In today, off for rest of week (off to a family wedding tomorrow).

Our office is quite busy – we are a holiday company so this is the start of our busiest period for bookings.

Weather and family committments have completely banjaxed any attempts at getting out on the bike over Christmas – Sod’s law that today is the first day of decent weather for a while. Am gazing longingly out of the window at Dartmoor and wishing I could get out for a play.

I would have taken today off as leave but needed to save some holiday and am on call for my secondary job with the fire service today anyway so couldn’t venture too far.

Hoping I can get out for a ride over the weekend.

As above, I do think it’s interesting that anyone critical of him is seen as a member of the loony left.

At worst he’s bigoted and ignorant, at best he’s either really badly informed or coldly manipulative. Either way those are hardly desirable traits for a future world leader.

Oh, and on terrorism, he’s a hypocrite (apologies if already posted):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/donald-trump/12042955/Donald-Trump-attended-New-York-Sinn-Fein-dinner-before-IRA-London-terror-attack.html

..and don’t get me started on his support for the NRA (yes, I know he’s not unique in that)…twelve thousand gunshot homicides in the US compared to 40 from domestic terrorism, three hundred mass shooting a year (only one allegedly by Islamic extremists) and he tells the country Muslims are the main problem for national security… if ISIS really want to kill Americans in industrial quantities then they could do worse than throwing a wedge of money into the NRA campaign coffers.

He makes me really angry. Can you tell?

Happy to say this is my backyard :-)

Suspension you say? Pah!

Good work.

I grew up on the island (Llanrhyddlad) and still visit from time to time.

When you get around to it, the network of lanes in the top NW corner stretching from Llanfaethlu along to Rhydwyn / Church bay, up to Llanfairynghornwy and onto Cemlyn are worthy of an explore. Very wild up there – some cracking coastal scenery, a few sharpish climbs (for Anglesey) and some fun but admittedly cheeky offroad options.

Same goes for the bit just inland of Lligwy around Bodafon.

Have happy memories of cutting my off-road teeth pre-mtb bombing around Parys Mountain (some terrifying drops in places) and sections of the coast path on completely unsuitable BMXs and mutant home-brewed “crossers”.

Locally, it’s not particularly challenging or technical but I love the last half of this, even better with the dog.

for which the craze like single speed will soon be over

Is it? Why wasn’t I told?

My 1×1 and Karate Monkey would probably be joined by a fatbike (ICT, Caribou or Mukluk) and some flavour steel framed gravel / tourer (Vaya or similar)

But realistically I seem to be in n-1 mode at the moment – I barely have time to ride the 2 bikes I already have, my current bikes cover all I need and if I’m honest the Karate Monkey would probably be fine as my only bike.

We made an 8 hour drive from Devon up there last Easter with dog and 5 year old stayed in Seahouses. We loved it. Did lots of coastal walking. Visited lots of the aforementioned castles all of which had entertaining stuff for kids. Ate and drank in some lovely pubs. Did the boat trip out to the Farnes. Went to Lindisfarne. Spent a day at Cragside (lots of interactive stuff there for kids). Could easily have spent another week there.

As above though it does seem that no matter what anyone says here you’re determined not to enjoy it – if your kids (and you) are only entertained by theme parks and the like then probably not for you.

Previously we’ve compromised and got away with either Eurocamp or Neilson type holidays .

Which of the Neilson resorts have you been to out of interest as they are all slightly different? The beach club resorts are more laid back than the purely activity based centre and may fit the bill.

We just got back from our second trip here:

http://www.neilson.co.uk/beach/greece/sivota

Brilliant place. Lovely scenic location. Good MTB and road riding. Water-skiing / wakeboarding centre and I think it’s their only resort with dedicated kayak coaching. Nice pool and bar area for lounging and only 10 mins from the town for nights out. There were loads of people your daughters age when we were there last week and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Home

B&B, self catering, yurts and camping on site.

Stunning location. Great natural riding from the door (Cadair Idris). Coed Y Brenin just down the road in one direction and Mach in the other.

Pub just a short ride down the Mawddach trail too.

