Cycling UK Forum

I can’t see the size of the chainrings from the bike specification, but the inner chainring looks very small - probably 22 or 24 teeth, with the outer one possibly 36 teeth? The inner (small) chainring is really for climbing hills and riding off road. For road riding on flat roads, they will probably need to be on the large chainring and possibly gear 3 on the back, depending on how strong they are. There’s a certain amount of trial and error involved. They need a gear that big enough that they can make decent progress, but not so big that they are forcing the pedals around. If they stay in gear 1 on the flat, their legs will be spinning like bees wings and they won’t be travelling very far for each turn of the pedals.

I’m still agile enough to be able to look over my shoulder, often twisting my body to facilitate this. My wife has been having trouble and has recently fitted Sprintech bar end mirrors to both of her road bikes.

Similar story with my own daughter. We are a family of cyclists - her mum rides for leisure and used to commute by bike before she retired. Her brother is/was a mad keen cyclist, as is her husband and her dad (me), but my daughter was never keen and never took to cycling even though she used to work for Wattbike. I’m starting to see it in the next generation too. I have 2 3 year old grandchildren. My grandson is already scooting about on his balance bike and is getting a pedal bike for Christmas. My granddaughter of the same age, shows no interest at all, prefers swimming and ballet.

drossall wrote: ↑5 Oct 2024, 9:51am I rarely to never feel the need to ring my bell at pedestrians. However, my Brompton has one integrated into the left shifter. I'm forever catching it when changing gear. Drives me mad. Apologies therefore to the various pedestrians who have been doing nothing remarkable, and been confused when I rang a bell at them. Just take it as a cheery greeting please.

I was accused of aggressively ringing the bell on my Brompton on the Bristol to Bath Path. On the outskirts of Bath, I rung my bell a few times, with 2 pedestrians walking towards me, but neither moved, so I kept ringing it. Problems do occur on shared use paths. I encountered 2 dog walkers yesterday gojng in the same direction as me, walking side by side completely filling the path, I rang my bell several times, slowed down to a crawl, then had to say “Excuse me”, then they suddenly jump in shock when the realise you are there. The problem seems to be that they are not switched on, don’t realise it’s a shared use path, and are either deep in conversation or in a daze.

Where I live, we have had a sizeable influx of Hong Kong Chinese people. Nothing wrong with that and they have integrated into the community very well. I think the figures over last few years have been inflated by the influx of these people, escaping the Chinese regime in Hong Kong, being British Passport holders and Ukrainian people escaping the conflict in their own country. Since these are out of the ordinary one-off circumstances, the numbers will drop back to lower levels.

Someone once abandoned a car outside my house. The main reason seemed to be because we lived very close to a bus stop. It was a rusty old yellow thing, might have been an old Peugeot. We reported it to the Council pretty much straight away, but it was 2 months before they came and took it away. We lived at the end of a Cul-de-sac (with an alleyway that led to the Bus Stop) and it was parked in the turning area, so it was a right PITA to me and everyone else who lived there.

Audax67 wrote: ↑1 Dec 2024, 8:16am Last time I rode home in the pitch dark I had an 80 lux dyno light up front, set so as not to dazzle car drivers*, I was on the local shared path when a face suddenly appeared in the air two or three metres ahead. It turned out to be a runner in dark kit, whether black or blue or a fetching shade of deep fuchsia I couldn't say, I just know that the bloke's face was the only pale thing about him. I surmise that he had had his head down for some reason - fiddling with his watch, maybe - and had only just looked up.. Fortunately we both swerved to our respective rights** and nothing else happened, but it was an excellent object lesson on how not to dress in the dark. I hope he learnt it.

* hothouse plants who don't mind blinding us at their convenience
** ici on parle français.

There are quite a few night joggers where I live, but they seem a bit more “switched on”. They all wear hi-viz running vests and there’s a group of them that have front and rear LED lights attached to their jackets.

Real fans are watching the host broadcasters? Like France2, Sporza or RAI? How do you do that with English commentary? Is there some sorcery that I’m not aware of?

Here’s the photo referred to earlier. You can still see the cyclist in black, though some of the other colours perhaps stand out more. Black doesn’t make you invisible.

Near where I live, a 75 year old woman ran down a cyclist from behind and killed him. She had defective eyesight and shouldn’t have been driving. She was prosecuted and was forced to surrender her licence to avoid a prison sentence. 9 month suspended sentence and 10 year driving ban.

https://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/n ... san%20Juke.

My own father didn’t give up driving until he was 84. He’d bought a new car but kept scraping the side of it, because he couldn’t see well enough to reverse into his drive without hitting the gatepost.

I have a free annual eye test because I’m a type 2 diabetic, so I would know if my eyesight was getting worse.

You can send routes to a Garmin from your phone too. I do it all the time. I Plot a route on RWGPS, Strava or Garmin Connect on my phone (not used Komoot yet), then just sync my phone to my Garmin and the route is there in the Courses menu. My Garmin is the Edge 520 Plus, but any modern Garmin with Bluetooth connectivity has this facility.

Real fans will already have access to Eurosport, either through a TV package or via D+. That’s because they won’t just want to watch the Tour, they’ll want to watch the other Grand Tours and the Classics and other races. It’s the casual or occasional viewer that won’t subscribe to D+.

All of my cycling club mates have Eurosport, it’s usually the main topic of conversation on club rides.

Tangled Metal wrote: ↑19 Nov 2024, 11:41am I think the point is nobody who uses the roads pay for it directly. It is all paid for indirectly by the taxation pot we all pay into according to financial circumstances and liabilities under taxation law. VED is an excise duty not a road tax in that it is an ecise payment for use of a fossil fuel based initiall on cost then carbon emissions then value on a certain date IIRC. IT is not related to actual road use but use of an internal combustion engined vehicle. No doubt something similar will apply ot EVs in due course.

It would be fun to see a pay per mile road tax to come in where you pay according to wear and tear on the road that your mode of transportation causes. That of course would not stop the VED being applies as that is something different. So DM reading motorists will get stung twice when they use their vehicles. That would make me chuckle for days.

The VED on my Campervan is over £600 per year, and it sits on my drive for 25 days out of every 30, and only does about 3-4,000 miles a year. One riposte I can use when accused of not paying “road tax”, is that I pay more than them!

This came up on my YouTube feed today:

https://youtu.be/GG-q7vRvwPA?si=2KEsYxBzwPTeYJg9

An examination of why teenage girls in Bremen cycle, and why teenage girls in Darlington don’t. It’s almost an hour long but worth a watch.

I do have some black tops, mainly summer ones, where conditions are brighter and it’s not so critical. My main winter top is red - not the brightest colour, I have another one for when it’s really cold like today, that is orange on the front and the sleeves but black at the back. So viewed from the back you can see the orange sleeves contrasting with the black.

My wife’s cycling tops are nearly all black, she also has a black padded gilet, but she wears fluorescent yellow overshoes, which because they are moving, really stand out. We both use rear lights in winter - mine is a combined light and camera, my wife’s is a Garmin Varia radar light. Motorists don’t seem to have any trouble seeing us, and we rarely get any close passes.

A consideration with light or bright coloured tops is keeping them clean, especially if cycling in a group, where not everyone has the best mudguards and you can get covered in road muck. I’ve had flouro yellow tops that I couldn’t get clean, because I got covered in muck off the roads.