Olive oil, honey and suchlike. I don’t think Catalans do standoffish

It’s like Catch22 if you’re self aware enough to ask for a banning, you can’t deserve one.

It categorically states that a debit card is not acceptable, even if it was used to pay for the flights and hire car. Not sure ringing will help, they are very clear on the website. I did a reverse trip with hire car a few years ago and had no issue, if it was a longer trip we’d come on the ferry and use our own car but it’s not worth it for 5 days.

I’m setting off next Wednesday to travel half way across Europe to spend Christmas Day with my 89 year old deaf MIL in a hotel local to her which is charging the Cornish national debt for lunch. So I’d say next Wednesday is my drinking kick off.
Just to complete the horror, on Boxing Day I’ve got a 6 hour drive north for lunch with my 87 year old grumpy casual racist father. Can’t wait to get back to Cataluña.

Mrs PB was dropping hints about getting a chainsaw for Christmas, she wanted a lightweight one to prune our almond and olive trees. We were in the local agri shop the other day and she appeared with one that she thought would be ideal. I pointed out that it was a non working toy!! Yes you can buy quite realistic toy chainsaws in Spain.
After going on a ladies only mountain bike ride last week, she came back lusting after some Sidi shoes like one of the others had so that’s trumped the chansaw until her birthday in Feb.

Today has been our cycle club social event. Met in a very foggy Mora D’Ebre at 9am then 20 or so rode up into the mountains for about an hour. Once up there a hill climb had been arranged over a 3km gravel and Singletrack course rising about 250m to an ermita. It was a mass start and I was quite pleased to come in 5th. It was quite chilly at the top so we rode a few metres down to a little summer house owned by 1 of the club where we had hot chocolate with cake and biscuits, followed by coffee and Brandy! 1st prize was a cured ham joint that you see for sale everywhere at this time of year. The ride back down to Mora was a bit hairy but incident free.
We’ve been really lucky to find a group of riding buddies to show us round and accept us even though our grasp of Catalan is still poor.
Last week we were both presented with trophies by the local village ajuntament, me for my exploits on the CAT700 and Mrs PB for coming second in the area Trail Running champs.
Tony, what is the likely timescale for your renovation, are you hoping to be operational next Summer?

Thought that title was a gig recommendation

Sorry, double post

The bike with tri bars on is a Salsa Cutthroat which he rode the Tour Divide on in the summer hopefully his route finding skills will be better on this trip.

I think that’s Malaga, about 400 miles away from us. There was supposed to have been a marathon there today, needless to say it got cancelled.

Nothing here, we heard of storms much further south but we’ve just had a few showers in the last few days.

Don’t forget there’s public holidays on Tuesday and Thursday this coming week so a lot of shops will be shut. I’m in S Cataluña not far off the N340 or A7 so if you are around, give us a shout.

Wikiloc.com is by far the best resource I’ve come across. Just go on the search function, type in where you happen to be and it will show all the routes in your area. There’s literally thousands posted up in Spain. Many areas also have btt centres but getting printed guides can be difficult, particularly at this time of year.

This is nothing new, my memory’s not great but a few that spring to mind.
Fireline Ti frame that needed the rear brake mounting filed to get a caliper to fit, nicknamed the Fileline.
Fireline that wouldn’t accept a front mech due to tyre clearance, also you couldn’t fit chunky monkey tyres as they were too wide. 1X was the saviour there.
ElGuapo 26er with low BB height causing pedal strikes.
Failing internal cable routing, whether or not the inner cable was guided was a lottery based on frame size.
Dissolving alu nipples on carbon road wheels as they retained water because the drain holes were too high up the rim.
Happy days!

STW basically knows more about half their products than they do…

That’s because a significant number on STW like me have worked there! Seriously, STW is like an army of ants scruitinising every spec, nuance of pricing, etc and shouting it proudly to the clamouring masses. Time was that if a cock up was spotted, There would be an “oops we got it wrong again” from the Hebden Bridge messiah and everyone would have a chuckle and move on.
This current mood is “don’t argue, we know best” and isn’t being well received.
I think a period of reflection and dignified silence wouldn’t go amiss, seemed to work for Hillary Clinton, oh wait…

Simon, the London road doesn’t use hydraulic hoses, it’s cable operated disc. BB7 to be precise.

Sounds good, looking forward to seeing the fruit of your labours.
Amazingly our builders turned up on Wednesday to replace some of the wooden beams that support our upstairs lounge and bedroom. The initial thoughts that 6 needed doing were optimistic, in the end 8 1/2 were replaced. We were shocked at the state of the old beams, some were virtually hollow having been eaten from the inside by generations of woodworm. The builder reckoned we were lucky that the ceiling hadn’t come down. I avoided commenting that we had been waiting for them to come since April!
If your plans include having beams, make sure they come treated and give them loads of coats of Xylophene to protect them. A couple down the road from us had a house built from scratch a few years ago and their new beams were infested with worms. They only found out when they started falling out in the middle of the night.

