I love the Twrch trail climb at Cwmcarn, especially the last bit up to the fire road. Hated it the fist few times when I wasn’t fit on knew the climb. The fitter you get the more fun its is. The last singletrack section up to the fireroad is probably where I can get my heart rate up to its highest, proper heart pounding out of your chest stuff.

The big problem that I see funding wise is that the sports don’t generate there own money, or enough of it. There are tons more cyclists now then there used to be say 10 years ago, and I mean proper committed serious cyclists. Especially in road cycling and this can easily be seen with the growth of Wiggle and Evans Cycles. The MAMIL has huge disposable income and BC needs to work out ways to tap into this to raise funds that can then be ploughed back into the sport. I not saying this is an easy job but the environment for them to raise money has never been so good.

Likewise with basketball, if its so popular then why is it not generating money. You don’t get central government / Lottery funding for football, rugby, cricket, horse racing, etc, etc

The problem with only funding historical medal sports is that any amazing sportsperson not in one of these other sports is stuffed, even though they could be a hidden Michael Phelps.

Santa Cruz 5010 Carbon 27.5 1×11 £2700 from Start Fitness. Bargain and an amazing ride

Personally I think it is great and works really well. Much much better than soap and water and you don’t get many dirt / water marks. Makes cleaning loads quicker. Spray down bike to get the worst off, spray with kickoff. Quick rub over with fingers or rag and then spray clean. Sparkling clean bike in just a few minutes.

Of course there is always the debate of whether you should clean your bike at all.

Looks tidy and that orange and black paint scheme is great. Well done Pace.

Isn’t all advertising copy in the bike industry full of superlatives.

CCTV in multiple places is your friend. It might not be able to stop them, not a lot will, but at least there will be some evidence to help catch the scum.

Tesco Finest are our choice, after years of trying the various main brands. However I do love a home made mince pie. Just need to try and make them myself.

We bought a house 2 yrs ago and the sellers were going into a new build. Builder was a numpty to say the least and for instance hadn’t told Transco that the house would need to be connected and thought he only needed to give them a couple of days notice. Anyway the long and short of it was that it took 3 months longer than it should.

What I would do is agree a date that they have to move out and agree that they will move into rented accommodation if they pass this date. There is no reason why they can’t get a short term let and it wont cost them any more as they wont being paying there mortgage. Get something in writing between the solicitors, not word of mouth from the estate agent. Turned out the estate agent was lying through his teeth about all matter of things and of course they did not have phone records.

My sister in law died of cancer in July. Actually the cancer did not kill her but the treatment did as she had a massive bleed after lung surgery. She had been battling breast cancer for the last 5 years.

The interesting thing is they live in London and had private medical insurance so she went to world class doctors on Harly Street. Their current view, well at least around Easter this year was that there have been so many advances that if they could keep her alive for another 2 to 3 years then there is a very very good chance there would be new drugs available that would not cure her but would stop the cancer in it tracks. A bit like the way HIV is treated.

The real crapper was 4 weeks after Amanda died, her older sister fell off a horse and died as well. Her poor father lost his wife Dec 2015 and then 2 daughters in 2016!! The only saving grace is that they had 6 kids.

That sounds a good price for the install. We have ours going in Thursday and ours is coming out around £1600 but a good chunk is VAT. I was thinking of doing some of it myself, but one issue is time and then after talking to my neighbour and all the headaches he had, it seemed far to much hassle. I think it is one of these jobs that is a piece of p*ss or a bloody nightmare.

The big questions is slate hearth or sandstone coloured?

Sounds like you are working and commuting far to much. Thats certainly isnt a good life balance and I am sure your wife will be climbing the wall soon if you don’t get home until 8pm and she is stuck with you son the whole day. I would say that needs to change for the sanity of your family.

Then be selfish but also don’t be selfish. You will probably have to cut back massively in the long run but try and keep fit by say running in your lunch hour. When you do get out riding you will then enjoy it and not be knacked quickly.

Try and work out how to get a short biking fix. My daughters now go to ballet on a Saturday morning so that gives me 2 to 3 hours of fun. Luckily trails are just 15minutes away driving so I can get a blast in most Saturdays.
To be honest that gives me my weekly fix. If I try and cram more biking in then it becomes a chore and not fun.

I have just started to include a small amount of trail on my normal road run and have to say that it has made it so much more interesting. Then again running is boring but it does keep me fit and much easier to fit in than half a day biking.

Don’t know if it does meet in the kitchen or not. The main gas pipe comes into the house under the kitchen where we have a gas hob. I assume it connects somewhere there but don’t relish pulling up the wood floor in the kitchen, hallway or carpet in the lounge. Just wondered if it could be capped and buried in the wall by the fire place

We get our insurance through Highway Insurance. Cheap but you do have to be a member of a camping club which adds £50 to your overall cost.

Why not convert it properly and then the V5 can be updated to motorhome. Thats what I did and it wasn’t hard. Sounds like you have most of the things in it. Just need permeant cooker but you can always bodge something up with a camping cooker.

Just had to take photos and send them to the DVLA.

We need to start a saddle testing group as I bet if we all dug out the saddles we haven’t got on with and are sitting in the shed we could probably cover nearly ever saddle make and model out there. You could then try tons of makes and models.

Lionheart

Out of interest how wide and deep is your chimney breast and what size hole have you got for that Charnwood?

When I say log burner I do mean MultiFuel, totally agree coal has its place.

According to the tree surgeon, Ash is good to burn straight away!!

Oh and do people have a view on insert log burners? That would be much quicker and cheaper to install as we wouldn’t have to open up the chimney.

