I’m sure he’s not easy to work with.  But if that is a bigger problem now than since they last renewed his contract it’s their environment and not his personality which has changed.

They can’t reasonably have the hump with him because his multi-discipline riding rather than focussing on the road leads to compromise.  Because that’s *precisely* what they signed up to do.  He made it clear in pretty much every public statement he made before he turned road pro that he wanted a team which would support his varied ambitions. And they quickly extended his contract after a season of multi-disciplinary riding and compromise on the road.  In fact they hailed his versatility when they announced that renewal.  And all of it was long term project, not least the grand tour thing (cf Geraint’s trajectory) which is also subject to massive uncertainty (cf all the other riders in the history of cycling who have targeted that).

Here’s Brailsford:  “Tom’s an incredibly talented bike racer but what sets him apart is his versatility…The length of the relationship we’ve agreed with Tom gives us the opportunity to enable his ambitious, multi-disciplined goals”.

(source https://www.pinkbike.com/news/tom-pidcock-signs-new-5-year-contract-with-ineos-grenadiers.html)

Ineos is falling apart.  They were very good at one thing for quite a long time. It was boring and soulless and let’s be honest smelled a bit fishy but Brits (including me, for a long time) forgave that because of results.  They can’t do that any more, and it turns out they aren’t any good at other things.  The wins have tried up.  The big money isn’t flowing any more.  They lost key personnel. They are no longer the favoured plaything of the big boss.  Bad managers are flailing, including resorting to public vindictiveness.  This public rift with Pidcock is just a symptom.  I don’t know if he’s a nice guy.  I like watching him ride but I don’t think I’d want to be his boss or teammate.  But they are an employer and in this instance they are being a shitty one:  they chose him, committed to him long term, threw the money at him.  They can’t now turn around and blame his personality, his versatility, he results etc etc which are all more or less what they signed up and paid for.

Island Peak and/or Mera Peak
(depending on if you trust Nepalese emergency response infrastructure)

there’s nothing “special” about curve, it’s just a free intermediary between your bank (which doesn’t cooperate with rings and watches) and your ring or watch (which needs a a card which will cooperate).

if you prefer to have to top up, or want to manage the balance available on your watch/ring I guess it’s inferior.  but if you just want a seamless connection to your account, no topping up required, as if your bank cooperated in the first place, it’s works and it’s simple.

Even the rather spartan info in the OP contradicts the above 2 posts!

This sounds like a job for an EQ app you like (without that feature) combined with one of those fiddly settings app like Tasker or Easer.

EDIT this is really just a version of citizenlee’s suggestion I now realise.

It doesn’t have a full UK banking licence. It has a weird cult like online following. Most of its functions are available with normal banks. The app is a labyrinth.  It’s premium offerings are hilariously bad value.  The virtual and disposable cards are pretty cool.  The kids’ allowance (and requesting money) works very smoothly. Your requirements are pretty niche but surely your main income should be going into a USD bank account and no doubt one which lets you get at the money as easily/cheaply as revolut exists?  You can pay the taverna with a broken machine without putting all your salary in revolut!

km 0 12:15, first gravel 13:35-13:41, the approach to that last cluster of gravel segments 16:00-16:15, finish around 17:00

I think this is an “all day” or “last hour” day.

When I was at school they used to expect us to eat HOT scotch eggs.

rucksack. then a shower.

or find a way to ride unencumbered – leave it at work etc.

That’s weird.  It might be fixed in an update at some point.  What phone?

Can you sit it on or mount it in front of an aircon vent?

Thanks @cougar.  £2/month retained, you just reversed the price rise for us.  (Noone in the family has ever even listened to an audiobook on spotify)

This is all v helpful thank you

I forgot to say:  I can’t take it with me as excess baggage, emirates want £££ (Tracey’s Air Canada cost is making me cry)

I’ve been through this, but years ago.

Lots of adverts, as similar as possible to my car (esp: colour, mileage) with higher prices but also ads showing how inferior a replacement could be bought for their initial offer (i.e. higher mileage, older models etc for the money being offered), worked for me.

Since then, selling prices have got a lot closer to advertised prices as well.

Smarty £8 / 50GB.  Signal is better than o2 where we use them but ymmv.

id do seem to have the best deals for a trustyworthy provider at the moment, £7 for 24GB.

Like everyone says easiest is to use a debit card on a current account with bank that charges no fees and uses direct rate: nationwide, virgin, chase, starling, monzo, first direct, probably more.  Easy enough to open one specially if necessary.

