Our Smeg has handled XT crankest and casette with no probs…

That said, I'd still go to Chamonix every time, but the prices in France are getting stupid now, particularly for food and drink..

Yep, that is certainly true…. Skied in Chamonix for a long weekend in February. 20 euro for a very basic pasta and 8 euro for a beer.

Oh, and btw – on the subject of Chamonix, I wouldn't include the Vallee Blanche as a piste. Sure, it is lift served, but you'll need 70-80 euros for a guide down the glacier. Well recommended, although I've skied it from Punta Helbronner rather than the French start point at Aiguille du Midi.

In Europe:

the runs are much shorter. You can usually see the bottom from the top.

Really? The Ventina piste at Cervinia is reckoned to be one of the longest in Eurpoe. If you start at the Klein Matterhorn in Zermatt, it is about 11-12km long and drops from 3820m (the highest lift in Europe) to 2100m in Breuil Cervinia… in fact the combined Zermatt / cervinia area has over 300km of runs!!

from the telegraph…

Cervinia is good – plenty of wide open, snow sure skiing, and the opportunity to go across the hill to Zermatt

'Die-uh-nay-say'

That's how I've heard it – both in UK bike shops and Italian mountain sport shops…

a lot of sportscars are made by very small companies that don't have the money to invest in what is really new technology with the diesels and all

That is utter nonsense… Bugatti and Lambo are owned by VW / Audi, Ferrari, owned by Fiat, etc, etc

Horsesh1t, we rode it in April. Rideable from about 50 yards from the summit. Totally recommended – brilliant day out.

Yes – but presumably your'e only talking about the descent??

If you have not ridden before a bike with gears it might be unrealistic to expect to pass the CBT in a day, with no prior bike riding experience.

I managed to get through the CBT in a day – geared bike, no previous geared m/bike experience… I'd say, if your a car driver, the key is to re-think what the clutch does. Use the clutch as an on / off like in a car and you'll find it very hard to master slow speed control. Largely ignoring throttle inputs and balancing the clutch either side of it's biting point was most of what my CBT morning consisted of.

learning to corner on a motorbike takes some time, on my CBT I was always running out of road! More a case of letting the bike lean over naturaly, then shifting your weight onto the inside (on a MTB you'd be shifting your weight up onto the outside and pushing the bike further down)

Yeah – I had this debate with my m/bike instructor. As a mtber I was used to weighting the outside pedal / peg of the bike for cornering, but with my upper body mass / CoG on the inside of the turn – but slow speed control turns on the m/bike required leaning the opposite direction to what I regarded as natural

I don't know what it's like now, but a couple of years ago I would have said unrideable… certainly for large parts of the ascent.

Lots of walker erosion protection had been put in making much of the bridleway route a stone staircase – great if you like that sort of thing I suppose, but still not good for getting up the hill.

Ahhh, yes…..

… yeah olde English longbowmen myth

I've spent over 20 25 years checking oil 5-10 minutes after turning off a warm engine…. That's what I was always told!!

Rationale – you never check the oil level on the first pull of the dipstick. If the engine is cold and the oil quite old and gungy, it might have congealed / be quite viscous in the dip tube, so wiping the dipstick and sticking it back in the dip tube might give a false reading if the oil is not warm and fluid in the sump.

This may not be as applicable in today's world of modern synthetic oils etc…

The impression of speed – exactly. Not much point in going super-fast if it doens't feel like it, is there?

since you want the appearance of 'sportyness' without any of the actual attributes of a sporty drive.

No, I want as sporty a car as I can get

One of these then..

Or

OR
how about, you could minimise your gear changes by not bothering to change down in the first place, because you have 3 times the torque of an equivelent petrol and dont NEED to. you also have a stonking great turbo, which would be useless to a petrol driving mortal, but as you have embraced the power of the oily stuff, you know exactly where to blip the accelerator* to get the best out of it.

But that's the whole point of this, err, debate… using torque in that way just doesn't work when it come to handling in the twisties. Drop to third, turn in, balance the car on the throttle – doesn't work in any diesel car I've driven. You either drop off boost and end up with a lumpen response mid corner, or get a whole gobfull of torque that unbalances the chassis.

I (foolishly) tried to use engine torque instead of revs for cornering during a test ride of a litre V twin sports bike a few years ago… Yes the V twin motor picked up nicely from low revs / high gear in a straight line – but trying to exit a corner using the engine's ample torque saw me run wide of my planned line and thanking my luck that nothing was coming the other way.

And I do currently drive a diesel car… great when your on the motorway / dual carriageway, big cruising A road. Acceptable / good straight line acceleration, especially for overtaking, but even after 18 months still can't get used to the lumpy (ie unbalanced) power delivery out of corners, at roundabouts, pulling out of junctions etc.

If it wasn't for the Government's biased revenue collection I'd have a petrol engined vehicle

Photos are funny aren't they?

Scirocco looks great in press photos, but the ones that I have seen in the flesh look all wrong. Like a squished, flattened Golf with a fat @rse (IMO of course).

