Can’t decide if it’s bikes or not

I think it’s everyone. I see people wandering all over the place up there.

One I use often is the side of the Dane returning to Danebridge for example.

There’s some huge potential to use that and then follow the canal feeder all the way to Rushton. It’s very muddy in places though….and a footpath

be nice if we could get Chrome hill included in that possible permission

The Roaches Estate that the survey refers to is a fairly limited area, some miles away from Chrome Hill. See the map on the survey for the boundary.

I like it as it is personally. i.e. it’s cheeky and you need to ride it when it’s not muddy and not full of people. It’s also amazing.

What is “it” though? The Roaches Estate is a limited area but it’s still more than “just” the main ridge, covering Gradbach Woods as well. There are a small handful of rights of way for cyclists, either permissive or formal (and hence marked on the OS map). The estate is currently limited in non-cheeky scope but has some potential. Getting a right of way on the main ridge is a big ask, but there’s other footpaths that are also worth opening up, not to mention the existing cycling rights of way that would benefit from some maintenance, such as Goldstitch Moss and the section through Gradbach Woods:

Gradbach – clearing drains
by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

You, me and the land managers know that mountain bikers ride the main (cheeky) ridge, but in my experience they do so in a sensible manner. I go there a lot with my family and I’ve never seen a mountain biker on the main ridge on a busy, sunny weekend and a very rarely at other times. Is common sense and a considerate approach more sustainable than changing the access?

The more we understand the habits and usage of mountain bikers on the Roaches Estate, the better we can prioritise what should be done to improve it.

Thanks for taking part

It is one of mine.

A few of us spent quite a bit of time sessioning that and the little step that leads onto the paving stones. I wondered who the photographer was :-)

A small light foldable push chair wins every time for me.

I’m all for not spending silly money on this stuff, but small and light pushchairs do reach their limits quite quickly if you take them off-road. If the OP – or anyone else for that matter – is a keen outdoors person, a pram with bigger, chunkier wheels is a Godsend for easier off-road strolls. I was walking up on Alderly Edge last weekend. It’s a great spot for a short, easy walk with little kids, but it’s just a bit too rough for small-wheeled pushchairs. Ditto walking round the local reservoir near me.

Horses for courses, natch.

…but have we ridden our bikes together since then??? :lol:

This was almost exactly 7 – SEVEN!!! – years ago. Where has the time gone?

Derwent Valley Pootle January 2010 by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

is it any good?

The Roaches Estate covers the Roaches itself and Gradbach Woods. They are a very short hop to 3 Shires Head and Wildboarclough which are themselves easy to link with Macclesfield Forest. You can therefore make a pretty huge day out with some fab riding.

What the Roaches Estate is currently missing is a good loop that doesn’t require much road work, albeit very quiet and pretty roads. You either end up doing an out and back or riding where you shouldn’t. I’m talking to the land managers about how we can improve that situation, hence gathering usage data on this survey.

Dougie the Mad Axeman

I remember visiting him in his “house” when I was a kid back in the late 70s or early 80s. Fantastically eerie place that is now the BMC hut.

No stock of Reverbs at Merlin and Wiggle
Service centres like TFTuned have no stock of spares and no due date for them either
SRAM website saying “….internals have been completely re-engineered….”

:roll:

Reverb scratch by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

I’m often out on a ride pondering whether to have another 20 minutes riding or go home earlier to clean the bike. The former often wins :-)

Oh for a life where my MTB ride is not sandwiched tightly between other commitments.

I was concerned about the grit that is probably inside the Reverb right now, doing additional unseen damage, not just the ability to hold air.

If its scratched then its only going to get worse

It only happened this weekend and I don’t plan on using it again until fixed, so it shouldn’t get worse.

I would start looking at alternative posts rather than paying for a rebuild.

It makes me sad for the state of the World that this may be the best solution :-(

[EDIT] – on the plus side, I might as well carry on riding it until it fails completely if this is the solution

I’m sure someone has already said it, but it does depend on where you ride as to how often you need to clean. A wet Dark Peak ride, for example, can leave grit and water in all manner of moving parts on a bike. This “grinding paste” can destroy components. A few miles away in the White Peak you’ll probably return home with a lot more sticky mud on your bike, but it’s arguably less damaging due to not being so abrasive.

+ 1 for buying second hand

We got a whole buggy set with all manner of accessories for £20 or so. It was in immaculate condition and was headed for the tip. As someone said above, parents just want to get rid of the clutter and let perfectly good buggies and prams go for peanuts. The local “things for sale” Facebook groups are a good starting point.

