Cotswold have some TNF offers as well. Got the email the other day.

http://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/index.cfm/dep/rock-bottom-offers/cat/discount-the-north-face/fuseaction/products.category/group/445/level/2

£60 off their Nuptse down jacket.

Been pretty wet here last couple of days…. hoping to get out for an early morning blast on Saturday. Not sure where yet. Was fancying a nice widescreen ride up over Grimspound way but suspect it will be a bit miry.

Yep. Well spotted. After surf round the point at Traeth Llyfn.

Mud Xs are great. Have had them on the singlespeed more or less permanently for about 2 years now!

Had similar requirements and this is what we went for. It’s is our holiday home and my daily drive. Not as bad on juice as you’d think, never misses a beat and is fantastically practical and fun. Had a couple of Golfs before this and wouldn’t go back.

Our other car is a Skoda Octavia Scout estate which is also great. Massive boot, fun to drive and 4×4 too.

Really sorry to hear about your Dad.

Still in Pen-Y-Fan direction, but what about the Black Mountains? Some really wild country N of Crickhowell as far as Hay and much quieter than other bits of the Beacons. Can be reached in 3 hours from London too.

Failing that, it doesn’t have the altitude, but here on Dartmoor we have a huge part of the map with nothing much on it, and some of the scenery is stunning. Again, once you get away from the roads you barely see a soul.

I got in a consultancy here for a free half day assessment soon after arriving and would definitely say its worthwhile. They produced a pretty comprehensive report detailing improvements which they picked up on, some of which was stuff I was already aware of, others I wouldn’t have had a scooby on without them coming in but was subsequently able to fix myself.

Yes, of course they want our business, but they were also pretty generous with the free advice and they will be getting work from us in the future as a result (I’ll probably use them to do our server virtualization if nothing else).

As PG says, you can always say no!

I sold a roadrat recently, which I’m regretting somewhat – they’re great bikes and personally I don’t think they’re ugly at all but I guess it’s down to taste. The frames are very springy though – not so good if you’re regularly carrying heavy loads. For commuting they’re ideal though. Not sure about running them with a Rohloff though – perhaps drop Cy an email?

I’ve got a Surly Karate Monkey now which is also great – a lot more rugged than the roadrat and pretty similar to the Ogre mentioned above (although with less braze ons etc) and is highly recommended. There’s a fair few KMs around which people have built up as drop bar / cross / tourer frankenbikes, so I wouldn’t neccessarily write the Ogre off as being “too MTB” if you want 700c wheels and Rohloff compatibility + versatility.

Used this website recently: http://www.blackcircles.com/

If you enter your required tyre size or vehicle details, it gives you a list of suitable tyres across different price ranges with reviews and ratings. Once you’d made your choice, you can choose a local garage to fit them at a time to suit you and pay for it all online. Job done. Simple idea, but really quite well done.

FWIW I’m liking Falkens at the moment

Are you restricted to 700C wheels? If not, what about the Surly Troll – again it’s a slot dropout, but there seem to be a few folk Rohloffizing them with an OEM plate, like this guy:

A troll is born (in Costa Rica)

I’ve got a 1×1 which is pretty much the same geometry and it’s a fantastic all rounder.

EDIT – Just checked the Surly website and in fact the Troll has mounts designed specifically to take the OEM plate. The Ogre has the same thing so you could also stick with 700C wheels.

http://surlybikes.com/bikes/ogre

American is pretty good. All our contractors stayed there when I worked over there and really rated it.

I always quite liked the Krasnapolsky too – bit dated in parts (it’s like stepping back to the 70s – bar is very kitsch) but the location is spot on. Only worth considering if you can get a cheap deal though

SP2 upped it to 75 but you also need to change in in the registry.

We’re on SP2 and already did that and still hit the limit with 35 users – no-one here had ever done any archiving and with the standard edition you can’t set up additional message stores either.

Cue me whipping around the office showing people how to set up offline archives and publishing a weekly “Hall of Shame” of the worst offenders for mailbox size! We’re now got about 30% headroom.

We run an internal exchange server, but pay our ISP to provide an SMTP feed (AKA store and forward) for the domain. That way we get best of both worlds. We publish their MX address for the domain (rather than publish our own) and they then punt any mail for us to an external IP address on our ISA server which then routes it our mail server.

If our server or internet connection goes down for whatever reason, they hold onto the mail for us for up to 4 days and if we have an extended outage they can, if required, provide the facility for us to access it via webmail.

We have also configured our firewall to only accept SMTP traffic from their MX, which is admittedly a bit belt and braces, but you never know.

