Take a look at the Clachaig Inn, Glencoe to see what a destination pub looks like. Good choice of real ale, live music at the weekends, a walkers bar with slate floor and real fire. Would seem like a good start?

It would help if you are in close proximity to a couple of local campsites, or perhaps a YHA? This could provide much needed traffic throughout the season.

Top this with good, honest food and you’d be onto a winner. If you are trying to attract mountain bikers then the food should be tasty, generous and simple. Avoid any sort of pre-prepared food like the plaugue – it’s always a massive dissapointment to order a sticky toffee pudding only to find out that it’s one of those pre-packaged things that’s been stuck in a microwave.

Get known for a signature dish – perhaps a big bowl of homemade chilli, perhaps the best burger in the peak district, perhaps a fantastic shepherds pie. Basically something that’s unique and legendary enough that people will tell their mates about it and keep coming back for more.

Limit the menu to around 10 dishes and perhaps a couple of specials that change regularly. I sound like Gordon Ramsey now. Seriously, I’d far rather go to a place where the time was spent to get a small selection of dishes ‘just right’ than somewhere that tries to do everything under the sun, but all are a bit mediocre. Also unless you can make a curry as well as your local Indian, best avoid. If I want a curry I’ll go to an Indian, good pub food then I’ll go to a pub.

Secure bike parking is a must. You get some bikers who will not want to let their bikes out of their sight so that should be considered. Perhaps you could set us a service point? Have a bike mechanic as a barman. That way bikes could be fixed or washed for riders at the end of a day. If someone offered to clean my bike for a fiver whilst I’m tucked up warm with a pint then that would be good by me. Someone having their bike repaired is a captive market for food and drink. The longer the repair takes, the more coffee they will drink.

Consider offering guided rides and make up your own local routecards that start and end from near the pub.

Employ people with the right attitude. Someone who is always smiley, friendly and helpful is always a better bet than an expert waiter who’s miserable. Bar and waiting skills can be trained – the right attitude, well you either have it or you don’t.

Hope this helps?

Yet these people seem to be able to live with themselves in the knowledge that through achieving their own personal goal, they had to walk by the bodies of those dead and dying.

Despite it being a childhood dream, that’s exactly why I now have no desire to now climb Everest.

I think what Steve means is that for most humans, just climbing and getting back off Everest is at the very limit of human performance. To try and drag someone who is in deep trouble of the mountain could very likely result in your own death too. Harsh but true.

Forgot to mention that Cafe Caban y Pair just up the road from the bridge in Betws y Coed seems very nice. We ate there in the evening and the pizza was lovely! No license but there’s a small Spar down the road for a BYO beer or wine.

Been to Conwy Falls cafe a couple of times and it’s always been good food. Similar with Woodbine – the apple pie is great, as is the fire in the winter, but yes the lady who runs it seems thoroughly miserable most of the time. Whinlatter cafe is great!

Pete’s Eats – disappointed to be honest. Dirty tables and even grubbier looking staff. Possible the weakest, milkiest cup of tea ever and the food looks more like overcooked school dinners. Even the breakfast was rancid, cheap gristly sausages and fatty, limp bacon. I mean how hard can it be to get that right? Shame really – if they upped the care and attention to detail with the food then it could be the be one of the best cafes going. Maybe they should stop trying to cook every meal option under the sun and reduce the menu by two thirds – and then cook the remaining third properly with quality local produce?

God I sound like Gordon Ramsey on Kitchen Nightmares!

Cheers all, will be off to buy some flats this weekend. Get prepared for some shredded shins time. Mike I’m in South Manchester. Does your friend work for a bike shop?

To hell with it. If he’s just starting out get him a good pair of boots, and then just get any old second hand board and bindings that’s a fairly descent brand and not too stiff.

You wouldn’t buy someone who’s never ridden a mountain bike before a brand new La Pierre or Yeti would you? Same with boards.

When he progresses, finds his feet and gets a bit better he will then know the sort of style of riding he likes and can then buy the right board accordingly. If he’s just starting out then don’t worry too much – any half descent second hand board will do.

And for those people who say buy a Rocker board, Lib Tech or Batallion because you’ll never catch an edge? Catching an edge when you’re learning is par for the course and learning the skills to avoid this will make you a far better rider at the end of the day.

If you learn on a board that’s too forgiving then you may never develop good sense of edge control. That’s important if you want to progress to become a really good rider. Comparing it to cars, you wouldn’t learn in an automatic just because it’s easier would you?

He reckoned it was a lot easier than it looked as the planes computers helped a lot too

Try doing that in a Microlight or light aircraft without any computers.

Landings like this always look pretty hairy to the untrained eye and it might feel weird approaching a runway sideways but there’s normally nothing to much to worry about provided the crosswind is within operating limits.

A constant cross wind is fairly easy to deal with. Set a drift angle or get the aircraft side slipping, round out positively and kick the aircraft straight with the rudder just before touchdown keeping the into wind aileron up and the into wind wing slightly lower.

In these conditions a nice positive touch down is desirable to firmly plant the aircraft on the runway. You don’t want the aircraft floating and drifting off centre at this stage. Again, to the untrained eye this may feel like a hard or bumpy landing but is actually the desired outcome from the pilot.

The difficulty comes with gusty conditions when things become a lot more interesting. The second jet drifts well off the runway centreline and was absolutely correct to go around and try again.

