It’s not that I’m not impressed by gravel bikes, they’re extremely capable and adaptable and would basically cover 85% of my riding, but that remaining 15% only an MTB can really address…

As someone mentioned above, maybe rental could scratch that remaining 15% itch, especially if it’s for occasional trail centres and holidays abroad. I used to ski every year and quickly came to the conclusion that renting made more sense for the one week of a year when I skied. If you only “need” a big full susser for the Summer Alps trips and weekend trail centre visits, it might be a cost effective way of having only one bike but still getting your n + 1 kicks.

EDIT – perhaps doesn’t work so well if your doorstep riding needs a “big bike”.

Interesting that some of you have tried the gravel/CX route and not been impressed. I might have to rethink my answer…

Part of the dilemma is that where I live now, the road riding on my doorstep is fantastic, but not so much the mountain biking. If I really could only have one bike, it might be a road bike…

…BUT if I lived only 30 minutes up the road where the doorstep mountain biking is a lot better, it might be a different answer.

We just buy cheap cartridges (fraction of Canon cost) and they have always been fine.

Just to put forward the other side of this, my HP printer worked fine for years, and only started to go wrong when I tried compatible inks in it. Had to get rid of it in the end.

Adding to this, any experiences with a not too large multifunction device that has a decent scanner?.

My experience is to use a scanning app on my phone. I use Scanbot which is much quicker, easier and better quality than the multi-function device I used to scan with. It’s one of my fave apps. The same company have an app called Unfade Pro for scanning photos, but not got much experience of that.

I still like to have a multifunction device with scanner, but the scanner is mainly used for copying rather than scanning.

I’ve just subscribed to HP’s “Instant Ink” subscription service. It looks good on paper (see what I did there?) but it remains to be seen if it works out cheaper/better. One advantage is that the charge is per page, not how much ink you use. That means I can print off the odd photo to keep the print heads from drying up without worrying about costly ink.

The cafe in Tissington is lovely, especially if the sun is shining and you can sit outside. There’s a village green and a duck pond nearby.

To help with the Excel/Word question, I use both MacOS and Windows 10 and frequently work on the same Excel, Word and Powerpoint files on both operating systems. I’ve not (yet) encountered any issues with compatibility. Office 365 is £80 per year for up to 5 devices, and those devices can be Macs, PCs and even tablets.

I’ll echo what others have said. The actual process of filling in a tax return is little more than typing numbers into some boxes. Whether you know how to calculate those numbers and which box they go in is the big challenge. A great example is understanding – or even knowing about – the various tax reliefs that might be available for you. Not including those in your sums could lose you more money than the cost of a tax accountant.

Some interesting comments CountZero. I can appreciate what you’re saying about having physical media and that’s why I still have a big rack of vinyl that I can’t imagine ever getting rid of. I probably wouldn’t go 100% streaming only, but streaming really isn’t as bad as you make out.

I want to be able to listen to it when I want to

This is the single biggest argument *for* streaming media services. In the old days, if I wanted to listen to my new album on my Walkman, I had to first record it to cassette, then had to take it with me wherever I was going. If I wanted to listen to something else, it was tough, unless I had the foresight to take other cassettes with me. Even with the rise of portable MP3 players, there is still a bit of effort to sync your MP3 from wherever you ripped it to your device. It’s less effort just marking music for offline use with a streaming service.

not at the whim of the sodding internet!

There’s no escaping the fact that streaming music is not possible without the internet, but this is 2017. How big a problem is that? Streaming music services allow you to have the music locally on your device, which means you don’t need internet all the time. This is still considerably more convenient than my Walkman anecdote above.

A more modern anecdote: I walk out the door of my house and think “I want to listen to X”. Before I get the door locked and get out of range of my wi-fi, that album is downloaded to my phone for offline use.

I really cannot be arsed having to wade through endless lists of artists on Spotify, and “If you like that you’ll like this” suggestions, which either recommend stuff I’ve had for years, or stuff I’d never ever buy.

That sometimes annoys me too. It’s like record shopping when I’m not in the mood to go record shopping. But when I *am* in the mood, the recommendations are often good. I’ve discovered more great music via Spotify and Apple Music than I ever did via my local record shops. Either way, you don’t have to look at those recommendations.

