Thanks folks , really cant fault the DT’s I’ve had and I’d choose them over the hopes and stans flows I;ve had over the years.

Thanks but Im not in NI. Im near Edinburgh .

Not nearly as impressive as above but Gypsy Glen is ace and Heartbreak ridge even better.

I saw this on the Edinburgh Bikers FB group , what a bummer . I hope you get them back . A mate of mine recently got done in East lothian . 3 high end bikes including Danny Harts old trail bike , cut a long story short the thieves took 2 and cycled back towards dalkeith / Whitecraig area. Then the following day my son spotted the wee pricks on a moped complete with balaclave hanging onto his sons airdrop. The local police unfortunately were worse than useless. He found the trail bike on ebay and when he contacted the police the guy said he would deal with it when he came back from his hols. This being no use he contacted merseyside police who posed as a buyer and took the bike of the dealer which he got back .
There has also been a spate of balaclava wearing hoods chasing the local guys on surrons threatening them to get there bikes. Local pump tracks are rife for this time of thing.
Good luck and keep yer eye on the bay gumtree etc.

It truly never ceases to amaze me what people will post on here about . This has to be a wind up otherwise how does the OP make it through daily life without having to take these decisions to a mtb forum.

I can get 3 bikes and 3 people in my 16 plate Peugot partner teepee. without taking any seats out . That said its easy to remove the seats as you just need to tilt them at a slight angle and lift out.
They are great little motors sadly mine nneeds a new NOX sensor for the cat converter which isnt going to be cheap. They are also only £20 a year in road tax.

On the cusp of biting the bullet on a Trek Rail or Nukeproof megawatt as my mates are all slowly upgrading , vowed I’d still keep a normal bike to keep some fitness. Looks like doing so would be a better idea for riding in the winter crap and prolonging the motor. Changing the subject slightly but a mate who is pretty knowledgeable reckons the Bosch Gen 4 motor is still the market leader. Any views. ?

I’ve had a trek checkpoint for just under a year and managed about 1100 miles and quite a few backpacking trips. I really cant fault it for the money . Only 2 faults would be it comes with god awful stock tyres and the paint dosent like frame bags so helitape like a demon. Gravel bikes like mountain bikes are a broad church so to speak , I bought mine for bikepacking but ride the local mtb trails on it. My point is if you want to just kick about fireroads and the occasional singletrack trail go for Gravel kings . If you want to ride through the winter in mud go for Scwalbe ultrabites.

The best hour of TV of the year , Great to see more of Ted what a lovely wee dug he is. As others have said nice to see Gazza treated properly. Everything from the drone shots to the slo mos coupled with a quality soudtrack . Paul Heaton and Jackie Abbot were good as well.

Didn’t feel overbiked today at the Golfie when I was rolling down right side clyde on my back . Ideally i’d like a trail bike but why makes trails harder than they need to be with short travel forks. My local trails are fairly tame so hence the reason I bought a gravel bike.

As good as trailforks is they do show a lot of permanently closed trails that are fine. For example we were down early morning after Arwen (The forests officially closed around 4pm that day ). Zorro , Trailfairy , Careless Whisper and thunderstruck were all fine. Jailbreak was knackered and sadly GT’s masterpeice Hush Hush completely gone as was the start of Shane Macgowan. Some mates have ridden most of the above today again and Its the same the west side is pretty much untouched.
Still this isn’t a dig if you’ll pardon the pun , some brilliant work has been done by The FLS and Trail fairys. Arwen was 4 ago tonight and the following day It felt like being first on the scene in one of those disaster movies.

Covid absenses hitting Scotrail hard, 118 services cancelled.

If there’s no restriction on numbers on the Scottish trains, those wanting/needing trains for their Xmas plans will be even tighter packed, increasing the risk of a massive Omicron spike.

This is actually a smoke screen from wee Sturg . Scotrail drivers are on a unofficial overtime ban due to transport Scotland running trains on boxing day but not paying their staff an enhanced rate with 4 weeks notice. It gets reported as ‘ A member of traincrew is anavailable’ but is more to do with O/T ban than covid.

Another for nukeproof blackline , really good jacket . Very waterproof.

