I reckon I’d pay 100 quid for them, now that I know how good they are.

Strange, you rejected paying £75 for the pair I offered you that I’d tried on for size and felt were a bit on the big side. I’ve worn them on the bike now for about an hour and they’ve been washed on cold non bio cycle so still look like new, still interested?
Edit, I paid £90 for mine and was very happy that I’d got good value.

Driving straight down the middle of France and through the Massif Central will get you to Beziers then down the coast to Perpignan, crossing the Pyrenees at la Junquera. This is completely tunnel free although crossing the Millau viaduct might give him the heeby jeebies in the opposite way. It’s quite a direct way, especially if he wants to go to the Med side of Spain (where we live) and relatively toll light.

Seems the Stayactive login is no longer working, just tried it and it says Company Reference is Invalid. Worked yesterday but once I’d put an 830 in my basket and moved to checkout, because I’m outside the UK despite having a Garmin UK account, they increased the price from £239 to €400 and processing time to 2-3 weeks. Seems they want to protect the higher EU prices which seems a bit dodgy, even in this brexit limbo period. I successfully bought an item from Garmin UK 3 weeks ago with no shenanigans.

Seems he’s now channelling Star Trek, the search for a vaccine is to proceed at warp speed and the doctor at the head of it is William Shaffner, at least according to R4 this morning.
Sorry, didn’t see the link earlier, already reprted

MrsPB and I compete in a local mountainbike race series (S Cataluña). The one organised by our village attracts about 250 riders and last years event was pretty lucrative for us. We both won our categories and she won a spot prize which was the weight of her bike in honey! The village has several honey producers and is widely known for it. They actually gave us about 20kg which we’ve had with our morning porridge for the last 8 months, just opened the last jar.

Had 2 lovely rides over the weekend, I’d worked out a 100% off road route around the border of our municipi. 32km and 450m of climbing including a long section of singletrack along the barranc that forms the frontera. Saw 2 other bikers and 1 walker which is 3 more than I usually see.

Tony, sounds like the campsite is trying to see you right, I guess a reopening date will also be affected by the French situation given your proximity to the border and the number that must come down to the cheaper, sunnier side of the Pyrenees on holiday.
We had roadblocks over the weekend preventing 2nd home owners decamping for the public holiday on Fri.

I don’t suppose it would be Spain if the rules on exercise were simple. As far as I can tell, cycling is restricted to within your own municipality which loosely compares to UK parishes. If the local population is less than 5,000, then there is no limit to when during the day you can ride, if it is more, the times are between 6 and 8am and 7 and 11pm. As everyone is required to carry an identity card, your municipality can be easily verified if you’re stopped. We live exactly on the border between 2 so all my riding must be to the North within 60km2 if we lived 50m South, I’d have 120km2 to play in. Still, it’s better than 2km laps of our land which I’ve been doing ad nauseam. How does this compare to your playground Tony?

We’re pretty happy here in Southern Cataluña, obviously difficult atm but the finca has never looked better with our olive and almond trees pruned and the land cleared. Normally we have hundreds of km of trails from the doorstep, mountains up to 1,400m within 30km. Climate is perfect, proper seasons with cold clear winters and warm summers, it rarely freezes or goes beyond 30° The people are very welcoming and cost of living low, I did a week’s shopping yesterday for 2 for £60. The Mediterranean is 15 mins away but we’re very rural with little hotel development. We can be in the UK in 2 hours from our local airport. All in all a great spot. This is us
Casa Tomillo

Dibs please on the Huddersfield one, it’s where I used to live and revised in the year of my birth. I’ll send a pm to sort out postage to Spain. Thanks for doing this, my OS map collection of a similar amount was donated to the Huntsman pub in Thurlstone when we moved here.

Not had this much non-cycling time on my hands since I changed jobs back in 2001 and was put on 6 months garden leave just as foot and mouth countryside lockdown happened. Then I lived in a house whose garden was basically a huge boggy ravine. I had a mate who had a skip hire business and gleefully delivered over 500 loads of building rubble to fill the hole, levelling it with a JCB. Topped the rubble with 100 tonnes of soil which was delivered from a local sugar beet plant and made a lawn. A year later got divorced and sold the house for double what we paid for it.
Now live in a 7 acre finca in Cataluna with about 100 olive trees that had been neglected for years so these are being cleared and we’re building a stockpile of wood for our wood burner which gets about 2-3 months use a year. We’ve also upgraded the pool and are landscaping the area around it, the local quarry reopened this week so ordered 10 tonnes of decorative gravel to tidy the area up. Not doing much for my cycling fitness but part of the clearing has opened up a 2km loop around the land which I’ve done a few laps of as we’re officially not allowed out at all here in Spain apart from food shopping.
Hope history doesn’t repeat itself on the marital front.

