Tom Simpson, first British road champion. Didn’t work out so well in the end though :-(

Not new stuff, just repairs.

Last bit of the descent down to the bungalows, from the log onwards, has been resurfaced, as has the middle bit of the last descent down to Abergorlech. And Abz has erected a panel fence all round his bungalow, presumably to keep the hordes of paparazzi away :-)

I’m pleased the wind farm isn’t going ahead here

Not definite, but without a grid connection it doesn’t make any sense, so unlikely.

should be a good one tomorrow!

Brutal

Good stage today, loads going on

That’s a spoiler friendly way of putting it :-) Fortunately my afternoon conference was cancelled, so I’m glued to the race.

see many huskys round here being exercised on a lead…

The problem with exercising huskys off the lead is they tend to disappear over the horizon never to be seen again. Huskys don’t do recall, as a couple of local residents discovered the hard way. One ended up shot, the other was eventually tracked down 15 miles away.

And now wants to ride XC at the Olympics …
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/olympic-games-slovak-cycling-association-seeks-wildcard-mtb-place-for-sagan/%5B/url%5D

Doesn’t even have a cafe

There’s now The Shed at the Byrgwm car park, for excellent burgers, cakes etc. But the lack of a proper gift shop still makes it rubbish, and not worth bothering with. And it’s always raining, which is what causes all that erosion :wink:

My understanding is that the Brechfa East wind farm is unlikely to go ahead. RWE were refused permission for the 2nd wind farm on Llanllwni Mountain and the study for the possible routes for the grid connection showed it to be prohibitively expensive for just the Brechfa East development alone, so RWE have withdrawn their planning application for the grid connection. There’s been no definitive statement about the actual wind farm development itself.
The new route could just be to do with the felling being planned for that bit of the forest, but no one I’ve spoken to really knows (which is about standard for the FC/NRW).

I wouldn’t use Hope skewers to barbecue a kebab, let alone hold my wheels on. (Yes, I’ve had some bad experiences with them!)

I have to say the most bizarre thing I saw was at the top of the climb a large number of roadies were getting INTO cars for the trip down rather than ride back down

What about those rock climbers then? Deliberately climbing up the most difficult bits then walking back down. Weird :-)

are we required to register to vote for the EU referendum, over and above normal voter registration?

No

21.84 (from Mojo) worked fine for me with an RP23 in a Spesh enduro frame that takes a nominal 22. 0.16mm is a very small difference and there’s no noticeable play.

BC have made some odd choices about entering races – and not just on the road / track.

Indeed Pro XC Racer Jenny Copnall Speaks Out At British Cycling[/url]

So we reached 2007 and a home World Championships at Fort William. BC did not select any senior women for the race, while selecting various male riders based on both domestic and international results. One rider had not even raced outside the UK that year. I was told that I had been selected to ride the relay on the Thursday. When I discovered that the UCI had a rule stating that all riders in the relay must also be racing in their own races (in other words, you could not bring a relay-specific squad), I thought BC would relent. Instead Dave Brailsford, then Head of Performance alongside Shane Sutton, emailed me back to answer this query. Yes, he said, that was indeed the rule and BC would enter me into the World Championship Senior Women’s race. However, they would withdraw me from the race after the relay on the grounds of being unwell or injured. I found this unbelievable. Not only did BC not want any women to race at their home World Championships, they were prepared to break UCI rules to prevent that from happening.

Unbelievable

towzer – thank you, that’s interesting

A quick look at their last full accounts from 2011 (yes, it’s a slow day at work) show a total expenditure of £92,980 of which £1,946 went on signage, maps and tour, £751 on repairs and maintenance and £58,305 on ‘administration and operations’.

Becoming even more skeptical :-)

So that’s a FAIL then?

Reckon so

The main route and Loops of the West Midlands Byway section, some of which is still to be signposted due to delays caused by Foot and Mouth

I actually reckon he’d beat Schurter on most courses.

Schurter rode the 2014 Tour de Romandie and finished 17 minutes down on GC, ahead of some pretty respectable riders.

A good ride is from Slaidburn, over the Cross of Greet to Low Bentham then back over Bowland Knotts and thence back via Stocks reservoir to Slaidburn.

Yes, done that the other way round. Being mobbed by curlews on the Cross of Greet was memorable!

Um … you so can’t actually see any of the routes on the website, only buy a paper map.

THE RURAL ECONOMY ALSO BENEFITS: BY MORE THAN £100 MILLION PER YEAR WHEN THE ROUTE IS COMPLETE AND 800 JOBS WILL BE CREATED

Colour me skeptical.