Just finished it , outstanding no more needs to be said.

Yup watching it now , It’s outstanding as was L’immortale. Really wish I’d watched a recap of season 4 though . Gennaro and Ciro are brilliant characters.

Easily the coolest team and the best videos , Lachlan morton is worth more to that team than any grand tour rider. All his videos are worth a watch.

I think you would be hard pushed to pair two more genuine guys. Great video .

I remember them , though they were quite cheap tat . The Schott jackets came way later probably 96 onwards. Naf Naf and Chipie were pretty cool at the time and probably just before the rave scene kicked in , couple them up with Fila trailmasters or ellesse boots and baggy Joe bloggs and you were the cock of the morth . Also remember the Gio Goi stuff from Manchester which Im sure was the donnelly bros . Great times though , you can still buy Best Company , C17 and Gio Goi which have all been rebranded. Soviet sadly was bought over buy Mike Ashley and is sold cheap in USC shops. Shame as the early sweatshirts were really good heavy quality like Carhartt.

I’m from Elgin originally but left in 95 and ended up in east lothian after a stint in London. Forres is nice , It’s big USP used to be that it won ‘Britain in Bloom’ virtually every year. When I was a teenager had a rep for being full of stoners but then so was every little town. It’s close to loads of nice wee beaches and Culbin sands if your a dog walker. I’d say Aviemore is probably less than 40 minutes away on a good day. Wee railway station with a decent service.
I was back home two weeks ago and did a lot of walking with the dogs , though I never would move back if forced to I’d actually settle in Lossiemouth which is lovely in the summer and has a couple of good restaraunts and pubs (Elgin has seen better days sadly)
Too summarize you could do a lot worse than Forres and Im sure its cheaper than Nairn .

Got my booster this afternoon at a drop in , whilst in the queue I read the Charlatans gig I was going to on tuesday is cancelled but my best mate from school still wants to go ahead with his 50th on saturday . I’ll politely tell him im out as It’s not worth the risk heading into Embra a week before Christmas. Despite having the virus two days after the first lockdown Im actually really scared that If one of my kids gets it we have to isolate and leave the mother in law on her own over christmas.
Weirdly I was at The Bicep gig last tuesday which seemed like a 2000 capcity rave and I didn’t feel anxious at all . What a difference a week makes.

Still at least I can get down the valley biking :(

I feel vindicated in using DFS after reading this

DFS own Sofology . But I get your drift I;ve not had any problems with them either.

Watched it last night on Amazon , Heartbreaking really and you would need to be made of stone to not shed a tear in the last 20 minutes. It’s so well made as you’d expect from the Anthill bros and the talking heads from Peaty to Bulldog and more importantly his mum are excellent.
The build up to the race for overall with Gee is the highlight for me. Although his mum shuttling Fin Isles , Matt Walker and co up the same hill at the end was heartwarming.

Went to see Bicep in Edinburgh on Tuesday with my 18 year old son , they were excellent adn I was the oldest there by about 20 years. Also got the Charlatans a week on tuesday but i, thinking that may get cancelled.

Thats a great little video and a has a lot of familiar trails. Seems like a lifetime away considering the forests are closed and the weather is shite. Well made though.

I liked it and i’m not the biggest bond fan . Yup it was way more far fetched than any other but the locations were amazing and great to see the Cairngorms doubling as Norway in the land rover getting owned by an auld toyota scene.
Daniel Craig has been good , hopefully Tom hardy or Sam Heughan next. Anyone know where the bridge was before the land rover scene. ? Also the agent in cuba was utterly smoking hot.

Back in the rave days we used to use this instead of vicks when on the ‘Christian Bentekes’ . Was all jolly japes till you went for a pee.

I love him , he’s a real hero of mine and when I got to see him live he didn’t disappoint. His back catalogue is way to vast to pick a song but one that sticks out and is underated is ‘Black Cowboys’ , I think its from ‘Devils and Dust’.
Theres a great video of him doing a Joe Strummer tribute with steve van zandt and Elvis Costello .
He is a class act .

His videos are all good and really well made. His cairngorms gravel and mtb ones make me want to head up there soon. He’s a talented rider for sure .