Yep, TdF 29th August-20th Sept followed by the Giro then La Vuelta in October. It’ll be interesting to see how the teams select for this fixture congestion. I’d think Ineos will go with Thomas, Bernal then Froome as leaders if they’re all race fit. Movistar will stay with their too many chiefs and not enough indians strategy that has served them so well in the recent past.

If you need a longer battery life than the 20 hours Garmin claim, there’s a link on the Barebones forum which discusses a battery which connects to the 5 pin adapter on the back of the 530,830 and 1030. These adapters are more robust than the crappy micro usb port so more suitable for long off road trips.
Barebones link

De nada. My C2C route also runs along a section of railway line used in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago which was a very well known scene of a steam train in a snowy landscape, supposed to be the Russian steppe but due to the book being banned in Russia, they used Spain instead.
Sorry, dont have any photos

Yep it’s the good, the bad and the ugly or as it’s called here in Spain, El Bueno, El Feo y El Malo the good, ugly and bad. The set is a military cemetery built for the movie that had become completely overgrown in the intervening 50 years. It has been fully restored and I stumbled across it during planning for a coast to coast trip I run every year. Unlike 95% of Spaghetti Westerns which were filmed in the Tabernas desert in Southern Spain, this place is 800km further north near Burgos. James Hetfield of Metallica put up most of the money for the restoration and for a contribution, you can have a cross with your name on it.

There’s 2 reasons for them being oval, the bcd of compact cranks is usually too big for 30t rings but on the Shimano 4 arm it just fits using special low profile bolts. Second is it seems to give a smoother transfer of power so reduces the tyre breaking grip on loose surfaces with narrow tyres.

Were you on foot or on a bike?

Ok so there are clues that make naming the film reasonably straightforward but I’ll be seriously impressed if you can come up with the location, nearest city will do.
It’s definitely from my own collection which may help with the country.

From memory, they launched a 30/46 chainset just before going bust, I’ve since looked on the BETD site to see if they were resurrected but not found anything. If I’m wrong I’d appreciate a link as I could be interested. My solution is to run 30/46 oval rings from Absolute Black on Shimano 105 4 arm cranks, I’m not particularly weak of leg but prefer to spin up the steep loose gravel climbs found here in Spain.

I think it depends on the size and location of the refuge. The Alpine ones definitely seem more of a commercial enterprise with decent passing trade but as September is a “between” season, neither high summer for the walkers nor winter for the skiers, it’s possible that if they don’t have a decent number of bed bookings, they don’t bother opening or only open at lunchtime. The Assietta is massive place and can sleep about 50 in twin bedded rooms, there was only us 6 in residence when I was there. Dave’s experience was finding a little restaurant about 20km before and the propietor was persuaded to let a group kip on the floor of an upstairs room hence the disturbance. I’m pretty sure the bigger refuges are contactable by email which allows you to decipher the answer to any questions you may have. When booking the Assietta I asked an Italian neighbour to phone on my behalf, when I arrived the guard greeted me like a long lost brother!

Duncan, I am waiting for your Spanish event to happen again. I REALLY enjoyed joining your ride the other year

You’ll be welcome Jamie, this year is looking dodgy with the lockdown here in Cataluña seeming never ending. I’ll drop something on Bearbones later on, thinking of having a “no sandals” rule 😏
I’ve toughened it up a bit with a few sections over 2,000m to take in the sources of the 3 main rivers of Spain, calling it the Spanish Divide.

One thing to be aware of is that James was considering a no-fly rule on participants to this year’s event i.e only travel there by train or other less polluting means. I suppose this would considerably extend the time window needed by UK riders. Given the changed times we are currently living through, this may have been shelved. I know he’s a fan of jumping through unusual hoops to get an entry a la Barkley Marathons so worth keeping an eye on the TNR facebook page. If you’re not set on the Alps, there are many similar events around including the Badlands in S Spain the CAT700 in Cataluña the Tuscany Trail and a trip I run across Spain.

I’m torn regarding using the Refugio, it seems like pinning yourself down a little too much,

Believe me, if you saw the 25km of trail at 2,300m before the refugio and thought about it’s suitability for bivvying in freezing fog like it was when I got there, you’d not hesitate in cracking on with the security of a hot meal and bed. In 2018 there were 6 of us there from the group start. Rumour was that 1 guy had carried on to Sestriere but we never saw him again!