Slaughter a goat and smear the still warm blood on the handlebars whilst chanting a prayer to Baphomet.

Or hose the bike down, sling my kit in the washing machine and have a shower.

All depends on my mood really.

The Hark To Bounty in Slaidburn
The Cobbled Corner Cafe in Chipping
The ice cream/coffee van at Sykes in the Trough of Bowland

Some of the greatest road cycling in England round there IMO

Brechfa’s fine, I was out last night. Little bit muddy on some parts of the black, but that’s par for the course :-)
And The Shed will be open in Byrgwm car park 11 – 5 Sat and Sun selling their excellent burgers and cake!

He writes for the Guardian, he’s probably worried about everything

He should have written a proper Guardian article, bemoaning the fact that Strava is the preserve of middle-class white males and demanding the government take action to increase it’s usage by differently-abled LBGT ethnic minorities.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be!

Yep, whinging about the good old days isn’t good as it used to be in the good old days.
27″ wheels, steel chainsets, oilskin capes, canvas saddle bags, Ever Ready lights, nailing your shoe plates to your leather shoes (continues in this vein until nurse arrives with my medication)

As an old duffer who was a roadie back when it was as fashionable as leprosy I can kind of see where he’s coming from. Chaingangs used to be for training and how fast you were was measured by the number of points on your license or your TT times. If you went out on a club run you were expected to ride as a group and respect the other riders, not burn them off at every opportunity. There’s now a new generation who do everything except race and the chaingang has become an end in itself and the place where prove your speed.

Next thing you know I’ll be complaining about how the music at gigs is too loud these days and they can’t even play their instruments properly :-)

Oy I got there first.

My mistake. Just upholding the great STW tradition of not bothering to read any previous posts.

Films or programs where they do a computer search and the computer displays all the possible search candidates as its checking through them

And when someone transfers vast amounts of money to another account it shows a progress bar as the ill-gotten gains are moved, apparently one dollar at a time.
Whenever I log into my computer now I always announce over my shoulder “I’m in!”

Having spent the weekend playing around in the forest with a couple of Rubber Queens, I can’t see what all the fuss is about.

The top bit is steep, loose scree and the path is indistinct to say the least. It’s an accident blackspot and there have been fatalities there.

My new underpants have a label inside saying in large red letters KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE. Whew, that was a narrow escape.

Compare the cost of the frame with the cost of the mudguards. That will tell you which you should be drilling holes in!

I think you need another Laager…

Sennelager, probably the worst lager in the world (old joke for the benefit of any ex-BAOR types)

I’ve heard of people having them taken off them

Happened to me, nothing to do with airline policy (or logic), seems to be down to the whim of the security jobsworth on duty.
Flying out to Canada with a load of fishing gear, including a self-inflating life jacket powered by a C02 cartridge, I was made to remove the cartridge as it was ‘hazardous’.
Once on the plane the safety briefing explained that under every seat was a self-inflating life jacket, powered by a C02 cartridge.

Production – That last batch went horribly wrong, we’d better bin the lot.

Marketing – No, we’ll just double the price and pretend it was deliberate.

The trouble with chamomile tea is that it contains Dihydrogen Monoxide

Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.

http://www.tftuned.com/wickens-soderstrom-tf-tuned-no-4-tuned-suspension-lubricant/p3152 ? Contains Nano Particles!

Not the nicest weather for bike racing. May be neutralized?

Rock Shox still sell the Revelation in 26er straight steerer

Yes, just got a pair of 26″ Revelation RCT3 Solo Air 140mm with fast black uppers for £375 from Merlin, which I thought was pretty good.

Bunch of luddites. The future is the Smart Spoon.

Connie Cheng and Leonardo Bonanni have developed the world’s first “Intelligent Spoon”. It’s equipped with sensors to measure temperature, acidity, salinity, and viscosity. Download the recorded data to any computer via a cable for furthur processing.
Apart from consolidating measurements that are normally done by an array of equipments into a single spoon, the information obtained can be used to advise the users what their next step should be; for example, it tells the user if there is not enough salt in the brine prepared to make pickles.

Read more at http://tech-planets.blogspot.com/#q3MzBSlrETgu68St.99

what is your view on the 5.5mm allen key?

Just spent ages looking for one. I found 187 5mm keys, but no 5.5, which I probably put in A Safe Place for when I needed it.

I love Torx keys, they give me a sense of moral superiority whenever I use one. Hey, I’m an engineer, not assembling some IKEA furniture!

I can see your mistake Northwind. Should have been ‘So-called ISIS BB’.