[EDIT] – one of the benefits of Apple Music is that is merges your own library of ripped Mp3s with the streaming library. Long story short, you get fewer recommendations of stuff you already have, cos it knows you already have it.

I’m passionate about music, it’s been one real constant through my entire life, going back sixty years to my earliest memory, and streaming just seems to devalue it, it’s just a commodity, and that saddens me very much.

I kind of get this. I had some time to kill in town recently, and popped into HMV. It was a delight to see vinyl back on the shelves, but I was a little sad that record shopping in the traditional sense is no longer part of my life. It was one of life’s little pleasures, despite buying some crap over the years :lol: Great to see it making a strong comeback tho’.

I had two CD’s arrive today, reissues of Curve’s albums Doppelganger and Cuckoo

I’ve not listened to Curve for years. I only have one 12″ single by them, but fortunately my streaming music subscription means I can listen to them whenever I want. I shall do so now.

As I mentioned above CountZero, I’m with you on some of this. I just felt – from reading your post – that you’re only seeing half the story regarding streaming music. I would have thought a combo of “real” media and streaming media would be nirvana for you.

Aggro hardtails can, if not done right, be pigs to climb and dull everywhere other than descending.

This is what I found to be honest. Descending, I didn’t miss the rear suspension much, if at all. I *did* miss it when climbing technical trails though, where it was much harder to keep traction than with a full susser. Not fun and hard work. Flat, non-technical terrain was a chore too, but to be fair it’s a chore on my full susser too :lol:

In summary, I enjoyed my “hardcore hardtail”, but largely because it was a much more capable descender than I expected. It wasn’t quite the all-rounder I thought it might be.

This thread normally pops up at Christmas, but early this time!

I thought it might spur me into some late season action to try and salvage my 2017 stats :lol:

Got our club “Legbreaker” in a couple of weeks, followed not longer after by the club hill climb. I have very low expectations.

presumably theyre all 100 milers?

:lol: sadly not. Average ride was a touch under 20 miles, but most of those miles were probably road miles.

Not the responses I’d hoped for to make me feel better :( :lol:

Boardman, from the article:

I am constantly doing risk assessments. I’m looking at parked cars, seeing which way wheels are turning, everything that’s going on around me. It’s just exhausting. Whereas if I ride on a track or a trail I don’t have to do that and it’s just more pleasant these days,” he said.

I completely get that and I’m glad I don’t have to cycle in built-up areas with lots of traffic, but it’s disappointing that this will be read and interpreted as a generalisation for road cycling in the UK, since it will undoubtedly be used as lobbying material by those who want cyclists off the road. There’s plenty of quiet country lanes out there where road cycling can be and is relaxing.

[edit] the flip side to all this is that you’re riding on a public highway so *should* be paying attention to everything around you. I bet that if all road users did that, we’d have considerably fewer RTAs.

I think where things have got a little confusing is that Spotify *used* to allow you to purchase and download songs. I suspect that the article above relates to syncing those purchased tracks to old-school iPods. Now it’s all streaming I guess that option has gone.

some info here

^from that article

The iPod automatically starts syncing all your music because the Sync All Music to This iPod option is selected by default. Additionally, Spotify syncs your playlists, starred tracks and so on — but only tracks you’ve already bought are actually copied over.

I assume you were wondering if the Spotify tracks you’ve not bought could also be synced.

What I wanted to do was crop a circular piece out of the picture and give it a border.

you can more or less do that with photos

How? I can’t see any options for cropping anything other than squares/rectangles and can’t see where to add a border. The “Markup” extension looks like the same tools available in Preview.

^Hmm, not sure I’m happy about 8 year olds swapping IP address and setting up port forwarding. Assumed this would be easier. A lot of waffle about command line software for configuring this too; there is no command line on iOS or Apple TV. Thanks for posting it

This is a great example of the “Chinese Whispers” effect of the internet. As someone pointed out above, Hoy did not say “anyone over 8st should not wear lycra”, but that’s how the OP and numerous news agencies have interpreted it. He said:

The flipside is that Lycra isn’t the most elegant material you can wear and professional cycling gear generally looks awful on pretty much anyone heavier than eight stone and with more than five per cent body aerodynamic fat.