If we had a better internet connection I’d probably consider a hosted option if I was setting it up from scratch, but having inherited the current setup, my experience is that the ongoing maintenance for the internal exchange server is fairly minimal although I have had a couple of hairy moments to do with message store size hitting it’s limit (we’re running Exchange 2003, standard edition).

Apart from that the only other issue we’ve had in the 6 months I’ve been here has been when the ISP in question changed the IP ranges for it’s punt servers without telling us, meaning our firewall was rejecting their connections for a while. Took a while to figure out what was happening and we had about 4 hours without incoming email, but was actually relatively easy to fix once we knew what the problem was, and all of the backlog came through without any problems.

Hmm not being forthcoming on location is a bit dodgy to be honest. Maybe buying the car for nefarious purposes and doesn’t want the payment traced?

The courier claim sounds a bit scammy but as above provided you don’t release the car until the money is in your account then I don’t see the issue.

I sold a car recently on ebay and stipulated a 10% deposit by PayPal – balance on collection in cash.

The one I really like is in urban areas – 20 mph speed limit, no road markings and priority to pedestrians first, then bikes, then cars.

I really like that “Naked Streets” idea too – they also get rid of all the street furniture. There’s a couple of trials happening in the UK already. I like the idea that the motorist, in the absence of any familiar reference points has to slow down and is forced to interact with other road users. Again, horses for courses though.

TJ – I understand completely. As I said, I lived there for several years. But that’s a two lane road reduced to single lane to allow for cyclists. The fact that the cars pull over into the cycle lane to allow passing means that it’s not fully segregated. I agree that’s a model which would work well in a lot of places but what about if it’s single lane already? – that’s the case with most of the roads where I live.

You’ll have probably have seen on your trip that a lot of Dutch towns and villages have dedicated cycleways connecting them which follow the lines of drainage canals, dykes and polders and are pretty much independent of the road network. To recreate that sort of thing here you couldn’t avoid building new routes or encroaching on green belt.

If you wanted the same density of fully segregated cycleway provision as you have in Holland, I don’t see how you could avoid it. Canals and old railway lines are great as trunk routes but they don’t go everywhere. Sure you could upgrade existing rights of way and add in cycle lanes to existing roads, but in some cases there’s no room and you’d have to either widen or forge new routes.

Right! So why would building better cycling infrastructure in the UK involve running cyclepaths over “virgin countryside”?

Jeez… I’m not saying it should, although in some areas it would have to. The point I was trying to make (badly obviously) is that the existing built and natural geography of a country are a factor as well as the political will.

I think I’ll just get my coat now… :?

Britain has thousands of miles of canal and thousands of miles of disused railway. And that’s just one way of putting in new cycle routes.

Er…. I think we’re in complete agreement on that. See earlier post.

I think you’re missing the point completely. It’s always easy to quote an exception but on the whole, post WWII rebuilding in Europe gave far better opportunities for future provision of mixed mode transport than it did here.

The other thing to point out is that the geography of the Netherlands is particularly suited to building a decent network of cycleways
Germany has just as much challenging geography as the UK, and have made much much more progress in creating proper cycle paths, its about the political will, nothing to do with geography.

Did you actually read my post? Of course practical / political will is a factor – but it’s ridiculous to say that geography, planning sensitivity and more to the point, existing infrastructure isn’t a factor. It’s far easier and cheaper to run a new cycle path over say a disused railway line or drainage dyke, or alongside a brand new road than it is over virgin countryside or to apply it retrospectively to a city centre built around a pre-Roman model.

Both Holland and Germany took the decision to start afresh when rebuilding after WWII in most of the large population centres and a lot of their large cities were already built on the grid model anyway. This gave them much better opportunities to build an urban infrastructure that could accommodate different modes of transport at a later date. In most cases we took the opposite route and built up everything as it was before (just look at London).

I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t happen – I’d love to see it happen here, but I think that we have to be realistic about some of the challenges.

I lived in the Netherlands for several years. Provision for cyclists is fantastic there but I have to say that it is all about utilitarian transport and consequently a lot of the riding is really rather dull. Off the cycle paths (they don’t go everywhere) the level of tolerance for cyclists by drivers is really not much better than here. The other thing to point out is that the geography of the Netherlands is particularly suited to building a decent network of cycleways. Apart from being flat, a significant proportion of the network is built around the polders and drainage canals. It’s an artificial landscape anyway so folk aren’t as sensitive to planning decisions and the structure of the canal system really lends itself to overlaying cycle paths. We can certainly learn a lot from the Dutch model but it’d be really difficult to apply in most of the UK.