On the other hand the Alfa MiTo looks really weird and boggle eyed in photos, but is really quite handsome in the metal. If you really want a hot hatch…. the Alfa MiTo GTA is due out sometime soon, and in the proper traditions of Afla GTAs, the MiTo will reportedly be lightened as well as being given more power etc.

Royce UK

Cliff Polton is the chap who runs Royce. I talked to him at some length before ordering my new BB – very helpful he was too.

Surely you meant understeer?

err, thanks – that's exactly what I meant…

… all these years later, and I'm still so angry at that diesel car's poor handling that I can't even express myself properly!!

A sports car to me is about nice handling and a reasonable amount of pace. Kind of like batting along nice singletrack on your mtb rather than getting kitted out for monster DH.

and

I like being able to go in any gear at low revs.

… and there's your basic contradiction..

Sweet handling, well balanced, good pace – the flowing singletrack analogy, is all about light weight and balance – as much the balance of engine revs, speed and chassis handling, as the physical weight balance.

To me, the "in any gear at low revs" is the monster DH bike equivalent – go over, not around…

Both the weight of the diesel engine and the inbalance of revs / torque / chassis grip etc conspire against a good diesel sports car (at least at comparable cost in production cars)

Many years ago (and both chassis, petrol and diesel engine technology has come a long way..), several colleagues had the then new and sporty 306 diesel hatch. Marketed as a diesel warm / hot hatch, these colleagues were convinved it was a far quicker car than my similarly powered, but older and far lighter 309 GTi. I drove both regularly and although the power of the 306 diesel was ok, I had some seriously scary moments in the twisties where the overweight front end just wanted to oversteer the car straight through the nearest hedge.

Good cornering = low weight

Diesel = higher weight than the petrol equivalent

By all means, diesel can give you a very good fast economical cruiser, with plenty of punch for overtaking – but I get the feeling that the sort of sportiness that you are after is best found in a light petrol engined hatch / coupe / sports car

Fitted Royce sq taper / Middleburn RS8 to the HT this year, after 5 years of XT cranks / hollowtech BBs – just got fed up with replacing bearings…

I'm 15st and haven't noticed the Royce / Midleburn set up to be at all flexy

Almost everyone seems to have missed or ignored the main point about Rights of Way…..

…much of the land will be owned by someone. What would your attitude be to Friday / Saturday night closing time kick-outs using your front garden for their kebab and a slash? Should they assertively assume that they can use your property for their leisure??

Hora and the other posters who have commented on the mentality of assertive mtb’ers on inappropriate trails are quite right. It’s not purely about trail use, RoW classification and right to roam where you blwdy well like.

Countyside access does need to be improved, and broadened out to wider user groups. If you are lucky enough to be riding local “cheeky trails” without being challenged (as I do), then great. If challenged, being polite and asking rather than telling, will be a far more constructive approach. I inadvertently ended up talking to a local farmer when riding across his land on an FP – and when asked, he was fine about it. If I’d been mouthy and aggressive, I would have quite rightly been told to bu**er off.

Price of raw materials is the commonly cited reason at the moment

That might have been true 12 months ago, but as the recession has reduced demand on commodities, prices have collapsed. Probably more a case that sales volume has fallen off dramatically so pricing has had to increase to maintain at least some revenue.

I too have recently fitted a Middleburn crankset at what now appears to be good comparative value… Always wanted RS8s on my Ti hardtail, but when I first built it up in 2004 the differential between Middleburn and XT was huge.

Re $/£ price shift and 2010 pricing….

… don’t forget that this year’s price rises are in spite of a VAT drop. Next year VAT goes back up

Put a Middleburn RS8 crankset on a Royce sq taper axle just before MM. Carried an allen key arround for the first few rides just to ease up any slack, but now nice and solid. I’m 15st and can’t notice any flex.

The bike has done 4k miles at the mo – at a cost of 4-5 XT HTII BBs… I’ll post again at 10k to see if the Royce BB has met expectations!!

You need a licence from Natural England

Surgical spirit – works on the ffet anyway

Interesting thoughts…

I’d always ignored 29ers as a freak show, but the Santa Cruz Tallboy caught my eye. At 6’3″ the whole scale up thing makes sense – I’ve always struggled to get the best saddle position and balance between weight to far back / forward etc.

Any one said “Sheriff Fatman”?

My riding mantra…

Although IIRC the “you fat b******” intro was from the beginning of 30 Something, before launching into the energy fest oif Surfin USM…. another piece of anti-social music from my past that really ought to be tracked down for the mp3 player – the casette died many many years ago

Black Dog – Led Zeppelin

Long Way Round was great. Long Way Down was awful – to many egos, tantrums and spoilt luvvies…

Far more inspiring by far is “The Ride”. Search for the DVD (google for “The Ride – Alaska to Patagonia”) – bunch of ordinary folk being guided by Nick and Julia Sanders.

Trip starts at the Arctic Ocean (Prudhoe Bay)and heads south through Alaska, Canada, USA, Mexico, Central America, and then through the Andes through Peru, Chile and Argentina to Tierra del Fuego.

Absolutely brilliant – one of those that can be re-watched again and again.

Pace?