Its probably worth asking theneighbours which network gives the best signal in that street. Then get a payg sim with £5.00 of credit and try in in his phone.

Also need to have right chain line. The ultegra rings may be nearer the seat tube than a MTB chain set is. With a 68mm bottom bracket shell one can sometimes hack it by moving a spacer to the other side but with a 72 mm shell your bike has that might not be possible.

Cable pull is different between MTB and Road shifters so unless one has a ratio change adaptor a road mech might not work with mtb shifters. But can get flat bar road shifters.

I have cycle toured in Sweden, Denmark, German Baltic Coast and a bit in to Poland.

Wild camped about half the time in Sweden.

Have thought about another trip to follow the Baltic coast up through Poland, through the Russian enclave of Kalingrad and then through the other Baltic States.

Looks like getting a Visa to cross Kallingrad can be done simply now, 10 years back when I last investigated it was tricky.

I would take my backpacking bike if I went again rather than a traditional touring bike as more scope to take tracks etc.

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com is a good source of info.

They may well argue that the wall was not constructed to take the load of the fixing for the glass panels which look like they were retrofitted.

Any idea what the London part of the old route 20 is like?

It runs through parks and paths alongside the Wandle river, joined up by some pavement cycle paths and odd bit of residential road. It is good for a safe relaxed ride rather than a blast. Reasonable well signed, but in place have to look carefully to find sign.

Re the comments about the A23 , it has a cycle path alongside or signed to adjacent quiet roads all the way from Redhill to Brighton – a lot of junctions to negotiate in Crawley through. When I have been down to the South Downs and I need to get a move on to get back to Surrey I use it and it is fine.

see this https://cycle.travel/route/summary/471

meant to include this in my earlier post.

for the old route 20 that starts on the Wandle trail. Ridden this a few times down from London to Surrey, and then on to Brighton.

and this alternative – https://cycle.travel/route/london_to_brighton

Tim.

I asked Cotic about the 11-51 and they have replied

we will be building the GRX bikes using a Goatlink:

https://www.wolftoothcomponents.com/products/goatlink

We have tested this on the bikes and it works perfectly. Richard has
been running a GRX mech with an 11-50 cassette and no Goatlink on his
prototype for months without issue as well. Shimano are very
conservative with their advised range for the GRX mech.

“

The GRX build says ‘Shimano GRX800 1×11, 11-51 Cassette. 11-51 might be an error, as it is above the official capacity of GRX. Or may be that have done something to make it work.

In hilly area a hub dynamo is not great because unless you exceptionally powerful and not carrying much luggage you will not be going fast enough to generate much power on the up hills, and the faster downhills do not make it up.

Better to stick to a powerpack that gets charged when you have a chance. Get a fast chargeing that uses the same spec of fast charger as your phone.

Tim

Not far back to Staveley and the tree free routes up in kentmere.

re

But to then actually remove Johnson would require 182(?) Tory MP’s to vote against him in that leadership election and transfer their votes to somebody else. That would require a ‘unity’ candidate to galvanise a vote for someone they think would do a better job. There is absolutely no sign of that.

If Johnston loses the no confidence vote he is not allowed to stand in the subsequent leadership election, but if he wins another vote is not allowed for 12 months.

I did it about 10 years back on my own camping using predominately the Cicerone route, but Edinburgh, Perth, Inverness.

I had not done as much pre training as a I planned due to a succession of bad colds through the spring. So I got fitter as I rode! As I was camping I could decide how far to go each day.

The main advice is enjoy it!

If you are going on an organised you do not need any advice about the route or accommodation! But you will have to ride the set distance each day whatever! So practice riding back to back long rides and going out whatever the weather.

My tip is make sure you get going on schedule in the morning, which allows for some more relaxed riding in the afternoon when you have the end in sight.

Make sure your bike has low enough gears to get you up hills when you are tired.