Top tip, if possible, is to have a bike-washing workstation to make the whole process more efficient. I find that the actually washing of the bike doesn’t take that long and I’m (usually) happy to do it. What annoys me is the muddy tip-toeing inside to turn the outside tap isolator on, getting all the bike wash stuff out, filling the bucket, rinsing the mud off the back yard afterwards, putting everything away again (usually wet!)….

For the cleaning itself:

1. Hose for big chunks of mud and debris
2. Hot, soapy water and a selection of brushes* for the more awkward bits
3. Chain cleaner
4. Spray lube on fork and Reverb stanchions, cycling the travel a few times to get dirt out from the seal, then wipe down (I read somewhere not to do this with rear suspension; don’t ask me why)
5. Towel down if the weather means the bike won’t dry naturally
6. GT85 to displace water from chains etc

*this type of brush is superb for getting in between suspension linkages and on hubs

….and this type of soft brush is a God-send for quick cleaning of the cassette

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can any dads / uncles / brothers give me some recommendations

Go to a shop and try some. Make sure you can both open and fold the pram quickly and easily. Make sure it will fit in your car. Make sure it is easy to push and steer around the many obstacles in a modern high street. Make sure it has space underneath to stuff coats/hats/blankets/shopping. Anything else is window dressing.

Google Picassa is no longer available for offline use

This is what makes me nervous about photo management tools. At some stage someone might pull the plug on them, leaving you with a beautifully catalogued photo library and no supported tool to maintain that library.

In my experience folders never work since they don’t allow a file to exist in more than one folder at the same time. For example if you had a folder called “MTB” and a folder called “Family”, where do you put a photo of your family mountain biking?

Loads of tools that handle this better and all the suggestions above are great. Personally I use Apple’s Photos app with iCloud Photo Library and tag photos (in my example above the photo would be tagged “Family” and “MTB”). The intelligent search and facial recognition aren’t as good as Google in my opinion, but I’m ensconced in the Apple ecosystem so it made more sense to me. With a 150Gb library keep an eye on cost, since some – like Apple – will charge for that size of Cloud storage.

or will it arrange the folders on your drive too?

Forget about folders; it’s not the way to catalogue photos.

Thanks for the replies chaps. I’ll have a ring around. In the meantime, old skool seat post for me :-(

stop trying to be bond/ Ethan hawke/ Austin powers( Yes Holmes was action orientated at times, boxing and martial arts but not to this extent)

Good point. One of the disappointing scenes in the first episode was Holmes’ fight with AJ by the indoor swimming pool. This AJ dude is supposed to be creme de la creme special ops, yet he struggled against Holmes.

I’ll have a shufty in the garage

Cheers :-)

Guessing it will be 34.8?

I would think so; I think I have one of these spare though. Will let you know.

What size do you need?

31.6

I’ve not checked my stock of tat yet, but if anyone does have a spare 31.6mm seat post and quick release that would be *ace*.

ta

do you wear a badge with your forum handle

I did on my first Pootle. I was the only one. I’m a bit sad.

I also had this:

stilltortoise by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

PS subject to getting a replacement seat post in time, I’m up for this :-)

Watched the first episode last night. It’s not half as smart as it used to be and is teetering on the brink of being irritating, but overall it was an enjoyable 90 minutes. The single malt probably helped.

This is available on Netflix now, so is queued up on “My List” waiting for a spare evening with the missus :-)

Although I’d been messing around on boulders and easy scrambles since being a little ‘un, my Dad first took me “proper” rock climbing when I was a young teen and he was nearly 50. I never caught up with his skill and strength and he’d probably still out-climb me now he’s 76!

I do sometimes miss climbing, but it’s just another of life’s leisure activities that was sacrificed to raise a family.

More likely the way in which we access tv and films will change to be more in line with Spotify or itunes.

Rather than paying Sky or Virgin or whoever for a tv package and watching scheduled tv you’ll just have a tv with internet connection and legally sourced high quality streams with fast servers will give you access to unlimited media for a small fee. Maybe.

Eh? This is exactly what is available now. Now TV, Netflix, Amazon Video, BBC iPlayer etc. All of them do this and for not much money. We’ve been doing this in our house for years and don’t mind paying for it.

As others said above, we all know people who have more than enough money to pay for content, yet still choose to source pirated material to save a couple of quid. I don’t get it. Get your money about and support the industry. If you can’t afford it, you can’t (and shouldn’t) have it.

