I also live 4.5 miles from the ferry terminal and you could park on my drive no problem. It’s all down hill to the ferry on the way there too :-)

Email in profile if you’re interested.

Thanks for the info! I’ve decided to make do with it for this weekend and then I’ll review it after the big ride when it’s less time sensitive!

If anyone has twins then I’ve got a lovely Chinook 2 For Sale in the classifieds as well! Open to offers obviously ;-)

They started climbing out of their cots a month ago so we had to remove the sides to make them into beds. Giving a sub 2 year old the decision on whether or not they should be in bed has been a troubling period for everyone involved. The excitement of being able to get out of bed in the period preceeding going to sleep is too much of a responsibility for such a small person to deal with and so ‘bed time’ now ranges from anywhere between 1 and 3 hours.

The bonus is that when they wake up in the night, they now get out and toddle in to our room and get in to bed. I now sometimes don’t even get woken up even if they are in our bed when I get up for work.

It doesn’t get any easier… it just gets different!

ps. in my view, it is not the Health Visitors job to tell you how to parent. This child has been alive 6 weeks and just wants some comfort and to be reassured that it is going to be ok. It’s only in relatively recent modern history that Man has decided that they should attend to their child at hours convenient to them. They need you, it’s a full time job, the hours are crap and the pay is awful, but anything you do now in an attempt to make things easier in the long run is essentially cutting corners at parenting.

Sounds like you’re doing a great job. You’re only 6 weeks in, life is a blur and you only need a few moments a day of them doing ‘new things’ and you forget all of the less than satisfactory bits of parenting! Farting is always hilarious. The moment that I don’t laugh at a fart I’ll know that I am dead inside!

I am the owner of now nearly 2 year old twins. I think that the main thing that can be learned from parenting thus far is as follows:

– Children are consistently inconsistent.
– What works this week probably wouldn’t have worked last week and sure as hell won’t work next week.
-It is impossible for a child to fart quietly.
-They hate it when you are enjoying yourself and they aren’t in the room. They can sense it when it happens, and they will do everything in their power to ruin it for you.

We didn’t swaddle from birth, but then one day we thought let’s give it a go and it was really successful for a while. I’d swaddle them up really snuggly and they seemed to like it and sleep well. From memory (memory isn’t what it once was…) they swaddled from a few weeks old up until they started to try and roll about and then that dream was over.

They are 2 next month, and in that time they have shown glimmers of ‘sleeping through the night’, but never both in the same night, and normally only preceeding a spell of illness in which they would then barely sleep for the following 5 nights…

I mentioned earlier that they can’t fart quietly. Even now, in the first few hours after going to bed, if they have got wind of any type then we know about it. There will be a period of wriggling, then some audible noises, then normally fully fledged shouting and screaming, then sometimes the tiniest of little ‘ppphhhffrrrttt’ and then they’ll be sleeping soundly again. (trying to suppress child A through this whilst not waking up child B is a dark art)

I called up and they valued it over the phone using the national average. According to them we’ve made £65k in 4 years on a new build. Our neighbours just sold their identical house for the same value, so pretty accurate in this case.

I signed up for a 1.74% fixed for 2 years. LTV is a whopping 51% as I called up for a valuation prior to the new agreement. It’s with NatWest and I paid £995 up front for the lower rate.

We’ve got a 2 bedroom house, with 2 year old twins… so am fully expecting to be needing a new house when this deal is up, although it is portable so depending on our situation we could move before that.

We’ve got a Thule Chariot Chinook 2. It was bloody expensive but it’s a remarkable bit of kit. We’ve had our twins in it since they were 6 months old and they love it. We also used it as our main pushchair for well over a year too.

We looked at the Chinook and the Chariot CX when we bought it (Leisure Lakes were so kind as to get both in stock for us to compare) The CX was lighter but in no way seemed to represent the same value for money in terms of quality compared to the Chinook!

(the Chinook is the one pictured in the Thule Chariot advert here on Singletrack!)

I got this at the weekend from Christian at Land of Mud and Glory. Bamboo and excellent.
http://www.landofmudandglory.co.uk/

The Cary Arms in Babbacombe.

http://www.caryarms.co.uk/the-inn

Great location, great food, great drink. Officially not in Torquay but close by, you can defs take a stroll there.

We’ve got an 05 plate windowed version and it is great. It’s the 1.3 multijet diesel. I’d never describe it as fast, but it’s not as depressingly slow to drive as you might imagine.

Ours is invaluable with nearly 2 year old twins. It eats bike and camping kit without worrying about what you are taking. It’s basically a box, so no space is wasted with needless curvy styling. Despite it’s shape, it’s remarkably efficient as it will return 50+ mpg as long as you don’t rag it over 70 on the motorway.

We’ve had a few classic italian car niggles with bits and pieces wearing out, and the odd WTF moment with some electrics, but nothing terminal and nothing expensive to sort out.

Buy one!

I’d ride them.

Great, thanks. I found their website pretty awful to use but have emailed. I’ll report back with any response if anyone else is interested.

Christian makes some awesome ones too Land of Mud and Glory[/url]

I am 5’11.5″ (I like to round up to 6 foot) and I ride a ML. I tried the large and it felt way too big. I have long legs and a short body (BB to Saddle top is 800mm for me). My previous bike was a Trek 56cm.

Pic here: Giant Defy Advanced 3

3 hours difference for me. People who complain about the difficulties involved with having A child need to strap a pair on!

I use an Alpkit one for night time trail running and it is great. The red rear light is also useful if you have to take a road section as it makes you a bit more visible. I normally just use the main beam on low and it seems bright enough. Also handy to carry in your pack when riding as a spare, had to finish a loop around Penmachno in the dark last week using it after my bar lamp died in the rain.