Have clothes that keep you warm when you are damp, I got warmer socks and a long sleeved Marino top in Shrewsbury on my end to end :-)

I have had about 4 punctures in my 32 years of driving.

The first three were over 15 years ago when a spare tyre was standards.

My current car (2008 Honda Jazz) did not come with a spare, but it came with a jack, even though there was space for a spare under the boot floor. The 1st time I had a puncture, found tyre deflated in the morning, so jacked wheel up and got a lift with tyre to tyre depot to get it replaced. Thought about getting a spare wheel, but never got around to it. Five years later got a puncture whilst parked, tried inflation kit, and only kept tyre up for about 1 mile. Tyre depots had closed,, called RAC, they came after a wait. The guy tried plugging it, but did not work. So he fitted a universal space saver wheel he had, and then followed me the 100 miles back to where I was staying to retrieve it. Next day was a bank holiday so I had to get a a mobile tyre fitter out to replace so I could drive back up North. I had learnt my lesson and immediately purchased a full size spare on a steel wheel.

Will be wary of having a car in the future with just an inflation kit and no option for a spare wheel. But I think my next car in a few years time might be electric, and they tend not to have space for any sort of spare.

Only about a week to go

Doing this has got me to the 1000 miles run in 2021 milestone :-), and kept me sane thought some difficult things these last few months. Will celebrate the running achievement by going out of my bike for today’s 30 minutes.

Since missing a couple of days towards the beginning have not missed a day, but a few times have done my normal run in 28 minutes and not bothered to run un and down the road to make the exercise up to 30 minutes.

A dear friend of mine died of cancer last year, towards the end she had very little energy, and reserved what she had for her closest friends and family. She meant no disrespect to friends outside this very small core, but just was not able to respond to there messages. I also observed that close family were also drained. So letting a little time pass before getting in contact to share your condolences is not something to be feel bad about.

Keeping in touch in a low impact way as your friend’s illness progressed may have been the best thing to do.

As others have said getting in touch and sharing memories of the good times with his family is a nice thing to do. If you can I would write a nice letter rather than using technology, may be including a photo of your friend happy out on his bike.

Tim

Ask about any organised activities appropriate to her state.

If she is in fast decline then a purpose built home with a specialised Dementia unit is probably best.

Key thing is having a relative close by with the love and commitment to visit more than once a week, and sort little things out, that improve quality of life. Close relative can notice things that even the best intentioned care staff do not tend to. So if your partner is close to her mother, it might be best to keep her close.

I think you should include a ‘free gift’ with the package , I suggest a jockey wheel with ceramic bearings, or 5 ml trial bottle of that very expensive chain lube.

The UK Direct Debit system is a batch system that uses a central interchange service BACS.

Organisations collecting money send a file of requests (on day 1) to BACS electronically who then generate a file for each member bank and send it to them (on day 2) . Each bank then processes the file, typically as part of its daily batch cycle and returns a response file to BACS, when then processes all the responses from the different Banks and sends each collecting organisation a response file, as well as crediting the collecting organisations back account (on day3). This operates over a 3 day cycle.

This is a simplification – as it a few year since I was involved in developing systems to DD collections for a major UK entity.

As well as batch jobs to process DD collections there is a batch process to accept / amend / cancel DD requests.

The DD scheme rules require a waiting period between a DD collection being set up and the 1st collection being made to allow the client to receive notification of the schedule of payments, and have an opportunity to cancel.

I think a significant proportion of the UK population and hence forum members will have had a payment collected or received a credit by the now retired system that I was one of the developers of :-).

This is different from “faster payments” and card transactions which are processed on a per transaction basis.

As others have said Banks only run their main batch cycle on banking days – which exclude Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. This works reasonably well for all concerned as others said it gives time for maintenance at weekends and avoids having to staff all support roles 7 days a week. Same applies to the clearing cycle for paper cheques.

There are rules that govern what happens when collection date falls on a non banking day.