The whole implementation of Kodi is – in my view – built on a premise that is morally wrong. It’s just facilitating and normalising something – streaming pirated content – that was once upon a time the realm of a much smaller minority. In the “old days” those who used torrent sites knew they were streaming pirated content. With Kodi boxes it’s not so clear (hence this thread).

It’s a bit like someone selling stolen goods on Amazon. You assume, because it’s on Amazon, that those goods are kosher. The law just hasn’t caught up yet.

All in my humble opinion etc etc

What I’m discovering though is that it’s difficult to find anywhere sufficiently rural with what I would consider good (in the region of 20mbps+) internet speeds.

You’ve moved to the wrong area then ;-)

So having kids has saved you money…

:lol: probably

I often wonder if we’d still be going out to the pub every weekend if we had no kids. That’s probably £2,500 a year straight off.

Plus one week is never enough, so budget for New Year and Feb half term….

:lol:

No kids, a small mortgage and 2 full time incomes meant we once had 2 ski holidays in one year. We felt very swish :-) Trading that in for 3 kids has been a pretty good deal though, bless their little cotton socks.

4 for holidays

Good point. I used to have annual ski holidays, but there’s no way I can could afford to take the 5 of us to the Alps every year. Last time my wife and I skied together was in Alpe D’Huez 6 years ago and it cost us about £500/600 each for the holiday (chalet) plus ski hire and lift pass, beer money etc, so probably around £1500 all in. A quick search for a similar holiday for the whole family in February half term this year would be £5000. Adding on ski hire, lessons and lift pass would easily be another grand on top of that. That’s a good chunk of the £10k right there.

Any hopes of ever going skiing with the whole family have just been extinguished #FirstWorldProblem

Is this still the place to post feedback on the new website? I’ve spotted a bit of a gremlin in that the drop down menu options against my user name (top right) vary depending on whether I’m in the forum or not. So for instance, now I see:

Profile
Forum Activity
Settings
Logout

On other pages on the site I see:

Profile
Messages
Forum Activity
Settings
Logout

Not a huge problem, but since I’m so used to clicking the second option down for Forum Activity, I often accidentally click Messages instead.

#FirstWorldProblems

Yes I do get that however we buy sports insurance which say covers only on piste skiing and more expensive which covers off piste

The thought of private health insurance working this way terrifies me. Life would become full of decisions based on whether you could financially afford the consequences based on what level of cover you have.

Try my local road gap? No, I’m not covered for that activity and can’t afford the medical bill if I stack it. Solo that VS I’ve done dozens of times before at the local crag? Nope, if I fall I’m not covered and I’ll have to sell the house to pay the medical bills. Take my lad on the Fort William downhill track? etc

I’m sure many people would argue that this is entirely right and fair, but it would be a huge change to become accustomed to when all I’m really trying to do is keep my mind and body healthy.

Macworld did a podcast a month or so back where they talked about connectivity of displays and it sounded like a minefield. Good luck.

Beyond that I can’t offer any practical help :lol:

The term is childfree. Childless implies a loss

When I first read this I thought it was nonsense, but as I say the words childless and childfree in my head, they do imply different things to me too. Childfree sounds like a choice has been made, whereas childless sounds like the choice has sadly been made for you.

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the total cost of childcare is actually picked up by the parents. For example if every parent had to pay for their children’s healthcare and schooling, would the average cost per child be £20k PA? £30k? More?

Is it me or is this thread turning into this?

That GIF is considerably more entertaining than watching Tae Kwon Do at the Olympics

The only way to keep everyone happy is to take it out of Government hands, then everyone gets exactly the quality of service they want

Do they? Surely cost then becomes an issue that the individual has to worry about rather than the government. My fear of a privately run health care system where you pay a premium based on risk is that, in our circumstance, the risks of having more kids would have been deemed too high by someone in an office with a spreadsheet and hence our premium would have been unaffordable. I know this is all pure speculation, but our health is not always completely in our control.

Our first born had a serious and rare condition that no doubt cost the NHS a lot of money to treat (in fact there was some uncertainty that the second lot of treatment would even be signed off). It was genetic, so we had to think carefully about having more kids. Long story short, we have 3 wonderful children and, although the first child still has some challenges, they are healthy and well.

I often wonder how different our life would be under a different health care system to the NHS and I will be eternally grateful for everything they’ve done for us over the years.