Excellent suggestions, thanks!

Cheers for the input everyone. We don’t need somewhere super-posh but would prefer to avoid the neds, so this is useful background :)

We’ll be spending quite a bit of time up there in the next few weeks as we try to get a feel for where would be nice. I’m guessing anywhere along the hillfoots road will have decent access to mtb trails. Will check out links above.

Any particularly horse-y places up there?

Cheers!

B

So I couldn’t resist trying to calculate it… if I assume two semi circles either end of a 50m straight, the red line is pi metres longer than the 250m black, and the blue approx 5 pi (15.7m) longer. So ride the red and you’ll be 2 bike lengths behind the guy you tried to pass but couldn’t.

The geometry is more complex than that, for example the banking is steeper at the end of the turn than it is at the entry, but I don’t care that much.

EDIT: just refreshed and saw all the posts above :)

EDIT again: using 0.9m for the width of the sprinters lane, its 5.7m longer.

Thanks, good resource

I’ve ridden the WHW S to N in 2 days and loved it. Considering the HT400 but also looking to dodge the midges for a wee bit!

Thanks for the thoughts…

Can’t see anything that has changed. I thought it might be that the oven below has been on, something had heated up… but it’s cool now and still not working.

Have tried various amounts of water and various positions.

Bet it works tomorrow, just to confuse me.

Will there be lap times posted? I’d like to know exactly how slow I was compared to solo singlespeed one-legged riders…

Update: it worked. Drained the cylinder only partially, got a good slug of rusty water out and taps now running splutter free. Thank you!

Shower pressure still poor though. Bummer.

Unvented

I’m not aware of the tank ever becoming too hot, at least, touching the outside of the inch-thick foam insulation never feels any more than pleasantly warm?

From all hot water taps
Flat is all on one level, hot water tank is next to bathroom, kitchen tap is 10 yards away
Hot water tank has 2 immersion elements, one of which is almost never used (connected to a booster switch)
No work done recently
Shower pressure has gotten worse recently, feels like spluttering has too but not sure

I had one in about 2008 – great when it was working, but it went through bearings extremely quickly (they’re all tiny) and the shock misbehaved once in the 18mths I had it. Flexed laterally when pushing it hard (Morzine!) but great on less hardcore stuff.

I’m totally in. Mayhem whetted my appetite for endurance mud racing, and I suspect there might be less walking involved at Drumlanrig…

thx

Just to add to the experiences here…

I had an acutely herniated L5-S1 a few years ago. Diagnosed (eventually) by x-ray.

It crippled me; I could barely walk and certainly couldn’t ride a bike.

I rested for a month, got no better, saw a chiro locally, got spine cracked and manipulated and told I’d be fine, got no better, insisted on an x-ray with a different chiro, got diagnosed, saw a chiropractor on Harley St (2/3 times per week, £55 per 15 mins) and after about 3 months I was improving, after 6 months I was back to normal. BUT I do not think the chiropractor helped at all, and would strongly recommend against it.

This is based on my subsequent reading about the evidence for Chiropractic and its efficacy – see the book ‘Trick or Treatment’ by Ernst & Singh and the plain-language systematic reviews by the Cochrane Collaboration. I used to think a chiro was a ‘back doctor’ – they’re nothing of the sort.

Instead, it’s more likely that I got better through (1) time, (2) the exercises I did to boost my core strength and (3) the placebo of paying loads of money to see a nice, confidence-boosting guy regularly.

I have now completely recovered (touch wood!) and those 12-ish months of hell are a distant memory.

I have no idea what will work for you, but take the advice of doctors, ask for the evidence that a treatment is likely to work and stay positive!

Best of luck mate!

Removed a kitchen a few weeks back.

Best game was ‘how few hammer blows to dismantle a unit’?

Two was the answer :D

MrSmith – fair enough.

It might not be complete, but I’ve never known it to be wrong. As a starter for getting above 0.5Mbps, the OP could still have a look!

We did it South to North in 2 days and loved it. Doing it in 1 day you’d be knacked by the time you got to Devils staircase etc… maybe not so enjoyable then? We considered North-South but went with convention in the end.

Agree that the OP’s issue is most likely rubbish broadband speed (note that’s different from rubbish WiFi signal). You can sit as close to the router as you like to improve WiFi strength, but if the line going into the router is too slow you’ll get no benefit.

If you’re getting less than 2Mbps I’d definitely look elsewhere for a broadband provider. For reference, my city-centre flat got 0.2-0.8Mbps on Sky and now gets 20Mbps with Talk Talk. That’s fast enough to do anything instantly.

There are complicated reasons for this (Talk Talk are LLU on my exchange, Sky weren’t) but you could do worse than checking samknows to see what your options are.

As above, it’s expensive but you won’t be short of options. We used the wee place by Lost Lake – Cross Country Connection – because they were very close to where we stayed (Chalet Luise). They did us a multi-day discount and were happy to let us take DH bikes one day and trail bikes the next, and were reasonably tolerant of us swapping brake levers and pedals!

Cheers bearGrease, exactly the ideas I’m looking for.

Sorry, hadn’t occurred to me that asking opinions on a commercial issue was bad form. I guess so.

I do appreciate the comments! In particular I’ll have a closer look at Office 365 as the MS branding may be an easier sell to clients, should work well with regular office docs and work across mobile platforms.

Also gonna look at Spideroak, Jungledisk, Apex and Hardsoft.