Currensea is pretty good if you bank elsewhere and can’t be bothered opening a new account.  It converts and then direct debits (a few days later) in GBP from your existing current account.  No fees but the rate is a bit worse than those above. Better than “taking the hit” though and easy to set up.

HSBC Global Money is similar rates to Currensea (i.e. a bit worse than the bank accounts above) but you have to move the money into the account yourself.  But that’s a faff – if you do that, why no just get a full bank account elsewhere for the better rate? Wise works in similar fashion (but with better rate, like those banks, I think).

Revolut is a weird cult, not a bank, and is more expensive than the banks above. (I do actually use it for the kids’ pocket money.  Not for travel though.  And people recommend it for *everything*, often claiming its better than an actual bank, for no good reason.)

Clarity is good, best credit card for this, but no better than the debit cards above for purchases and you’ll pay interest on cash withdrawals.

If your new Virgin 1gb service comes with their new Hub 5x you need to be careful about mesh.  This will definitely be the case if it’s suddenly become available in your neighbourhood.
The hub 5x does not yet have modem mode.  And there are some signs it might never get it.
So if you choose a mesh which has to act as the router, at best you’ll end up with double NAT.

Do you have an o2 simcard? That gives you volt, which makes the virgin wifi extenders free. So you might as well try them in the first instance.  What are you doing with your existing router which you don’t think the virgin hardware will do?

You best solution if you are already drilling holes and running cable is wired access points – cheaper than mesh, compatible with everything.

The cat 5 / 5e joke is that cat 5e is absolutely fine for these purposes but cat 5 (no e) definitely isn’t.

(There’s no such thing as the high hedge act.  This is not legal advice)

You asked about enforcement.  If you win, a remedial notice is served on the neighbour.  The council determines the content – but they can cover action now (to remedy the problem) and action in future (to stop it happening again).   They can’t require the removal of the hedge, only cutting it back to 2m.

This would be a local land charge (i.e. bind future purchasers of the land, and therefore will be reported on by future prospective buyers’ solicitors).  It is a criminal offence to violate one of these notices.  Would violation be enforced?  Who knows. It is also possible for the council to enforce a notice to enter the land and do the work themselves if the property owner doesn’t comply.    Does that happen?  Who knows.

Can any of that put your neighbour in financial difficulty?  Yes.  If they don’t comply (e.g. because they can’t afford  it) and they are prosecuted it the penalty is … a fine.  And the obligation to sort the hedge would persist, so that expense would remain.

You mention the 2m height, but I want to make sure you realise that isn’t a height limit for the hedge, but for listening to your complaint.  The test – which can only be applied to a hedge over 2m tall – is whether it your “reasonable enjoyment” of you neighbouring property is being “adversely affected” i.e. a hedge under 2m is not caught even if it affects your enjoyment in that way, and a 5m tall hedge is not caught unless it affects your enjoyment in that way.  Nothing in your post meets the test, although I realise your unstated reasons might well do so. But “it’s tall and I don’t like it” doesn’t suffice.

Finally – FWIW I get why you asked here, but anecdotes (other than ones about neighbours hating each other) are unlikely to be helpful.  Practice (like the fees…) might vary wildly between council areas.

If you are going eurotunnel (I think they check) and you do want Emovis and littlerob’s discount is not even better, you can get a discount. Just google it.

They are all “official”, run by different motorway companies (some directly, bip&go is a bit less obvious but it’s just Sanef) and offer a basically identical service.

Just get the one with the best offer when you buy, or whichever is most convenient.  e.g. Fulli (=APPR) has no application fee at the moment.  Cheapest, assuming there’s an “offer” (there usually is) is often ATMB because you can collect it for free at the péage near Annemasse,  but that’s no good if you want it for the journey down.

Emovis is expensive – £10 a year “management fee”, plus £7/month in use (capped at £14/year).  None of the French ones cost anything near this. And emovis *do* charge currency exchange fees (2%, on a mid market exchange rate) which is worse than lots of cards. I appreciate some people prefer the convenience of a UK supplier, but cost is really not a reason to go with emovis.

On the one hand – it’s probably about right, definitely passes a sanity check.
On the other hand – the price difference between electricians we’ve used is more than 100% so worth shopping around, esp if you can get recommendations you can trust.

