There are so many I love sometimes but the ones that have never let me down are Shropshire Blue, Isle of Wight Blue, Explorateur, Caboc and Montgomery Cheddar. The one I go catnip mental for occasionally is smoked mozzarella – oh God I can feel it happening…

The Wayfarer across the Berwyn is a great open moorland trek.

There’s a kart track at Glan y Gors near Bala. Also an amazing beer shop in Bala called Stori – they’ve done beer tasting sessions for parties. Civilised type boozing mind you.

The new Lusso ones are excellent, very reasonably priced and made in Manchester too.

‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ (Terry Gilliam version) was roundly panned on its release but is one of my favourite films.

‘Tree of Life’ (Terence Mallick) was seen generally deemed to be turgid but I thought it was amazing.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for a film by anyone called Terry.

Evening Dave
It’s Richard here from Ty Beic near Bala. Hope I’m not breaking any forum rules, but since you asked our website is http://www.tybeic.com
We’d love to have you stay. And yes, the beer shop is great and we spend far too much time/money there.
Thanks Graeme for the ‘bigging up’. Hopefully we’ll see you again soon.

Really like them on the cross bike for when you sometimes want bottles but don’t want cages in the way at other times.

Penmachno at reasonable speed the other day and bottle stayed firmly on its little pegs. Also, many miles on the cross bike without loss. Would echo the whole putting them back on when on the move – sketchy.

I was sceptical to start with but now i think they’re great.

Couldn’t agree more with both of you, but how do you get the message across to those whose riding is truly dangerous? Or is it something we just have to accept?

If this is a bike for the track that’s great. There are so many incidents and fatalities involving big bikes round us that our community council is having having road signs made saying “Ride like you live here – not like you want to die here”. Don’t know whether it will do any good, but it’s some expression of local frustration.

Videos of near misses are all very good, but the reality of police collecting body parts from your front garden not so good.

I’ve run a 1×10 campy set up on my cross bike for years, with a seat tube mounted chain guide and I can’t recall dropping the chain, even racing and some fairly extreme CX riding. I think marketing inclines us to think that we really need a clutch mech when in reality you’ll be fine with a normal one most of the time.

Rode it this morning. Lots of deep puddles but water is standing rather than flowing. Seen it a lot worse. Cold though and you will get wet.

I would say CyB too. Lots of great riding opportunities for all abilities. Also, if you’re looking for another option, there’s a decent ride round Llyn Brenig but’s quite exposed and not really as interesting as CyB.

I don’t know what it was, but it was in my view the best response to this whole sorry thread. Yee hah. Ride ’em out!

A few years ago one of my balls swelled up to about twice its normal size. I looked at all the NHS direct stuff online and decided I needed to go to the doctor.
When I got into the consulting room, the doc asked me to take my trousers down and lie on the couch thing. Just as he placed his hand on my enlarged ball his mobile rang. With his free hand he answered it and had a conversation that wasn’t in English. I was a bit put out. Might I be a racist?

Thanks for that, but it was fixed really quickly and free of charge by the importers, which seemed a bit odd. It sort of made me wonder if there is some sort of wider problem.

Hmmm, interesting. The cracking litespeed story has actually given me an idea. I have a pair of bottle bosses on the underside of the downtube on my frame – I could just use one of those.

Anyway, I’ve had an even more worrying idea. I’ve got a Works Components 2 degree slackset on the bike – there’s plenty of meat in that where it’s offset to drill through…

Seems people are quite down on this idea then? I’ve been drilling holes in all sorts of bikes for years – rivnutting rack mounts, bottle bosses and all sorts of stuff.

Thanks for the replies. I thought as much with regard to size and likely cost. I don’t have to move the chip very far – just have to get it through a small door. Yes it is the g30/m20 but the quality I’ve now sourced feels drier and moves much more easily than some of the wetter stuff I got from our old supplier (which was frankly terrible). I would only really have to blow it about 3 metres as I can back my trailer up to the door of my store.

I can’t really do much to improve access. It would involve removing a lovely mature tree and I don’t want to do that.
I also don’t want too large a machine as I’m going to have to store it and the aim of this post is really to minimise the amount if time I have to devote to chip delivery so I would prefer not to have rent/borrow equipment.
I reckon the Stihl leaf shredder/blower i looked at isn’t going to have enough oomph, so wheelbarrow and snow shovel it is then for the time being. Woohoo.

On the morning of our wedding my wife and I went out for a quick spin on our road bikes. She was just in front of me and came off on a patch of ice. I swerved and missed most of her – except I ran over her ring finger, which then swelled up to twice it’s normal size. Not best pleased.

Also once gave myself septicaemia by nicking the top off a haematoma on my shin whilst shaving my legs for road racing. Four days in hospital on antibiotic drip and the horror of a leg three times its normal size. Could have been worse – the fella in the bed next to me had the same thing on his groin from injecting heroin with dirty needles.

