I have been away working for a few days and came back to find a letter from a solicitor at home. My godmother died 2 years ago and her estate has just been settled, because her money was mostly tied up in a property she had rented out they had to wait till the sale went through and lots of other legal ramblings. I don’t think any of the beneficiaries would be massively skint and in need of her generosity but if somebody was thats a long time to wait.

Made me think about starting to arrange stuff.

I travel all over with work, always with the bike and have left it in storage rooms at Holiday Inn in Glasgow City centre, quite a few Premier Inns, in fact I am in Wolves Premier Inn this week and will have the cx bike for some towpath action, never had a problem always been spot on.

Wish I had gone Scrabo route, ended up along the A21 to Newtonards, tractors coming off the fields and the bike lane was a shat shower all the way from Comber. I was cleaner on the mtb at Castlewellan the day before!
Was a cracking ride out though, crisp cold weather. I used the greenway on some of the ride and stopped to watch the football at the Billy Neill centre till my fingers dropped off!

I have a 16 plate Berlingo enterprise 1.6hdi van for work, Just got back last night from a few days in Northern Ireland working/biking, took a load of work gear and both my bikes mtb and road (no wheels off) 2 and a bit seats up front (3 adults is a squeeze) Plenty of space and easy on the juice.

Well I had a cracking couple hours at at Castlewellan this morning, trail was perfect with a cover of frosty snow and the views up on the higher stretches were beautiful.

My bike is a camber FS, but I frequestly ride with it locked out at the back.
I really enjoyed the trail, don’t mind the constant to work on the pedals, despite its lack of big big hills it has enough to keep you moving along quite nicely. The surfaces are in great condition.

What was particularly nice was the folk at the cafe. £3 for coffee, shower and a bike wash! Wood burner was in full flow upstairs as well. Well worth another visit in my book just for the welcome I got in there.

Tomorrows road ride is looking positive weather wise. Thinking of a Bangor Newtonards Comber -ish route. Its handy from where I am stopping.

Thanks for all the advice on riding, thankfully I’ve drummed up enough business to generate another visit in the future.

These guys are genius writes, I thought LoG recent run was great and the characters are so strong, but the No 9 stuff is just fantastic writing and performances. The detail they go into to make each episode is amazing. There aren’t many better writers out there just now.

Fudge, thats the website I have been checking, good to see so many places with facilities like showers and a bike wash. Makes life easier when you are trying to get the work/life balance correct and go meet clients after a bike ride!

I think Castlewellan is going to happen in the morning, weather looks decent and I need to be back in Dublin for 4 to meet a customer. Think Saturday morning I will hit the roads around Belfast.

I taped that Drew Pritchard thing I will have a look.

What did anybody make of this Goblin Garage Workshop thingy? I watched some of it the other night and was bored pretty quick. Just a bit false

Helen has been having a pretty good season so far, I don’t think Nikki has quite got back to where she was 2 years ago. Evie has a really good opportunity in the U23, but I will be cheering for Anna Kay a local (to me, Gateshead) rider. I think the course will be the test, not too muddy (forecast is for dry weather) the bridge over the finish straight is a dog leg and comes after a short climb out of the trees (could get a bit slippy) definitely a leg sapper. I think a young rider winning would be good for the sport in general, lots of young females out there today racing looking to be there in the future.

Good to see plenty coverage onTV and online

I was down at this course today watching the younger riders, course is looking fairly good, weather seems dry for tomorrow, although it was a bit nippy when the wind picked up, plenty places for shelter though in amongst the trees and the finish line.

When I saw Michael Gove announce this as part of a “Green Brexit” I realised instantly it was a sham piece of misdirection to stop the Toby Young story rattling on in the media.

I was down in my local woods this morning walking the dog and spent 45 mins collecting bottles of echo falls summer berries and lambrini , the council are trying to hive it off to charity run organisation apparently to save them £4.50 a year on running costs. Cant see that stop the local toe rags spending winter nights chugging fizzy.

Anyhow, I digress…

Its on the BC website and facebook paging streaming live. The course generally has a breeze blowing through it, if its coming off the lake it gets a bit nippy. Plenty of cover in the trees though. Looking forward to it, going to ride along on Sunday morning.

My wife commutes on a blokes bike and doesn’t have an issue if that helps at all.

I visited the LV velodrome 2 years after the olympics and stood watching for 25 mins, a completely empty place apart from me and a dozen riders, once they started rolling around the place came alive with the movement of air they created in the bowl as they raced around. Heading to Manchester this weekend to see the revolution series with my old man.

*I cycled to the velodrome from Barking on the mountain bike to have ago on the olympic MTB course, sadly a full 2 years after the event it still wasn’t open to the public?? Still the velodrome was worth the visit.

Rides – 79
Time – 122 hours
Distance – 1782 miles
Elevation 96,345 feet

Mix of MTB,CX,road

Heading out into storm Dylan this afternoon to clock a few more in the wind. Lost a few months this year due to work, injury etc like most folk.

Ideally would love to clock 2500 miles next year and try to stay stupid injury free.

My G3 is almost 2 years old, 16GB version, not slowing down at all but I do need to shift a 1000+ photos to update some stuff. This happens regular I usually delete an app like twitter for a fortnight (its a bit like coming off heroin) and then download it again. I’m fairly app light and prefer to use the browser for most stuff.

I’ve got a work iphone 6S+ 64GB which is just starting to slow down which is very annoying given that it is less than 18 months old and is hardly hammered and barely has an app on it.