Baby wipes

Still f’in raining

also:  momondo, cheapflights.co.uk

(on all of these sites, make sure you satisfy yourself about whatever agent they send you to)

Honestly, totally worth it.  It feels dirty, but it makes for a totally different experience. You’ll spend more time on rides and stopping for a rest/coffee  doesn’t take time away from your day any more.
It does take some thought/effort to use effectively though (including sometimes physically queuing for one ride while you virtually queue for another)

My MIL has mobile broadband (£20/month with Three) for her internet.

And plugged into that a Linksys PAP2T (£30 on ebay?) with an account at Andews and Arnold (£1.something a month).

And plugged into that the same phone she has used for years.

We even ported her old landline number across (although she doesn’t actually live in that zone any more).

Calls are chargeable, but really not very much.

One caveat – it’s not maintenance free.  You’d have to set up the VOIP initially (A&A instructions are v good).  And Three once pushed an update to the mobile router which broke incoming calls on the VOIP and I had to do some forum digging/fettling in the settings to get the phone back online.

For modest (relative to the loan) additional borrowing, we found lender direct (TSB) worked well – even in non standard circumstances. Let’s say I half-expected a refusal, but being able to discuss directly was extremely helpful.

Name and shame the travel agent.

Reputable online travel agents are fine – as long as you know what the extra costs might be (e.g. they superimpose their own change fees on the ticket, and the airline won’t talk to you direct).

You can normally identify the disreputable ones because the force a call back or don’t take enough info for a real booking when they take that first payment.

You need to be careful which of the sites you are referred to you actually use.

Is it auto-filling into a password field (as ****) and then you press “log in”?
If so, it’s stored in the password manager.
If not, if you just go there and are automagically logged in, it’s not stored somewhere (well it is, kind of, but not like you mean).   The fact you are authenticated in all those services is stored. If you log out, you’ll need the password again to log back in on the device you log out on.

roof rack. and don’t cheap out on the bike carriers.

If you want alternatives to the woods,  just wander around.  These shops don’t exactly hide themselves.

And you are describing a need for a K2 Passport (and lots of other options, admittedly)

Transpennine Express – for commuting with my bike the ritual is a whatsapp chat (!) the day before in which I tell them my train times and they tell me they can’t access that system right now…but to keep the exchange of messages in case anyone asks (they never do).

What’s the BT TV Box intended for?  It might well be redundant alongside a smart TV.

Don’t worry.  Just do what they say.  They get you to fix at home in the first place even under warranty anyway.

There’s only a set number of fixes for mechanical faults, all are documented, they’ll narrow it down through a couple of emails and videos (maybe they already have).  Basically, it might take time, they might ask you to get surprisingly hands-on, they aren’t fobbing you off.  

They do check.  Not always though.
Ts&Cs say (I can’t remember the detail) that they can charge you, retrospectively to original payment method, full one way fare if you don’t use the return portion of a cheap return – where “full one way fare” means something expensive.

I haven’t done it for years, too chicken, but if you insist, best way is to book using a UK address “out” and a French address “back” (and like @mercuryrev says – not using reg number).

Cycle to work generally makes these cheaper than buying direct – but it’s very rare to see them simply priced cheaper than buying direct
FWIW I built mine with 2x 105 for gravel/commuting/family rides and I love it.  Fun on almost any surface.

check one night hotel + full trip parking via holiday extras.  weirdly Can be cheaper than just parking.  But pay attention to what parking you are getting.

some are definitely better than others – i.e. ones marked as suitable are sometimes rubbish in reality, like your one.

but Ikea are nicely priced and work perfectly.

Catgill at Bolton Abbey has some, Devonshire Arms just down the road for food.  (Neither are cheap though)

Rammy is indeed damp.  It is worse than some nearby alternatives and gets me down sometimes but over time I always realise it’s really the only down side and is massively outweighed by the huge countervailing advantages of living in this location.

I’m sure there are better places to live – but (as @binners has already indicated in terms I endorse wholeheartedly) they aren’t in the soulless hellholes of Cheshire.  Elsewhere South of Manchester?  Maybe – but we’re talking hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of km…

Sun just came out.  With your constraints, you should move here.  Recommend what you have/did etc etc.  And if you insist on exploring South to North next week, don’t wear yourself out and get here bored/hangry/done for the day etc etc

@multi21 I lay in bed last night listening to my 11yo have exactly that conversation , but with added subplots involving various colours and brightness % numbers, with google for about 20 minutes.

This stuff is fun, and I love what people with more patience than me ( hi @zilog6218 !) do with it.  But even branded versions are not exactly mature/reliable/intuitive yet