Holly Hill just east of Trottiscliffe / Trosley is good for a wander – you can walk there along the Pilgrims Way from the country park via Coldrum Long Barrow.

http://www.walkingbritain.co.uk/walks/walks/walk_b/2210/

The valley to the North of Holly Hill dropping into Luddesdown is lovely too. Beautiful little chapel there at Dode – very quiet and remote feeling, you wouldn’t believe you were only a couple of miles from the motorway.

Ridge walk from Ightham Mote (NT) along to One Tree Hill on the Greensand Way is also lovely.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/article-1355777694892/

All of the above is great on a bike to by the way!

Chartwell / Toys Hill / Ide Hill are also all great shouts.

May not be what you are looking for but this site is a pretty good resource which I’ve used when planning trips – the images on the site are probably not of sufficient quality or resolution for what you need but if you get in touch they may be able to provide hi res versions.

They seem to cover a fair part of the areas you mention (use the A-Z index)

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/

As he’s mainly a blur in the above video here’s a few stills..

Love the caddy but I’m more jealous of kenneththecurtain’s landrover.

My dream car would be this – my Dad ran a hardtop version for a few years. God I loved that car.

And yes, I drive a 130 defender and a 90 hard-top fairly regularly, so I’m under no illusions how uncomfortable, noisy and downright infuriating it would likely to be.

Lovely pictures.

Not a full spaniel (he’s a springer / lab cross), but here’s Lucas in action just in case anyone missed it on the other thread :D </proud owner>

This one is close to my work.

I’m on call with my primary employment and also on call as a retained firefighter so sleeping patterns can get really messed up sometimes.

Most recent occasion was coming into work around 4am to do a server upgrade, just about to slope off early and book off call at 3:30pm when my pager went off and I was out at a big moor fire until around 3am the following morning and then back into work at 8:30.

The basic plan, such as it is is to just monster through till the evening then flake out at about 8pm.

I’d agree with that. I tend to just keep going and then just grab some extra sleep at the earliest opportunity. If I sleep too long during the day I find it can make things worse – better to have a couple of early nights / late starts to compensate.

Balance bike all the way. My boy loved his and went straight to a pedal bike from it without stabilisers.

He had an Islabike Rothan – it was brilliant and I got a great price for it when I sold it on when he outgrew it. He then went on to a second hand Cnoc and is now on a Beinn 20.

Some pics here:

Milestones

No worries

Lovely. That’s the next plan – beach riding. Where is that?

:-)

I guess it depends on your definition of natural. Here the forests were mostly stripped for industry and shipbuilding rather than grazing but that process started in the Bronze Age – if it wasn’t grazed / burned now it would revert to a pretty mono cultural gorse/scrubland.

@cougar and Tom – thanks for the responses – as I said I’m genuinely interested in how vegans square this and your replies have helped.

For my own part I do eat meat but not all the time – we eat veggie / vegan a lot, and when we do eat meat we do make the effort to buy locally produced or high welfare stuff that we know the provenience of. At the moment we have lamb in the freezer which was raised on the open moor about 2 miles from our house by good friends of ours and I’m comfortable with that.

And yes, I do think there is an argument for understanding the process from field to table if you eat meat, and again that’s somethimg I’m comfortable with ethically.

Out of interest what do you think about the landscape impact? Where I live (Dartmoor) would look very different if it had not been actively grazed by animals ultimately destined for the table over centuries. There is a movement locally to promote pony meat in an effort to improve the welfare of hill ponies who otherwise have no economic value.

As you say neither end of the spectrum is black and white.

I’ve also wondered about this.

Genuinely not a troll and this comes from someone who has been veggie in the past but do true vegans consider the animal products which may have been used to fertilise the crops they eat? What about land clearance for soya, Palm oil, nut plantations? Environmental impact of synthetic fertilisers?

I salute anyone who does but I think it must be really difficult to have a diet that has nil impact on animal life.

@Jambalya – For a longer route you could climb back up to the hill fort, take the lane S past Wooston Farm and bear left after the cattle grid to reach the Headless Cross on Mardon Down. Take the BW east from there and drop down to Teign Farm and (steep) to the road.

Turn left and then pick up Permissive BW down to the river near Steps Bridge (not marked on OS map). From there you can either turn right cross the river at the bridge and work your way back up to Clifford Bridge through the nature reserve, or turn left and either just follow up the river or climb up through Cod Wood.

