I’m guessing that the similarity in gear range is due to having a closer ratio cassette but I’d look to keep the existing 11-42 cassette and be careful not to use big-big combinations. A 34/42 bottom would definitely help with the steep ramps we have here in Spain.

March may be a little early to be absolutely free of snow on the higher level stuff. I live about 3 hours south and keep an eye on such things, pre Easter can still be cold over 1,000m. Tony(Spekkie) is in the States atm but I’m sure he’ll reply when he sees this. I’d say mid-end of April is the optimum weather, dry but not too warm. The trails are very well maintained and marked thanks to the local team which includes Tony.

We had 4 days in San Sebastian in June this year, long enough for me. We took the train from our home in Cataluña as RENFE had a deal for €19 each way. We paid €240 for an apartment for 3 nights. I’ve stayed in and around Bilbao several times as it’s the finish of a bikepacking trip that I run in May. I prefer Bilbao, nice city and beach, if you stay somewhere out along the metro line, it’s a lot cheaper and 70 cents for the 20-30 min trip into the city centre. The surfers village of Sopelana is really nice.

Deranged wife put herself into debt and bought me a Rolex, we were divorced by the time I was 41. Watch is in a drawer still in it’s original box 22 years later. Serves as a reminder not to marry lunatics but doesn’t seem to be working.

Be careful leaving the cable attached when off road, the micro usb port on Explores (why are Garmin always 2 steps behind current standards?) is very fragile, I’ve broken 3, the current one is permenently attached with epoxy glue but on it’s way out. If the Explore had the contacts on the 1/4 turn mount like the 530,830 and 1030 which would connect to their auxiliary battery, it would be the perfect unit for me.

Seems he has been having issues with his riding dropping off recently.

Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia clothing boss who paid all his staff through lockdown.

I went back after 2 days, I didn’t know at that stage that my pay had been docked, it was only when my payslip arrived a few weeks later. There was no repetition of the funny turn. When they eventually dispensed with my services, they acted in such a half arsed way and in contravention of employment law that I took them to a ACAS and they settled out of court which added significantly to my bike collection. The guy from ACAS had never seen such a clear case of constuctive dismissal. I was happy to accept the bikes to set up my bike guiding business in Cataluña which I was about to retire to.

Sorry, I’ve referred to this on here before but it bears repetition.
For me the charm disappeared fairly dramatically.
I worked there in their heyday around 2012-15 in the bike build/workshop and latterly as service dept manager. I’d retrained and got my Cytec qualification following a 25 year career in sales management which was slowly killing me. The work was good fun the 10 guys I worked with were great and there was plenty of variety.
One morning I started feeling quite unwell with numbness and dizzy spells. A colleague saw me in distress and sat me down then ran round to the ambulance service training centre which happened to be next door, a stroke of luck (sic).A paramedic examined me and organised an ambulance to take me to Rotherham hospital where I was hooked up to various bleeping machines for the rest of the afternoon. After a few hours I was given the all clear and my wife took me home with instructions not to drive for 2-3 days so I couldn’t go to work.
When I got that month’s payslip, I was dismayed to see that my hourly pay had been stopped before I’d reached the hospital.

Most striking is the utter delusion of the person who installed solar panels whilst living in Northern Ireland

(he was a right p****k, short man syndrome,

I’ve known people like that, a right Planck

Long short sleeves are all the rage here in Spain. Try Gobik, I have a couple of CX range tops and they really are top quality. Siroko also do similar at lower prices but not so well finished. You probably need to size up one size unless you’re really rake thin.
Gobik shirts

I lived in Hyde (mass murder capital of the UK) as a kid and regularly ate tripe cooked in milk or with onions, it’s disgusting! Pulling ones tripe out means doing a proper hard day’s physical work, something alien South of Watford Gap.

I live in Spain and have been keeping an eye out for when these appear here, it’s usually a couple of weeks behind. Lo and behold they are available this week, for the princely sum of €399!!
So basically double the UK price so either there’s been an almighty pricing cock-up in the UK or they’ve decided that demand in Spain will be stronger and priced accordingly. Bugger, I was looking forward to trying this.

