Dutch customs into ijmuden two years ago checked every car.

blimey, we go to NL &/or Be 4 or 5 times a year and after pre-tunnel faffing have never been stopped or checked on any of the FR/BE or BE/NL borders (except about 10 years ago where French Plod checked for tobacco on a back road from BE (but not passports). Guess I should consider myself very lucky / outwardly trustworthy in appearance…….

never try to argue with a rozzer if they’ve tucked their trousers in to their boots

I’d have no hesitation in suggesting you talk to https://www.northroadcycles.com/  really happy with mine and feels just as at home on-road with a change of wheels / tyres

good people too :good:

“not made to be disassembled”, so as above

long shot, but my FiL comes from a long line of High Wycombe chair makers and had something to do with Ercol at some point in his career.

If the answer gets beyond a Grandpa Simpson anecdote I’ll let you know…….

does it mention the bit of NCN included in a CX World Cup course?

 

so why are they smoking outside if they don’t realise it stinks like shit?

a Simon & Garfunkel album?

I reckon theres a fair chance that qualifies for a replacement……

700c really brings the trail alive etc etc

I was still chuckling at @susepic ‘s “minge clippings” comment

definitely sounds like the missing lyric from GLC’s Your Missus Is A Nutter  the world didn’t know it needed

Broken wrist means it’ll be an indoor virtual one for me this year

kimbers

I call BS, because we dont have hoverboards yet

I guess you guys aren’t ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love them……..

“low hanging fruit”

if I get through a CX race without at least one remount ending up with me sitting on one of my knackers I consider it a good day

doesn’t answer your question, but at the height of things a couple of years ago I needed a PCR test kit to get into Belgium; paid for courier delivery etc but kit had a bit missing. I contacted the test company and they said just e-mail them an image of a negative test result and they’d fill in the paperwork for me!

Aero becomes dominant force at about 16km an hour

I was talking about this on an audax a few weeks ago as someone in a velomobile very slowly crept up a relatively shallow incline before smashing past everyone like a scalded whippet on the equally relatively benign downslope; I’d say on this albeit limited test that weight was far more of a factor than the aeroz?

ditto….

my review of last year (or whenever it was I last went) is that I can’t remember much about it except the tedious hi-viz jobsworth who after I’d had my ‘secure cycle parking’ sticker taken off my bike in order to wheel it inside (and him to hold the door open for me) to be Datatagged then tried to wrestle me to the ground on my way out 10 mins later for ‘stealing a bike’. No amount of explaining, suggesting he remember letting me in a few mins before, offering to look at cctv with him or even getting the guy from Datatag to confirm I’d just brought my bike in to be marked would see him back down.

and a got a effin puncture on my way back, that I do bloody remember

EDIT – thinking about it, it must have been a couple of years ago as I was sent free tickets for the following year but didn’t bother going.

sirromj
Full Member
Tweezers no good for the things I’ve seen block the pan 😆

I was once given a test tube and a spatula to collect a sample by the Tropical Disease Hospital and no amount of explaining that a bucket and a funnel were going to be more appropriate got me anywhere.

Fortunately those taps with the elbow paddles on top meant I could give my hands (and forearms) a good wash afterwards.

sorry.

as the owner of cars aged 10, 15 & 45 years old with no experience of keyless entry / starting, what is the problem its trying to solve?

I appreciate more than a whiff of “old man shouts at cloud”, but just can’t see how pressing key fob / putting key in door / ignition is such a pain

tonyf1

So much more challenging now we carry co2 cartridges but still doable. Steady hand and a good aim needed.

when I was bitten by a dog that pulled itself out of the hands of the girl walking it to run across the road to try take a chunk out of my kidneys I took a photo of the dog and ‘owner’ (or owners’ daughter as I found out) and contacted both plod to report it and living in a village a local dog owner I know who I was confident would know who the owners were.

The owners were soon in touch and deal struck between us both and plod was that their dog would not be walked by anyone not able to hang onto the lead, they were to take it (and themselves) to an agreed trainer and that it must be muzzled whenever out in public. AFAIK this was all and continues to be done.

I’ve never reported any of the countless “he’s just being friendly” / “he’s scared of bikes” / “you shouldn’t have moved” nonsense I’ve had further from home where I’d have no hope of tracking down the owner

I have duck feet and yet still have plenty of room around the toes in these; and in a sentence I never thought I’d say it seems that Giro would be the money-saving option in this instance

molgrips
Full Member
Re why the Netherlands is different: The wiki page has this to say about politics in the Netherlands:

The Netherlands is described as a consociational state. Dutch politics and governance are characterised by a common striving for broad consensus on important issues, within both of the political community and society as a whole.

Now I know it’s only a wiki page but you cannot imagine anyone saying anything like that about the UK, can you? As I said before, different countries view the concept and role of government differently, which is how they will accept different things from them and vote differently. Or to put it another way, there are deep rooted social-historical reasons we ended up with Brexit and not Netherlexit.