Thanks everyone. We currently have a gas fire that is broken and to get it replaced was going to costs £1100 all in so not that much more for a stove to be fitted, maybe £2000 if we can get a stove for around £500. The wife really wants a stove, she is not the one who is cutting up the wood each day!!. However we are just about to have a tree felled in the garden and the tree surgeon reckons we will have 3 tons of Ash, which is perfect for burning. Seems a shame not to use a free resource and of course keeps the wife happy. A month ago she gave me the green light to buy a Santa Cruz 5010 so I can’t complain. Maybe me chopping some wood is fair compensation!!

You can’t remove a service they’ve paid for.

Why?

Change the password on the website and tell them that until the invoice has been paid or they start proper dialogue with you that there will be no access and you will be performing no security updates or monitoring. I guess this will only work if they have a website that they update or use regularly. If your not bothered about keeping them as a customer, as someone who runs their own business I would say don’t, then just take the website down and see what happens. Tell a white lie and say it seem to have gone down.

Start Fitness have 10% off everything. Good deals on Intense, Scott and Orange

http://www.startfitness.co.uk/cycle/bikes/mountain-bikes.html?dir=desc&order=percentage_saving

Self promotion – but we have 30% all our Premium iPhone / iPad MFI Lighting charging cables and Micro USB cables. All come with Lifetime warranty.

+ 30% off iPad mounts and other charging cables

http://www.woodforddesign.com

Mods please delete if not appropriate

Just seen http://www.laredoute.co.uk has 40% off everything and loads of branded stuff

Thanks everyone. We are looking at getting a 2015 Nissan Qashqai for £16K. The PCP finance deal I have been able to negotiate is at 4.3% down from 14.5% over 4 years so works out as £167 per month.

We will probably replace the car in 3 years time.

Most lease deals seem to be considerably more expensive but of course there is not the deposit to be paid. I might check these over again.

I did look at the new car option and got some massive discounts using carwow.co.uk but even with 0% interest it still worked out about £50 more per month.

I’ll check out the personal loan options as we did think about this but they were harder to get.

I was pondering the same thing last week and went for a Curved Samsung Ultra HD 49″ and it is very very good. Amazing how clear the picture is. You can get the non ultra HD version about £100 cheaper but thought as this is something we only buy every 8 to 10 years then worth future proofing a bit. Curved is really good and certainly gives more depth to pictures.

http://ao.com/product/ue49ku6100-samsung-tv-black-43149-108.aspx

The problem is that saying people can’t park in certain places does not fix the problem. At the end of the day you have to encourage people to walk or cycle or provide a carpark for people to use. Fundamentally many schools are in the wrong place and don’t have the facilities even such as playgrounds or sports fields that they should have.

In some ways we just have to accept that people will drive and then either convince them not to or devise other ways to make the dropping off of kids easier.

Its interesting the remark about bad parking being good as it actually slows all the traffic down and probably also makes people for hyper vigilant when crossing the road. It feel more dangerous but is actually loads safer.

Yes massively. Just bought a new bike and I can’t believe the difference that 27.5″, tubeless, new geometry and short stems, super wide bars, 1×10, etc. Really big difference if you ask me. And I am like you and enjoy riding up hill.

Shimano ones

Not painful when I had mine last year. I was really surprised how quick it was. Tooth did ache on and off for quite a few months later. Had a few follow up checks but nothing untoward and just took time to settle down.

You should come to our primary school. I reckon about 1/4 of the kids being dropped off aren’t in car seats or are just running around the car. Used to live in the city and you rarely see children in cars without car seats. Now in the country and you see its loads in the school car park. What amazes me is that in the city you don’t get over 30 or 40 mph but in the country you would be hard pushed to keep under 30 or 40 mph. Any crash is going to be far far worse.

tonyg2003

tonyg2003

What bank do you use as this sounds perfect for what I need?

Loved my 147 until some git nicked it!!

Would buy another in a heart beat. If you buy an older one just don’t worry about warning lights coming on. If they do, switch the engine off and on again and see if the light comes back on.

Love, love, love

We have a Mira Sport, top of the range one and it’s really good. We also have a power shower that all in cost us about 2.5 X as much and if I was doing it again I would just put 2 of the electric showers in. With our power shower connected to a hot water tank, it drains it far to fast

Seems like a sensible idea to me. Technology can’t be that complicated as it has been used for Londons congestion charge for years. Anything to free up the flow of traffic is a good idea.

However it does make you think why does the Welsh government not just cover the full cost of the bridges. Im sure a tiny increases in taxes would easily cover it.

Agree with Google Now/Cortana/Siri/Alexa to actually work. We have an Amazon Echo and it is good but you quickly find limitations and areas where it could be improved actually quite quickly.

Fast broadband for everyone. Tech that allows this to every house

Over the air charging, proper wireless.

Removing the need for interconnect cables on the back of TV’s and stereos

Amalgamation of TV services into one, so I don’t need Freeview, Now TV, Amazon Firestick, Apple TV, Etc to get all my content. One place for all content.

captainsasquatch – Member
Your daughter can’t win, even if you are not in full agreement with the wife, you should be seen to be with her.
Things have changed, but your daughter doesn’t tell her mum the rules.

Totally agree.

Apple have never been a company to absorb currency fluctuations like out supermarkets do. When Greece had its economic melt down Apple stopped selling completely in Greece. If there was ever going to be a company to change prices due to Brexit then it was Apple. They protect their profits as much as possible as they know there are very few people who will swap to Windows just because of a price hike. Apple’s strategy for years now has been to lock you into their ecosystem and the means they can raise prices and people will for often not walk.

When you actually think of the hours we spend on a computer then they are actually a bargain, especially compared to the amount we spend on mountain bikes!! Also Macs do have thigh residual price compared to Windows machines. Its just a shame they don’t really have a starter priced MacBook now. How many school children/students/parents can afford a £949 laptop!!