I haven’t repaired an s-one but I have repaired quite a few tubeless road, cross and mountain tyres with tubeless repair patch from the inside and have yet to have one fail in the same place. Is there a reason that an s-one would be different?

I once got followed by an owl for about five miles. It flew from fence post to fence post beside me while I was doing the SDW at night.

Don’t know what it is with me and the birds.

I was once riding at dusk through a pine forest in North Wales. There were these weird fast movements all around me but I couldn’t exactly see what was responsible for them. Anyway, I turned on my wheels and got out of there. On the way out I came face to face with an ostrich. Turned out the plantation was an abandoned ostrich farm and the birds had gone feral.

I had noticed that thanks, but I think they’ve gone and misdescribed it. From what I can make out they’ve only got 12mm rear hubs.

I like them, something a little out of the ordinary with excellent pedigree and manufactured in Europe to decent labour and environmental standards.

Got the Alan direct from alanbike.it

I just bought a scandium Alan. Lovely bikes at decent prices. Check out alanbike.it they’ve got some offers on bikes and frames and Alberto is a very helpful man to deal with.

Selling my Spooky Supertouch. Pure race bike but maybe a bit old skool for you with its rim brakes.

I had a schwalbe one tubeless road tyre fail like this after a couple of rides. Sent the tyre back to the retailer (a cycles) who claim to have lost it. I’m very wary of schwalbe now, but even more wary of a cycles.

Well, I’ve just gone and done it. I’ve been staring at this frameset for months and the recent serious illness of a couple of near and dear ones has convinced me that life’s too short not to.

I paid 100 Euros extra to upgrade to a thru axle fork. Didn’t want to have it going through my mind on some of my more extreme cross outings.

Hmmm, that is a grim tale.
I reckon I’ll run 140mm rotors with a DT Swiss skewer and won’t be tipping the scales beyond 13 stones, still your story is so sickening that it’s making me think…

Thanks all for the replies – it reflects my own experiences on my rigid MTB. I’m pretty sure I’ll go with the QR fork since it’s part of a frameset I’ve had my eye on for a while (it’s all about the paintjob!). I think I’ll go with the DT Swiss RWS skewer as I’ve found them to be very secure. Had a terrible experience with a halo skewer – the bolt head snapped off despite me tightening the skewer to the recommended torque.

Yes, but it’s always done that.

Exactly that.
Anyway, it was WIGGLE who remain stubbornly unable to see the discrepancy in the photo that so many on here have spotted. It matters little because I also sent the photo to Zipp who have told me it is a warranty issue and my retailer should replace the bar.
I didn’t want to get into slagging off Wiggle as I’ve generally had good experiences from them, but on this occasion their service has been terrible. Thank you all for your views.

Ah yes, well the bar was a replacement for an old carbon one that had developed a crack. It arrived on the morning of a day that I had planned a long ride with friends so I installed it and went out riding.

The outcome I would like is a replacement bar and an apology for telling me that it was my error. Don’t get me wrong I make plenty of mistakes and happily admit them, but on this occasion it wasn’t my fault.

I’m not losing sleep over this and it’s not stopping me riding my bike, but I do think it’s slack quality control.

I am grateful for everyone’s views on here. What peeved me most was the retailer’s technical team telling me it was my mistake.

I shall take it up with them again. I am not generally a difficult customer and I have spent a fair wedge with this shop over the years.

I paid £50 for this which is I think full rrp. I did so because it was exactly the shape I wanted very few places had them in stock.

I could remove the markings but I sort of feel I shouldn’t have too modify it.

If this was part of a recall I would expect the retailer to know that. Hmmm.

Yessssss, you have it. The centring markings are not errrrr… centred.

I sent the same image to the ‘large online retailer’ last night. Their ‘technical team’ told me I had simply misinstalled the bar. Grrrr.

I am a cabinet maker and work to fine tolerances so unfortunately I do find this irritating (and yes the workshop does need cleaning).

It does raise QC issues. This is a £50 bar and i expect it to be made and finished to a high standard.

When I saw the ad for the oykel because I knew of their Scottish origins I thought ‘brilliant – a British manufacturer investing in domestic carbon production’.
Hmmm. I feel shamd.

An imported badged up number will never be for me. I think it will dilute his brand. I make furniture using native grown timbers. Even when I’m very busy I’m never going to make a fortune, but I really care about the provenance of the things I make and I believe that my customers do as well. Shand makes terrific steel frames and I can’t see there’s any reason for them to paint up generic frames except to generate revenue. That’s fine and totally his decision, but rightly or wrongly to my mind it diminishes his other work.

Got a couple of Norbars. They’re very good and made in Banbury.