Cycling UK Forum

The peak district idea has the benefits of plenty of YHA accomodation which might make it cheaper and more fun than B+B. YHA accomodation often have grounds for children to run about and self catering facilities. I had thought about a weekend tour for my children along the following lines: hiring bikes at the top of the tissington trial at Parsley Hey and cycling to Hartington YHA to stay over night and then continue the tissington trail the next day to Ashboune. I thought it would give a good and easy 2 days to cycle touring as it is mostly downhill and get the children introduced to the YHA whilst they still have some hostels left.
I still need to work out how to get the bikes back to Parsley Hey from Ashbourne as it is all up hill.
More info about the route here http://www.derbyshire-peakdistrict.co.uk/tissingtontrail.htm

Mick F wrote:We have one of these, but they are the only ones I have experience of.

The bikes go on easily enough, but you have to keep them from rubbing against each other and it takes a bit of fiddling to get the pedals out of the way of the central support. Also you may need to mount the bikes Top-to-Tail.

http://www.leisureshack.co.uk/thule-950 ... rrier.aspx

I have one similar to this as well but I think mine is an older model. The only problem is when I mount my 2 straight handle bar bikes on it the handle bar of one bike hits the other bikes saddle and it does't quite fit. I slight change in saddle or handlebar position is all that it takes to make them fit.

It is stable and the bikes are secure when travelling. The picture on leisureshack website indicates it is easy to drop the rack to access the boot, this maybe a feature of the newer version as mine would be difficult to drop as it is adjusted by a large spanner, and would be impossible to raise again without help. But this may be because it is older.

If you are buying the extra lock to secure it to the tow bar then you can specify the key number so it matches other Thule locks you may have for roof boxes or roof bars. I didn't so now have 2 similar keys one for the bike rack and one for the roof bars.

I use the Zinn book of road bike maintenance as well. It covers everything from puncture repair through to wheel building with everything in between. The explanations and diagrams are excellent.

I think the rack pack would be the best for performance as it is more streamline.
A saddle bag would be a close second, and panniers would be the least streamline as they have the most surface area facing direction of travel. (unless of course you just have one pannier)
But if it was a heavy weight then would panniers be more stable as the weight is lower?
What weight are you thinking of carrying?

This B+B run by my nearly in-laws is on the edge of the Cotswolds if that is any use http://www.gantier.co.uk and they have a single room.
It is located in a quiet village between Evesham and Winchcombe so you have a choice of flat cycling in the vale of Evesham or hills

It doesn't seem a good idea to me to leave the panniers attached but this is just a thought I have no evidence either way.

I have seen people at airports checking in bikes and in all cases their panniers were placed in a separate bag. 2 Panniers count as 2 pieces of luggage, 2 Panniers in a large bag count as 1 piece of luggage.

I recently changed a set of drop bars to flat bars on my Dawes Horizon and the cost was about £100
I needed the following
new bars + grips
new brake levers
new vbrakes as the existing canti brakes weren't compatible with the new brake levers
new gear shifter levers right and left
new front mech, as the original one was a road mech and wasn't compatible with the new gear shift levers.

It took me a good mornings work to swap the bars.

I did this recently on my Dawes Horizon and ran into all the problems mentioned above.
I started by buying new v brakes, flat STI levers for v-brakes and road front mech. these didn't look right on the bike so took them back and swapped the levers for MTB brake levers and MTB gear levers and a new MTB front mech.
I then fitted these new components and found the MTB front mech didn't fit the chain rings. The front new front mech wanted a difference of 12 teeth and the chain rings only had a difference of 10 see thread http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=43550 for an explanation.
I then got a front mech that was compatitble with both the mtb levers and the chain rings, this worked.

I thought the job would take an hour, in the end it took two complete weekends! Check, double check and then check again the components you are buying will work with each other is my advice.

Even if the label on the pannier says fully water proof I still pack stuff in individual waterproof bags before putting them in the panniers. This protects my clothes etc from leaking fuel bottles, leaking sauce bottles, wet tents and even the remote event of me not fastening the pannier properly allowing rain to flood in from the top.

My Sleeping bag is always double bagged, this might be overkill but there is nothing worse in my opinion than ending a hard days cycling in the rain and facing the prospect of a cold night in a wet sleeping bag.

There is one just off the route at Padfield, Grid reference SK 037 962, It is called Windy Harbour farm campsite and its contact details are

Windy Harbour Farm Hotel, Woodhead Road, Glossop, Derbyshire SK13 7QE
Email: enquiries@peakdistrict-hotel.co.uk

There is also the Camping and Caravan club site at Crowden, details can be found at the camping club web site, it is next to Crowden YHA. Grid ref SK 071994. This is just off the route.

There is also one called Thurston wood campsite at SE 164 028, this is just after the tunnel near Dunford Bridge, sorry no other details on this one.

This website is pretty good for finding campsites http://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/sites/results.asp?county=South%20Yorkshire

There are a few near York, this is slightly off the main East / West route but a pleasant 20 mile or so detour and York is a nice place to visit.

I should point out that I haven't stayed at any of these sites, I just researched them for my trip last year. In the end I stopped in Buxton which is no where near your route.

"I want an alien for Christmas" by the Fountains of Wayne is my favourite

You can cycle over the Humber bridge. There is a cycle / pedestrian path either side of the road carriage way accessible from the Humber Bridge visitors centre on the North bank and Far Ings lane, Barton on the south bank.

I used to cycle over the bridge a lot when I was a teenager and was always amused when someone painted a letter 'T' on the road name sign at the Barton end. I will let you work out where the wrote the 'T'

Thanks for the replys. Don't worry about going off topic its all good interesting stuff. I am going to look for Saturn and Jupiter next time the sky is clear.

Jupiter is visible in the southern skies in the evening, and saturn is visible in the south east in the mornings at the moment.
If you get the chance to view jupiter through binoculars you can see its 4 moons. They appear as tiny dots on either side of the planet in a straight line, over a few days they move positions as they orbit the planet.

I use http://www.heavens-above.com/ to find out what stars and planets are visible on a particular night.

I have the terra-nova laser tent, which weighs 1Kg and has the benefits of being large enough to live comfortably in.
I find the tent big enough to spread out all my gear and still have room to move about, and the porch is big enough to store my panniers and cook in. I don't find it too claustrophobic when hemmed in due to bad weather outside.

Unfortunatly it is slightly out of your stated price range, perhaps a 2nd hand one could be considered. In my experience buying a cheap tent is false economy as they generally fail after a short time. Poles break, zips stop working, flysheets rip etc None of which you need on a tour.

Your link didn't work so I don't know which tent you were looking at.

But have you considered tents from Vango, Vaude, wild country or Robert saunders ? I have used all in the past and all were ok.

York night school ran one a couple of years ago which I attended, it was for 4 nights and we covered everything from puncture repair, routine maintenance, brakes, gears, wheel trueing, wheel bearing adjustment. it was fairly hands on and I learnt a lot from it.

I think this is the link to the course I did but can't be sure,
http://york.floodlight.co.uk/york/cours ... omain.html