I think for the majority of mountain bike riders (not people on here) the former may still be true, not everyone is doing 10ft gap jumps or enduro racing. Apart from when I’m at a trail center with my kids I still ride what you’d consider 80’s/early 90’s mountain bike routes, they are still there. A flat barred gravel bike is sometimes the better option for those routes and with modern MTBing gearing you can climb the ups as well. Only now your rims don’t wear away in weeks and you don’t have to carry a headset spanner to use after every descent.

Wouldn’t a portable induction hob give you more flexibility for those time you need to do something on the hob other than an egg but can’t be arsed with the log hob.

We have an ALDI one at its great. I’m sure you can pick the same one with a different name from Amazon or eBay.

This is what I love about this place. Just about to buy a 53O for my holiday next week and that tutorial is excellent.

Are the European maps provided ok for off road or am I better off downloading something more detailed. I downloaded talky toasters uk map about 5 years. I think it’s in the SD card on my etrex I’ll see if I can it on to the edge.

I has a treatment called shockwave therapy on my Achilles and it cured it after six months of physio stretches didn’t touch it. It can be used to treat PF as well. Based on my experience if I got PF id be straight down the clinic getting Shockwave

There was one guy who massively overweight and didn’t eat for a year, just a vitamin pill salt and water. I done it for a week a few times and its been fine I have plenty to burn.

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/blog/2018/02/story-angus-barbieri-went-382-days-without-eating/

We just spent a small fortune on a private ski instructor for the kids for a week in Morzine based on word of mouth and the quality of the discussion we had with him prior to booking. It never occurred for me to check his Insta. Anyhow he was brilliant and we’ve booked him to guide us for few days next year, so I’d say it is possible to do it without social media but maybe your crowd is younger and more in tune with the socials

I think it really depends where you use it. My new bike is 36t 9-50 12 speed and I have no problem the gaps an I love the range but its flat bar and mostly used off road. I have 40t 11-42 11 speed GRX on my other gravel bike and I’m using it as my winter road bike and I hate the gearing on it just feels wrong. I’m tempted to put in back to 50/34 11-34 if I keep it for the road.

I think if your using it off road mostly I do Rocketdogs conversion when you get on 1x GRX to give more range, it easy and cheap. If you want to use it on the road a lot I’d go for Scoutroutes gearing or you can get 2x GRX and you can put 11-40 on the back which is bigger than Shimano suggest but it works

I’m like you I have had two serious road crashes and have been riding mainly gravel since lockdown. If your limited to one bike I’d go XC MTB and that’s from someone who mainly rides a gravel bike. For example I’m planning a a week in the Lakes in May we will be mostly riding easy gravel routes but we are taking hardtails so we can do a bit of mountain biking if the we feel like it or the weather is crap and we go to the trail centres. The range of terrain you can ride on hardtail is much wider than you can on a gravel bike. But if you only going to ride tracks that can be done on a gravel bike get a gravel bike as it just more fun.

The reason why once you get to the silly priced bikes you can build them yourself for less even at RRP is that the majority of people that buy 10K bikes don’t frequent MTB forums and don’t build their own bikes. They are generally cash rich and time poor and just want the best bike (in their minds) and prepared to pay for it. You typical investment banker isn’t going to be arsed figuring out which pressfit bottom bracket adapter he needs.

Unlikely to be 9 speed if its 105/tiagra as they went ten speed well before gravel bikes were a thing.

If looking at rear mechs just watch out as tiagra changed the cable pull from one generation to another.

The older 10 speed tiagra and 10 speed 105 you can use a 9 speed MTB mech which gives you more options replacements and for cassettes as the road mechs were officially limited to 32t.

That what I was going to say I use these on my road / gravel bikes if he wants to go Clipless later he can. Planet X do a cheaper version.

Link

Decided I didn’t like the colour of my
grips. So I decided I put new ones on and cut down the old one to cushion my bar ends. I had a brain fart and cut the brand new one instead there’s £20 down the drain.

