For the rest of the UK to adopt the Scottish right to roam model (think thats what it is called) so the rest of us can legally ride footpath trails and camp in forests … please.

He’s no Major Les Hiddins.

If you liked Les Hiddins you’d love Malcolm Douglas. He was biting the heads of centipedes before BearG was a bear.

Like you I use a tarp and bivi for bikepaking overnighters but Ive got a 2nd hand Vaude Taurus 2 for longer tours. You can pitch the outer on its own and leave the inner at home giving you a big tarp tent you can pitch in 5 minutes, is seriously wind and weather proof and about 1.2kg.

You can have hours of fun on checking out the sites below for lightweight gear but get your CC ready.

http://www.ultralightoutdoorgear.co.uk/equipment-c3/tents-shelters-c25

http://www.backpackinglight.co.uk/shelters-1.html

29er Inbred here. Ive had a 2.4 OO Chunky Monkey on the back with no clearance issues. It does only have one set of bottle bosses but you can get clamps to attach others if needed. Great for bikepacking and general hacking around. Very happy with mine though if Id had the money at the time it would have been a Singular Swift.

Plastic “bronze” birdbath. Yep.

If we’re included the Pixar films then for me it has to be Cars. It was the first film I took my son to. We bought popcorn and cokes and took our seats front and centre. The lights went down, the curtains parted and I heard Finn take a deep, deep breath.

“Wow Daddy,” he said. “That’s a BIG TV.”

First bike a couple of years after I got it.

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We used to call it a Grandslam™.

Worked on a tourist fishing boat one holidays and was asked to go clean up a “helicopter” in the ladies’ loo. Went in there with a bucket and mop and there was puke everywhere – doors, walls, ceiling. Woman had projectile vomited while on the bog …

Hope you find the leak but more importantly where are you located that you are still using your pool and can we all come over to yours for a swim?

So why do squirrels swim on their backs?

To keep their nuts dry.

Sorry.

I am very good at seeming busy.

Manflu – bah. I’ve got manpneumonia. Far worse.

Also not local and not cheap but Van Nic bikes are rather nice. I’d have on of these if I could afford/justify it

http://www.vannicholas.com/28/Pioneer_Rohloff/bike.aspx

Get some adhesive foam tape to pack up the inside edges of the rim and give the bead something to sit on. Did this with my OO Fatty’s Floater tyres which were so baggy they just fell off the rim without a tube in there. Bit of a faff but perhaps less so endless layers of gorilla tape.

Only one of the those weasels was playing in the vid, the other was just lying there
Only one was a weasel, the other one looked stoatily different

Perhaps but I wouldn’t ferret about it.

We can stop now yes?

The PDW Origami one Ive got works well – keeps the muck off, doesn’t rattle and has stayed put so far. Hate the look of the things though.

I can’t stop watching that rally car one

I’d LOVE to hear the sound track to that one too.

My lad stayed over a mate’s last night who’s dad is a bit of a game hunter and fed them pheasant pie for dinner. He had made a few extra and gave me one when I went to pick the boy up and my wife and I had it for Sunday lunch. My god. Lovely.

Enough to run the Christmas lights then?

Dental work.

Looking at a 1.6 diesel D2 R-Design.

Mrs BrownDog has one of these. It drives very well, nice and comfy and great build quality. Nothing gone wrong with it in 3 years and 20,000 miles. The 2.0D is the better engine ^^^, though my wife finds the 1.6 more than powerful enough. And if you have kids who like biscuits and a highly strung small hairy dog, you will be pleased to learn it will be the easiest car to clean that you have ever owned.

Welcome to the club and real sorry to hear we have another member. I have two prolapsed discs following a major fall skiing years ago. It acts up every couple of years to remind me that, maybe just maybe, I should have had that surgery back then. Pain killers and anti-infalmatories do nothing for me other than make me dopey and give me stomach cramps. I use an ice pack – a proper gel one that I keep in the freezer – to stop the spasming and then go see a physio to help me keep mobile without irritating it all over. He also gets out the acupuncture needles, and that does amazing things.

One of the worst things about it is the lack of genuine understanding from people who have never had this sort of pain. My wife, as sympathetic and loving as he has always been, didn’t get it until she had out second child. As the anaesthetist was inserting a spinal tap – she had refused pain relief for her first birth and left the second one too late for an epidural – he momentarily touched her sciatic nerve, sending what she described as lightning bolts down her back and legs and into her feet. A few days later she asked me whether that was what I felt and I said yes, but it lasts for days rather than a split second. She got it then.

Good luck managing your illness.

Those B&Q bike storage sheds are pretty good but do find a way to anchor the bike to the ground. Maybe fill a big bucket with concrete with a thick chain sticking out the top and bury it under the shed? It would take half an hour not counting setting time, cost about £10 and deter most thieves, though in my experience if they want your bike enough and have time and access, they are going to get it.

As an aside, there was a form of track racing called motor pacing in which cyclists would ride behind HUGE motorbikes as close as possible. They would turn their forks around backwards to get even closer, while the motorbike rider would wear a squirrel suit and stand up with his elbows out to give the best possible draft. The motorbike would also have a little roller attached on the back so if and when the bike’s front wheel touched it, it would just spin instead of spitting the cyclist off. They could hit 75mpjh – must have been terrifying. Think I read somewhere they had a demo at Herne Hill track not so long ago.

One year my wife said she didn’t want anything so I bought her a bench drill press. Next year she asked for some shoes.

