Cycling UK Forum

After 3 Garmin units, been pretty impressed by my bryton. Excellent battery life quite cheap and wireless transfers of data.

Top tip! Find someone heavier than you to ride with!

There are some good free training plans on the British Cycling website, you probably won't go far wrong by following one of those.

A few years ago I bought some of Aldi's cheap shorts for turbo use for under a tenner. They were hilariously bad. You expect two things from a pair of cycling shorts a) the waist doesn't fall down and b) the legs don't ride up. Unfortunately both would happen within about five minutes of starting riding and I'd end up looking like I was wearing a pair of particularly low cut swimming trunks.

Weinmann 500/600 brakes from the 1970s/80s were very poor especially in the wet but then so was pretty much everything else!

And of course there are hotels like F1... plus they are a bit on the soulless side...

Soulless agreed but also quite like a particularly unpleasant prison cell.

I rode the via de la plata (south to north) in September about 15 years ago and the first few days were extremely hot (35-38) and I was unaccustomed. However, I had a bit of a shock when there was frost on the ground in Salamanca and I had to buy some more cycle clothing such as gloves and a warm jacket. Much of the middle of Spain is a high meseta c. 1000m altitude and so gets pretty chilly over night.

One thing that I found, and this is a Spanish thing, is that meals are served very late, so restaurants might not open for dinner much before 9.30pm. Breakfast is also a pretty late affair, so getting an early start to avoid the heat often entails a DIY breakfast or missing out or getting very hot. One advantage of late Spanish dining is that it's quite acceptable to arrive at a hotel or b&b late in the evening ie. 9pm. However, if like me you travel light and wash your clothes as you go it can be tricky to get things dry. Overall Spain is a great country but has some local/national foibles which take some adjusting to or can lead to inconvenience.

I also have a pair of selectspecs Aero2057, which I've had for about 18 months. They're great value for money and far better than something with an rx insert as they are lighter and sweat tends to drip down between the 2 lenses with an rx insert. They still look like new. The only downside is a minor one in that the specs and lenses are flat rather than curved as I understand it's difficult/expensive to do that. But no biggie. I paid about £60 for single vision mirror-tinted. Definitely I would recommend them.

Interesting context for the phrase 'balls up'.

I too have struggled with the weight of ebikes when doing maintenance. Taking the battery out helps a little as does asking someone else to do it for you! For on the road, I've swapped over to self sealing inner tubes, so far so good.

If you want a climb you should head to the Signal de Botrange at 694m altitude Belgium's highest point.

The main issue I would see is that the battery would run out of charge before you reach you destination rather than not being able to charge. So some careful route planning would be required as battery range will be very different in say the Alps compared to the UK, especially if loaded. I'd also suggest booking your stay ahead of arrival as you don't want to find that they're fully booked forcing you onto the next place if your battery is low on charge.

To avoid an unpleasant surprise I'd err on the side of caution in terms of distance and use the lowest assist practicable.

Good luck!

It's a real faff. I've never understood it as the planes tyres are fine aren't they. In the past I have said that my tyres are airline approved solid tyres and that's been accepted.

Who?

Go to Crete where you can combine uphill and against the wind!

Unfortunately, I had bought mine maybe 4 years before use probably from Wiggle. And as I now live in the EU I'm not going through the hassle of sending them back to Wiggle with the Clusterfckery that is brexit.

After multiple similar failures with marathons and my unanswered complaints to schwalbe, I've decided that there are companies that deserve my money more and so I am no longer spending my ill gotten gains on schwalbe tyres. I suggest we all do the same. It's a pity that a once reliable tyre has become anything but.