Hi dogz,

Just received the bootliner and wanted to say thanks for sending it. A pleasure doing business with you.

Hmmm, just got a delivery failure notice so the email didn’t work. Can you send me a mail to the address in my profile or pm me. Cheers

You’ve got mail

Cool, providing it’s in decent condition i’ll take it. Where are you based by the way? I’m in South West London and work in Croydon if you are anywhere near, no point posting it if we don’t need to.

Dogzyboy, what year was your car? Of its the same model car and you still have our that that would be great. How much do you think it would be to post?

Don’t really want to go down the Audi route if I can help it. There are a number of websites out there that sell them (roofbox.co.uk and leisureshack.co.uk etc) but was wondering whether anyone had experience of any of them. If not I guess I can take a punt but would rather get something good first time round

Cool, all good info. Yeah it a long way but my wife who is 6 months pregnant wasn’t keen on flying so what we thought we would do was try and make the travel part of the trip. This also means that checking out some of the local trails probably isn’t on the cards this time around…

The place we have booked once we get there was from Sawdays so it’s a good shout to check that out too.

Going to book channel crossing transport tonight and hopefully have a scout out for some halfway stops.

Ah yes, missed out some crucial information. Will be looking for hotels or B&B (or the French equivalent) to stay in.

I’ve done a fair bit of driving “on the wrong side of the road” including in Greece, Croatia and Italy so not too phased by that but the above pointers will no doubt come in handy. At the end of the day it’s a long drive and we want to take it easy so will resist “making progress” and will opt for the more relaxing drive.

Depending on where you are based the bloke that does the work on my Audi is an Indy Saab specialist who used to run the service centre at one of the dealers. His Name is Joe and he’s based in Tattenham Corner (near Epsom) and it a nice chap who will probably be able to give you some pointer if you give him a call. His details are here is your are interested:

http://joesrepairshop.co.uk/about.html

Sorry,may have aready said but whereabouts are you based? I’m Epsom way used a heatas registered fitter called Costertons. We didn’t need a liner but think he said it was about £500 for a liner and similar to fit the stove. Stove is on top of this.
We bought a firefox 5, one of the “cheap Chinese” ones. Had it just over a year and are very happy with it and it fitted our budget

Some good pointers there everyone, will check them out.
Surprisingly there still seem to be a fair few places asking for a 2 night minimum, even on the 17th Jan. We have friends in Brighton and Lewes so know the places well but usually stay at their houses,know nothing about hotels! I’ll see what I can find.

Cheers

I’ll have to give that a go Stoner, the other night I was just using the phone and couldn’t find it on there anywhere, even after saving it to the device.

Can’t say I use itunes for anything else other than ripping CDs and downloading podcasts, never really got into this downloading music thing but at £2 thought it was worth a go

What I don’t like about Google music is that it seems to lock the tracks away in a database so you cannot use them on other devices (eg a traditional mp3 player).

If there is a way, I would love to know!

I discovered this problem the other night having downloaded Transformer. Much googling didn’t seem to provide a solution so at present I can’t sonos it around the house!

I work in Croydon so will keep an eye out. I know you said it was pretty standard but do you have any pics?

I have a 59 plate A3 sportback with the 1.4 TFSI engine (the same as this one I think, approx 120 bhp) and I think it’s a cracking engine. Is as quick as I want it to be and real world mpg calcs put it around 42 mpg from a tank of petrol on a combination of London suburban driving and motorway speed cruising.

We looked at other cars and considered bigger non-turbo engines but in all honesty loved this way this drove. OK it’s not sports car but is plenty nippy enough and when you don’t want it to be just cruises round sipping fuel like any other 1.4

Glad I’m not only one missing place since moving out! I echo what MrSmith and Buzzard have said

Personally I would choose Earlsfield. Wimbledon is only a few minutes away on the train and is walkable (or I should probably say cycle-able) if it’s a decent enough day. I just preferred that Earlsfield was a bit smaller.

