Planet X are selling them off for not very much (£15) since they became illegal for road racing.

Be aware that the weight limit for a bike on BMI Baby is 18kg, over which it’s £12 per kg per flight. OK for a BMX but nowhere near enough for a road bike in a proper box or mountainbike. If your bike and box weighs the usual c:30kg, you would be looking at an extra £300 for a round trip. 😥

Just tell the police that you’ve heard screams and seen car headlights in the middle of the night. It worked a dream on our veg plot and that nice Mr West next door had them round for weeks 😉

5 laps for me, rode up the cobbles 4 times and didn’t fall off once. Quite pleased considering the crap start I had. Nice to see Steve Makin and the rest of the Singletrack bods. Closest to Chris Young I got was when he walked fully clothed into the showers 🙂 I think today was the final outing for my 14 year old Giant MCM Team, it’s becoming too fragile for such silliness 😥

Probably a good job that most journos don’t know the first thing about road racing otherwise he probably wouldn’t have made the shortlist.They may have considered being dragged across the line due to the efforts of Goss, Wiggo et al not all his own work. Thankfully and typically he thanked all his various team mates in his speech although 99% of veiwers probably missed the significance of this. I voted for him (twice) as a vote for cycling and British cycling in particular so his speech was spot on for me.

Riding is varied, mostly jeep tracks but there is a bit of singletrack if you explore. The GR92 from Cadaques over to Cala Joncols is rough in places. Several of the wikiloc routes have photos to give you an idea. I don’t know of any guiding arrangements, it’s not really a honeypot area. No problem re the map, just been and found it.

We were there in August for a few days, camped in Roses and cycled around the peninsula to Cadaques, fantastic scenery and Cadaques is lovely with the Dali stuff. The beach cafes en route are very expensive but once you get to Cadaques there is more choice and prices are lower. Look on wikiloc for mountainbike routes or pick up a map in Roses. I have one if you want to borrow it, mail me I’m near Sheffield.

and

I regularly ride through Upper Thong, it’s near Nether Thong 🙂

Thanks all, Chugg, does the track running NNE from Bermuda carry through to the pylon track beyond Titling Cairn as the OS map shows it stopping about 1 mile south? I wouldn’t be popular having to turn round at this time of year.

If you want to be able to follow OS Mapping, have a half decent battery life or replacable batteries and be simple to operate, the options are Garmin Oregon or Dakota (screen size is bigger on the Oregon) or Satmap, these are on offer if you follow a link provided by Midlantrailquestgraham earlier today. You will need built in OS mapping to ride off road and ideally a base map on your PC for route planning, or Where’s the path.
Only my opinion of course, I use an Oregon 450 with mapping and it’s great.

Front or rear? There was a big drama a few years ago when disc brakes were introduced. A number of over the bars incidents were caused by front wheels falling out, particularly where the forks didn’t have retention lips such as the early Pace airforce. It seemed that there was a high frequency vibration and torque reaction that was unscrewing the cam type QRs. There hasn’t been muuch talk of this recently, I don’t know if the problem was solved or not. My wife is very nervous about this as she had £10k worth of dental surgery after her wheel fell out, I have rigged up a piece of inner tube around the fork leg which loops over the QR to stop it coming loose.

anyone, please?

I’ll be there on my 10 yr old Giant MCM Team, dicing for 30th place in the over 50’s class 😕

Sneak preview of the next Florence single

Hope you were wearing Lake shoes. Boom tish

You can usually tell if the tyre is out of true, there is a line on the tyre about 2-3mm from the rim which should be a constant position all around the tyre-rim junction. A good tip is to brush soapy water around the bead before inflating. The tyre should pop onto the rim when you inflate it to about 50 psi, don’t exceed the max pressure quoted on the tyre wall as it could go bang, especially if the bead is a bit slack.

Thanks a million, saw you were about from the Duran Duran post 🙂 What sort of price do they charge if presented with a stripped masked frame?

4 Times British Trailquest Champ. Once in under 40 Solo Class, Once in Vet Solo Class and twice in Mixed Team Class.
Not exactly XC racing but hard work when all the events were 5 hours long and ranged from the West of Scotland to the Isle of Wight.
Entry numbers were also bigger then with 2-300 riders per event.

If you mean Aberystwyth (Abergavenny is about 80 miles) it’s 10 miles up the A44 or a bit longer if you take the quiet lanes following Sustrans route 82 up Cwm Rheidol or to the North of the A44 through Capel Dewi and pick the Syfydrin trail up above Old Goginan, either way is very scenic.

