Cycling UK Forum

See the link to my thread for the ride I did in 2010, this followed the Dippe to Paris route.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=39424&p=314720

Thanks for the comments.

I hadn't seen the SPECIALIZED SOLAR JET LONG SLEEVE JERSEY, but I think this is probably what I am looking for.

http://www.specialized.com/gb/gb/bc/SBC ... spid=65948

Does anyone know of any summer long sleeve cycling jersey's with built in UV protection?

Me and the sun don't get on together, how ever I want to cycle, so I need to be protected when I am outside.

I have plenty of long sleeve winter tops, but I am struggling to find any light weight summer tops.

I have some running tops which are light weight with built in UV protection, but I am trying to find some cycling jerseys specifically with rear back pockets.

Any suggestions please?

Thanks,

Matt

dinbnc wrote:Hi, I'm going to have a crack at this next month. What did you use in the way of bike lights in France, are the roads reasonably lit?

Thanks

From what I remember, the road out of Dieppe was pitch black, no street lighting, but it was a lovely smooth road, nothing like any roads in the UK!

For the 3 of us that did the ride, we had a combination of lights ranging from some high end cateyes (EL530/LD1100), some £10 cheap no name lights and a single LED light bought for £2 through ebay from China that lasted 1hr before stopping!

From what I remember there was enough moon light around. The only problem was when the occasional car passed you, and then it took 10 seconds for your eyes to adjust to the light again. How ever at 4am you don't get many cars, so it wasn't much of a problem.

If you are doing it in April I guess it won't be as much day light as when we did it in June though.

Have a good trip, it's a great ride.

velo-city wrote:Have also used the LD lines Newhaven to Dieppe a couple of times.
Very bike friendly, although the timetables can be a bit harsh.
Dieppe is a a nice place o cycle through, and apparently one of the best French port towns in terms of cycling away.
Once it said bike places were full, but we turned up anyway and they let us on. As it turns out, in reality they're pretty much unlimited in how many bikes they can take.

Was relatively cheap, except when we missed one and they charged us loads to change the ticket.

We also did this route last June. Very easy to use and bike friendly. I think we paid £24 each.

We did the late night crossing, leave Newhaven 22:30 and arrive in Dieppe at 03:30. We were then in Paris by 14:00.

The road out of Dieppe was amazing, great for cycling, and if you wanted to you take the cycle path which runs in parallel with the road for a good few miles.

West coast of France.

Last year we stayed near Labenne (just north of Bayonne). We stayed at a campsite in a static caravan. We took bikes with us and cycled around lots with the family, daughter age 7 on her own bike and younger daugher age 4 on TAG bike pulled by me. Lots of lovely cycle paths, very flat and easy riding.

The year before we stayed around Royan, again lots of nice cycling.

The year before that we stayed around St Jean-de-Mont, again lots of good cycling.

As for next year, I suspect we will be going back to the West coast, around La Tranche-sur-Mer (La Rochelle).

My wife visited out local store at 9.15am and all the workstands gone. The manager said there was a queue of 15 cyclists at 8am when they opened!

Quick phone call to my Mum, and she managed to get one from her local store.

gentlegreen wrote:I'll definitely try to grab one - but Monday's a bit of a challenge to get there in time ...

They're advertising a £30 workstand too - the only snag is the security guards are wont to pounce if you open the box.

In my local store everyone opens all the boxes, tries things on, checks everything out and no problem?

I would suggest NC4. I have done the section from Reading, through Newbury, Hungerford, Devices, Bath to Bristol.

Some of this is along canal paths and some of it on very quiet roads.

This was a ride I did over the August bank holiday weekend with my wife: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=785086

I just had a weekend touring from Basingstoke to Bristol and back along NCN4 with my wife. I have riden the route before myself, but this was the first time I managed to convinced my wife to come along to.

Day 1 - Basingstoke to Froxfield, 33 miles
Pub with Rooms: http://www.pelicaninn.co.uk/

Day 2 - Froxfield to Bristol, 67.8 miles

Day 3 - Rest day in Bristol

Day 4 - Bristol to Collingbourne Kingston, Marlborough, 61.74 miles
B&B - http://www.manorfm.com/

Day 5 - Collingbourne Kingston, Marlborough to Basingstoke, 42.8 miles

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=785086

We joined NCN4 near Thatcham and joined the canal which was really hard going. The path was very thin and not great for bikes. On the way back we avoided the canal after Newbury and just stuck with the A4.