The consumer and business need for a payments outside this batch cycle outside he clutches of Mastercard / Visa has lead to the introduction of the ‘faster payments’ product. Though to complicate things collecting organisations can submit a batch file of requests!

Missed a day today, for the first time , my mother needed a lot of care, plus busy WFH day at ‘work’ and this had to take second place – after all its just a challenge.

It would help borrowers by reducing the real value of their debts.

It would help savers because interest rates (and hopefully savings rates) would increase to try and curb the inflation.

Inflation can not help both at the same time.

Which it helps depends on if interest rates are higher or lower than inflation.

In recent years interest rates have been lower than inflation.

But complications – some borrowers are borrowing at fixed rates, and some savers are on fixed rates.

Pay rates do not necessary go up with inflation.

So lots of different groups in society are impacted in different ways.

Increased costs of food and energy are likely to hit poorest in society , since they have less scope to cut back spending of non essential goods.

Because of way inflation is calculated the official rate of inflation is likely to underestimate the rate of increase of prices that poorer groups experience.

If the better off have to cut their expenditure on non essential goods this is likely to lead to a dropping of economic activity when measured in ‘real terms’

I’m after 700c cheers 👍
Plus they’re a little high on budget for dog walking.

Anyone tried these Conti Terra trail?

I have got them on the back of my Giant revolt, (with WTB Nano on front, replacing the back Nano which wore out ) seem to work Ok in ‘light mud’/ ‘grass with muddy bits’ and roll ok on tarmac. But they do get clogged up in sticky mud.

they are a sort of Gravel bike version of the Conty Race Kings I have on my Fargo.

They are probably doing a ‘sanity check’ to reduce chance of a return because bike is obviously the wrong size.

I think some manufactures have the bikes almost fully build in the far east with steerer cut down to minimise the assembly work in the UK. I think it is now rare to chip a frame + fork and a build kit of the parts and leave the shop to cut down the steerer.

The web sites of the manufactures often specify exactly how many spacers are included under the stem.

With a carbon steerer there is a limit on the safe number of spacers below the stem.

Always did things by hand, but I’d recommend £12 on a Topeak ComboTorq to anyone to get a feel for numbers. According to the BikeRadar test it under-reads by about 20% which I don’t feel really matters. And being spring-type, it’ll stay in calibration, has no moving parts, and can’t see how it could be accidentally misused.

I have the same tool and choose it for the same reason.

Have fun setting it up and riding it :-)

I have a 2020 H20 in XL which I got after hiring a H30 at Whinlater. I note that Bike Treks have chosen it for their hire fleet as well.

Not ridden it a great deal because just got it before last years lockdown, and have been doing more road and gravel riding. I am no where near taking it to its limits, but it takes care of me when the going gets technical.

The plastic clip that holds the mech hanger in when you take out the rear axel cracked, may be due to me over tightening the rear axel. So be careful.

Since I bent the hanger I replaced the hanger with a third party one with a different clip.

https://gearmechhanger.com/PILO-D797-CNC-gear-mech-hanger-/-derailleur-hanger

Did my first Great North Run yesterday and my 2nd half marathon race.

Had been running every day between Christmas and mid July mostly 5km each day , then got a tender spot inside the rear of my left foot. So had a break for a 12 day 1000 mile England and Wales bike packing trip.

After my holiday Foot was getting better but still tender so took it easy for another week, got some new shoes , then ran some 5km runs then built up . 8km, 5km km 10 km ,5km, 15km , 21.1 km with the longest run 2 weeks before the 12th, when I did a completely flat mock race in 2h ours. Then ran a mixture of 5km and 10 km runs.

Had a race plan in my head adjusting for the hills on the GNR to do it in 2 hours, but on the day my legs felt good and the down hill from the start to the Tyne Bridge got me warmed up quickly, and running faster than my target down hill pace. I then felt good on the 1st hill and was faster than my target for the flat, so decided to keep that up. This continued to the turn ( this year race ended in Newcastle). Did slow a bit on the slope back up to Newcastle from the Tyne and in last couple of my upper left leg started to ache a bit.