@tartanscarf We stay at Ribeye mainly as it has its own little private lake which has free SUP boarding and Kayaking which the kids love plus I use it for open water swimming practice.

https://www.sandaya.fr/nos-campings/la-ribeyre

Thanks, I’m aware of Doug, this is more a few hours pootle with my wife and kids whilst we have the bikes rather than spending the day doing full-on guided rides, we’ll be doing more of that in Ainsa. We holiday in the area quite often but usually with road bikes, I know Hondarribia and that is a good call, I’ve often thought about riding those hills when we’ve been on the beach at Hendaye. It’s strange Trailforks is really extensive in Spain but in France its really poor.

I spend a lot of time on our last trip to the area on a road bike around LaRune from Bayonne as I much preferred having lunch in the cafes in the villages on the Spanish side. I’ll check out the app thanks for the tip. Much like you, we’ll be kayaking, bodyboarding and SUP boarding in the second week but I fancied a couple of days on the bike.

It a 2006 2.5, Massive Roofbox and 2 bikes on the roof, 5 bikes on the back, packed inside to the rafters, slightly tuned engine, French motorways run at about 85mph. This is where it does most of its milage. It burns through fuel.

I think I’ve done every combination you could imagine having had 3 kids with 4 years between them. At the stage your at I did a rear seat and a trailer then when they got a little older wee ride and a trail gator.

I’m planning retire in 2030 and buying a camper. I know diesel vans will be around but I suspect they’ll become increasingly hard to live with with clean air zones increasing fuel prices and duties. I don’t want to buy a van that I won’t be able to use a few years later.

I hope that battery tech will improve so you can get the same mileage as our current Caravelle which about 350 miles. They’ve come along way in the last 8 years and all the manufacturers are focusing on them you’d imagine they will improve even more and come down in price.

We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute vile… banana republic, vile, nasty, Etonian… piece of scum.”

I was annoyed when she was made to apologise for this, I thought that scum was been restrained about the current government and to be fair everything that has come out since she said it has validated what she said.

@elshalimo I’ve created a folder with the road gpx files in and the mtb leaflet let me know if you can’t open it

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zFhRE4fPvDBqGfSC3maHQblMUjB7WXXM?usp=sharing

@matt_outandabout you must have got a quiet day on Puy de Sancy when we arrived there must have been a 1000 people there and there was a huge queue to get on and off the summit.

We went in 2018 and 2020 for a fortnight and we are going again this year for a week. We really love it. The road riding is excellent most of the roads are empty, we found a load of rides on the web from a Dutch guy that were all about 60km. I have the gpx in google drive I could share them. I’ll post a link to the mountain biking map a lot of it is farm tracks but even the blues can suddenly end up in a rock fest. Last time I had a rigid mountain bike and I managed the blues, red and black routes the grading is more around distance and ascent as difficulty but I was glad I wasn’t on gravel bike. But there are miles and miles of farm tracks and the sign posting between towns and villages is amazing so its hard to get lost

We stay in Murol as it has a great campsite for the kids and its is a nice town but we spend a lot of time is Besse, it has better shops and restaurants. Mont Dore looks nice when I’ve biked through it too.

We hiked around Lac Pavin, Lac du Guéry and we did Puy de Sancy from Valle de Chaudefour but you can get to it from Mont Dore as well but it bit of a tourist trap at the summit (think Snowdon in summer).

The cheese is amazing !

Or I could buy exactly the same thing from a uk supplier who imports it and adds a massive mark up.

I not sure that a NW chainring is going to prop up the Chinese government.

Are you going to your heating off as it has uses some Russian gas.

I’ve been eyeing a couple of relatively expensive cassettes but not pushed the bottom yet. I bought a cheaper one which has been fine. I’ve had Loads of NW chainrings dirt cheap if your prepared to wait and short chainring bolts ridiculously cheap.

Clothes are usually crap though

Ice cream van at Roach end 5 ice creams £28 quid. The kids were seriously flagging after a massive walk so it was worth it. I pretty sure was wearing a mask before covid.

Wouldn’t you better off with skis in the alps this week

Would this be ok on a beefy gravel bike, I like ride to it to make big ride from Macclesfield.

I’d like to know what trails you could get down on a more expensive bike with similar travel that you couldn’t get down on these.