The section between Newbury and Devizes is all on quiet roads which are lovely to ride on. The biggest issue we had was lack of places to stop. Between Hungerford and Devizes there was nothing. From Devizes to Bath there were lots of places to stop.

The canal path surface really varied. Some parts were lovely hard packed surface and other parts were very lumpy stones. We came across alot of walkers and other cyclists which was fine. The hardest and most dangerous part was the dog walking along not on leads, as it was always a gamble which way they would run!

Both the Pub in Froxfield and B&B in Collingbourne Kingston were excellent and would recommend.

andun84 wrote:Can you explain option 2 to me a little more please as I think I need to know this once the sh1t hits the fan at work when they get wind of the changes.

We run our own scheme so we already handle the disposal ourselves. We apply, in common with many it would seem, 5% across the board disposal charge. Well those days are gone. What complicates the p11d route?

As I understand it you pay the 5% as usual, but then the difference between the final value (25% if over £500 or 18% if under £500) is declared as a benefit in kind, so this becomes a taxable benefit. As I understand if this is declared on the P11d, then your taxcode is increased for the following year to allow the extra tax to be paid then.

If you run your own scheme, then I guess this should be easy to setup.

My company just uses the cyclescheme, so I have a feeling it will be alot harder to get them to go down this route.

Edwards wrote:Option 4 is to give the bike back.

and lose all the money you have paid out for the past 12 months, so probably not a great idea unless the bike is worthless, and in which case you have a valid case to argue the Bike is not worth the 25% value the HMRC say it should be anyway.

belgiangoth wrote:A bit confused, do I have this right? At the end of the scheme you can either:

1* pay 25% of the original value of the bike, or
2* pay tax on the current value of the bike, eg tax on 25% of the original cost.

?

People would chose option 1 because? ...

At the end of the scheme you have 3 options:

1) Pay the 25% value (or 18% if under £500)
2) Pay 5% value of bike, then declare the 5% to 25% difference on your P11d, and pay income tax on the difference.
3) Continue to rent the bike (for a nominal fee or free) from your employer

Option 1 is cyclescheme prefered option, as they make more money out of you!

Option 2 works out alot cheaper, but this depends if your employer can be bothered to implement this as it is likely to be alot more hassle than option 1.

Option 3 works out cheaper still, but depends if your employer will allow this.

andun84 wrote:What I do find distatesful though is that LBS regularly use this excuse to charge at full RRP even when their fee to the admin company is well below that of the discounted rate ie 30% markdown the bike, they pay 10% to Cyclescheme yet they still charge the person buying under C2W the full retail price. That is pure greed on their part.

Completely agree. I saw one bike that came with 20% free worth of accessories if you paid cash. If you uses Cyclescheme you get nothing. I tried to negotiate with the bike shop to offer me 10% free of accessories instead to take into account the cyclescheme 10% fee, but they weren't interested.

I ended up going to another shop and the only thing they did give me was a full bike measure and fit service, which should have cost £50. Having seen many other people with mail order bikes not getting them fitted correctly, I am really pleased I did this and would recommend to everyone.

kwackers wrote:In reality BTW is a tax scam, it was always a tax scam. To pretend otherwise is silly without it you'd be better off getting some form of interest free/cheap credit from a retailer of your choice.

I agree. To give you a bike VAT free, and then income tax free always seemed to be too good to be true.

However, changing a scheme retrospectively just seems unfair and wrong.

Yes I understand the point that the current scheme was vague and not clear, but from the information I saw when I joined the scheme it was pretty clear that the final payment would be around the 5 to 7% figure. I am fully aware that the final value was not part of the agreement when I started the scheme, so the only option was to find out what values the employer charged employees that had just finished the scheme. I (and I am sure most other people) used that information when calculating what it would cost them to join the scheme, and made their purchases based on this information.

As other people have said, buying a new bike not part of the scheme, you could easily get a 10 to 15% discount direct from the bike shop. When I purchased my bike I tried really hard to negotiate with the bike shops to get a discount, or throw in any extras free, but non of them were interested at all, due to the admin costs charged by cycle scheme.

For higher rate tax payers there are still savings to be made, but for basic rate tax payers, the savings are marginal if at all. What a shame.

I really hope the CTC can step in and put pressure on the government and HMRC to reevaluate the retrospective changes, and also look at the scheme again for new members.