And a Goldfinger thrown in 🙂

We go to Nant Yr Arian a lot, the comment about getting back for the Kite feeding reminds me of my (blonde) wife asking why they changed the feeding time from 3 to 2 pm after the end of October. I had to explain that the Kites don’t have a watch so are unaware of the clocks going back and come at the same time every day. 🙄

Was the dog’s name Benton, in which case I think it’s probably in enough trouble.

If you are into lip reading, it looks as though the Mayor is saying “FFS” at a about 1 minute in which is both succinct and accurate 🙂

Looks very similar to the Aldi one but it must be a bit longer to fit 18650 batteries in as the Aldi one I’ve got is too short. Incidentally, does anyone know of an 18650 type battery which is 55mm long by 22mm diameter? Output of c:4.5v as well.

That Tony Pond film brought back memories of the RAC Rally stage in the mid 80’s around the Great Orme in Llandudno, run again this year for the first time in 20+ years. The Rover rally car was developing so much horsepower that they rigged up a Squeezy bottle full of soapy water that the co-driver squeezed depositing the water just in front of the rear wheels just as Pond dropped the clutch. The wheelspin prevented the drive shafts being snapped by the torque and grip of the slick tyres. Launch control is nothing new 😀

Oh the shame.
First Single Blockbuster by the Sweet
First Album Honkey Chateau by Elton John (on cassette)

Don’t hang about if you want an Alpkit one, I picked one up from their warehouse today, it does exactly what you want and is good value at £12.50. They have just had a new delivery but numbers seemed tight, I’d order now.

Good God, riding in carpet slippers as well!!

Superb.
It reminds me of when I worked for a large German company years ago, they had 2 factories, 1 in the North and another in Bavaria. The owner and his wife had houses near to each and used to fly back and forth. The problem was the wife’s beloved Dachshund wouldn’t fly and was driven by one or other of the factory managers, a trip of about 600 miles. He had strict instructions to stop for doggie comfort breaks. At one of these, the dog escaped and the vision of this highly paid guy running around the rest stop chasing a Dakkl and crapping himself as it would have been curtains for him if he had had it run over, came to me when watching this.

Bob Dylan Christmas In The Heart kitch at it’s best.

I think Jack Dee doesn’t quite have the naiive delivery of Humphrey Littleton but it still makes me laugh.

If it’s the one that follows the track that used to be the no mans land between east and west Germany, there’s a report on Bear Bones Bikepacking. Apparently it’s got all the variety of a German stand-up comic.Here it is

Rode it a couple of weeks ago in the other direction. It goes from Tod along to Summit which is IIRC the highest canal in Britain then along to Littleborough, it is then an easy climb to Hollingworth Lake where you can revel in the delights of Rochdale on sea with amusement arcades, chippy or carry onto the Pennine Bridleway under Rakewood Viaduct.

Looks as though I am you, I’ve just turned 52 and am reviewing what I want from biking. I have always favoured longer endurance events like Trailquest, sportives etc and this seems to suit my ability to dig in and keep going. Maybe you should try a few events where other skills than brute force can improve your results. TQ with map reading, course selection and experience are definite plusses and could be an option. I’ve been riding a few CX races this year, mainly to go with my wife who really enjoys them, they are really too intese for me and I’m just getting going as the bell goes. I suppose anything that gets you out and exercising is better than 95% of the population but it is nice to have a competitive edge for some.

That photo is the first 100yds of a bike ride that I’m leading next Saturday from the YH. 30 miles over Fylingdales and back along the Cleveland Way. Last year a few of the group sh@ themslves on that bit, it is steeper than it looks and falls away just before you get to the bottom.

Whitby, no contest. Scarborough is nowhere near as atmospheric as Whitby with its Dracula stuff, the Abbey and the harbour. Hope they are untypical septics as the steps up to the Abbey are steep. 😯

Re your comment about putting “extras” in the box, you need to read the fine print on your booking as certainly on short haul, a bike means just that. I’ve heard of the airlines making you remove helmets and shoes and they definitely take a dim veiw of non bike related luggage being in the box. The one we use is from Edinburgh bikes as we got it cheap when they opened in Sheffield, it suits a road bike best and is too small for most mountainbikes.

Specialised BG only have 1 clamp inboard of the grip and have an extra bit on the outer end to relieve ulnar pain, works well and 1/3 of the price of Ergon.