However it probably depends on how old you are and what you want to do. If you want to be able to walk to a chain bar then hit up Wimdlebon, if you only occasionally want to hit some high street shops then go for Earlsfield. I found that by my mid 20s I’d grown out of living in Wimbledon but it’s nice to be able to go back there. Actually, since moving further out (Worcester Park) I probably go to Wimbledon more than I did living 3 minutes away.

Earlsifed has some nice cafes BTW. The aforementioned Mels, the Earlsfield Deli and a Nero which is my chain of choice.

Oh yeah, also a good Thai resturant

edit due to over eagerness to post

Lived there for 5 years and Wimbledon for 3 before that. Moved a bit further out last year so that we could afford a house.

In short I loved the area. I lived in the “dodgy” Tooting Area according to Trevron73 :D and never had any problems. It really depends what you are looking for in a place. It’s quieter than it’s neighbours (Wimbledon, Clapham and Wandsworth) but that’s what I really liked about it. 3 minutes either way on the train or a quick bus ride and you have shops, but when I wanted food or drinks it suited me down to the ground. Mels is a good cafe/bar, Nazmins does a good curry (or head down to Tooting for cheap authentic goodness) and the Korean place is good if you want something different.

As I said, I was Tooting way on the Aboyne Estate. If you don’t mind an ex local authority place the flats are a good size and despite what people think about London “estates” it was fine. We sold our two bed flat and have since been back to collect post etc and the new owners love the area as well. As stated above, you get a bit more for your money with an SW17 postcode so if you don’t mind a longer walk to the train station and being near the Hospital then areas around Rostella road are worth a look for a “cheaper” period house.

Between Earlfield and Wandsworth Common are good roads but can get busy and they provide a convenient cut through. The roads further the hill off either Magdalen Road Burntwood Lane start to get into silly money.

As you head up to Wandsworth you get a bit more ex local authority and some new builds. Don’t know much about the places up that way but when my now wife was looking she preferred the Tooting side to up there. Still, no harm in having a look.

Aboyne Estate was about 10 minutes from Earlsfield and about 15 from Tooting, however there are loads of buses that run along the main Road (garrett lane) so if you’re feeling lazy you can do the stretch pretty quickly. However, at the weekend and during the day it can get pretty congested and there are only a couple of points you can cross the train line or the river.

Sorry, bit of a rambling post. In short, I loved it and if I could afford a 3 bed place there would be living there now. Oh yeah, as with most of that part of the world it’s full of South Africans, up to you whether that’s a problem or not!

Hi Smatkins

Firstly, this is my first post on STW but I didn’t join just for this! I also have an interest in Woodburning stoves, sheds and of course mountain biking (although from what I can tell there’s not much chat about the latter on here!)

Anyway, back OT, I’m a Senior Civil Engineer with a large consultancy based in South London. From experience, recruitment agencies can be useful but not particularly so in the graduate market. As you know, there are a lot of grads finishing uni and the industry is still a bit depressed (although some areas are showing signs of growth) and jobs *can* be few and far between.

From my experience I would say contacting the companies directly was your best bet. Look on their websites for specific roles you are interested in and contact them about those, highlight anythig you have done that makes you stand out in that field. If you want to work in geotechnical design, say so and mention anythign you did at Uni that help feed this desire (final year projects etc.)
As you can imagine we got lots of CVs for our graduate programme so anything you can mention that makes you stand out is a bonus.
I did some interviews for summer interns earlier in the week but my boss sorted the CVs beforehand. Anyone who put ‘Institute’ of Civil Engineers rather than ‘Institution’ went straight in the bin apparently. These little things matter so make sure you proof check the CV and get others to read it through as well.

I also did searches on LinkedIn of the potential applicants so if you have something on there make sure it is relevant and shows you in a good light.

Lastly, if you have any contacts within the industry, now is the time to touch base with them and find out what’s going on. We find out about vacancies before they get released and can sometimes bypass the HR filtering process if we like the look of someone…

With than in mind, if you want to send me your CV then my E-mail should be in my profile.

All the best, Dan