thanks for the advice. I like the idea of the Konas as they are bit more like a normal bike, but perhaps not the most practical.

wind the bobbin up always causes issues.

I don’t really want a proper boxed cargo bike as I need it too for getting to work, to the station etc.

yeah hammax might not be the best option. Maxi do one that looks like it will straddle a bend on a cargo bike I think

there is some crackers in there! Fred and Rose?!!? Its not a forest of dean party!

i obviously don’t know the context of the report, or the site, but it would seem that the report author is trying to determine what are the main contributory factors that caused the collisions. I.e. is there a problem with the road and the way it is used, or was the collision a one off caused by error of the road user of some sort. If there is a problem with the road that is contributing to a pattern of collisons then something can be done. if it is random reasons and isolated in nature then usually not much can be done.

Generally as a road owner (the council / trunk road agency) you would be looking for patterns of collisions to understand that a trend is emerging. A single collision does not constitute a trend.

in the first example they seem to be saying that wherever the car was stationary (side, middle wherever!), the other driver had adequate visibility and should have been able to see it and stop in time. They didn’t stop, hence they appear to be at fault (driver inattention??).

In the second example the pedestrian walking in the road with their back to traffic and hidden by a crest does seem to be deemed at fault (would you think its a safe thing to do, especially if there is a footway available?!).

The report is probably, as someone above said, just listing collisions and using data from the original police reports to state what the main contributory factors are. A report like this will often be being used to determine where is best to spend money on reducing collisions. If these are isolated incidents it is pretty unlikely that they would be considered a cluster site and acted upon.

what I most like about this book is Sophie’s Dad sitting on the chair as they tell him a tiger has eaten and drunk everything in the house (including his beer)….the look on his face says it all.

thanks steve. anywhere you’ve stayed that you could recommend?

yes. I do this buying xmas presents for family who live there. Just go down to the bottom on the page and select the USA flag. You can then just order from Amazon USA. tax and delivery are usually extra.

thanks for advice. I will try some of those timber merchants. Good point too re getting things cut to size….will save me wastage.

call him ‘Butch’!

there’s a book by Tim Woodcock as a guide for doing the C2C on mountain bikes. Someone gave it to me…..I’m from st bees (the start of the walking route)….but have done neither the walk or ride! The guide looks good though from what I know of the Lakes part of it.

Book is still available on Amazon.

ride your $hit bike on the really bad weather days (there usually aren’t that many of them)….and the nice bike at all other times. I have a full size chainset and small cassette on my ancient spesh allez winter bike and it makes good training. Feeling like I’m flying when I get back on my ‘good’ bike.

Brilliant event and well organised and marshalled again as ever. I saw a few bits of rubbish but it was no where near as much cr@p dropped on the route as seen on the Fred Whitton. I imagine there is a lot of missed pockets….but also plenty of lazy ****ts!

was good to see no smashes this year on the route….seemed to have seen quite a few over the last 4 or 5 years.

join either a tri club or a master swimming club that has coached sessions. A tri club will generally be more focused upon just swimming crawl (plus drills etc.), a masters club will be more all round / all strokes (a bit like a kids swimming club but for adults!).

val thorens in france, zermat / cervinia in switz / Italy???

cheers for the advice. Yeah the guy quoting has done other work for us and I know he is trustworthy.

bugger, didn’t need a £2k bill right now though!

the footway is technically part of the council owned ‘highway’ so you need permission from the council to obstruct it. This would usually involve means for pedestrians to get around it safely. report it to the council and they will have an obligation to either get the skip hire company to provide access around it or move it altogether.

failing that just dump all your rubbish in it.

thanks for the advice. hammyuk, are the ones you are selling for a 2012 onwards 3 series touring? how much are you after? I am Bristol based but travel a lot around the southern half of UK.

I’m 5’10 and I have a medium. tried a large and a medium back to back (couple of mates had them already) and the large just didn’t feel right. Rode it at an uplift and a couple of big all day rides in the lakes and it was comfy. I expect if I got a large I would be fine on that too….so try both if you can.

Awesome. Lots of good footage from the Skate Shack. spent many a weekend there.

separated my AC joint in 2012. I think the ligaments etc weren’t totally separated so doesn’t sound as bad as yours. The surgeon in Bristol Royal said it would be best to just leave it and see what happens. The prognosis for do nothing or surgery was about the same. I just had a lot of physio (make sure you do the exercises!!) and it has been fine ever since. Got a bit of a lop sided shoulder though!

