Cycling UK Forum

Newcastle (upon Tyne)?

Stourbridge Junction?

Turns out Halfords are giving away RIdge Cierzo helmets (meets EN1078) for free at the moment, if you spend £30 or more on cycle accessories. I just went in to pick up some "collect in store" tyres, and was offered a free helmet. It looks like any other helmet, and even has a light on the back. I went for an L and this adjusts 58-62cm. I wasn't looking for a helmet, but handy to have a spare for visitors who prefer to wear one etc. Receipt says the RRP was £27.



It looks like every other "value" helmet, and I am sure you would go much faster if you paid £280 for one "as used by Team xxx" that has more holes and less polystyrene. Anyway, even if you think helmets are worthless, you are still getting exactly what you pay for this way

Millom, looking roughly NNE?

horizon wrote:There's a school of thought that turns this on its head and asks: how do you get to be 80? And the answer of course is through cycling in your seventies. So you aren't cycling despite being old, you are old because you cycle.

Some support for this view in this recent King's College London / University of Birmingham research https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43308729 which examined the health benefits of regular cycling as people get older.

You could contact the Teesside DA / Cycling UK Member Group and see if any of their members has any (very) old club runs lists – “Singing Kettle” could feature as a regular 11s / lunch stop? I saw above that someone had contacted a relative who had no memory of a local stop near Middlesborough with this name though, but one of our regular 11s stops has changed names 4 times in last 10 years, so it can happen!

There were several Uniteds for buses. One branch of United operated out of Cleveland / Middlesboro’ until 1948 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Au ... e_Services so that may be closest to home?

These guys http://www.unitedenthusiastsclub.co.uk/ might be the sort of people who would also collect 1930s bus timetables for United in the NE, and with luck “Singing Kettle” might feature in the name of a stop in a timetable? So might be worth asking there. They might also know for sure what shape a United bus stop sign would have been in the 1930s.

Might be worth asking here https://oldtwbustime.wordpress.com/ as well – the examples shown are far more recent than you need, but again bus stops are still often identified by the place and the adjacent pub / hotel etc. name – “Gilesgate Moor, Travellers’ Rest” – that kind of thing so you might get lucky. These are obviously old Tyne and Wear bus timetable enthusiasts, but they may have some good friends who are old Teesside bus timetable enthusiasts!

Good luck!

Sadly (or maybe fortunately) I never got as far as that, because the train I was on went into the tunnel outside Liverpool St and we were cut off....

I just Googled the number that called me (01752 926296) and it appears to be an outfit called QTS Fundraising who do subcontracted outbound calling on behalf of charities. Several well-known charities are mentioned on their website http://qtsfundraising.co.uk/charities/ (though not Cycling UK), and trying to get people to Gift Aid their charity memberships seems to be one of the things they are famous for. I still think of myself as being a "member" of Cycling UK, so if they call back and start calling me a "supporter" as per their website, I may find I have suddenly gone into a tunnel again!

Others appear to have called the charities mentioned by the firm to check them out and have been told they are legit. So I think QTS Fundraising will have been subcontracted by Cycling UK to chase up naughty people like me who haven't Gift-Aided their memberships (supporterships?) yet. If you want to be 100% sure, though, best check it out with "Supportership" Services at Cycling UK?

Yes I got one on Thursday, also from a Plymouth / 01752 STD code. It was about gift-aiding my Cycling UK membership.

Tangled Metal wrote:

mjr wrote:

Tangled Metal wrote:Perhaps I live where there's no active group. I live near Lancaster, I think there is a group in Lancaster. I did hear they mostly did mid week rides and average age was retirement but that could just be a case of a "youngster's" perception of the ctc people she went cycling with once. That was under ctc name it was a few years back now.

You can find if there's a local group (Cycling UK, but also other groups) by looking around here https://www.cyclinguk.org/groups-listin ... _value=All

It turns out there is a CTC Group in Lancaster. I was able to hunt it down by typing "CTC Lancaster" into Google, where it came back as the first hit. They have a website http://ctclancaster.org.uk that explains who they are and what they do.

So, it's not particularly hard to find if there is a local Cycling UK / CTC group, and find our what they offer in terms of rides etc. It may not be the right kind / demographic of group for you, but I don't believe it's quite fair to suggest they are difficult to find out about?

Cog
Popular term for a rear sprocket. Sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for cluster, which is actually a group of cogs.

Sprocket
……..
The rear sprockets individually are also commonly called cogs or gears; as a group they are referred to as a block, cassette, cluster or freewheel.

Three guesses which bicycle glossary these two definitions comes from…..

Apologies - it was me who first used that pesky "c*g" word above, without even thinking. I will write out 100 lines of "a cassette is made from sprockets and not cogs" as punishment.....

Almost but not quite as disturbing - it's also a brush without bristles!

Well, turns out it even has a name - a "cog brush"....

https://www.evanscycles.com/fwe-cog-brush-EV183191

Thanks Brucey,

You're right - only the outer and middle rings have this arrangement, while the granny ring is all regular teeth, so this seems intended as a way to help the chain slide off a larger ring and onto a smaller ring.

You're quite right that this arrangement has successfully confused at least one person - hence this thread!

I will just file it under "one of those things" and see how the chainset shifts and wears over time.

I believe it is intended for scraping all the rubbish out that accumulates in between the cogs on the back wheel. I have one, and it has never really worked that well for me. I tend to use the stretched edge of a duster, or something that's a bit like a glorified giant pipe cleaner, but everyone will have their own methods!