To anyone who’s nervous about flying, I’d recommend taking a couple of lessons in a light aircraft. That will open your eyes and you will learn that most of the normal stuff that airline passengers get nervous about is nothing really to worry about at all.

Apart from the fact no one would move if everyone was stuck in negative equity……

Houses are still affordable. As said well above – people need to adjust expectations – my first house was a two bed mid terrace and I thought I was doing well!

No people in negative equity can still move just fine. It is more difficult yes but there are plenty of lenders who will take this into account – they are having to these days.

Don’t forget too that the house they move to will have also dropped in value so it’s not quite as big a problem as you make out. Plus the amount of mortgage payers in negative equity at present is around 5%, so hardly a significant number.

Houses are not currently very affordable. Two bed mid terraces where we are currently sell for around £230,000. The same houses were selling for around £90,000 ten years ago. That’s an 155% increase in 10 years. Average wages have gone up by 26% over the same period. So how is that affordable in anyone’s book?

It’s all very well saying why not buy in a cheaper area, but funnily enough the locations where house prices are a lot more reasonable tend to also be those places where it’s very difficult to get a job – any job. And even in those crummy areas, house prices will have risen by a massive 3-400% in the recent boom.

Affordable – not likely!

Prices crashing would create so much negative equity for so many people that it would be an absolute disaster for our economy. Wishing/hoping that to happen to people is a terrible thing.

Errrr, how is that then? A proper house price crash would bring about massive improvement in affordability. That should get the housing market moving again and in turn would mean that all the industries that rely on this market (construction, solicitors, estate agents, furniture and DIY stores etc) should all see a nice upturn with the creation of thousands more jobs as a result.

Cheaper housing would mean that those buying a home will also have some disposable income left (rather than all their spare cash being piled into their house). They can then spend this on holidays, white goods, eating out etc – again supporting the economy and creating jobs.

You can’t really feel sorry for people in negative equity can you? If they took the risk to overstretch themselves then they have no-one to blame but themselves. Sorry it may sound harsh but that’s just how it is. No-one forced anyone else to take on a mortgage did they?

A house price crash is probably good for most of us. The only exceptions are possibly:

Those who blindly bought at the peak of the market because they just had to get on the ladder at all costs.

Those that have recklessly borrowed too much or taken out big loans against the paper equity in their property.

The banks who will sooner or later have to write down their balance sheets.

Those property developer types jumping onto the BTL bandwagon and hoping to make a fast and easy buck.

Seems insane for the media to have been portraying price rises in housing for years as a good thing. I mean we don’t celebrate price rises in fuel, bread, beer, mountain bikes or any other of life’s essentials do we? If you like to buy or own a home ‘JUST TO LIVE IN’ then lower prices are a good thing surely?

Makes you sick doesn’t it. House prices are still shockingly expensive compared to what people earn.

We rent but do look around from time to time for what we could buy and prices are still insane where we are in South Manchester. We have a large deposit saved and could easily secure a mortgage but despite that can’t quite seem to find the will to commit to 25 years of mortgage slavery just to purchase a pokey little 2 bed at these inflated prices.

The quality of housing in the UK is criminally bad. Small windows, small rooms, little natural light, crammed together, poor parking, little storage space. This applies to both new builds and older stock. The UK really needs to take a leaf out of Germany’s book when it comes to building homes that are actually ‘livable’. Housing over there has embraced modern technology and modern construction whereas house builders and buyers in the UK seem more obsessed with whether the home has a mock Georgian dooway than whether there is room to store a bike and other essential requirements. Madness!

Wouldn’t surprise me if prices drop big time. I think they are going to have to – otherwise the whole market will grind to a halt. The banks still don’t want to lend and potential young buyers are either saddled up by huge student loans, or suffer the crippling cost of increasing rent and increased costs of living.

How are the young ever going to be able to afford property at the current prices? I think they are not so the only solution is for prices to drop.

I had it for about 6 months after falling quite hard playing paintball. Bl**dy awful to be honest and really interfered with normal life and mountain biking. Painful to walk and stand around for long periods. Some days better, some days terrible. Tried osteopathy, physiotherapy, core strength and yoga but what has really helped me is a book by ‘Treat your own back’ by Robert McKenzie. Now almost pain free after a frustrating few months.

Keeping active is a must (walking is good) and learning about good posture can contribute hugely to making a recovery. Doing a desk job contributed to prolonging mine. I thought that sitting down and resting would help it get better – in fact it probably helped prolong the symptoms.

Kings House Webcam is working. Basically grey skies but good visibility – the summits are cloud free and visible. Patches of snow at summit height and in the gullies but otherwise clear of the white stuff.

You could try the webcams on here:

Winter Highland[/url]

Thanks everyone for the great ideas. I have enough to go on now so will be making some suggestions.

Can now stop thinking about work and start planning the weekend’s biking activities instead :o)

Don Simon, the delegates are not employees of the company so getting the brand name on the prize is a good idea.

Whiskey – you know the medical profession too well!

Like the idea of a tattoo but can’t see many people signing up for that one!

Digital radio a good idea, as is the iPod!

Keep em coming :o)

Cheers all, some good info here. Jamesy – so you’d rate the Stereo above the Orange 5? That’s the other bike I was considering.

Interesting that some of the magazine reviews give the Stereo 3/5 (pretty poor) and others give it 9/10 (darn good).