Very pleased to finish in 1:54:30 well inside my target time, particularly as a month ago I though that I mighty not be able to run.

Having lived previously in Gosforth and ran a lot on Town Moor, it was great to run through the city centre and then finish next to the moor and then walk back up to Gosforth high street, with some of the guys I used to run with when I lived in Gosforth.

I think the extended start interval was good, as it was not too crowded on the road.

I don’t think there’s a swimming pool in Kendal

There is a 25m pool at Kendal Leisure Centre.

I live in Kendal having moved to work in the mid 80’s but until recently hve been working over in Newcastle but still kept my ‘home in Kendal. Now back full time thanks to a change to home working, and enjoying being in Kendal. Its great to be away from the trafic and aggrivigation of a big city.

Kendal is far enough away from the Lakes to avoids being crowded by tourists in the summer, and most services. Small hospital so for many things need to travel to the big hospital in Lancaster. Been okwit my health, but if I had somethig seriously ill with me would want to be back in Newcastle.

For road biking Kendal has the pennines and dales close at hand.

From almost anywhere in town you can be outside of town on your bike in 10 minutes.

Kendal has grown a lot in the 30 years since I arrivied so lots of incommers many of which hve been attracted by the outdoor life.

Clubs and facilities for most sports.

In pre COVID times Brewery Arts Centre was a mainstay of cultural life, and it has survived.

Enough shops to meet everday needs.

Almost everywhere is within resonable reach on foot.

Wetter than the south east but dryer than the central lakes.

If some where bigger would suit your family better you might consider Lancaster, or if you would like village life one of the villages in the Lune valley.

You realy need to come up to see which place’s vibe woudl suit your family. But there is enough choice of different vibes to find your match.

For me the main disadvantage is the distance to travel back down south to suport my ageing parents. The Lakes and Dales are special but so are the South Downs and the Surrey Hills in a different way.

RE

All a lot of ‘specialist’ recruiters do is trawl LinkedIn so save yourself a 20% fee and trawl LinkedIn. You can also advertise on LinkedIn.

That is so true in the IT sector, there are even offshore service providers that agencies and employers with internal recruiters out source the Linkedin trawling to.

re

it’s got nearly 80ml of Muc off sealant in it.

I found that Muc Off was not great at sealing up a worn tyre, but it has been fine sorting out punchers from thorns etc.

Got a WTB with worn sidewalls to seal up using Hutchinson (from Decathlon) sealant, which is a nit more runny and without particles in it.

Tim.

A few thoughts from my experience recruiting and developing IT teams.

1) recruiters/agents are naturally optimistic about a candidates CV

2) If you go in to an interview for a ‘stretch role’ and you may are unsuccessful you may gain insights in to areas you need to grow your skills. When I did a lot of interviewing, I aimed to give immediate feedback to any candidates where the interview revealed gaps that made the candidate not viable.

3) I have seen many ‘hires’ respond really well from switching organisations and been given more responsibility and having to extend their technical skills fast. The key factors for success are a) being good at and enjoy learning new stuff b) having access to experienced colleague to point them in the right direction / ask the right question / collaborate in a tight ‘situation’

4) I have seen new hires flounder where it is too much a stretch from existing skills and not a good more experienced collaborator with time for them. So find out more about the organisation and its culture. Ask if you can ‘meet’ (harder at the moment) with a member of the existing team for a ‘coffee’ chat. Does any one you know know some one who work there?

5) Interview yourself and ask yourself for examples of situations where you have been stretched technically and /or with level of responsibility you were given. If you have a number of examples where there was a positive outcome your can use that to give your self the confidence you can succeed in a new role. If you do not have these, then seek these in your current role.

6) The best senior techies/ developers have often got their experience by jumping in to new situations and using them to grow their skills and confidence. Some people ‘just have’ it, if you are the ‘go to’ person on your current team, sounds like you ‘have it’ and you would respond well to a rich learning experience.

