Search found 61 matches

by T
27 Jul 2014, 4:26pm
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: cycle.travel - works for me!! :-)
Replies: 14
Views: 1608

Re: cycle.travel - works for me!! :-)

Thanks for bringing this site to my attention, I'd not come across it before.

My first impressions were that it's pretty good:
  • The website feels very responsive.
  • It's easy to tweak the route by dragging it to add a waypoint (One of the flaws with a similar website, cyclestreets.net)
  • The 'suggested cycle rides from a given location' is a nice idea, although none of the rides it suggests for me are circular.
  • It appears that routing is done using OSRM, with OpenStreetMap data. This is great, as I find it generally has excellent coverage, especially of cycle facilities. However, if you do find an issue which causes odd routes, you can fix it yourself! (An occasional problem is a cyclepath or footpath that ends next to a road, but the cyclepath and road aren't explicitly linked in the OSM data. It needs someone who knows the place to link them up, otherwise the route finder doesn't know that you can get from one to the other).
  • It's nice that the route finder considers the possibility of pushing the bike along a short section of footpath; I have known other routing websites to go an extremely long way round because their routing rules ignored footpaths completely.
  • The elevation plot is nice.
by T
25 Jul 2014, 4:03pm
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: Suit you, Sir!
Replies: 6
Views: 1359

Re: Suit you, Sir!

...detachable fluorescent pocket flaps, trouser turn-ups and collar.

It would probably be quicker to change your entire outfit than faff around trying to find and attach all your fluorescent flaps.
by T
11 Jul 2014, 9:43am
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: Normandy Queries
Replies: 8
Views: 5327

Re: Normandy Queries

groberts wrote:1. Has anybody any experience of riding on the Avenue Verte from Ceaux (near Mont St Michel) to Mortain to Vire: is it all open, what is the ride & surface like, is it any good?

We rode this section last autumn in the other direction (We did Cherbourg to St Malo along the Tour de Manche). As far as I remember, the bit between Vire and Mortain is all along a disused railway (originally designed and built by the same engineer who went on to build the Paris metro IIRC), so it is all very gentle gradients, traffic free, with a fairly fine compacted grit surface that we found perfectly good to ride on. For a lot of its length, the railway is level with or raised above the surrounding countryside, so you get better views than some railway paths which remain in a cutting for most of their length. The section between Mortain and the coast was less memorable, but it was mostly similarly surfaced cycle track through the countryside, except for the bit near to Mont St Michel, where it is minor roads, with some small hills. All in all, a very pleasant ride.
by T
2 Jul 2014, 7:50pm
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: Surly Long Haul Trucker or Thorn Sherpa
Replies: 19
Views: 13038

Re: Surly Long Haul Trucker or Thorn Sherpa

Monsieur wrote:Can bikes such as LHT be bought over the web from the UK and then delivered to a UK address?

As far as I'm aware, Surly stopped selling complete bikes via online retailers in 2011. See here: http://surlybikes.com/blog/post/the_way_we_do_things .
by T
19 Jun 2014, 8:29am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Comparasion - Road Bike about £800
Replies: 20
Views: 4909

Re: Comparasion - Road Bike about £800

Brucey wrote:I also note that on the same page it says 'lifetime warranty on frame and forks' and then elsewhere '5 year warranty on frame and forks' . Which is it I wonder?

Could be both. Lifetime warranty often means the lifetime of the product. 5 years doesn't seem very long for the lifetime of a frame, but it's possible that's what they mean.
by T
30 Nov 2013, 1:01pm
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Railway map of the UK
Replies: 16
Views: 3685

Re: Railway map of the UK

Since you say 'on-line', this may do what you want:
Go to http://www.openstreetmap.org/ . Open the layers panel by clicking the 4th icon down on the right. Switch to the public transport layer. Railways are shown as black lines when zoomed out. Zoom in a bit and stations appear as red circles. (Also shows buses when zoomed right in).
by T
13 Nov 2013, 3:27pm
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: Front ‘Dazzling’ light discussion – University project.
Replies: 76
Views: 11291

Re: Front ‘Dazzling’ light discussion – University project.

My thoughts on dazzling lights:

If you are in an unlit area, especially on a poor surface, you want the brightest light possible to light up the road.

Nobody wants to spend more money than they have to on lights.

As far as I can tell, as you go up in price, the lights available are roughly as follows:
  • No lights
  • Low powered light that's cheap as chips.
  • A bit brighter
  • Bright
  • Bike mounted personal sunshine
  • Fancy light with dimmer setting that costs the earth

So if you cycle in empty, unlit areas and busy, built up areas, you have the option of:
  • Two lights, one bright and one less dazzling.
  • Adjustable brightness light.
Either of these options is expensive, leaving you with the third option:
  • Dazzle everyone

I suspect that if they could be made cheaply enough, moderately cheap lights with at least a constant high brightness setting and a lower brightness setting (either flashing or constant) would help, allowing people to spend less without being forced to choose between bright for illumination or dim for less dazzling.

