All the ground is rotovated
Early spuds, onions, garlic & 1/2 a row of “chuck em in and hope” carrots are planted.

The first salad crops are just peeking through (sown under glass)

2nd earlies and a load of other stuff starts to go in next week

Tomatoes, chillies and sweet potatoes are on the conservatory windowsill. planted a few pumpkins & butternut squash from last years saved seed in a pot on the windowsill to check germination as well.

yeh i think that delivered water pressure is determined by head and not pressurisation vessels and is thus at east partly determined by elevation.

ergo it’s not necessarily something they can just ‘turn down’

And back to the OP. The water pressure is routinely turned down overnight in a lot of areas to reduce both leakage and energy use. When there’s a big fire with lots of pumps sucking at the mains it’s normal for the Fire service to call the water company and request more pressure.

So yes, they could reduce the water pressure in most places, but maybe not in hilly gravity fed areas – but most of them don’t have a shortage!

How low they can go? I don’t know the answer to that.

Mine came supplied with a bungy.

However it’s so big that you will inevitably overpack and you’ll have to jump up & down on it to fit it into the trailer anyway. Where upon it’ll never come out again.

As above.

My only top tip would be to do a test run at a local campsite first. That way if it all goes wrong you can jump in the car and drive home. We’ve never needed to bail out, but some friends have and Mrs trb was much less stressed knowing she had an escape plan and it was a 10 minute drive home.

Choose a family campsite and pitch up next another family with young kids.

90 mins each way generally, but it has to be a good ride and ride time should always be greater than driving time.

That said I have a whole day off and to myself this Friday. I could go ride wherever I like. But I’ll probably take the chilled option and ride from home for 3 or 4 hours. Can’t be arsed to drive and pay the fuel costs. I must be getting old.

I did a powerpoint presentation explaining to my 2 year old what cat poo looks like, it’s inherent risks and how to avoid it, I even had her sign a training form so no-one could deny she wasn’t fully informed of the facts.
But I don’t think she really took it all in.

I learnt a life lesson though, and that was to keep cats out of my garden! (and cat sh1t stinks)

Ignore it, it’s only cat poo in an inconspicous location

It’s not when your 2 year old carries a handful of it indoors saying “Look what I found in the garden dad”

I have a sprinkler connected to a motion detector. Bit like a security light but with a sprinkler head instead of the light.
Any vermin comes in for a dump and it gets sprayed. I moved it to a different position every couple of days just to keep ’em guessing. After a few weeks the local sh1t machines learnt not to come into my garden and I was poo free for the rest of the summer. I got mine on amazon.

Just remember to turn the water off before you walk down the garden in the morning yourself 🙄
It’s also good fun to turn it on the kids on a sunny day 🙂

After trying a cheaper alternative with our 1st, we got a baby bjorn for the 2nd and it was great. I spent many happy hours hoeing the allotment with her in it, (then as soon as she was asleep went to the pub for a pint)

Because my bike used to be a singlespeed, but I needed gears to carry a kiddie seat and it was only supposed to be temporary and I was too lazy to put the front rings back on.
4 years on the kiddie seat has moved bikes and it’s still 1 x 9

But I do have another bike with proper gears on for when I go to places with proper hills.

Ooooh, It’s technically for a mate at work and Part of the plan was to get something that doesn’t stand out and get nicked from the bikeshed.

But I’m tempted by some of these choices myself…..

Nope, but then I do have calibrated fingertips and try not to overtighten stuff.

As far as I can tell, I am (thus far) still alive

Looking at the amount of mud, food, snot and puke on ours, it’ll be treated as a biohazard if we ever try to sell it. Any potential buyer will need to de-contaminate it before they can worry about crash damage!

Tour of the Cornfields is on your doorstep.
http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/events/details/74830/Tour-of-the-Cornfields

Or buy a BMX and get yourself down to the Royston Rockets track

I used to live there, don’t any more though, and no, I won’t tell you how I escaped 🙂

Quick blast :
Up past the heath (throughh the estate just before the heath), to Therfield, down through Therfield, there’s a Bridleway on the right (easy to miss), follow that all the way down. Pop back onto the road and back through the village (stop for pint) & back down the heath (some cheeky bits at the top of the heath if it’s quiet)

Long ride :
Head North, over the trainline, before you get to bassingborn pick up the bridleway that runs parallel to the train line all the way to Baldock. Into Baldock and out the other side
A)take some twists & turns through the villages and bridleways back to Therfield & Royston
B) head over to Buntingford and take some twists & turns through the villages and bridleways to Barkway, Barley & home. there is an almost interesting descent parallel to the B1039 back into town

Fun ride :
Catch train to Baldock, ride to Chicksands, have fun, go home same way.