Could be a bit tense in the UAE bus,what with Gaviria being nerfed into the barriers by a teammate!

I have a friend who walked away from the Moorgate tube disaster and was sat at his desk on the 9th floor of the World Trade Centre at 9am on 9/11 and walked out of that as well. He now makes a good living as a landscape gardener in upstate New York, bit less danger involved!

My first proper job was working for a BMW dealer in Stafford where I lived. In 1982 I travelled up to the dealer in Coldstream in the Scottish Borders to collect a car we’d sold and drive it back. This was at the time of the disappearance of Susan Maxwell from the village, she was found just outside Stafford 260 miles away and eventually the serial killer Robert Black was convicted of her murder. I was visited by the police and interviewed about the reason for my journey, pretty scary.
I was born in Hyde, less than a mile from the Hattersley estate where Myra Hindley and Ian Brady lived, we moved to Leeds in the mid ’60s and used to travel back and forth across the moors where the bodies were found. My auntie’s GP was Shipman as well.

You have to press the physical button on the bottom right of the unit to start recording your ride, should start the distance recorder.

This was my lockdown project last spring.

I was an early adopter, had mine about 2 years. Ticks all my boxes as I’m not interested in the performance metrics just navigating and following trails downloaded from Wikiloc. Turn by turn is a bit hit and miss depending on the type of trail you are following. I downloaded mapping from Fietsmap, I live in Spain and the detail is fine. The wireless file transfer works ok, the battery life is not as good as the 1030 or 840 but it’s a lot cheaper. For long rides I plug it into a power bank but have found the micro usb port fragile. If it came with the 5 pin connecter as the 540, 840 and 1030, it would be possible to connect to the Garmin propietory power bank but hey ho.

Not just a talking head, won Gold medals in the ISDE 6 day enduro and Scottish 6 Day trial, a true motorsport enthusiast. Father was a works Norton road racer as well.

I’ll never forget listening to I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue on Radio 4 one teatime when Steven Fry described the word Countryside in the Uxbribge English Dictionary as “Killing Piers Morgan”

Or 7 hours of minor league snooker from Milton Keynes when you want to watch the Paris Roubaix. I went for the GCN+ deal which has been less than stellar so far with technical problems last weekend and the coverage of the Strade Bianche resetting every 10 minutes.

A guy I went to college with and raced enduro motorbikes with farmed on the Eppynt firing ranges near Llanwyrtyd Wells, he leased hundreds of acres from the MOD for sheep grazing. The land was used for massive burning pits, we were up there watching the world rally stage just afterwards, not a pretty sight, the pits seemed to go on for miles.

I often repeat the Uxbridge English Dictionary definition read out by Steven Fry who described the word Countryside as the killing of Piers Morgan. Pretty edgy for teatime listening.

Not unless I lay my hands on a time machine, it’s 2021. I suppose it’s the email equivalent of a Gallic Shrug.

Couple of tips for avoiding the sludge in the bottom of cups that forcing the plunger down can cause. Pour the hot water to the required level, leave it for a couple of minutes then carefully stir to let the big bits fall to the bottom. Leave another 2-3 minutes then just place the plunger on the surface of the liquid, don’t push it down more than the froth. Pour through the filter giving it a little swish if it gets blocked. Coffee is much less gritty. Tips borrowed from James Hoffman on YouTube.

Anyone spot Hannu Mikkola spectating? (Stripy polo shirt)
Back around that time my father took part in the RAC Rally, with me doing service crew.We had built a Ford Fiesta to group N spec and ran it on a shoestring. The year we did it, the start was in Harrogate. There were set times for presenting the car for scruitineering and as spectators were allowed in, they also spread out the star drivers through the day. It turned out that our time slot coincided with Juha Kankkunen, he spent loads of time chatting to us, looking at the car and comparing notes. Turned out that our entire budget for the event was about the same as Toyota spent on 1 set of tyres. I also met Max Moseley as he was head of the FIA at the time, struck me as a bit creepy.