This is the downhill from Mardon to Teign Farm (was riding this on cross tyres, hence a bit shaky!):

EDIT: It works! Thanks!

Another alternative for a longer ride is lanes back to Moreton and onto North Bovey, then BW over to Barnecourt for the Peck Farm climb up to the other Hunters Tor and a loop of The Cleave.

Happy to act as a guide if you are in the area. Just drop me a message.

@Jambalaya – cheers. It’s the Hunter’s Path / Fingle Woods in East Dartmoor. It’s one of my regular loops. Normally ride from the door but as the first section is road I drove up to start at Wooston Hill Fort car park – which is here: http://bit.ly/1PpzZ7u

Steep downhill through woods from there to the river turn left (first section of vid) and head upriver past Fingle Bridge. Over bridge at Salmon Leaps, follow (cheekyish) path up to turn right onto Hunters Path just past Coombe, follow that around the valley rim (mid section of vid), forking left through Drewston Wood for some singletrack loveliness (last bit of vid). When you hit the valley bottom turn right on fire road down to road, and right again to get to Fingle Bridge Inn. Have a pint next to the river (it’s the law) and then back upriver to follow waymarked trail back up to the hill fort.

The whole area along that section of river up to Steps Bridge is now owned by the National Trust / Woodland Trust – they are slowly stripping out the conifers and reinstating trails – not much singletrack but loads of wildlife, very scenic and great for a pootle if you are in the area. There are plans afoot for some dedicated MTB trails too I believe…

Cheers. I thought he’d be knackered but after a power-nap in the pub garden he was ready to go again.

I rather like Schwalbe Smart Sams – ran them on my cross bike for several years without any problems. If you shop around you can get them for buttons too.

For no other reason than I really like these photos of my van and it will annoy the haters :D

Another 2 VW family. 20 year old T4 is my daily driver. Wife drives a 2009 Passat TDI estate. Chalk and cheese really but both well built, solid, unfussy and understated.

I don’t doubt that the reliability is not what it was but I drive them because I like them.

It’s called choice, you may have heard of it.

You can do it in the GoPro studio software

https://gopro.com/support/articles/how-to-create-a-still-image-from-video-using-gopro-studio

Here’s one of mine:

EDIT: It’s from an aviation firefighting training exercise in case anyone thinks we routinely turn up to real jobs with cameras going!

Unless you are her midwife / birth partner then go ahead and take your holiday and don’t worry about it. Your family are being deeply odd.

As above baby is unlikely to be on time and even if it is, when she’s in the throes of labour the last thing your sister needs is an Empire style entourage hanging around outside the ward door.

Best thing you can do is pop around with a takeaway and some bubbly once they are at home and offer to take sprog for a walk in the park to give the new parents a break.

Worked for “a large telecommunications company” in various offices around central Bristol throughout the 90s. Various sales support and techie roles. In all of them, lunchtime drinking (actually drinking generally) was the rule rather than exception. On Fridays we’d often not come back.

At one point they had a bonus scheme paid in High Street vouchers (remember them?). One of the more enterprising of the team persuaded a local pub to take them (The King William on King Street if anyone knows it), so come the end of the month everyone would troop over at lunchtime and hand over a stack of vouchers to the landlord in exchange for bar credits which he totted up in a big black book behind the bar. It was like a second home to most of us. Upstairs bar was like a private members club for those “in the know” with some epic lock-ins.

Later worked over in Whitefriars doing tech support – at lunchtime, evening shifts and weekends (pretty much most of the time in fact) a significant number of the IT team would be in the Artichoke pub next door (now gone) with phones on divert to their mobiles or on walkie-talkies. It was basically an extension to the office and informally known as Conference Room 5 by pretty much everyone in the business.

After that I worked in Holland for a bit where we had a bar on site and were encourage to have a beer at our desks on Fridays.

Then came back and did 9 years in the rail industry where it’s obviously a complete no-no with some folk even being subject to random testing.

No worries. If you need any more info then PM me.