Childcare costs? Never a problem in my day – kids had the huge benefit of having mothers who actually wanted to look after them!

pffft. My mum worked part time when I was a kid and my wife works part time now we have kids.
The difference being that I was looked after by the lady across the road, I hated it and was bored out of my mind.
My kids on the other hand love going to nursery. They are surrounded by lots of friends do interesting things and have a right old tantrum if I arrive early to take them home!

Back to the OP, we both get the childcare vouchers, salary sacrifice. If we didn’t it’s be marginal if it was financially viable for mrs trb to work. We find that nicely covers 2 days a week for a 2 yr old + after school club for her bro. Plus as it’s taken out at source, paying the monthly bill doesn’t feel quite as painful.

my local is £5.10 lager, £4.50 Guinness

You need a new local, mines £2.90 a pint + £10 to fill a 4 pint flagon of micro brew to take home, slurp.

back in the old days pre wife & kids, I once worked out the true cost of a ride and found my bikes were costing me about £1 a mile in bits

OP – Your title say “predicted time”. If you’re asking about the time you put down on the entry form then worry about the swim time right as that dictates where you get put on the grid or which wave you start in. Put a too fast time and the quick boys are swimming over the top of you, too slow and you’re stuck behind someone doing breaststroke. Forget the bike & swim times.

If you’re setting a target time, well mine is generally “as fast as I can” or “1 sec quicker than I did this event last year”

We just stayed in the Motel 8 up one end of town, but we were on a boys biking holiday so your requirements may differ to ours. I think we did 3 night in Moab & 4 in Fruita. We thought we were being cheeky by having the bikes in our rooms, until we discovered the guys next door had their MX bikes in theirs!

The beer was better in Fruita, but we didn’t die from lack of good beer in moab

Would all those parents arguing that it’s ok for them to take their kids out of school be ok with the teacher clearing off for a week or two?

Sounds great to me, I’ll take my 2 weeks at the same time and take little trb touring, he can “catch up” with the teacher when they are in over the summer hols making up their time. A flexible approach to term time is just whats needed. This would be even easier to achieve if teachers only had 24 days holiday like the rest of us but saying that would be trolling 😉

Little trb is coming to France in the last week of term. But as he’s in reception I’m fairly confident it won’t affect his GCSE’s, and beside’s the government / LEA have mandated that kids start school at 4 these days which is a tad young for some.

Some friends had a pin of Milton Pegasus from cambridge for their wedding, that went down well.
http://www.miltonbrewery.co.uk/beers/pegasus.html

I’d go for an Adnams (Southwold) ale over Greene king. Not the most distinguished but Good session ales – you don’t want anything with too much character

I not up to date on the micro brewery stuff from out east these days

When you say “there are a few bumps in the terrain”

What sort of a lakeland hill would that compare to?

Imagine the slip road from a dual carriageway up to the bridge to turn right – that passes for a reasonable bump

I had my hearing test cancelled today, probably that van drivers fault.

Turbo trainer?
Ride offroad so you don’t get as much windchill
Go running instead?
My favourite – stay in and drink beer

Seriously though,
I have a set of windproof gloves 1 size too big and wear these underneath
http://www.arco.co.uk/products/1447100
It’s what gets used in cold stores. you could probably use a pairs of these + a pair of marigold rubber gloves. Just don’t ride where the fashion police will see you.

Once upon a time I had a set of neoprene gloves that worked on the same principle as a wetsuit, Toasty and warm but stank to high heaven!

I did CyB. We stayed in the house near the pub a couple of miles down the valley from CyB, so no need to venture very far. I rode the next day with a fetching pink basket & tassles on my bars + I think spokey dokeys.

I left my non-bikey mates at home tho and went drinking with them the night before the wedding – luckily we’d booked a late ceremony.

My parents are just into their 1st winter with a air source heat pump. It works well*. They’ve got some super dooper fan assisted radiators as well. You can hear the outside fan if you know what to listen for but only if you are trying. I reckon if you use PV cells to offset the ‘lectrick you’re on the a winner.

*It replaced a clapped out oil fired convection heating so any comparison would be meaningless.

That there website you linked to has the best bits. Pencilli is on The Gap route, which is a must.

The Grwyne Fawr route is an all day epic that you’ll get plenty of opinion on which is the best way round to do it.

Just get an OS map, use your above web link as a guide and go explore. Loads of good riding over there.

Where are you going?

