Loving the quick crete option…

Agree with druidh, the recieving landowner may have consented and be happy with this. In Scottish law – and increasingly English and Welsh – sustainable drainage solutions should be sourght as a first resort, piping the water onto adjacent land in an agreed manner will manage the flows through infiltration. The increased boggyness would be of amenity and wildlife benefit – but this would need to be carefully managed.

All, of course, if designed like this and working as agreed and expected, SEPA should eb able to confirm if such an approach has been developed.

Off road lights badly positioned and shining into car driver or pedestrians eyes are taking the p1ss surely – no matter what we think of their attitudes.

Good comments re: side visibility and flash modes, I have Exposure Flash and Flare communting lights, awesome lights, not the brightest but plenty bright enough but also have a mode where you can have permanent and flashing on at the same time and have great side visability. They are also super portable for pub trips etc – and can aparently be submerged in a pint of beer, not tried this….

My Superfly XT is a few years old now but easily the best jacket I have ever had, fully recommended.

I built a treehouse for Stevew jnr(s) this summer, same sort of process / consideration. Basically used off-cut and spare wood from skips and all over, spent very little on it. The design evolved out of looking at the materials available and incorporating them rather than designing and procuring set pieces of wood.

Try talking to a few builders, we had our attic converted a few years ago and I rang the bloke up and asked him for any spare wood they were removing as part of the process – some fantastic 2 x 4 roofing joists came from him and basically built the whole of the frame.
Pulled stuff out of skips and asked for wood on freecycle for the rest.
Had to buy some of the fixings – bolts in the main intersections between different parts of the ‘super-structure’ then good quality screws for the rest and some of the decking – missed out on a good load on freecycle, could have waited but wanted to get it finished.

Good advice about planed vs sawn wood, saves a lot of cash. I borrowed an electric plane from a mate and planed anything that needed it – took up a lot of time but saved lots of cash too.

I do not host any piccies on the tinterweb so can’t upload any – unless there are other ways.

Most of all enjoy it and remember, its for the kids, not dads – something I found hard to accept when it was finished and I had to hand it over…. very sad day.

and make sure that when you send them to the step / wherever that there is nothing to distract them from their purgatory and water down the punishment.

Sent Eddy to the step a while back, left him there for a good long while, went to have a word and realised that the door to the living room was partly open and he had sat himself on the 5th step up just where he could get a good view of the telly and sat doing his time watching whatever was playing on screen at the time. Now the telly goes off or the room door is closed… sneaky these bairns.

Yep, all normal, jnr snr now 3 and has just about come out of it, jnr jnr is 8 months and we fully expect more of the same…

All great advice here, we have removed toys, used the naugty step – it is important to tell them why they are there and leave them some time to stew – jnr snr used to say sorry as soon as he got there as he worked out this was what was expected of him….

The other piece of advice I would give is for only one of you to do the disciplining at a time – could be either – but they only need to hear it from one and the other back them up by not wading in and giving different / mixed messages to the original parent. Takes some trusting between partners but gives a strong message rather than a potentially diffuse or mixed one.

Good luck!

I’ve just got a Phillipe Stark O-Ring watch, looks amazing, worth checking out.

All style no substance though – not even a light so useless in the dark – I knew this from reviews before buying though, still went for it.

Try the Trossachs Backpackers place, stayed there a few years ago and it was great. Lots of bike storage, rooms are great and the communal areas are spacious

http://www.incallander.co.uk/trosstel.htm

Lidl have one for £12.99 at the moment, picked one up on Monday.

Looks like something Gordon Gecko would wear but does the job nicely.

Hi

I’m not particularly local and usually drive past on the way to the NY Moors or dalby….

I have caught the train to malton a few times and ridden back to York. The bridleways – check the map – south of malt on are ok, nice scenary especially if an early morning ride. A better option is to head west out of Malton on the Helmsley road then head south and west on the bridleways towards Castle Howard. Some nice stuff round there and the ridge Running west to east immediately north of There – slingsby bank wood and coneysthorpe bank wood have some nice trails – cheeky and legal.

It’s not the lakes or the cairngorm but still some nice riding. Great post ride coffee and cake in Leoni on Wheelgate too.

Enjoy

Big Ted has listed all of the very best pubs there and luckily all are still open – my brother lives there and I look forward to frequenting them whenever I visit…..

‘Pan Fry’ – what else am I going to fry in, my hands?

‘its a nice space’ – when referring to a room in a houes – ‘…this is a nice space, i think we will have this as a reception room…’ – so thats a living room then? Numpties.

Cool

Some good advice guys – and girls?

Will have a good look round now for bargains….

Don’t suppose any of you have a slide and a sack full of climbing holds for the slidey down and climby up part of the build do you…..

Ta.

That was one I was starting to look into, looks like decent kit.

Hi

Its a cracking route, think I still have the magazine route in a file back home.

Drop me an e-mail to the address in my profile and I’ll check later and send it onto you if I have it.

Steve

Imagine this with Julia Bradbury as host, now your talking….

I’ll have my cheque now thanks Beeb.

There are only a handfull of properties that flood ‘every year’ they all know this and have their own defences etc. The King Arms – the famous pub – has its barrels ont he first story and continues to serve to american tourists wearing wellies even when flooded, they love it. The media are lazy though and only ever report it as a disaster, the people carry on and the city is pretty much unaffected.