Good things happen to good people Rick , well done. Just means you need to buy Andrea one.

I was born there but brought up In Elgin . I’ve supported the football team for over 40 years but as for the city I’m not a fan.I’ve just never found it freindly compared to further north. That said deeside is nice and so is the Moray firth which are both close. Also Deeside has ace biking . I’d probably try and stay within half and hour of the city , I recently went to Stonehaven and was pleasantly surprised.

Sorry to hear this OP , Your wife is basically my mum. I knew this as a wee boy , irrational over the top behaviour at their friends parties. Coming home and my dad was in his bed and my mum talking pish and falling about the place , weirdly it wasn’t until about 15 years ago she addressed the situation and she must have late 50’s at the time . She tried everything including hypnotherapy (She was told to visualise an empty house after losing everything). Anyhoo she dosen’t drink anymore but it has left its toll. I think it has brought on early dementia , my dad told me the last straw was seeing her drive her grandkids about after tanning vodka disguised by fruity water. I must say I’m proud of her for sorting herself.
Sadly the apple dosen’t fall far from the tree and My big Brother died at 48 from bad living . By this I mean basically from about 16 he had kicked the arse out of every substance known to man but ultimately in his last few years bad eating , no exercise , fags , hash ,coke and an enormous amount of red wine and stella finished him.
A grim story I know but I spose my point is in my mums case she sorted herself out knowing that she would lose it all if she didn’t. My brother on the other hand had nothing to lose and so there by nothing to gain by fixing himself.
Best of luck I hope things go well.

I had one of these albeit the unbranded Naff black camo one. Its a good jacket but unfortunately suffers from sticky zips like a lot of endura stuff. Sadly I left it on a wall whilst loading my car in Inverness after doing the loch ness 360 . I’ve just replaced it with a Endura Flip humvee Jacket which was reduced to around £80 . It’s really good and up there with Adidas Terrex TLD down jacket which is to good to wear on the bike.

No , head north and try Ballo , dunkeld , pitlochry or Aberfeldy . Then head to deeside for Ballater and then Aboyne. Way better then FB and Glencoe.

Whilst I’m Scottish and proud of where I’m from and live I don’t think the cornish thing is that uncommon. Don’t Manx see themselves as such and not English. My Inlaws are from Bangor in North wales and there seems to be a massive North / South welsh thing. The north always seems bitter that the south predominately don’t speak the language.
Changing things slightly when It comes to International football and the FA tried to move England games around the country ticket sales were slower the further north they went as people felt detached from the national team.

I’ve got a Trek checkpoint Alr4 , which I got for the pre increase £1700. I cant fault it apart from the crap stock Bontrager tyres. You would think it would have came with tubeless ready tyres. That said It’s brilliant , I’ve done 4 overnighters and use it for my local mtbs trails. I’ve just taken the gravel kings off and put on Schwalbe ultrabites for the winter. If you get one helitape it as Bike packing bags will strip the paint back to the Aluminium.

My Route

I remember the climb being probably the hardest I’ve done in the Uk . This was a great route though had everything to be honest .

It’s only 30 odd minutes and they are regular so I’d say should be easy enough. It’s the longer journeys that the guards are a bit stricter on for local services they really dont care.

Yup I think it would stand very well as a film for someone that hasn’t watched the series. It’s a lot like the Scorcese gangster films of the 90’s. A fair bit of background on all the characters , There are a lot of little in jokes and quotes from the series as you would imagine.

You know It Is actually ‘Newark’ in New jersey now don’t you. ? Im sure they still say ‘Kwafeee’ having done the Sopranos tour.

I’ve done FW to inverness on the mtb with the high routes which was good. Also did the loch bess 360 last week on the gravel bike . This was with the low routes. Both were good but If I was purely doing the Great Glen way I’d stick with the mountain bike as there were some fun bits on the high routes and I think there is not much to be gained by using the gravel bike. On the other hand if your doing the 360 use a gravel bike as day 2 is pretty much 90% on the road.
Also if you do the low route from fort Augustus to drumnadrochit you dont really see much of the loch .