That is very unpleasant, glad you are physically OK.

I’m concerned about my garmin, can anyone else access its data to find my start points? I’ve contacted garmin but obv it’s a weekend. Anyone know?

If the thieves know about Garmins then they could connect it to a computer via its USB port and download the GPX the files that are stored in the internal memory and then analyse the files with any of the numerous services or programs that can do this.

But if they know enough to do that, I think that they are more likely to do a factory reset ASAP and remove any link to you in the data.

I did on my Salas Fargo last month with 2.1 Race King tyres as part of a 12 day 1000 mile ride. Then it was very dry so their minimal tread was not a problem.

The photos that are agaiont the route in Kommoot give a good represenation of the terrain.

Hardest bit was a sandy section in Thetford forrest, where i had to get off and push as no traction. But you will probably have turned off to Cambridge by then.

I think you will be best on your cross bike, plus if you have to switch to the road to make your deadline it will be faster when you need to be very fast. Plus cross bike will be faster getting to the point you join the trail.

I would start at 1st light, work out a schedule and if you are dropping behind t their is scope to edit out some of the trial when it loops around a bit,

Have fun.

Tim

Another happy Fargo owner here,

Me too mine is 3 x 9

back about a week from a 1000 mile 12 trip through England and Wales.

Its got a higher bottom bracket than is fashionable but that works out well on rutted bridleways.

Where this particular fatality occurred is not too far from my home.

I agree that statistically overall the chance of an accident is low, but I still tend to try and avoid these types of roads. The consequences of either me as cyclist and/or a driver making a mistake (and I think until the inquest we need to keep an open mind about what happened)

Thinking about it from my perspective as a cyclist

If I found my self coming up from Milnthorpe and wanting to be on the Bowness road (and for some reason I had not gone the longer way around), I would cycle along the pavement until I was opposite the junction, and then wait for a large gap in the traffic before briskly crossing the road pushing the bike, or cross cycling from the left hand side of the road, hiving stopped to have a careful look at the traffic. I do not feel confident about looking over my shoulder whilst cycling and moving right on a busy road like that, too easy to make a mistake and not see a vehicle or underestimate its speed.

I have been advised If I had my conventional boiler replaced with a Combi that I would need a bigger pipe fitted between gas meter and boiler.

So something to get checked out.

Not done this ride before.

Is it just a case of turning up and starting to ride on Saturday morning, following the GPS route?

Is there any checking in and out ?

I live in Kendal so will probably just ride to the start.

Tim

in the commercial world most large employers restrict references to confirming employment dates and for ex employees if the person resigned / made redundant / dismissed for misconduct. Where I work compmay policy stops managers giving a more detailed reference. Thing is large companies send out detailed reference requests, but are not surprised when they just get confirmation of dates back, as this tends to mirror there own rules for giving references.

If I have a postive view of the person as well as re directing the request to HR, I offer to say a few words on the phone.

Tim

I am happy with Nationwide, I have cause to pay in a cheque about once a year and it can be done via their cashpoints. It would be good if they introduced paying in a cheque via a image. Now that clearing between banks is done via images it is the next step.

I used to be team manager for a large team of 40 software developers, working across multiple technologies and clients.

In my experience some developer thrive whilst staying on one project, and others need and/or benefit from ‘the kick’ of being taken out of their comfort zone and dropped in to a new situation which might be new project, new technology or different responsibilities (or sometimes all three). The best setting for growth is one that gives these opportunities outside a rigid promotion process. Those who growth their skills fastest, look out for stuff they have not done before and say,’ have found out about that’ / ‘I can find out about that’ ‘I can take care of that’….

If you current situation does not offer that, then time to move on.

When hiring private learning outside the workplace was always a very positive thing when considering a candidate. Frequently new role will not be exact match for old role, so track records of self staring learning is a good sign.