GQ Source

Not read all the thread, so apologies if this has already been pointed out.

The problem with asking a bunch of strangers “what light?” is that you’ve little idea how quick and technical their riding is. A Joystick may well be fine for such-and-such, but they might ride easy trails at slow speeds. Conversely, thingummy who says they “need” a bar light and a helmet light could be sessioning DH trails at vast speeds.

So, to help you, I can confirm most of my night riding is loamy, woodland singletrack with occasional roots, fields, canal towpaths and rarely anything beyond what one might equate to a blue trail centre. I don’t potter or dawdle, but I’m certainly no speed-demon (just check my Strava for proof of that!).

I use a Diablo on its own and wouldn’t want less light. In fact I got a cheapie bar light to complement it.

Don’t you just create a server?

I don’t really know. That’s the problem :lol:

My lad is angling after an Xbox so he can play Minecraft remotely with his friends across town. I have no idea whether I – or his friends – need to spend money to make that happen. Hopefully not, but the kind responses above are unfortunately confusing me even more :-?

The kids regularly play within the same Minecraft “world” on our home network, but I don’t know if those worlds are available over the internet.

I test drove a 1.0l Focus Ecoboost and was quite very impressed at how much fun it was to drive. Anecdotally I hear that the fuel consumption is woefully lower than quoted.

being cynical, they promote events that help sell their products

That’s how it works, whether it’s the local sportive or a Grand Tour (or F1, or the Premiership, or…). Why do you feel that it’s wrong? Genuinely curious.

I have this debate sometimes with others in our cycling club. I feel that there’s a bit of snobbish traditionalism regarding sportives. Similar snobbish traditionalism seems to be creeping in from many quarters regarding e-bikes.

Back on topic, I massively enjoyed the couple of sportives I’ve done, for the following reasons:

– I wanted to take part in a mass-participation cycle event. If you don’t get why that appeals to people, you will probably never “get” sportives (nor marathons and fun runs for that matter)
– I wanted to ride a route prepared by someone with local knowledge in an area I’ve not ridden in before
– I wanted the challenge of a bike ride. My first 100 miler was a sportive and I have no doubt it was made easier by the crowds, especially the cheering at the finish line
– I’m not fit enough, competitive enough nor committed enough to compete in a proper road race. I’ll leave that to those who are. It’s a surprisingly big step up from just participating in a sportive to actual racing.

So, I touched down in one of the most amazing places on the entire planet, and all I got to do was sit on the floor for a few hours.

If that’s the measure of “worst airport stop over” I’ll see your Easter Island, but raise you Fiji and Santiago on the same trip. All 3 were stopovers of various lengths on the way to La Paz. Not one of them saw me leaving the airport. The Santiago enforced camping out on airport benches was because English people were advised they may not be very welcome in Chile at the time due to Pinochet’s recent UK arrest.

Schindlers List
The Jungle Book
Blade Runner
City Of God
The Beach
Raging Bull
Lost In Translation
Dark Knight

Quite impressive. My list of films I’ve not seen would extend to the hundreds of thousands. You must spend a lot of time at the cinema ;-)

“Alexa, are there any good routes near here that i’ve not ridden?”

Not sure if people create routes on Strava much…

Quick answer, yes.

What do you like about them that keeps you going back?

They offer an opportunity to ride terrain that isn’t in abundance naturally (corners is a great example!), without the stuff that can spoil a natural ride (overgrown trails, floods, mud, tough climbs :lol: )

I love a good “traditional” ride, but a number of factors need to be just right to make it a great experience. Many of those factors I have no control of. Trail centres provide a buzz that might be nigh-on impossible to get on my local trails in the middle of a wet winter, for example.

Also, much of the buzz I get from a good XC ride I can get from a good road ride, yet trail centre riding is a very different experience. It’s the difference between going for a drive in the country versus going on a track day.

Coming back from Applecross over the Coffin Road, last year.

