All of the above answers I would agree with, seems to me depending on the colour it changes name.

Put some blue piping on a ‘Lab Coat’ and you turn from a chemist into Ernie the fastest milkman in the west.

I have a tow bar mount for 2 bikes, it has a 100kg limit I think, have had 2 full sus on without issues.

If its just me on the road bike, I have it inside for travelling then padlock to the van wheel overnight, or (and don’t tell the Mrs) I put it in the pop up roof bed. I have not and will not attempt this with the full sus!!

Fridges are generally 3-way, meaning you can run hooked up, leisure battery or gas.

I have 2 awnings, a sun awning which sits in the gutter rail and has a couple of poles. Fine for a night but lightweight and can catch a breeze. the drive away only goes with me for 3 days or more. Khyham motordome something or other, takes about a min to pop up.

I’ve gone to race/riding weekends and run my van without hook up, gas for the fridge but only a couple of lights work from the leisure circuit, its enough. My plug socket doesnt do anything so I take a portable USB charger for the phone etc

OK,

A) my current T25 has a 3/4 bed and a decent size pop top for sleeping in, the T2 we hired was 3/4 but only had the small pop top for storage not sleeping, assuming there are only 1-2 people it was perfect. The bed is long enough and wide enough for 2, less than full size mattress but more than a single. Preferred to have the storage for bedding, clothes etc.

B) Never had a fan in the van to be honest, just open the skylight in the roof or cranked down the windows behind the silver screens I have. Battery should be ok though, I can get 3 days ‘wild’ on mine. Run the fridge on gas if wild.

C) Hob and grill is all you need for weekend type trips, knock up a curry/chilli etc and drop in the fridge. Toast in the mornings.

D) Didnt have a toilet in the hired van, but I have a bog box and porta loo in my van, mostly sits in a bit of the drive away awning if we take it at all, but havent done only in europe when using the stellingplatz or aires.

A pair or lycra shorts with padding.

I hired a Brazilian Danbury T2 years ago, but now have had a T25 for 5 years. I still lurk

There was tents on the C&C club site at Beadnell in Northumberland last week. All with their own toilet tents as facilities were not open.

I used to run a Berlingo van for my work, 2 and 1/2 seats up front and plenty room for bikes and changing room in the back. When the lease was up I bought a Yeti, no private changing facility (which I do miss) but sturdy little car which can have all 3 rear seats removed and bikes installed, feels van size when they are out. I have had 3 bikes in and 3 seats in bit of a squeeze but it worked. It has a tow bar as well so my rack can do all the carrying when the weather is iffy keeping the inside tidy

EDIT: Agree with what tthew says about flexibility and tips runs for small van, although my Yeti has been doing just that since the local tip opened again.

We often have the discussion surrounding Sunday dinners when we were kids in the 70’s and how our parents would spend all day Sunday (seemingly) with pans of veg boiling to the point that they contain zero colour or nutritional value and were served up as fairly pale looking washed out green things. The little kitchen in our house would have condensation running down the windows and walls due to the the volume of steam coming from the assortment of pans boiling away their contents.

Despite my old man being a butcher the meat all tasted and looked the same to me and I hated everything on the plate apart from Yorkshire puds.

The OH’s mother was still maintaining this all day cooking method when I was in my late 30’s

PP +1

Malvernrider – if an engineer or some similar sort had dirty finger nails I say fine, but a man (Who knows?) holding cheese with hands like that? I’d puke before you mentioned maggots, and then again for good measure.

Cucumber is utterly pointless green water gone wrong, not sure what might be right about green water mind you.

Sweet Sue and her canned chicken can stay over the pond keeping the trumpsters happy, we don’t need that kinda nonsense here thank you very much

I bought a condenser dryer about 3 weeks ago to replace our dearly departed elephant trunk type one.

Got it from AO.com for £199 delivered. Easy to use and it pumps out dry air rather than the damp stuff that the old one did when the trunk fell from the face.

I would say though that it’s not the easiest thing to empty when its floor mounted, the water tray is a bit of a squeeze to get the fingers under and remove. Need to check out how much the feet extend when the garage isn’t such a tip (3 bikes in the way).

Well, the trailer stills are encouraging I look forward to the movie

Can we stop posting attractive to the eye videos during the working day please! I have stuff to do, not nearly important as watching bikes in the lakes but nonetheless….

Watches thread with interest…….

I’ve lost out on a couple of ebay deals recently for wheels, also after standard QR wheels for the Arkose.

That sounds good, don’t suppose they do GF pies?

Just realised the emoji things have gone, so

Applaud emoji thing multiple times to Binners and TJ

There’s a definite biology lesson in there as well for a brief second

Woohoo that worked @greybeard thank you v.much

Cheers @codybrennan

I dont know what I do? I’ve never thought about it.

My mind is blown.

*Runs to drive car round the block…..

correct

Sadly not, If I click on any email address it’s dropping me at another google search page now. Not opening any email client at all. I wonder if its something in the chrome settings I need to alter?
Specifically I have Pipedrive as my CRM software and all stored email addresses within that I can no longer click on to send an email via my work gmail address which I’ve been able to do for 4 years without issue.

I’m on a macbook using Gmail via chrome browser

I also have the 50 coming up in 15 months and a similar spending spree has crossed my mind. Only ridden Di2 once for a week on a hire bike in Mallorca and it was heaven.