The rest of the city is really well defended but if in doubt check out the Environment Agency website. Happy to say all of this as I used to manage the defences there….

Tourists are a pain but just avoid town on a saturday / sunday / school hols. Expensive but agree no more so than other ‘nice’ places. If you want banging / cool nightlife not the place but the train to Leeds is regular. Some great ale pubs though and hen / stags are avoided unless you really do like Yates’ Wine Lodge….. I canoe on the river, it’s OK but not amazing.

Trails from the door are poor but I have a few routes that are my straight from the back door staples, they can all be pretty good as high speed hacks or singlespeed etc.

Dalby in half an hour is optermistic but it is fairly equi-distant to dales and NY moors which is good.

Its a good place to live IMO.

Enjoy.

The Rothan is fantastic.

Stevew jnr loves his, he is 2yrs 3 months and for the last few months he has been bombing around everywhere (I bought it when he was 1 as I got a bit excited about getting his first bike….). It is really well made and light – although he loves it you do end up carrying it after a while so the weight really matters.

It has a really low standover height too so any little toddler legs can deal with it.

Got some great video of him ripping up my local woods ride spot the other day, so very proud!

Thats that sorted then…..

So as long as we have lights it seems were all cool.

As for the reflectors…. thats another matter, they spoil the look of the bike and just don’t look blinging, I’ll take the risk on the grounds of looking the business….

Well wort learning at snowdomes.

Agree that you can loose skills though, may be worth having three or four shorter sets of lessons so you gradually build up time at the dome before you go away, you may be able to get away with no lessons when you get there.

My boy is 2 years old and is just starting to love his balance bike. He can do a mile-ish round trip to the park or shops.

Although at the weekend he struggled a bit on the way back from the park as he had filled his pockets with so many conkers I’m surprised he could move his legs!

Demense Farm in Bellingham has a good bunkhouse. We camped there but had a good look around the bunkhouse and it looked very good.

http://www.demesnefarmcampsite.co.uk/

Hopefully the midges will give you more respite in October than they did for us in August….

Hi
I live in York, I'm firmly of the tut tut brigade re: red light jumping in my city and others like it but I have also ridden a lot in London and Elfinsafety has made some killer points. Depends where you are, to some extent, I suppose, even if I get stopped at every red light in York it is hardly an issue….

One of the major junctions in York, near the train station, is being changed shortly, they are installing delayed lights where cyclists get the green light earlier than motorists to allow them to get away safely. Aparently this is the first of its kind in the country.

Don't Gear the Reaper
Singles Club: WLTM ride, GSOH, 32:16

Second for Clumber Park too.

How about Monsal Dale in the White Peak, fairly accessible, pub, cafe, ice cream van etc

Agree with all others, cycle meter is great and easily as good as any other 'logger' style GPS. Obviously not a navigation aid but great for recording what you have done.

I upload stuff onto bikehike.co.uk to see offroad stuff on OS mapping too (I have Memory Map too) for the ultimate in cheap / easy ride logging. All good.

Not tried airplane mode, good tip.

Hey there

We have a cheap halfords one, its great, does the job – was a gift to be honest so I did not choose personally but my bro bought it after reading really good reviews. Fully agree, it does the job great.

QR mount through the rear axle.

Had it on my superlight a fair few times and its fine, you feel the compression of the suspention a little under braking but thats about it – usually knock the pro-pedal lever up a bit to compensate.

However, do tend to use my hardtail – more because it is set up with road tyres pretty much permanently.

On the HT the rear disk squeals a little from time to time, think this is to do with the QR being pulled around a little and the rear brake on the HT is a mechanical and does not self compensate the pads like a hydraulic setup so no problem really.

Even had the trailer on my singlespeed road bike – not to be repeated again soon as stevew jnr is a formidable lump to move around….!!!

Go for it, you won't regret it.

Thanks, I had seen a bit about the Tubus racks, look good, I'll check them out.

I presume they have adapters for sea-tstays to fit at the bottom of the rack but how do such racks work when there are no mounts on the top of the seat-stays / sea-ttube? Is this where manufacturers have a fitting to the seat post?

All sounds a bit depressing…..

I did OK out of the scheme, very happy with my purcahse and do in fact regularly cycle to work – the fact that I have a garage full of other bikes that could have done this prior to the scheme is neither here nor there I suppose….

But, some do take massive liberties – I seem to recall reading on this very forum a few years ago that two guys bought snowboards on the scheme – all you have to do is put the paperwork in front of your line manager who may not be a cyclist. Do Burton make just snowboards or bikes as well???? My Satacruz Superlight could have just have easily have been a SC snowboard. I presume the shop they bought from had a snowsports section as well as a bike section.
Still, maybe they live at the top of the caingorm and ride their boards down to the office in Aviemore…. then take the summer off.

I suppose that sort of thing is pushing the boundaries!

Hi

Yes, been to quite a few.

Its OK, all of the displays / ehibitions etc are OK. Always some nice wierd and wonderfull bike exotica knocking around too.

And yes, always trade stalls, not a wide range but pretty good mix of secondhand and brand new.