Thought you were referring to this gem
Multi buy bargaintastic

Hero of my youth, Malherbe, DeCoster, Carlsson, Mikkola, Jobe at Hawkestone Park. Jumpers for goal posts etc etc
Imagine sitting waiting for the gate to drop with a Hakan on one side and a Heikki on the other, you wouldn’t stand a chance.

I hope to be corrected on this but I think the issue with exceeding the 90 day stay is that you will have a dated stamp when you leave the country and clearly anyone checking on your return will notice the excess period. We are aware of fellow Spanish residents who have wrongly had their passports stamped when returning to their only home in Spain since Jan 1st and wrongly refused flight boarding as the airline have not recognised their green residencia card. It’s early days and should be sorted by June (year not specified)

As you can imagine we’ve made a study of this as we live in cataluña. Thankfully we are resident in Spain so no issues but we know many people who’ve had to return to the UK or are doing so before April as they never bothered to apply for residence. The maximum time allowed in the EU is 90 days in a 180 day period. You cant come for 90 days go back for a day then return. It also means that if you spend all your allowance, there’s no weekend breaks in Paris etc allowed until you’ve had 90 days back in blighty. It rather buggers up those wishing to do a few months touring or just bumming around Europe doing casual work on the Costas. If the current Covid situation gets no worse, a big if, then I’d say you’ll be able to get here ok, just be sensible and stick to local hygiene rules.

I’ve spent the last year researching and recceing a route across Spain which goes via the sources of the 3 longest rivers. I’ve done similar trips every year since we moved here in 2015 but this is a bit longer and more off road. I’ve called it the Spanish Divide and a group start/ride is planned for the end of May.
Spanish Divide Wikiloc Segments

Having watched a few youtube clips of battery replacement and charging port repair, another issue with Edge units, the later models are much harder to get into as they’re glued together rather than using torx screws. They require heating up with a hot air gun and the screen carefully prising off to get anywhere near the battery compartment. This combined with unavoidable updates that randomly bork the software means that they’ve cleverly turned their product into a disposable item for even the most minor issue, good work Garmin

Just had a look at the Frontier website. Unless you’re flying, you’ll have an enforced stop after 18 hours of up to 5 hours so it may be worth taking a 2,000mAh lipstick powerbank and a wall charger to boost everything up for the last 70km. Also you’re following a gpx which is more power hungry than just recording your ride, especially if you’re overlaying the route on detailled mapping. Make sure you know how to minimise the backlight to save juice as well.

Have you already got a Garmin unit, if so which one? The edge 530, 830 and 1030 have an array of pins on the back which mate with a Garmin charge power pack that doubles the battery capacity. Beware, the usb ports on other units are very fragile and don’t like the vibrations of charging whilst riding. I’ve broken 2, the first was an Edge Touring, the second an Explore. Might be worth considering Dakota or Oregon models with replacable batteries.

Every Spring I run a week long bikepacking trip across Spain from the Med to Atlantic. The route runs through a village that was in an Orson Welles classic, along a disused railway line which passed for the Russian Steppe in Dr Zivago and through a valley that featured in one of the most famous gunfights in cinema history. This sequence https://youtu.be/XuUWq7qGSro used a set which has recently been renovated with donations from all over the world. James Hetfield from Metallica was one of the biggest donors and Clint Eastwood spoke at the opening ceremony.

Maybe Amazon, confused regarding his claim to have invented mountainbiking, couldn’t decide whether it should be classified fiction or non-fiction.

Bones Festes from us in Cataluña, all the best for 2021 Tony and Andrea. Bring on the return to normal service.

The second clip and the suspension bridge are near me in Cataluña. The Congost de Mont Rebei, there’s a few clips of people riding it but not on the back wheel. It’s on my to-do list for next year but probably on foot.