Applecross singletrack by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

Did you get out for a ride then? :-)

I like the look of those BeatsX, but even they are £130. I’m not sure the problem of plugging headphones into my iPhone is one worth over a tonne.

What am I missing?

Siri. At least that’s my understanding of the only key, functional, difference. Siri actually works reasonably well with Apple Music, so if you’re in that infrastructure AirPods are a good solution. I could be missing something else though.

Thanks for the update. I’m intrigued by these things. There’s a lot to like about the design, but a lot to dislike too. Not being able to change the volume without talking to Siri or getting the phone out is the biggest downside for me. I bet that the 2nd gen model with have some way of physically controlling volume. You can’t rely on Siri when you’re on a flight, for example.

I’ve not done loads of riding in Scotland, but the Applecross Coffin Road that others have mentioned above is a cracker. We were very fortunate with the weather, which helps. I even got one of my photos from that trip in a magazine!

I would have happily volunteered to take you out, but I’m away on hols. There are a couple of permissive bridleways around the Roaches and Gradbach and – within riding distance of that – some great, rocky off-road around 3 Shires Head. That’s all doable from Leek, but the first few miles will be on road. If you want some insight into the Roaches stuff, check out Peak District MTB[/url] and have a look at their proposals for developing MTB at the Roaches. It includes some maps of the ROW and the proposed ROW.

Sadly there’s not many good off-road rights of way from Leek itself, but that are plenty of canals and old railways to explore if you really do want to bimble.

I second the suggestion of Forbidden Corner; it’s a great day out with young kids. I also recommend a stroll to Ribblehead Viaduct. It’s only half a mile from parking by the roadside, and then you should hop on the Settle-Carlisle railway. It’s a stunning journey.

Other stuff in that vicinity that the kids, wife and I have enjoyed:

– White Scar Cave – loved this.
– Bolton Castle – possibly the best day out we’ve had at any castle due to there being so much to see and do.
– Richmond Castle and Middleham Castle – neither as good as Bolton Castle in terms of entertaining kids, but if castles are your thing and you’re going to be based nearby, they’re worth bearing in mind.

Obviously there’s some fab biking – road and off-road – just in case you get the chance.

EDIT – all of the above are relatively close to each other and easily accessible if you’re based in Wenlesydale for example. Yorkshire is a big place and not quick to travel around with travel sick prone kids. Yes, I speak from much experience.

The UK is not short of good riding destinations in all corners. However it sounds like your trip is first and foremost a holiday with your other half and not an MTB tour. You need to pick places with something for your other half to do rather than simply good riding venues. For example the riding in Torridon is fab, but is your other half going to find enough to keep him/her occupied?

I’m thinking of heading to south Wales, maybe a bit of north Wales, Lake District, Scotland, back down the east side of the UK, maybe peak District, Yorkshire, nothing really planned yet

I suggest you get this a bit more nailed down and then we can recommend riding along the way. How long is this trip going to last and when do you plan on going, for example (don’t forget the Summer Scottish midges!). Hitting all those spots is a lot of driving.

In the interests of giving you something to whet your appetite, the Gap Route in Brecon Beacons is a classic ride and relatively straightforward.

<thread hijack>
One of the problems with mechanics being so reliant on the computer to tell them what’s wrong with the car is that sometimes the car doesn’t say anything is wrong.

My car is a bit skittish on bumpy B-roads. It’s not always behaved like that, but diagnostics aren’t saying anything. I don’t have much faith in my local garage diagnosing or even spotting there’s a problem unless they take the car out for a drive with me. What should I do?
</thread hijack>

Cuillin Ridge

Not on your bike I assume 8O :lol:

Not exactly gnar

I remember one steep section with some big wheel grabbing rocks that everyone in my party (except me) walked.

The out and back from Kenmore to Applecross is a good shout. I did it last year and don’t remember any path junctions at all, so very little chance of getting lost. It’s a good clear path too.

With confident map reading ability there are other accessible options, but company is wise in case things go wrong IMHO.

Some photos for inspiration on my Flickr[/url]

Applecross singletrack by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

is 8 now and happy on FoD blacks and BPW reds

Chapeau Micro L_F