I was talking to a Dutch person about this and they explained that living in a country where if dykes and sea defences weren’t doing their job your house would be under water tends to make you very keen on understanding and happily accepting of / contributing towards mutually beneficial infrastructure even though you can’t see it from your window and your house has never flooded…..

I crashed (had a fall?) in a CX race last year and was asked by a medic “where hurts?”; he seemed genuinely bemused by my explanation that as a fifty year old man racing his bike everything hurt even before I hit the ground

Also, I’m sure the healing time for a broken wrist was 6-8 weeks when younger not bloody months as it seems to be nowadays……

nothing to do with all the arguments already made but I (beach) race a few times each year in BEL & NED and the private shame I feel at being overtaken by countless OAPs as I drag myself (normally into a bettering headwind) back to HQ after turning myself inside for the previous couple of hours means I’d be in favour of banning everything, or at least limiting them to about the 8mph I’m normally capable of by then.

That looks perfect for a bit of gravel training – Tx for the route. Hit the follow button while I was trying to copy the route. Feel free to ignore or accept as you wish ☺️

I think I’ve just done exactly the same…….although without managing to get the GPX copied

another person with nothing to say apart from hoping everything goes as least bad as it can do

I turned mine off as deviating from the route I was following also seemed to set it off; so any diverting around a fallen tree or nicking off the trail for a piddle would alert international rescue

See if you can arrange family things so that you can ride there while partner/kids drive. I’ve done that a few times and it’s an easy way of banking a load of miles which is otherwise dead time in a car.

I find this is a good way of getting it done; this year I’ll ride to & from a visit that’ll see the best part of 400km done in a couple of days, leaving the rest to be done at leisure

“Great audax food” is the correct answer; if you’re not eating a pork pie sat on a park bench or in a bus shelter at 3am in the hissing rain, are you even alive…..

“works in accordance with the permission” can be as little as a bit of a trench or two for footings, service runs or if you’re really lucky and the permission requires (and includes in the description) demolition of an existing outbuilding etc you might be able to argue doing that constituted commencement………but also need to be mindful that commencement won’t trigger any CIL payments or similar that they’d also need to factor in

I’ll leave the pigeon chess to those who obviously know better how the Town & Country Planning system works…..

Where in this thread has that been said?

Entirely up to the land owner wha they store on their land

It’s THEIR field. They can, within reason, keep what they want in it. There’s nothing else to say

Its their land, can’t they keep their stuff on their land?

containers aren’t “development” unless they’re fixed to the ground, had services plumbed-in etc and so don’t require p/p UNLESS they represent a change [or intensification] of use of the land……..

EDIT: ‘their land they can do what they want with it” is not what the planning system says, or does anyone think there’d be any fields left without housing estates on them?

funkmasterp
Full Member
Can only be done for “cycling furiously”. Which is almost impossible to prove or prosecute.

Anybody else want a conviction for cycling furiously or is it just me?

at the end of one year at uni many moons ago I discovered a wrongly addressed envelope with my name on it in the post room which was a summons to the local court for that very offence. Presumably a fellow student had been nabbed and given my name and guessed (incorrectly) at halls room number.

I went to the local plod station to say “not me guv” but they said I’d need to see somebody at the courts to sort it out. Bloke I saw listened to my tale then went to check if they’d issued a warrant for my arrest for not attending ‘my’ trial. I exited stage left so never knew if I had a ‘wanton and furious’ conviction in absentia but rather hope I do!

walking on the cracks in the pavement, lock him up!!!!!!

my two penneth as a Carradice-lugging audax type is that for someone with the OP’s baseline fitness it’ll be neck / back / wrists that’ll give out long before legs or lungs. If your set-up is spot-on it’ll hopefully just be a case of chalking off the miles……

Cougar
Full Member
I am still confused by the fact the instructor was adamant that the vehicle made no difference to the stopping distance. I thought she was very patronising

I had that too. I posited that I wasn’t driving a Ford Anglia with drum brakes and was talked over with “but thinking time hasn’t changed

I did a course in 2007 and remember asking the instructor who was adamant that braking distances hadn’t reduced since Ford Anglia days why I’d just been issued with ‘Manual for Streets’ (joint DfT & DCLG publication) which explicitly revised downwards junction visibility splay requirements to reflect improved braking of vehicles from old DMRB times. I also got told thinking times hadn’t changed but couldn’t see the point in trying to argue.

She also said that speed cameras were able to tell the speed limit of individual vehicles so on a 60mph speed limit road would flash a vehicle with a 50mph limit doing 51mph but know not to flash those that able to do 60mph doing 60mph. I called bullshit, but didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ so just sat on my hands for the rest of it.

I found getting older, having kids, riding my bikes more and paying for my own fuel have all had a much more profound impact on my driving than being sat in a room for a couple of hours

gray
Full Member
The infatuation with bells is completely mystifying to me.

I suspect theres quite an interesting PhD to be had on the subject of centuries of ingrained English serfdom leading to people refusing to hear / process verbal notification of approach &/or requests to pass on a particular side, in favour of needing a bell to order them out of the way…….