Cycling UK Forum

I've had this gathering dust in the garage - we left the house it never got used in 12 years ago!


It would probably need to be raised up on a block of wood to raise the back of the front mudguard, and it is simply an alloy clone of the block of wood with a hole through it for a QR skewer. On the plus side, the virtual block of wood is the right width, and the skewer is at right angles to the sides! The skewer is thicker/ stronger than a regular QR skewer, but not quite as thick as an actual axle.

Yours for the cost of the postage.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:You’d be surprised how big you can get an inner tube to go, before it goes bang.

This is what CTC Cambridge did for entertainment in the 1930s - an inner tube bursting competition. Taken from this site https://ctccambridge.org.uk/ctccambridg ... #ontheroad. Apologies in advance for this light-hearted diversion from the more serious topic under discussion, but it illustrates the point above!

If you are as lacking in foresight as me, and habitually turn your bike upside down to mend punctures, then with the extender bars that stick up above the bag, you may realise for the first time that you can't do this as easily, or at all, the first time you have a puncture! It's not a deal-breaker, and will depend on the design and strength of the extender, but it's something that mounting the light somewhere below the bar bag avoids.

Ortleib do these https://www.ortlieb.com/uk/ultimatesix-adapter that give a mounting above or below the bag without taking space on the handlebar (how well it works above / below will depend on how deep the bag is etc.).

My Carradice bar bag came with a light bar like this https://www.gbcycles.co.uk/p/125158/Car ... er-bracket that clicks into a plastic mount on the bottom of the bag. This is OK as a backup / emergency option, but it wobbles about with the bag, so it is not ideal for mounting a primary light, and of course only works with (some) Carradice bar bags.

I have one of these https://www.spacycles.co.uk/m2b29s169p3 ... unt-CS-500 but they are a bit flimsy - wobbles from side to side, keeps working loose with a light on it, and the threads in the aluminium the screws screw into strip easily. So, avoid these and choose the sturdier one from SJS recommended above!

So, one that may work that I haven't tried, and two that don't work so well that I have tried!

Not quite. Turns out these are two different questionnaires about two different things, each sent to different subsets of members. The first is broadly about how to market Cycling UK, and the second is asking about a new membership package.

(a local member asked Cycling UK and this was the answer that they got back)

Sorry - I was typing while julk was saying the same thing about checking the inside of the tyre!

At least we aren't saying two different things.

Could be caused by farmers giving their hedges an autumn haircut? Our road was done the other day and the road is now covered in thorny twig fragments.

You can get the ends of black-ish thorns caught in a tyre. They break off flush with the outside of the tyre, and sit just poking through the Kevlar etc. anti puncture band on the inside, and so can be pretty hard to spot from either side.

Do the punctures keep happening in the same place relative to the valve - that's a clue that there's something hard to spot still lurking in the tyre? It's a good idea to try and find where the hole in the inner tube is, and then look carefully for anything poking through the inside of the tyre that far round from the valve, remembering which way round the tube was in the tyre.

Lots of other possible causes, but hedge trimming around this time of year and punctures often seem to go together for me.

Quite possibly. Someone asked if this make of pump was any good, and all you can go on is your own experience. I haven't done a systematic review of all makes of track pump, such as the SKS Airworx you mentioned that is £1 cheaper, and I'm sure that's good as well / possibly better. There's probably a "what track pump" article in a magazine somewhere that compares and contrasts the different makes!

I have had a range of track pumps that cost both more and less than the Topeak over the years, and that didn't last 12 years. These include a mostly metal Blackburn that was built like a tank that cost a lot more, and an unbranded mostly plastic one from Decathlon that cost a lot less. The Decathlon one had a side-by-side head, and that seemed to have a mind of its own, especially when you were in a hurry to get somewhere, so I wouldn't rush to get another of that design. Your mileage may vary.

Of course, none of these has lasted as long as my venerable Zefal frame fit pump, which will see me, and probably my children, out.

+1 for the Topeak Joe Blow Sport 3. You can generally get this for £26 (e.g. at a local Halfords using click and collect) rather than the £35 advertised in the link above. So that's already down to £2.60 a year over a decade!

I had a yellow Joe Blow that worked for 12 years and then the gauge stopped working properly, so I bought a Joe Blow Sport 3 last year. It works well. Since then the old one has mysteriously started working again, so I now have one in the car and one in the garage. They both work fine with Presta and Schrader valves up to 120psi (and probably beyond). Also has adapters for footballs etc. The new head design is working well for me so far - but I'll try to remember to come back here with a long-term report in about 11 years!

I had lots of other makes before and these seem to last well in comparison. You can pay a lot more, or a lot less, but these seem a good price-performance compromise.

There were some CTC guidance notes on this area. I can't find my copy, but there is one linked from here:
https://trurocycling.files.wordpress.co ... viders.pdf

I have no idea if this is current or has been updated. The bit that stood out for me was section 5.2 discussing the expectations a court might have of an unpaid volunteer ride leader. The view is that the expected level is not so different from the expectations about a professional paid "activity provider".

As above, this 2006 info / discussion may now be out of date / superseded. The good news is that there was no / very little cycling club case law to report at the timer, suggesting that there have been few if any claims against ride leaders. This doesn't help answer the original question, of course, as it is another "I haven't heard of it ever happening" statement!

You just need to wait a few months, and then get a ShelBroCo Sram deluxe kit https://www.sheldonbrown.com/chainclean.html for $249.95, which is all made of power links.

The other way if you don't have the time to wind them up is to say your phone number is registered with TPS, and ask them for their name and company name as they shouldn't be calling you. Outbound callers do seem to be scared of TPS and know what it is, and immediately say they will remove you from their calling list.

I registered a few months ago and the volume of unwanted calls is probably down by 80-90%, and most of the remaining 10-20% tend to go away without a fight. The passing of the PPI deadline may have helped as well!

(TPS = Telephone Preference Service - https://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html - it's free to register)

A couple of other options for mounting lights on a front basket.

I've got a bracket that attaches to the front top of the basket, and gives a raised mounting for a handlebar-type mount that is out of the way above and in front of the contents of the basket. I got this at the LBS - if you want to know the make I can go in and find out.


You can also bodge a mounting under a wicker basket with a couple of zip ties - the light needs to be precision-angled, using e.g. half a wooden clothes peg between light and basket as a wedge to aim it downwards. Probably less relevant if you want a rechargeable USB light as the mounting is semi-permanent.



Good luck!

I wish organisations would stop replacing thin peel-off laminated membership cards with plastic ingots where this is not needed. National Trust and Cycling UK both did this. I just looked and I have 14 credit-card sized cards of the standard 0.76mm thickness in my bulging wallet.

I can see there needs to be a bit of thickness and stiffness for cards that need to include contactless / chip and PIN technology, and be swiped and pushed into ATMs. You don't need this for cards that simply say who you are etc. 6 of my cards need to be "active". The rest are just printed bits of plastic.

With 66000 members, Cycling UK uses a 50m long ingot of plastic with a credit card cross section every year for renewal membership cards.

Cambridge Cycling Campaign give me a thin membership card that has a QR code on it, and is also good for 6 years - you get a code to write in a box each time you renew. One thin card every 6 years. I can see that the annual Cycling UK card shows you paid in the last year and are a current member, so multi-year may not possible in every case.

So it would be good if organisations considered thin loyalty/membership cards, multi-year cards, or virtual cards where this is possible.

Is the half-timbered house just in front of the church of St Peter and St Paul in Lingfield, not far from the Lingfield lock-up https://www.prisonhistory.org/lockup/lingfield-lock-up/ and the racecourse where you can place bets at a wide range of odds?