I got a roller door fitted by essati (http://www.essatigaragedoors.co.uk/). think it cost me £780 fitted inc VAT with 2 key fobs. I only open it about 3 times a week and so far its been great. Its not the most heavy duty thing, but its fine for what we needed it for.

ebay… 5 for £5 in the end.

bike forums are always more reliable!!

I’ve got into Dammam in the early hours a few times. It can take a very long time to get through immigration if there are a number of flights arriving at once. Never had any experience of immigration being closed though….not heard of it from anyone working there either. Going out of Dammam was always fine for me. The airport is a long way out of the city though. 45-60 mins from Dammam….probably longer to Khobar or Dharan.

ask them if a ‘Road Safety Audit’ has been carried out on the proposed access arrangements. Also worth asking to see the ‘Transport Statement’.

out of interest what county are you in?

if it is a private road there is probably no reasonable way for parking to be either permitted or prohibited. Parking on the public highway is controlled by traffic regulation orders (a legal document that states what controls are on the street). It is this that forms the basis upon which parking enforcement can be made. On private land it would be a civil matter.

If people have been parking there for years I would doubt that they have a right to do so simply because they have been doing so for years. However I understand that there are rights of access gained on the principle of there being permitted access for a time, so there may be something similar for parking, but I would doubt it.

if the land owner wants to have access off this lane to a development site he will probably need to demonstrate in his submission to planning that the site can be accessed safely from the public highway via his lane. This will usually mean that two way traffic can move through the access (usually requiring about a minimum 4.8m road width, and that visibility is unobstructed by parked cars. Also there will need to be enough room for a refuse vehicle to get in and access the properties….lots of parked vehicles may be a problem for all of these!

if the access is going off his lane rather than off the public highway it would be unlikely that the new roads for his development would be adopted by the council. If the council were to adopt it the private lane would also need to be adopted, which would mean the developer bringing that road up to adoptable standard….making it more expensive and complicated for them.

If they have submitted a planning application already you can have a look at it via your council’s website (usually called something like ‘planning portal’).

if you only have a few days avoid taking the slow boat from the thai border near chaing rai down to Luang Probang(!)…..it is slow (2 days), and whilst picturesque is uncomfortable and theres better things to see.

was there in 2008 for a few weeks. Very beautiful country, particularly the more remote places, relaxed culture that (at the time) felt still very much focused around a fairly simple way of life.

we hired a motorbike and did a week of touring about on it. Great way to see some out of the way places…..bit unsafe mind with the bad roads / drivers! Although we went through places where you got the impression that they never saw anyone none Laotian.

its defiantly not a beach type holiday mind you, more of a backpacking type experience. I would second what some of the others have said and try to tie it up with a visit to either Vietnam, Cambodia or Thailand….although if you are time limited not more than one of these. We visited all 4 in the space of 9 or 10 weeks and it felt rushed.

Internal flights are a good idea throughout the region. I don’t think Air Laos has a good safety record though with only some of their fleet allowed to fly in neighbouring airspaces!

thanks. Got in touch with the Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix and Steveo’s mate. Will try the others too. The Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix have an advanced free-ride thing that sounds good.

i.e……any bargains out there!

Also, check out this site for people with diabetes doing lots of different sports. I found it very useful to read other peoples anecdotes about lots of different sports.

http://www.runsweet.com/

Liam, its certainly not the news you want to hear and I know that when I developed type 1 I was totally knocked sideways by it. I was 28-29 also and probably the fittest I have ever been…..ands like you I was lucky to be diagnosed before getting really ill and being admitted with ketoacidosis.

8 years in and its been a long learning curve that has had its ups and downs. I got registered with a very good diabetes specialist nurse in Bristol and generally tried to learn as much as possible about all aspects of it. Getting involved with the systems available to you (i.e. the specialists nurses) is massively important to learn about the condition, how insulin works and how to tweek it, how and when to monitor, learning about the physiology, etc etc etc…..but at the end of the day its about managing it yourself on a daily basis. The more you understand it the easier it becomes to do that, and whilst at the moment you will be looking to the medical professionals for the answers you will eventually find that you become the expert in how your diabetes works. Just takes time.

The biggest issue for me was (and still is to some degree) hypos. I used to suffer from regular, sudden and sometime bad hypos. These aren’t fun, and I’m sure you have now experienced many of them. The good news is the better your control gets and the more you get used to having diabetes, the better equipped you are to deal with them / recognised them / prevent them, and they will therefore become less frequent. Always carry something sugary with you…..I always fill the empty test stick container with jelly beans and keep them in my pocket!