For what it’s worth I did something similar on a set of MX Comps about 5 years back and was looking to helicoil them but managed to get away with just using a longer than standard bolt – turned out there was plenty of thread at the bottom of the mount, but the standard bolts weren’t reaching it.

I’ve been running the same forks since then without any problems whatsoever.

Quantocks are fantastic, not many places have such a density of trails in a relatively small area outside of a trail centre. Exmoor requires a bit more navigation effort to plan a route but is also excellent. A few suggestions here from an earlier thread…. I’d say grab an OS map and go for it:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/a-classic-exmoor-mtb-route-wanted

… don’t forget to give Dartmoor a spin next time you’re down this way ;-)

Think the offer may only be for limited sizes though. That SE Lager gets pretty good reviews too.

Got rid of my drop bar Roadrat a couple of months back and am missing having a single speed roadie in the stable… might be tempted myself!

Cracking deal on Kona Paddy Wagon here….

http://www.tritoncycles.co.uk/m14b0s180p9268/KONA_Paddy_Wagon_2011

.. or what about this:

http://www.tritoncycles.co.uk/m14b0s180p5956/SE_BIKES_Lager_-_Midnight_Black_2010

This is apparently very big in Holland….

… this is the Formula 1 version:

The head has three bits – the rotating bit (reel) bends the crop in towards a cutter bar, which er cuts the crop. Behind that you’ve got an auger which pulls the cut crop into the main bit of the combine where it’s separated into the useful stuff and waste by a series of sieves.

It’s all that and more…. don’t underestimate how steep Exmoor can be either!

There’s also a really good descent down off Selworthy Beacon down to Bossington too which is just slightly N of the route above.

Where was the first pic taken Slugwash?

For bike tools, I just have a very basic Specialized one with hex keys – I prefer to carry a separate chain tool and tyre levers.

I also carry a general multitool on longer rides – I find the pliers are the bit I use the most on it, followed by the screwdrivers and saw (trail clearance).

The Gerber suspension is pretty good for these things. My only criticism of it is that it’s a bit on the lardy size and the lock on the knife blade has a little bit of play in it.

The saw actually got me out of a sticky bind when I lost the keys for the cable lock on my bike. Miles from home, getting dark etc – managed to saw though a half inch steel cable in about 10 mins…. might be useful for trailside geometry mods to your frame!

Further to earlier post – pic shows amount of seatpost I’m using on the 20″, old style version (6’1″, 32″ inside leg)

I’m running a 100mm stem, which I’m comfortable with, but would probably go with something shorter for more aggressive riding.

One thing you do need to consider with Surly bikes is the lack of standover, particularly with the older models (newer ones have a dropped top tube) – the geometry is pretty traditional but it does really work.

I’d say either would probably be OK with the right seatpost and stem. I’m 6’1 with a 32″ inside leg and have the 20″ – really comfy and handles well but it feels pretty roomy. Perhaps the smaller size if you’re more of an aggressive rider. Larger one if you’re more into longer XC rides and mixed road / trail.

Wish I hadn’t read this thread… got a 1×1 and a Karate Monkey…. all I need is a Crosscheck to complete the set!

Don’t come to Devon… it’s rubbish….

White speck in the distance in the first photo is reputedly the 3rd or 4th highest pub in England… and (with the exception of the ridge in the foreground) it’s downhill all the way from where this photo was taken… I saw two other bikers through the whole ride.

Seriously… it’s all good. Cornwall has great coastal scenery and some lovely little fishing villages. Devon has the same but also prettier inland countryside and far better biking.

I can’t really say anything that hasn’t been already said… really inspirational and puts a lot of the mundane day to day stuff most of us have to deal with in perspective. You’re an inspiration mate – best of luck to you and yours…. you’ve obviously got the right attitude!

If you’d asked me 6 months ago, I’d have said no… I was commuting 3 hours, a day stuck in a high rise office off the Euston road and up to by neck in workload, petty bureaucracy and political bullpoo.

Left there in April to move to the South West – still working in IT, but for a small company in a lovely village on the edge of Dartmoor. Job is much more varied (everyone multitasks here), people are lovely and it’s a great place to work. I’ve swapped my 3 hour tube / train commute for a half hour bike ride through quiet lanes.

My wife is retraining so we’re on half the income, and if anything we’re busier than ever, but far less stressed – I genuinely haven’t been this happy at work for a long time.

I guess the only downside is that I sometimes miss the high profile of what I did before and the fact that I was involved in some pretty big projects, but in terms of overall quality of life, it’s a no-brainer really.

In addition to above, consider Surly – Steamroller has track ends, Crosscheck has horizontals. As with above, they’re steel though.

If you want Alu then choice is probably a bit more limited – look at track bikes perhaps?