My current 2015 road has 105’s and I cant fault it really but the bike has taken a few on and off roads knocks over the years and I can easily convince myself it can become a good winter bike.
I’ve been thinking about heading this way for a while but had put everything on the back burner planning wise, but now I’ve looked at that Canyon page again after successfully weening myself off it, the voices in my head have started again!

I don’t live in a tourist honeypot so I can’t really add, but I did visit Sutton Bank a couple of weeks ago. When we arrived the car parks were very busy, but if you were prepared to walk more than 500 meters along the Cleveland Way you only met the usual folk who would go anyway, walkers, bikers and trail runners. Very few go beyond the best view in England spot.

Loads of quiet little lanes around the area but not lots in the immediate area is off road. You will need to drive somewhere. I would head to the beach, walk to Dunstanburgh Castle or to Newton. Not sure if the Grey’s is open yet but the hotel beer garden is nice on a sunny day.
I usually just road bike round there cos it’s flat and fairly quiet.
Weather looks decent hope you have a nice week.

@stumpyjon I think your last point is valid as suggested by @cougar. It’s shocking to think that some folks will get this and just panic and pay up, half tempted to report it, if it’s illegal it shows that some companies will risk anything to make a few quid.

The C2C route has been tarmacced in most parts but is a steady climb up to Consett, plenty of places around Beamish to jump off the line and play around.

If you can venture to the Angel of the North, there is a much more gravelly former railway line up through Kibblesworth to Tanfield Railway and a line down to Watergate Woods, Loop around there and back down for some fairly nippy descending from Kibblesworth back to the Angel. Plenty of Strava detail of the route.

If heading from Durham, park at Broompark picnic area and head up to Lanchester and Consett, more gravel less tarmac and a nice steady climb.

Indeed. MOD’s delete thread. Runs away.

I going to look it up but i think I remember driving past Fanny Hands Lane somewhere in Lincolnshire years ago.

We have a Sour Milk Hill Lane not fat from us.

I ride through Pity Me quite often and No Place is also a regular haunt. No far from them is a Pea Road, I always stop there for one.

To answer a few questions:

The letter was issued to Lex in Birmingham on 9th July 2020 in relation to an alleged contravention of parking 28 May 2014.

Lex have simply photocopied the letter addressed to them and sent it to me. DCBL are the agent recovering the ‘unpaid parking charge’ and have written to Lex.

Nobody has written my name on the letter that DCBL issued and its not on anything other than the envelope that it came in.

Lex have not written to me saying I have to pay anything.

DCBL don’t know me from Adam, unless Lex have given them that info, but I’ve not been contacted directly by DCBL.

Again, just to be clear this was in a Scottish Hospital where parking was (and currently is) free, I’ve worked there since that date and not had any issue with parking notices and at the time of this alleged ‘parking contravention’ did not receive anything from Lex or anybody else.

@tomhoward This Scottish Hospital was free parking and the carparks were littered with the little plastic envelopes that had been stuck on hundreds of windscreens. RAH Paisley for ref.

I think it looks like the company has gone through its records and thrown out a load of ‘chancer’ letters to get a few quid in from folks who wont check up and just pay just as @cletus said.

@boomerlives The company is dcbl from Runcorn in Cheshire.

@martinhutch On reading it again the ‘supreme court judgement’ is a classic bit of Matt Hancockism. ‘The supreme court ruled in 2015 that it is lawful for a parking operator to pursue payment of fines through a county court, this means (no it doesn’t) you cannot at this stage appeal the fine’.

The language is great and proves its almost a begging letter, ‘Your next opportunity to dispute the charge would be if the matter was taken to court’

Sorry bin this ones for you….

Most touring and static sites are full from now till Christmas it seems, we cant get booked anywhere. My mate has a house in Embleton on the Northumberland coast he rents and he said the phone is ringing steady with people rushing to get away

I’m starting to wonder how much time the human race actually has left?

That looks and sounds fantastic, nice work. I did need to read that twice though, for a minute I thought you’d climbed Claire Grogan early on in the day.

My day with Trainline has been a complete joke.

I definitely need to travel to the station and get the tickets and take photographs of them before my refund process can begin. At first they said I didn’t, then the 2nd person said there was no evidence of tickets booked on my account and finally the message states stay safe and only make necessary journeys but we must get you to print out those invalid tickets. FFS

So don’t travel to collect the useless tickets for another 2 weeks when you make your journey, send us the photos and then we will start the process which may take 3 weeks.

In the mean time they have £300 from me.

What DannyH said (again)

Anyway, I found another hotel not that far away from where I was originally and it only cost me another £100….

Today I’ve had an email from trainline telling me my train is now cancelled returning home. So I’ve done as they said and gone into my account and boy oh boy is it a minefield of link clicking to get an answer or your money back.

Apparently I have to go over to the station collect my invalid for travel tickets, cut them in half to prove invalidness and then send trainline a photograph to confirm. I click another link and it says don’t worry if you haven’t collected the tickets already as you won’t get them as they are cancelled, within a second an email pops in again from trainline telling me to travel to the station and have a pair of scissors handy and a camera.

Absolute anchors the lot of them.

@maccruiskeen Find another one because we are no longer opening this one, they didnt give me an option to swap the booking to another location. The booking is for next week but I don’t get the cash back for 3, its not a financial issue just a bit of short notice challenge

Good job Tottenham’s book are well balanced as I don’t see Jose filling that new stadium anytime soon with his style of play.

My G3 is still going strong after 4 and a bit years, must have hit lucky.