The limit to road bike braking is tyre grip, not brake power. Proper dual pivot rim brakes work well enough and are lighter than discs for reasons others have gone

I’ve got a CX with disc brakes on and it is great offroad but in the wet with 25mm slicks things can get very spicy very quickly, especially when you add in a bit of road film to make the discs all grabby. It’s OK with wider semislicks or proper ‘cross tyres though.

Proper road bike with 105 brakes is perfectly adequete, I have ridden it in the Alps on long hairpin descents and been just fine and I’m quite heavy (15st). Can’t say I’ve ever wanted more brakes on it.

Gary_M – Bealach Beag goes Sheildaig – Kishorn – Bealach na Ba – Applecross – Sheildaig via the coast. The climb is a bit steep but mostly long – if you have a compact or triple I’d highly recommend you use them! The coast road is worse than the Bealach (apart from the last bit before the hairpins).

Basically get used to the time in the saddle (it’s only about 43 miles, albeit very hilly ones) then find lots of hills to ride up and down to get used to the climbing and descending. You won’t find anything like the big climb for obvious reasons but get your climbing nailed and the coast road will be much easier. I’m lucky living near the Bathgate Alps which have half a dozen or so 100-150m climbs I can make into a sort of jigsaw-piece shaped ride – if “Tewke” on your map is Tewkesbury then must be some scope to ride up and down the Malverns or west towards Ross and fit in some decent climbing? And if, like me, you’re carrying any excess weight then try to loose it. Makes a big difference to climbing and gives you more choice of groupetto heading north up the (relatively* flat) coast bit.

This is a “better” profile, from when I rode it last year using GPS/ Barometric altimeter data:

*relatively is indeed the key word here!

We’ve been up in the northern Highlands (near Dingwall) – ground conditions were fantastic until about Wed then there was a bit of a thaw and a full refreeze on Ne’erday so a lot of water ice formed (rather than frozen ground which is ace). Coming home today down the A9 there was fresh snow above probably 550-600m in the east and sleet at Drumochter and it’s all set to freeze again tonight. Obviously conditions in the west are going to be quite different but based on this week’s experience I wouldn’t fancy it as a bike myself.

In summer it’s probably under 2 hours from Kingshouse to Kinlochleven but in winter, who knows really. Depends how much snow and ice you meet.

Woot! Will mail you in the morning.

Always weigh myself in the morning, going back to work after 2 weeks off so can’t get much better!

I’m in – thanks for organising! 13st 7 would be nice – if I get there I’m having me an iPhone!

Will mail you a “weigh in” tomorrow morning and take it from there.

Stuart

Sweet – saves me being organised. I defer to the existing thread.

I’ve had a Passat Sport 2.0TDI estate for about 6 months now – the 170bhp version so plenty quick enough for most things. It’s ace – a significant step up from an Octavia in refinement and comfort though not an A4. It’s much bigger than both as well.

We got 2 people + 2 weeks’ stuff + 2 road bikes + 2 MTBs in the back and whanged round France and n+1 kmph last summer, can just get a bike in the boot seats up (my Soul fits but Rush doesn’t without taking the rear mech off). It’ll do a bit over 40mpg driving at, ahem, “Autoroute speeds” and 50 is attainable if not driving like a ****.

Downsides – well, bit of an appetite for front tyres and not so good for on-street parking and manouvering (it’s a big car whatever way you look at it).

Money no object I’d love an A6 3.0 tdi quattro estate (well, an RS6 ideally but A6 3.0tdi and a 911 with the change seems a better idea!), on a smaller budget hard to beat a Mondeo.