It is Friday evening, time to switch the work brain off perhaps.

B

@cynic-al: karma ;)

Thanks

I guess my preferred approach would be to go with web-centric, simple options where possible.

I’m very pro-cloud, but some contracts may prevent us from storing client data on a non-in-house drive. There’s a perceived risk – whether or not that’s valid or not, I don’t know. This may be pretty fundamental to how cloud-based we can be, or if we’re always going to need an in-house server. How easy would it be to build an ‘in-house cloud’ with syncing functionality?

The majority of our clients – actually, every one I can think of, use Word and Excel. Hence we need to, too. Frustrates the hell out of me, but I can use them well enough.

Oracle Apex – will check it out.

How about mail – exchange server or Gmail with desktop client and appropriate domain?

I do appreciate the responses guys, pushing my knowledge which is exactly what I need.

Cheers

Bob

Hmm unfortunately the reason I’m asking is that we’re trying to get away from the solution our SME IT provider has given us – too complex, too many issues, nowhere near the functionality I expect given what I can do with Dropbox and my iPad, and too high a fixed cost!

Hmm ok fair comment – more specific questions then!

I use Dropbox and Google Docs personally and love the sharing/cross-device functionality, but we’d have concerns about security on Dropbox and GDocs doesn’t have the functionality we need from Excel. Assuming we’d mostly be using MS Office docs, what good solutions are there for sharing and (preferably automated) backing up?

Encryption, antivirus, VPN, firewall – what sort of setups should I be considering here? (Truecrypt I will look into)

If we run exchange mail, do we need our own physical server?

In terms of laptops, is it worth spending £hundreds extra on Thinkpads or will a bog standard Acer do?

If we decided to go the ‘bring your own device’ route, how easy would it be to maintain security? By that I mean own laptops and/or own iPhones/iPads/Blackberries.

Cheers!

Bob

Arrrgh spend £0.5m on visitor centres and £4m on trails – THAT will boost visitor numbers.

Horse riders are very similar to us lot – after all they’re just people out doing something they enjoy. I’ll also bet there are plenty of us on here who spend as much on bikes as riders do on horses!

Horse riders also have to put up with bad driving and folks who don’t know their highway code. No one is going to choose a busy road if they can possibly avoid it – it’s extremely stressful for horse and rider.

They have just as much right to be on the road, at ANY time of day, as you or I in a car or on a bike. There are FAR fewer options of routes for horses than there are bikes, so road riding is inevitable.

Bear in mind that even the best horse and rider can be spooked by cars or freehubs or plastic bags. Pass with caution, say hello, and chill out!

We had a bit of an epic round Ben Alder last year – misjudged our speed by about 200% and watched the sun go down (beautiful) from the top of a mountain. Then rode 25km back to the car in the dark through boggy part-frozen snow/ice with no lights, no more food, no more tubes and totally exhausted. Oh and Dave rode over a dead deer leg, eeewwww.

…then drove to Aviemore, were greeted by the giant neon flashiness of that restaurant and OH MY GOD did we enjoy that buffet.

Had the same thing recently when my dentist/fiancee took out an impacted molar. I wouldn’t stress – probably bits of bone that have broken off since the extraction. They’ll make their way to the surface over a week or two (amazing what the body can do!) and will come out of their own accord. Worth going back to the dentist as she’ll be able to get them out rather easier than you will yourself :)

In my Camelbak I always carry a space blanket, a phone, some electrical tape and an energy gel.

Have used the tape plus a buff/tissues (and clean water from camelback) a couple of times for gashes on shins and palms.

Agree with much of the sentiment on here that scrapes can be cleaned up after a shower.

PS also used to work as a first aider, qualification long since expired but most of the important knowledge retained!

We have a communal dish (149 flats in the building) and we can only get a single feed, meaning with Sky+ you can only do one thing at a time i.e. can’t watch one thing while recording another.

Not a massive problem obviously, and don’t know if that applies to all communal setups or just ours. Worth asking the question though.

B

I have an airport express (£80ish?) with a wee Bose wave unit (£200 off ebay). Sounds brilliant, and I use it with mac, ipad and iphone.

I’d recommend the airport express plus speakers of your choice just for the flexibility.

Really? I had thought about 12hrs by bus Delhi-Manali.

Hmm.

Hmm might be interested… can you send me a few more pics?

bob_g_05 hotmail com

Thanks!

B

Also, if anyone knows of a decent map of the valley trails… last time I just got lost lots!

Currently using tarp and 4 bits of washing line to tie it down. Looking to upgrade!

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/skye

Oh yeah, shoulda hit search…

I’m also looking for options on Skye… we’ll be riding Sligachan next weekend (it’s brilliant) and am not sure what to do on the Sunday.

I’ve had a play about the Quaraing before and it’s fun in places but extremely challenging to unrideable in others.

Ideas, anyone?

Definitely for.

Gadaffi is using superior military hardware against civilians and a band of democracy-seeking rebels. We have a moral duty to intervene – we’ll deal with the issue of setting a precedent later.

The fact that we (the West) have supported or supplied him in the past does not change the fact that he and his regime are murderous suppressors of democracy. Our past behaviour is our own problem, not the people of Libya’s.

I’m delighted to see the UN take this stance – even if it is about 5 days late.

I love that first video, but in the interests of fairness…

http://www.xckd.com/850/

My gran knows the offside rule (demonstrated at dinner last night) and I had no idea she’d ever seen a game of football.