Don’t think Alpkit have their Koala saddle pack on sale yet. I love the Wildcat kit though. Ive got their seatbag and handlebar harness. Terrific versatile lightweight and very tough.

Ive run the seatbag harness with 5L, 8L and even a 13L dry bag and as long as its not overly heavy and you pack it so the squidgy stuff is at the bottom and takes the shape of the harness, it’s very stable and can carry a heap of gear.

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Welcome back.

29ers are last week. 650b yesterday. Fat bikes are where it’s at this evening but will start to look old about 1030 when I have to go pick up the kids from the movies. Shame, I’ll be out for a whole hour and will probably miss the next best thing at least twice.

I think you have some insecurity issues.

Who says I have security issues? Tell me their names ….

Fat bikes are remarkably normal to ride once you accept that you will work more on the climbs and your bunny hopping will not be quite as impressive. The OO Fatty has really neutral handling. Its the traction that is the thing though. Mob of us were traversing a steep slippery hillside a few weeks back and whereas everyone else bottled it and walked I was able to just skim straight across.

It’s a bit like buying a humvee to do the school run… Oh.

Oddly enough, me and another dad at our kids’ school have hatched a plan to hire a humvee for the morning school run on the first day of next term. Sick and tired of the Range Rover/Discovery/XC90/name your oversized gas guzzling, two-car-park-space-taker-upper contest going on among the mums. So we are going to end this stupid argument once and for all – our car is bigger and badder and therefore better than everyone else’s’ so we must be better than everyone too.

Speaking of fat bikes. Go ride one. If you like it, buy it. I ride my OO Fatty more than the rest of my bikes combined.

How do you oil a BBQ surely it would fall through the grate? But yes ideally charcoal grilled would be great but a nice heavy duty grill pan is too.

I just put a bit of oil on a plate, dip an old paint brush into it and smear it over the grill. Not too much or it’ll fire up and be smokey till it burns off.

As many steaks as there are, so too are there opinions on how they should be cooked.

I’d be sparking up the BBQ for flame grilled tenderness. Oil the BBQ, not the steak. A bit of salt and pepper is ok if you want but I don’t bother. BBQ nice and hot. Whack it on to sear one side then flip it over to sear the other. Don’t believe the story that you only turn it once. IMO, especially on a BBQ, that will result in one side over cooked and the under done. Cook it how you like it but time will depend on its thickness and indeed the cut. Let it rest for as long as you can stand the sight of it not being eaten.

No sauce, but you may have mustard. Please make it English. Dijon mustard is a crime against the laws of God and man.

The BT Vision remote control. Nothing is where it should be. The TV guide scroll function is laughable. And don’t get me started on the nightmare that is the On Demand menu.

And +1 for the Range Rover Evoque. Gopping.

Christmas presses for your other half … worthy of thread in itself ….

JoeG – yep, he reckoned it was the best aphrodisiac ever and he spent ages rearranging them, working out his mental catalogue. They were more than a tool to an end though – he genuinely loved them.

But I worked with a guy years ago who had a thing for women’s shoes and had converted his spare bedroom to display them. He had over 400 pairs or seriously high quality, mint condition shoes. Otherwise he was perfectly normal …. Women loved it. He’d take them home and let them wander around, answering their questions and trying them on. Never failed.

Is scouser or geordie or taff or tyke cockney or ****

Mate of mine was in Australia when the West Indies and Pakinstani cricket teams were touring. He had heard the West Indian team referred to as the “Windies”, a term of genuine endearment for Australians who had a long love affair with the likes of Richards and Lloyd. He got that one. But he nearly choked on his beer when he saw a TV commercial warning Australian cricket fans that “The **** are coming!” That was sometime in the late 1980’s. I think they have moved on since.

Lovely place, great people. Expensive. I remember paying London prices for groceries.

If she was going to book it anyway, why bother asking you first ?

Time to reset this … *

She wasn’t asking your permission. She asked because she wants to know that she thinks you are important and that you think she is important (bare with me)

Does she ever ask you which shoes she should wear? The ones she has on, or the ones in her hand. The ones she has on are the ones she likes – that’s why she has them on. Fact is the shoes will probably be almost exactly the same to a man’s untrained eye, but she wants you to prove to her that you care about the way she looks as much as she does. So the only response should be to ask her to change the shoes so you can see her in the other ones, and then tell her you liked the ones she had on in the first place. It could be shoes. It could be dinner. It could be the sort of soap in the sink.

Basically, we’re all the same and want/need similar things. But we do go about getting those things in different ways.

So when your wife asks if its ok for her to disappear with her friends on NYE to go to a concert, there is only one way to deal with it, something like: well, you know I love NYE and think its an important night for us to be together. But sometimes its also important for us to do things with other people, and the concert sounds like great fun. WIsh I could go with you. So while I am a bit miffed that you want to be somewhere else on NYE, go with my blessings and have a great time, and we can do the together thing the next night.

* This advice comes with a health warning. It could be complete bollocks.

Power and the Passion by Midnight Oil from their 10,9,8 … album. It was 1982 and I was 18 and had never been interested in music till I heard this at a mate’s place. Brilliant.

Ive got a Deuter Cross Air 20 EXP (yes, it’s all that … ) Don’t get one of these. It’s incredibly comfortable, takes a water bladder, has a great shape thanks to an internal frame that supports a mesh back to holds it off your back, but it’s a great heavy lump of a thing and you can barely get a sandwich into it. Others may have a contra view but after struggling with it for two years, mine is going to Oxfam and Santy is bringing me something Camelbakky for Xmas.