Cycling UK Forum

Erm....I am getting a sense of your parenting style....perhaps my solution is not for you.... :D :lol: Yep you lost me at "we agreed..." Will be a different world when he has enough language to convey what's going on, what needs to happen etc. For now it's just miles of going "Look m...

Brilliant, thank you all! I've no experience of toe straps and the velcro ones looked like they'd be limited by where the fluffy side of the velcro stops and the hooky bit begins. But the clippy ones in Vorpal's photos look perfect, and threading them so they tighten on the outside of the footwell i...

His shoes measure about 19cm around the bit the strap would go round, if that helps - I don't think they make normal toe straps small enough!

I'm back on the bike after having a baby! He's 18 months and I've got a Co-Pilot Lima. Been out a couple of times, so far so good. I feel like I need to replace the footstraps though, they're rubbish! They're a strip of velcro that's supposed to bend back on itself to close, footstrap.jpg but the ki...

A huge amount of the total volume of our camping gear is taken up with a big double sleeping bag. It's worth it because I'd get cold on my own and couldn't do without the cuddles, but I'm wondering if there's anything a bit less bulky than the huge square-ended Coleman thing we're using. The small (...

Perfect, I will drink the vodka instead then

Phew, should be ok then. Is it still purple? Why do some places not allow it to be dyed? Surely it's to stop you accidentally taking a swig from what you thought was the water bottle - or worse still, trying to use what you thought was the water bottle to dowse a small fire?!

Oh. I'm leaving for a few days tour tomorrow and I've only got one pack of this newfangled bio-ethanol gel stuff. I figured we could easily get more depending on how fast we got through it - will we find it hard to get now? Can anything else be used - what happens if you try to use vodka or somethin...

I love it! Thinking about maybe taking a nine year old on a short cycle trip sometime soon, I think I'll use your blog to explain what sort of thing I mean. Loads of lovely photos. Where are you going next?

A possible alternative - I have about 5 spare batteries for my phone, which are cheap from china on ebay. Every few days of a tour I sit in a pub for long enough to charge any I've used up, they're light to carry and tiny and this definitely works well for me.

Our tent is tiny for 2 people, there's only just enough room for us in there, and the four panniers and 2 rack bags we carry stick outside the porch a bit however we stack them up.

But they are lovely completely totally water-and-slugproof Ortliebs, so it doesn't matter (<smugface)

BTW I have a Surly LHT which I LOVE TO BITS. Manufacturers say not to use a kick stand as it will damage the frame. How much will I miss having a kick stand while teaching, given how much I'll be not actually riding myself during lessons? Is my own bike likely to get ridden into, knocked over, scrap...

Maybe if they don't mention it then I won't mention it either and we'll see what happens. I would be willing to wear one if absolutely required to though, I'd rather have a nice job than try to prove that it's probably not worth it to someone who would just decide it's not worth the bother of employ...

Do they? Why?

I suppose I'd wear one if I absolutely had to, but that's another expense I'll rack up. I suppose I'll need it for the training? Don't think it was mentioned in the course info.

Children will think I'm a hypocrite when they see me riding around without one outside of school.

Thanks so much, that's all really really helpful! Redundancy pay will mean I have a little freedom to take the time to train and take the risk that there might not really be enough work to not do anything else. Doing a bit of something else would be ok, although I'm not sure what yet. I only work pa...