Boardman

or this

https://alpkit.com/products/sonder-evol-29-xt.

One of these is going to be my next bike as I try to keep up with my kids

I bet the kids in the video on the front page aren’t worrying about whether they have a Deore Mech or not.

I’m very privileged that I one could easily afford a 10k superbike but I’m also very fortunate in not giving a toss what anyone thinks, so I ride a Boardman hardtail bought on bike to work and at a discount so must have cost me about £500. It’s not because I’m tight it’s because it was the best value tool for the job at the time.

Id rather spend money giving my family amazing holidays than being over biked for my ability and my bravery. At the time I was just riding Blues and Reds with my young kids.

Similarly most of the time you’ll see me in an Hyundai i10, again because it the right tool for the job.

This is not aimed at the OP but If your self esteem is tied up in what bike you ride, car you drive or what group set is on your bike you really need to have a word with yourself. And similarly if you judge someone by what bike they are riding or their rear mech you need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

I grew up in abject poverty, so I’m never going to waste money on what is essentially a big toy. It amazes me that people put themselves is unaffordable debt for an expensive bike. The guy that had to sell his bike to fix his car. If your finances are that marginal buy a cheaper bike/components having a shiney bike with XTR isn’t a right.

There are good value bikes like Sondor, Boardman or on-one. Deore drivetrain is fine so is Microdrive and Clark’s or Deore Brakes.

We had to do this a few weeks ago for 13 year old who went to play football for school rather than get his first vaccine. So he had 1 vaccine and proof of recovery. If you scan the qr code from the NHS app for the recovery into Tous Covid it’s gives a valid pass. Hopefully you won’t need it

Thanks good to see that dance is on the list and that it is pretty inclusive. Interesting that they don’t allow dry slope skiing given nearly all Great Britain freestyle skiing team learned on dry slope.

No but if that list is exhaustive it excludes at lot of other sports. I suspect it isn’t. Otherwise it just reads like a pick list for private schools for entry into Sandhurt just need to add fencing.

My daughter is in a national level street dance team she trains 10 hours a week why shouldn’t that be included.

I did none either and came top, I’m not sure that I inherited it though, must be mutation both my parents can barely read. My bigger problem is with the list of sports given this forums obsession with inclusivity, it’s not the kind of sports that your average comp is offering, unless I missed the note about the Water skiing and clay pigeon shooting teams.

So we give out educational awards for inheriting a good VO2 max I didn’t know that. My son is the best dead ball player in the league looks like he can’t get points toward his A levels with that water skiing, clay pigeon shooting or archery it is.

Thanks for the link, one of our weeks in the summer we are pretty close to Fuilla north of Ax les thermes. Not been that far east before. We’ve not camping anymore so we are always looking for places to stay.

Out interest where in the Pyrenees have they moved or do I look for mansion with a Tesla with a bike rack outside when I’m out there.

Should have said for me

I’ve spent a long time when I was doing endurance racing low carb and it definately works I have run fell marathons and longer without eating carb. A few years ago I had a TC with Zak Bitter who is/was the world’s 24-hour running record holder to discuss how to bring carbs back into my diet during racing as I’d got a bit phobic of them. The aim is to protect your glycogen whilst also not switching off your fat metabolism so small amounts of carbs regularly during exercise is fine for that, he told me to eat a cliff shot every 10 mns or to save money Haribo but sips of energy drink would also do the trick which is easier cycling.

If you don’t want to go low carb as its tonnes of effort, as folk have said eat what you like to eat. I was racking my bike for an ironman and the guy next to me had a tribike with a little basket full of Jam sandwiches under his aero bars. I had a chat with him after the race and he’d done the tri X the ironman the day before a was doing this for fun. He turned out to be one of the top endurance racers in the country and not a gel in sight.

Just listening to Martin Lewis on 5live looks like the price cap will go up another 25% in October. I’m lucky that we are fixed until then but then our price will likely double, I can see ours being over £4k a year. More people are going to have to make decisions about eating versus heating next winter.

I’ve got the gen 3 and they can’t be changed to bolt through. I think that only came in the gen 4s.