This thread is a good read, I’ve always worn the same shoes on the same pedals for road and mtb. Its so much easier for flipping between bikes and saves a few quid as well. I thought I was some kind of freak

No photos, but yesterday was a proper gloop fest after 24 hours of rain.

Todays ride (starting after this coffee is gone) will be a frozen gloop fest as temps have dropped like a seat post overnight. The air temp is cold as well, so no doubt I will be wheezing like a set of bagpipes till I warm up.

Despite spending lots of time in a pool as a kid, I didn’t learn until I was 22. 8 Weeks basic training was what it took, fancy joining the Navy and not being able to swim! I didnt get much stick at all…

I still only swim breast stroke 24 years later, but it does me just fine.

We use it a lot, not by paying LinkedIn for ads or such but by writing pieces on our products and just releasing to followers, I think between the 3 of us in the company we have 8000 connections and putting out a few pics of our visits to customers or our products in use with end users has seen our sales grow via this platform.

Its better for potential customers to see the products in use by fellow professionals rather than at a trade stand at a conference.

We also run short video clips of new products in development, this always keeps the messages fairly fresh and engages people. We get a lot of ideas from our connections and because its global we also get potential partners or distributors contacting us.

Works really well for us, FWIW we are in the medical education products business

There is the Back of Skiddaw sportive, part of the Keswick Mountain festival 70km. Its not Scottish of course

Sure wiggle or evans or someone organises a series of gravel/cx type sportives through the year, I think Cycling Weekly or Road.cc has a list of them

Got a feeling there is one of them based around Galloway Forest?

No snow this morning in the North East (well the bit I am in, Consett 10 miles away is probably 3 feet under) plenty of hard ground frost, think I’ll be heading out for a mud free ride this morning.

was planning on Cannock on Monday afternoon, heading to South Wales to work having a cheeky stop off for 2-3 hours. Best watch the forecast

Nice roast chicken and veg dinner

Nene valley brewery release the chimps IPA

no tunes, surfing

Cold wind and blue skies here yesterday, got 20 road miles in. Probably heading to the local woods today to do some winter branch pruning and bramble removal at crank/knee height. Give me somewhere to play over the winter nights without getting bits ripped off me.

Excellent stuff, the scenery is just mind blowing, just made me drag my arse off the chair and get out.

Good link Ferrals, it could mean I get no work done for the next 90 mins :D

Saw this on local news last night, if we substitute local farmer causes damage for emergency services needed access to patient…

inconsiderate parking causes all kind of problems.

See also bike lanes.

Morning, sorry logged off last night and missed all the replies. Thanks for them.

Cougar – Its at least 10 years old and as he puts it moves slower than him. Its a Toshiba. Takes 20 minutes to fully function and doesnt have windows 10 update (which is no loss)

Stirlingcrispin – he sometimes uses my ipad or my brothers and he swears, and my old man never swears. It will have to have a keyboard.

Guitarhero – Black Friday, hmm the day I love to hate might be a saviour!

Thanks all, I hadn’t thought about refurbs TBH but why not, his budget is limited he says ( I don’t want anything fancy I wont be here much longer) to around £200

I shall get searching

It only seems like 2 years ago when you could get live coverage of lots of races, hopefully some day with all the advances in streaming and subscription channels we can get that access back. Either that or I will just on a ferry and make a weekend of it

Not had a problem with cyclingfans other that not getting a stream occasionally.

Have you tried following Pete Geyer on Twitter @cyclingfans he posts regular feed info. Some is geography blocked but plenty feed options normally.

Not sure its the new face of the Tory party?

All my lifetime it seems that they have been all about personal gain. Even if we take that last 2 years Boris fits this profile perfectly.

He will be no different to the last bloke or the next bloke (there are few women who will be given the Defence job), he will do as he is told by party hierarchy but will look to score his own points along the way to the top

Turkey burgers
a mixture of 6Music and the Simpson in two rooms
Some rather disappointing Malbec from the corner shop

I just coughed £2k for a new Baxi Duotech to be fitted in a new location within the house, replaced a 20yr + old floor mounted. Lots of pipes to move and install. No changes to rads at all other than flushing and balancing or whatnot. Hot water cylinder was removed and cupboard cleaned out.

Combi has worked just fine so far.

We got a Mira Sport Airboost 10.9kw or some such this year when we had the bathroom renewed. Its a belter, the airboost never gets used. Bought online in April for approx £210

Previously we had a Triton, I twice replaced it over 12 years with either the same model, or on ringing the (as pointed out above) rather helpful helpline who gave me advice on finding a shower with the same footprint connections wise.

I got my last job via a skype interview, wore a shirt that was in shot and shorts and flip flops out of shot. Similar uniform now on a day to day business working from home 80% of time. Other than those occasions I need to get a few miles in during the day….

Whilst at Faslane during the 90’s we all used to say that Serco would end up running the MOD one day, they won every contract that was being sold off and inevitably the wages would fall, but for many civvies out that way it was guaranteed graft for as long as you wanted it, nobody could blame them for taking the jobs.

£28k includes shift allowance as well!

Is there any irony (may be the wrong word?) in that they only fall on the sword when they sense the gravy train is off the rails personally but its fine to lie and lie over Brexit and all else where they are not personally under threat?

Just a few days ago he was ‘demanding answers’ from the 1st Sea Lord after some drug taking, now he’s bleating that his actions may have fallen short of those required as SoS for Def. He knew this at the time he was demanding action but only chose to resign once he was about to be exposed.

I’ll bet he still has a big majority at the next election which says much about the public today ( see also that bloke in Yorkshire who does the filibuster waffle)

Excellent news, hope the new job and wife’s recovery continue you raise your spirits.