As has been mentioned, beam shape is important. However, I think it is more likely that a simple dimmer setting can be made cheaply, and the problem is not that you can't get a perfect setup for your bike; It's that you can't persuade the great unwashed riding in the opposite direction to do the same unless it's cheap and simple.
by T
11 Nov 2013, 9:00am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: SatMap / Opencylemap combo...
Replies: 17
Views: 6632

Re: SatMap / Opencyclemap combo...

simonineaston wrote:I see they are currently offering an attractively priced bundle...

That is how their business model works. They offer the hardware heavily discounted, then make their money from the maps people are forced to buy from them in order to use their hardware.
by T
8 Nov 2013, 9:17am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: SatMap / Opencylemap combo...
Replies: 17
Views: 6632

Re: SatMap / Opencylemap combo...

Deliberately using incompatible formats to lock customers in is not a new strategy. An obvious example is amazon, who designed their .mobi ebook format with incompatibility in mind. If they had designed their ereaders to use the already established .epub format, their customers would have been able to shop around and buy ebooks from whatever bookstore they wanted.
by T
8 Nov 2013, 8:47am
Forum: Does anyone know … ?
Topic: SatMap / Opencylemap combo...
Replies: 17
Views: 6632

Re: SatMap / Opencylemap combo...

Does seem a bit steep, but:
There are several costs that apply to both open and proprietary data: The cost of the SD card itself, handling, shipping.

I have no idea what file format the SatMap GPS unit reads. It is possible that the original OSM data needs converting, possibly to a proprietary format. If this is the case, not only can they charge a fee for the work converting it, but it's likely that their file format isn't open, meaning you can get the OSM data, but they are the only ones who can make it work with their device.

So my guess is: The data's open, but your device isn't.

EDIT: Short answer: https://help.openstreetmap.org/question ... -active-10
Long answer: https://www.satmap.co.uk/faqs.php (See question 29. to be taken with several large sacks of salt. I read it as, "We utilise '.map' as a format because we want to lock you into buying all your maps from us")
by T
8 Nov 2013, 8:24am
Forum: Helmets & helmet discussion
Topic: Discussion...
Replies: 36
Views: 1891

Re: Discussion...

BeeKeeper wrote:The pedestrian figures will include I suspect a high proportion of the very elderly...

No need to 'suspect'. Look at e.g. page 24 of the report.

On a slightly different note:
The data is often divided by the distance travelled. However, I don't think I've seen a plot of KSI per time spent on the road network. Owing to the large difference in speeds between the different groups of road users, this would skew the plot considerably. So why do they only adjust the data for distance, never for time? Is there a study that shows that the number of accidents is directly proportional to the distance travelled, and not to the time spent travelling?
by T
28 Oct 2013, 9:29am
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: How was your storm?
Replies: 29
Views: 7069

Re: How was your storm?

I cycled through about half a metre of water on the way to work this morning.
by T
28 Oct 2013, 9:24am
Forum: The Tea Shop
Topic: Orange! :-(
Replies: 18
Views: 8591

Re: Orange! :-(

My commiserations. I tried to get an orange contract quite recently, because it appeared to be the cheapest. At first I tried to apply online. It failed. In retrospect, I should have given up then. As it was, I tried to set it up in person in their shop a few days later. After an hour of getting nowhere, it became abundantly clear that the employee in the shop was basically just filling in the same online form (which still wasn't working), and didn't actually have any other way of contacting orange, despite being their employee. I discovered giffgaff a short while later, and have been very happy with them so far, so I'm glad I didn't persist with ****ing Orange.
by T
22 Oct 2013, 7:56am
Forum: Touring & Expedition
Topic: Cheapest crossing to France
Replies: 15
Views: 2569

Re: Cheapest crossing to France

Where are you starting from, and how are you getting from home to the ferry port? (No point us suggesting super-cheap crossings from somewhere if it costs you a fortune in train tickets/petrol to get to that particular ferry port)
by T
18 Oct 2013, 8:27am
Forum: Lands End to John O'Groats
Topic: Bike space reservations on trains
Replies: 23
Views: 39839

Re: Bike space reservations on trains

RickH wrote:
T wrote:...but you can't reserve bike spaces online :evil:

If you use East Coast, Scotrail, & others, which I can't remember use the same background system (you don't have to use any of their trains - I've used East Coast to book a journey using Virgin & Crosscountry, for example) you can book your bike reservation as part of the seat bookings (you have to book a seat, even if it isn't compulsory for the ticket, to make the bike reservation). The other advantage is you don't pay the Trainline booking fees, only postage if you get the tickets sent out to you.

Rick.

Assuming this works (it looks like it should...), then that is a very useful piece of information. Thank you! I've looked at booking through several of the train companies before, but didn't happen to hit any of the ones that offered bike reservations.