XBox One or 360?

I picked up a 360E last week, 250GB HDD with controller and 4games for £179.99 in PC world.

Seretide for me, was on numerous as a kid but had the Seretide for years now, although i would say the biggest difference recently has been cutting Gluten from my diet. Both kids were diagnosed Coeliac 18-24months ago and i made the decision to follow the gluten free diet and it has certainly helped.

I can see how swimming would help, increases lung strength i think, used to swim competitively until mid teens with no problems but like everything years away from it i notice the difference when i try an get back in the pool now.

@sausagefingers would the ESP and eggshell take so well on fresh MDF? Got a few ideas for making bespoke storage / display units that i’d want to paint but never had a great finish on fresh MDF without loads of work in the past. Wash with ESP, primer and top coat in eggshell sounds easy.

Tullibody aint too far from the trails, almost on your doorstep infact.

There are some good and bad bits to Tullibody as with anywhere really. Could reccomend avoiding bits of all the towns an villages around Clackmannanshire really but I wouldnt avoid any of them entirely if the right house came up. Be fairly obvious once you go have a look at the place whether it’s in a nice area or not.

If it was a really nice house in a good location i would look into the possibility / cost of putting in some flood protection around the property.

Just out of interest though does anyone know if having added flood protection to your property you would be able to then get flood protection on the insurance which could not be had previously? Assuming potential floods are recorded as being able to reach say 100-150mm above your thresholds and you’ve protected to say 500mm to be on the safe side. To me that should be seen as doing everything reasonably practicable to prevent damage if a “freak” flood was to overtop your defences. Maybe hoping for a bit much there.

If everyone stopped turning their gardens into hard paved areas we would have much less of a problem as a lot of water would be absorbed into the ground at source rather than just channelled along to somewhere else to cause a problem.

I’ve got one of their wind/waterproof jackets which has kept me dry an cosy on some pretty foul Scottish hillsides. Never had a “proper” brand jacket to compare them against but no issues and as said above pretty robust

Oh and Tescos own brand Cornflakes & Rice Crispies are GF according to Coealic UK although they’ll still stock a GF version at 4x the price. Blitzed cornflakes make a nice crumb coating for fried fish, or BBQ Doritos for a BBQ flavour coating on chicken nuggets.

Both my kids were diagnosed with Coeliacs 18months ago and I chose to follow the Gluten free diet also to see if it helped with other things which it seems to have to a certain extent.

Most important thing to remember that your fruit / veg / fresh meats are all naturally gluten free so like others have said all you’re trying to elimiate is the breads and pastas we bulk our meals out with. There are Gluten free versions available but simply swapping to rice / potatoes avoids the excessive cost of a “speciality” gluten free product.

I have the added complication of being allergic to Eggs which is a big constituent in gluten free bread products so really struggle to get and kind of breads or rolls. Best i’ve had to date is Yes You Can bread altho it appears to have dissappeared off the shelves lately, or Warbutons wraps are really nice if a bit pricey.

Thing to watch is sauces, seasonings and coatings on things that might contain gluten somewhere. Make sure you pay attention to the labels, you’ll get to know soon enough what your typical shop is and what you can / cant have. Be aware for “new recipes”, caught me out a couple of times in the past.

Certainly not easy eating out particularly with young kids but more and more places do GF menus now, Pizza Hut/Pizza Express & Dominos all offer GF bases as, TGIs do a GF menu but its really just the same menu with the Gluten element removed. Like giving you Fajhitas with no tortilla wraps which is a bit of a cop out in my view.

All in its not all that bad once you get used to it, if you can switch from Gluten containing foods to naturally GF foods it’s much cheaper than just going down the route of buying replacement GF foods.

Just starting to give my 2 (5 & 7) pocket money on a reward / loss basis. Giving them £2 a week but they can lose it incrementally if they don’t do their basic chores / good behaviour. Hopefully teach them they have to “earn” money and not to just expect handouts each week without being to difficult for them to get it.
We’ll see how it goes over the next few weeks…

Yeah it was the crane that made me think. By increasing the length of the top platform member backwards it allows it to pivot about the top of your steps with the tail being restrained by the tension member rather than purely trying to rotate and bend the sections with the steps.

Not gone into any calcs or anything but basic principles i would think you need to add a second diagonal main brace opposing the original, creating an x shape between base and platform.
Extend the main rails of your platform back within your given width to meet this second support.
This would give you a main support in tension and the original in compression which i should help to distribute the loads better within your restrictions.
Thoughts?

Trespass or GoOutdoors have been where most of my littleuns outdoor gear came from, no complaints.

Whether you use resin fix or expanding anchors is irrelevant to the edge distance both will pass the same load through the bolt into the brickwork.

Based on a 50mm deep hole you’ll only need to fill the back 18mm with resin to ensure that when you push the bolt in the resin fills only the hole and doesnt spill out the front wasting loads and making a mess.