Having done it in 2018 and assuming the route will be very similar in future, I’d say the 6 day time schedule you’ve suggested is actually the trickiest from the “what to carry” point of view. Imo there’s 2 strategies, 1st is to get really fit and go for 4 1/2 days and travel light with no stove, basic bivvy,lightweight sleeping bag and mat, good waterproofs and a change of shorts. 2nd is to tour it over 7-8 days with warmer sleep kit and warm off bike clothes. Again IMO, the first day is the crux, if you’re going for plan 1, you really need to tick off the Colombano and Finestre climbs and get to the Refugio Assietta and have a booked bed there, it’s a very long day, 170km and 4,500m of climbing. The refugio is at 2000m and the temperature can be sub zero even in September, there’s a long high altitude section before and after it with few comfortable sleeping options if you’re travelling light. I managed it in 12 1/2 hours, arriving in the dark and I’m 60. If you crack this, the rest of the route falls into place nicely with low level villages appearing towards the end of each day. I chose the “road of death” and Col d’Izoard options and got to Nice on Friday mid afternoon.

So it’s TJ 1 NHS 0
Maybe you need to think about how many items of PPE your subsidised ride to work is costing. I understand that your employers are, in your opinion, a bunch of incompetents but reporting your “win” in the current climate seems rather crass.

One I’ve been working on for a while is an off road loop of Spain. First leg is a section that I was due to start this Friday from near home in S Cataluña via the sources of the 3 longest rivers of the Iberian Peninsula, 1,100km finishing in Bilbao. Given 3 weeks I’d then go west along the Camino del Norte to Santiago de Compostella and back south on the Via de la Plata to Sevilla then back along the coastal mountains of Alicante and Valencia using the Burrally route. Might need slightly longer than 3 weeks as it’s over 2,500km. One for next spring?

Priorat wine region
This is our local wine, it sells for around €15-€20 a bottle so €1.20 a litre is a steal, no wonder they keep it secret.

Living in a wine region of Cataluña has it’s benefits, had to go to the farmacia in our village today. While I was waiting outside, I spotted a few locals furtively coming out of the bakery next door with plastic bottles of dark liquid. Curiosity got the better of me and I went to enquire. It was red wine from our valley which was available from under the stairs at €6 for a 5 litre bottle! Just tried it and it’s very drinkable. Result!

Ferrero Rocher made my son redundant this afternoon 🙁

That’s a shame, which country is he the ambassador for?

what’s your waste measurement?

Why does the size of his poo matter?

So Frank, you get angry when I comment that major tory doner Dyson gets an order for 10,000 machines which won’t be delivered in time when existing manufacturers don’t even get a reply to their offer of help. Did you not see Newsnight yesterday?

Sorry but I get very suspicious about altruistic businessmen, wonder if the price for making these machines apart from publicity is a peerage. Lord Suckandblow anyone?

Oh, and I’m Peter Purves’ love child

Used to ride trials as a kid. Once tried to ride along a log in Junior Kickstart with hilarious consequences

Bet the neighbour wouldn’t do it if next door was 6’4″ and male. Can’t the arm supporting the dish be set at 90° to the house and the dish reset, thus putting it on her side of the divide. Neighbour is a ****t

Doug and Dot are in Spain and are subject to strict restrictions on cycling.

And molgrim,spekkie and me. Maybe we should have a group hug.

All the best to you and Andrea, here in Cataluña life is pretty weird. Now we’re told you can’t even go out in the car together, only 1 person can go to the shops, get fuel or go to work. Living where we do it’s easy to self isolate but not seeing our friends is difficult and I can’t see this ending soon. Hope you keep safe, chin up.

I am aware of that cynical, I meant that I’ve experienced being able to adjust the chain tension from the hub end and from the bb end. I was aware of the EBB creaking issues but this hasn’t been my experience so far but I generally ride in dry conditions here in Spain.

I’ve had both types due to having frames replaced under warranty, twice! First 2 frames were Van Nicholas Redwood 29ers which were a specific model year that came with horizontal track dropouts which, with a bit of torque arm bodging, allowed a Rohloff to work no problem. They replaced the second one which cracked around the headtube/downtube weld with a Zion Rohloff specific frame with Bushnell EBB which needs liberal use of loctite to stop the wedges loosening but otherwise works well. The only other issue I’ve had is the positioning of the double gear cable guides which cause issues with fitting a bar bag when bikepacking. Overall, I’d say EBB offers the least amount of faff and I’ve not experienced any creaking issues.

More Cash- I should have said leisure cycling is banned here in Spain, no such restrictions in the UK, yet. My point is that the likelyhood of transmission on a solo ride in the middle of nowhere is negligible but turning up at A&E with a broken limb sustained by an activity that could be avoided will consume vital resources. The policy of don’t be a dick is applicable here.

As discussed on another thread, it’s not just a question of the likelyhood of meeting anyone and passing on or getting the virus, it’s putting more stress on the health system if you have an accident. Here in Spain the decision has been made for us, no cycling of any sort with a fine up to €600,000 or 3 months jail for infraction. Sobering times, might have to dust down the turbo.