We went to the states a few years ago, they have a much more generous allowance in that direction. (2 large bags each in the hold)
We booked our bikes on, and had no issues. A nice lady even met us at Colorado to help us check in and make sure everything went smoothly.

Mrs trb ruled out a trailor as she once had first hand experience of what happened when a car hit one.

That said, I’ve experienced some inconsiderate driving when I’ve been out with the bike seat on the back – and in the event of a small tumble it’s a long way down from a seat, where as they’ll be fine in a trailor.

However if my missus says no, then I don’t do it if I know what’s good for me!

How much cash have you got? Can you afford one of those cargo bikes that converts to take lots of kids? (can’t remember what they are called, but they adverise in the CTC mag)

If you paste this grid ref into google and zoom in on the Satellite view you’ll see a BOAT that has been widened to 4 lanes by the 4×4 crowd on their way to drive the Gap in the Brecon Beacons
51.835141,-3.32602
It’s the same trail widening that you see with MTBs and walkers, but more so. So right or wrong, they cause more damage and are correspondly more unpopular.

I might also add that the ridgeway near me has had motorised vehicles banned for a few years now and it’s a much more pleasent place to ride and walk with the kids. So i’m happy that a few suffer restrictions so that that majority don’t have to wade through knee deep puddles.

It does look fun though and banning them is the thin end of the wedge

CTC. Although I’ve never had to call on their legal team for help.

They are the biggest and most cohesive group campagning for cycling in general and so you should back them.

I found that their “Cycle” magazine was getting read on the day it arrived and Singletrack was taking a couple of weeks to read so I ended up cancelling my singletrack subscription. I quite enjoy reading about the other arms of cycling and bikes that aren’t mtbs and also find the odd letter from the old blokes complaining about new fangled 7 speed derailliers quite amusing.

I’ve had a couple of short term, no strings, work based relationships. But here’s the catch… they were short term and we both knew they would be.

I’ll give you different advice from all the rest. Take her out for dinner on a proper date with lots of nice wine. Then you’ll be able to decide one of 3 things :
1) No strings are go – get in!
2) Let’s go home alone before it goes pear shaped
3) Actually strings may not be a such a bad idea.

I used a flat bar and bar ends on my 4,000km “big tour”. It was fine, but I was envious of the other bikes in the campsite with ergo bar end grips

SPDs for proper bikes

Flat pedals are for the pub bike and tourer when you don’t want to wear cycling specific shoes.

You get used to it. When I had my rack mounted seat on the solo it felt like the front wheel was constantly lifting.
I now have a tandem with kiddie cranks for the 4 year old and rack seat for the 1 1/2 year old. Now that is a handful.

I have a £20 kids saddle bolted to the crossbar (from SJS cycles) on my town bike so that little trb holds the bars with you, which is much more stable, but he keeps whacking me in the face with his helmet and then tries to steer towards the park!

What you need is better discipline and control. We have have 2 fork trucks and only designated drivers who have passed an internal test can use them, and these guys are responsible for looking after the trucks and an accident investigation happens when they do damage.
Last year these ran out of capacity so we got 3 powered pallet trucks for all to use, the first week they were out of action as no-one charged them, the 2nd week 2 were out of action as they’d been left on fast charge all weekend and the batteries were fecked. Free for all to use, so no-one took ownership of them.

I use a Lumicycle HID, however my commute has 10 miles of unlit backroads, so I have it pointing at the road so I can see were I’m going

When in the car recently, I almost pulled out on a cyclist with a silly bright flashing light on his helmet. The light was so bright I was dazzled and rendered all of hs reflective clothing useless, the flashing meant I couldn’t get any perspective on where he was & the height of the light made it look like he was much farther away than he was.
Luckily for him I was so curious about his light set up that I stopped and waited for him to come by so I could get a better look.

I found evidence of a mouse in my Garage this year, and caught 3 in 3 nights with a proper old school sprung trap and a lump of cheddar. If you’ve seen one, he’ll have a bunch of mates hiding somewhere, probably egging him on and laughing at you.

My trap cost a whopping £1.50. If they won’t take your bait, remove any other food so that what’s on the trap is the tastiest treat available

Personally I’d get a couple of 6 packs of traps and go for the carpet bombing / shock & awe strategy
http://www.trapman.co.uk/plastic-mouse-trap.html

Too my shame, I have grown up considerably since I met my wife.

Yes, we now own a Tandem and a set of panniers…

http://www.oatfieldfarm.co.uk/

Very nice, but not very cheap. Actually just outside the Forest but me & little trb road to the Sun pub and on to the cycle hire place from there