I wasn’t aware of the Evoc but having a look now, might be the ticket.

Thanks for that richmtb. Got the race notes downloaded eventually with the map so all sorted…

Yup im goin. Where’s the link to the route on Tweedlove? Unless its in the pre race notes PDF that won’t open for me at the moment!

Anyone know the script on Saturday for practice, is it start from the Hydro or just ride around GT ourselves knowing which bits of trails to look at?

Not personally seen one in the flesh, but have other Deuter packs and they are very good, check out the Deuter Compact. Shows in one of the pics carrying a set of pads and full face helmet with a reasonable looking retention system. http://www.deutergb.co.uk/products/all/bike/all_bike/deuter_compact_exp12_/428/

Took my youngest across to France camping at 6months, biggest issue is the amount of space they can take up. We had a great little fold up travel cot so he couldnt roll away through the night but still takes up a fair bit of space.

Done the same thing myself and never had any problems with it.

Agree with the good post and good information, most of which is common sense to most I would imagine. However what I find difficult is the not eating certain things or drinks 4-6hrs before bedtime when I get home around 7pm and out the door at 7am. Restricts your diet considerably as you cannot feasibly leave 4-6hrs after food and still get a “good” nights sleep.

Stevo210 sounds like the problems i’ve had with KMC requiring replacing in less than a yr without what i’d class harsh condtions.

Looking at the PC971/991 both say they’re improved to run smoother with Truvativ chainrings, anyone know if this means they dont run so well on Middleburn rings or will that not be an issue?

Did it a few years ago over two days which was ok, if i was to do it again i’d do it over 3days to properly enjoy the scenery.

If you’ve only got a day then prob best from Crianlarach northwards would be a decent option, bout half the distance but some of the best scenery / remoteness on the whole trail.

Those Softie bags look pretty damn good for the money gab, you have one?

“lunch line” … maybe
“king kong” … not a chance!
However if it was my local trail I imagine i’d get stupid one day an try it…

thanks for all the suggestions, sadly there shall be no major MTBing involved as the youngest is still on stabilisers and there’s no SO to supervise whilst I go off to play.

My kids school has a shelter and I got a letter towards the end of term asking who would be using it next year as they have limited space and would allocate spaces in a raffle kind of fashion. Tbh I very rarely see more than a couple of bikes in it.

I wouldn’t rule out the foil stuff entirely and rememeber to include that the additional plywood you’re planning to lay will have some insulating benefits also. Just hard to quantify the insulating benefit each will give you. Other option would be to use a laminate underlay material generally 2-3mm thick and is designed to be squashed under flooring and provide sounds and insulating properties.

4 foot? surely thats more than ample room to get under and fit insulation from below. My parents house was insulated from below and its only 2-3ft headroom, i’m currently considering whether or not I can do my own house as in areas its around 400mm which I think may be possible just v awkward.

That said it depends on how much height in the room itself you can live with loosing as to what options you have for adding insulation above. You could replace the 9mm ply with a 15mm rigid insulation board and have a floating floor above it? If you’re going to the effort of lining the whole place in ply anyway couldn’t you lift the existing boards fit decent insulation then relay with a thicker ply instead of the old boards plus new ply?

Having completed two weekends in the area in the last few months i'd certainly agree that Cli-Machx is worth a visit if you want a decent DH. Its possible to ride straight up the fireroad to the top of the final 3km DH too if you wanted, just have a look at the trail map first. There also appears to be a second unmarked "DH" trail joins the main Cli-Machx route half way down the final section but we never made the effort to investigate it while we were there.

In my opinion Coed Y Brenin has too much fireroad up and down for the amount of singletrack you get but there are some lovely pieces of singletrack.

Bit more out of the way is Coed Llandegla uptowards Wrexham, its a gentle fireroad climb out from the car park to the far end of the forest but then theres plenty of good black graded singletrack on the way back. Definitely worth a look if you're in the area.

mate of mine had a full roadrat nicked in Glasgow bout 2months ago, not able to look at EBay from work but have passed this thread on anyway just incase.

A basic concrete mix uses 1 part cement, 2 part sand and 3 part gravel. Sand weighs around 1.6t(dry) – 2.0t(wet) per cubic metre, gravel about 1.5t(dry) – 2.0t(wet)per cubic metre and cement 1.5t per cubic metre. You can the work out you overall volume required an work out what quantity of each is needed, this only applies if your mixing it yourself as you only need to specify type and quantity of concrete when ordering from a readymix supplier.
Getting concrete pumped any distance further that where the chute on the truck can reach is very costly and I doubt would be worth it for this. You could still get it delivered by truck an tipped in the street if you can transport it easily in barrows to where you need it within an hour before it goes off.
You might want to run a strip found or pads for supporting the actual structure but do you really need a structural 100mm slab all over, some well compacted granular material with a 50mm screed might suffice for the non structural area. Would almost halve the amount you need to get or make.