Just a word of warning – the section between Challacombe and Natsworthy can be a bit of a “character building” moorland slog in the wet but worth doing to ride past Grimspound – stick with it and you’ll be rewarded!

You can avoid the Challacombe bit by riding straight up and over to Headland Warren from Vitifer Mine on the outward leg, but don’t miss the downhill to the mine at the start – it’s only short but great fun.

You could easily spend a day exploring Lustleigh Cleave / Nutcracker area but if you also want to explore a bit of the high moor as well then you can extend that loop out to the west. If you can get hold of a copy of the extended Dartmoor route which ST mag did a few months back it will give you a few pointers.

The following is a variation on that starting at the other end – good mix of widescreen open moor and techy singletrack – it’s a bit of a killer though and you’ll definitely need good weather and the whole day.

Not got a GPX but if you have an OS map of Dartmoor (you’ll need one) then the route is pretty obvious

Bennets Cross (near Warren House Inn)
DH to Vitifer Mine
Soussons Down
Challacombe
Grimspound
Natasworthy
Jays Grave
Bowermans
Water
Foxworthy
Peck Farm to Hunters Tor
Nutcracker
Hisley Bridge
Yarner Wood
Hound Tor
Shapley
Hookney Tor
Headland Warren
DH from the Warren to Vitifer Mine and then back up the hill to the Warren House for a pint. You’ll deserve it.

Looks like a lab/springer is favourite so far…

Sometimes referred to as a Springador or a Labdinger <shudder>. Quite a common “happy accident” in the shooting community.

Ours was originally named Derek which I think rather suited him but I was over-ruled. My son is a massive Star Wars fan so he became Lucas (Luke / George Lucas).

1. Tell him you’ve had a word with a mate at the Vatican who may be able to help

2. Create fake papal email account (papafrankie1936@gmail.com is available).

3. Send Mr Gurung an email from above account humbly offering assistance and post responses here.

<Grabs biscuit barrel and cup of tea and awaits with interest>

Ours is Lab / Springer X too. As above, it’s a great mix. Intelligent, lovely temperament, bags of energy when out and about but chilled at home.

I work full time, my wife works 3 days – he’s left on his own on those 3 days for up to 3 hours without any problems provided he gets a decent run in the morning (I get up around 6 to do this). We have a local dog walker look in on him and let him out if we can’t get back to let him out at lunchtime – she charges £5 a time. It works really well – he basically just sleeps when we are not there and someone is always home for the school run at 3:30.

I was thinking it’s not too much of a schlep to get up to Llanberis from there but you’re right thinking about it. Conwy would probably be a better drop off for Conwy Mountain trails

There must be loads.

West Highland Line – take your pick
Windermere for Southern Lakes
Ivybridge for Southern Dartmoor
Newton Abbot for Eastern Dartmoor
Abergavenny for Black Mountains
Bangor for Snowdonia

As an off the wall suggestion there are occasional connections from Taunton main line through to Norton Fitzwarren / Bishops Lydeard for the West Somerset Railway for access to Quantocks and Exmoor. Qs are a fairly easy ride from Taunton in any case.

I also don’t think the OP is trying very hard.

FWIW My top tip – look at any of the above locations on Bing Maps and click on the Road dropdown and switch view to OS Map view and look for the green dashes.

http://www.bing.com/maps/?mkt=en-gb

The Mawddach estuary area is one of our favourite spots. We camped at Cae Du just down the coast last month and did some exploring of the hills above there – it was lovely. Have also stayed at Graig Wen a few times in the past.

Barmouth has it’s charm but I agree it really doesn’t live up to it’s potential for such a glorious spot.

I do fancy its on the up though I doubt it will be as an outdoor hub.

The old Chapel on the High Street which used to be a pound shop is now this: http://www.piecesforplaces.co.uk/#!about-pieces-for-places/c1se

…and there are a few other indicators of gentrification around the town. – coffee shops, “boutiques” etc.

If I’m honest I could see it becoming a bigger version of Abersoch in a few years time…I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing.

Re Ponderosa – From the looks of it when we passed a few weeks back I think it’s a campsite / bunkhouse now:

EDIT – OP it looks like you got your wish – it’s now known as Cefn Coed apparently: http://www.cefncoed.co.uk/