Similar to above advice, I cycle mainly on the road bike now and always carry gels, and never let myself run out of energy. for longer road rides I tend to eat before with very little insulin and then take two bottles – one with water and one with a fruit juice and water mix with say 40grams of carbs in it. I then carry a few gels which I usually start to eat after about 1.5 – 2 hours along with the fruit juice bottle, when the novorapid will be almost used up and therefore my blood sugar may be starting to drop.

Snow sports aren’t difficult – again just test regularly, and carry gels or something similar. I have done a bit of long distance open water swimming that required a bit more thought and a couple of gels stuffed into a swim hat. I surf (not very often unfortuanly) but always test before I go in and only stay in for about 45-60 minutes before coming out again and re-testing. I even travelled around the world 9 months after developing diabetes without too much trouble…..just needed to take a lot of insulin and kit with me.

It shouldn’t stop you doing too much unless you want to drive a truck or fly a plane, but even now there are some determined people who have proved that their control is good enough! Make sure you tell the DVLA and your travel insurance, and make sure you test prior to driving and take breaks when driving to test.

Good luck with it. Its not what you would’ve asked for Christmas I’m sure, and it will take time to get to grips with, but I can vouch for the fact that it really shouldn’t have to restrict your life in any way.

I got a rose xeon crs last year. its great. Customer service was good. I met up with the rep in Bath at the Odd-down track. Because I was unsure about sizes he brought down a van load of bikes of varying sizes and models.
I wasn’t too fussed about customising the spec but did specifically want a bit more range in the gears so could spec an 11-28….and a shorter stem. Bike arrived quickily. I ordered about this time last year when they had a sale on so ended up only paying about £1200 for full carbon, ultegra, Mavic Ksyrium wheels. I did like the look of the canyons but the price of the rose was a big factor. Id recommend them.

Do a google search for ‘mortgages for self employed or contractors’ and plenty of brokers will come up. I did it this way about 5 years ago when I was looking. All the high street brokers and backs weren’t interested but I found something pretty easily in the end and not expensive.

http://www.contractormoney.com – I used these guys.

Rose have a UK agent based down in Wiltshire. I got in touch with him when I bought one (not a CX) and he brought down a van full of bikes to Bath for me to try out in various sizes. Worth doing if you aren’t sure about size / feel but keen on the bike.

CRazy legs, do you have a route log?

why is Bristol so anti-development in general? I’ve lived here for a decade and have never know a city that actually gets so little done in terms of developing infrastructure as Bristol.

metrobus on its own wont solve the transport problems of Bristol but it is a start. the city has been grindingly slow for years due to the mass of cars. making a start on new mass transit infrastructure is surely a good idea? once this part is complete other projects can feed into it to improve connectivity all over the city.

People always seem to be banging on about resurrecting old rail lines, but buses are infinitely more flexible modes when you seek to develop a city wide network of fast cheap travel. (Although granted Metrobus isn’t cheap!)

there was a huge investment in the area pre 2006 when they had the Olympics in the milky way ski area. That said I haven’t skied there, but have skied linked resorts.

Go. Its a great place. Stayed at Bohinj years ago (the next lake / village). The area is really beautiful. Lots of outdoor activities to do. not sure how cheap anymore. Ljubljana is also worth a visit. The centre looks a lot like Prague…without the stag dos and strip clubs.

I got one fitted from Essati about a month ago for £700.00. Pleased with the results.

got a petrol version (1.6) as we didn’t think we would do enough miles to warrant the extra spend on buying a diesel (2nd hand). its pretty good as a family car. plenty of space, good on motorways and not too underpowered.
fairly dull though as a car and yes the back seats are not comfortable for an adult.

Overall though id say they are pretty good.

In Saudi at the moment (Dammam). come here couple of times a year for the last few years. Its ok. Wouldn’t want to live here (or anywhere in the Mid East) as id miss many things about the UK / western life….but absolutely fine for a couple of weeks at a a time.
security situation in major cities (and provincial places I have been to is fine and it appears crime is very low (tough punishments!). Its always sensible to follow FCO advice though wherever you plan on travelling to. People are generally hospitable and friendly.

If its only for a few days Id say give it a go to see what its like, and form your own opinion….rather than the many STW armchair travellers!!!
Its also an interesting place to do business, and contacts you make here could be lucrative (if that’s any benefit to you!).