Don’t hold your breath on the stable pricing wish. Having an owner who is now seemingly controlling marketing and has admitted to being a contrarian and exhibits chronic ADHD doesn’t bode well. Time was that he would travel around picking up container loads of frames, components etc from failing businesses at the right price and sell them through the website to an adoring fan network. His pronouncement that having the TdF finish a mile down the road from the business was just a distraction and the Rouleur interview were the beginning of a slippery slope akin to the Gerald Ratner debacle. Hiring several key people from CRC and GoOutdoors then either firing them or making their jobs impossible didn’t help the business reputation. Brant has been out of the business over 2 years and still people ask his opinion on stuff, such is the cult of personality. Whenever anyone comes here defending or explaining stuff, they get shot down, incidentally SQetc is not to boss unless Dave has nicked his STW login. I think the saying ” how do you make a small fortune in the bicycle industry? Start with a big one” is coming true in a rather public way.

Following parents evening we need to start working on his focus because he is very easily distracted.

Bit young for a focus isn’t he? Maybe an Islabike would suit him better.

A)I’m the man of the house
B)I can do what I want.
C)where did I put my coat?

99% sure customer services at PX wouldn’t know what a Pickenflick is.

Just read the Dispatches link, wish I was called Harry Wallop.

Back Passage to India.

It’s been a funny old week in Cataluña. The weather has been lovely, clear blue skies but cold at night so the new fire has had a good workout. The house is lovely and warm despite having the insulation properties of a plastic bag. The solar power setup is working well and there’s no danger of the blackouts we experienced last winter. We harvested our olives on Tuesday and proudly took the sack to the local moli d’oli where the laughing owner turned it into a whole litre of extra virgin oil.
Since leaving our VW camper in the UK to sell, we’ve missed having the option of having the odd night away so today we’ve been to order a new one. The one we’ve decided on is built about 30 minutes away but they don’t sell from the factory so we had to go to the nearest dealer up near Barcelona. They only have 4 allocated to them next year and nothing until May so we took the plunge and ordered one there and then. Hopefully they will ask the factory to make it a bit sooner. It’s a Benimar and a big step up being 6m long and based on the new ford transit chassis. It’s pretty palatial, having a shower and toilet and will mean we can stay on the huge number of free camper areas throughout Spain which are in great locations but don’t have facilities.Can’t wait.

Used to work as a mechanic in a much loved producer of carbon road bikes. One day I was told to drop everything to do a cracked frame swap under warranty for a triathlete customer who had driven across from Manchester to wait while it was done. Cue a burly ex rugby league pro with our lightest framed model that looked like it had been through WW3, covered in grime, dried on gel liquid, sweat, the works. I set to swapping all the components, wheels, cables, headset,BB etc. The process took about 11/2 hours and the whole time he was sat on the car park on the phone with the engine of his X5 running, presumably with the aircon on as it was a warm day.

Conventional wisdom was that carbon steerers had to be cut flush with the top of the stem and a 2mm spacer placed on top before bolting down the top cap, thus giving the stem full purchase on the steerer and preload on the headset bearings. Focus bikes have a particularly thin steerer and had to have an alu sleeve bonded in once bar height had been established then the top cap could be fitted flush with the steerer cut just below the stem. Straight answer is that it depends on the type of stem clamp, steerer quality and thickness and lastly what the manufacturer will warrant if it goes pear shaped.

500 residents and only 2 surnames. You could play count the fingers with some locals. Probably the wrong time of year but the RSPB place at Cors Caron is worth a look. Teifi Pools are nice on a sunny day.

I’m going to post here more Often!
This afternoon 3 blokes turned up in a transit van with our long lost beams. The 6 metre lengths stuck out of the rear doors with a bit of rag tied on to pacify the mossos. We’ve now got to get as many coats of preservative on as possible before they come to fit then. When pressed their answer to the question ¿when? was next week possibly the week after. Hope we get them in by Christmas….

Yes that’s the one Molgrim. We often ride past caves which were used as Republican hideouts and many buildings still have bullet marks. Strange to think that less than 80 years ago, hundreds of people died in these hills. The inscriptions on the stones looked fresh. There’s a museum in Corbera d’Ebre which we are planning to visit.

Well done, definitely time to break out he bubbly.
We are slowly getting there as well. The new wood burner is working well, we’ve had a few chilly evenings lately and it sure pumps out a lot of heat. The upgraded solar installation happened last week, we’ve gone from 3 to 8 solar panels and doubled our battery capacity. We can also monitor performance on line and are learning the tech involved in optimising battery life and output. The last piece of the to do list is taking a bit more time. We found several rotten ceiling beams a few months ago and a local builder has been promising to renew them. He turned up a couple of weeks ago promising to deliver the beams within days to be painted prior to fitting, we are still waiting.
Had a lovely club ride on Sunday following a route which ran through an area where a big civil war battle took place, there were stone plaques every few hundred metres with tributes to the fallen Republican fighters. Need to do a bit of reading on local history.

Bet there’s no mention of Sian Roberts or Dafydd Davis. Mother of UK mountain biking, Tracy Moseley hmm.