Cycling UK Forum

rollinbone wrote:If you wanna do a kind of Wainwright route that takes in all the 3 national parks you may like to consider one I did

Train to Ravenglas (lake district)
Over Hard Knott pass and tru the lakes
Head for Hawes in the dales
Then due east til camp at Great Barugh (due south of yorkshire moors)
Head north over the moors then east again to Robin hoods bay

186 miles

Hmm, sounds interesting - how was the pass? and is it reasonably do-able fully loaded with tents etc?

delilah wrote:What type of bike will you be riding? Touring or MTB? Are you camping or B&Bing?

We'll be on MTBs with semi slicks, don't really plan to anything like singletrack. Going to be camping. Don't mind hills for the views!

Thanks for the ideas, I'll take a look at these suggestions and decide

I'm looking to do a north-england coast to coast route in 2 or 3 days, does anyone have any recommendations for routes?

Just in case anybody reads this forum again, we ended up going to Cherbourg in Normandy and doing a big circle east along the coast through Bayeaux and Caen as far as Liseaux, then south through some cheesy villages - in Vermoutiers we stayed about a bit for a cool fancy dress 24hr go-kart race! Then west as far as Mont Saint Michel and North to Cherbourg again. Saw a huge variety of stuff, (don't miss the war museum in Caen if you go there). Missed out Swiss Normandy which I would def have done if with other people. Great campsites and met lots of very nice people. Had a great time and I def want to go to see more of France. Thanks for all of your advice.

Does anybody have experience of using the Old Man Mountain Sherpa front rack? I found that it was prone to shimmy unless I put hardly any weight in the panniers, (say a couple of kg each side). If anyone else found this how did you get around it?

EDIT - I recently used this rack on a pair of Marz bombers on uk coast to coast route, and it was rock solid this time, even with more weight on it. I think the shimmy I experienced before may have been to do with a number of reasons - 1. I used it on an old Orange Clockwork, which has quite twitchy steering.
2. When used on the Clockwork the setup meant that I had to use long v-brake bolts to mount it - I used xt // push v brakes, booster and spacers for clearance, and all this made the long bolts necessary, which introduced a lot of flex, I think.

For the c2c bike I used hs33 brakes that sit low on the brake bosses, and then the pannier mounting brackets, so very little flex. Much, much better, and I'll definitely use this rack again.

I've picked up a pair of Schwalbe Snow studs second hand cheaply, but I also have a Diy job that works 'better' - more grip, but much more noisy and heavy, and doesn't like turning (steering) as much. It's quite an interesting project to make your own if you can be bothered and have the time

Get a tyre with chunky grip where you can insert large flange - headed self tapping drywall screws (screwfix or toolstation) from inside out. Don't mount them on the central tread but off to the side a bit. use an awl rather than a drill as it doesn't destroy the threads in the tyre structure. Then you need a tough liner to stop the heads puncturing the inner tube. I cut up an old tubeless road tyre and used that. Lastly nip off the excess screw on the outside of the tyre with some bolt cutters- it's surprising how little you need - a couple of mm.

Mine is very heavy and steers like a tank! This is due to both the weight and because I've left the studs a little long (maybe 3mm). On the upside the grip is phenomenal.

Thanks everybody that was a really interesting discussion. I think now I'm quite happy to use stainless everywhere and take spares along.

I've got roller classic front and plus rear, and an ortlieb classic kit bag made of PVC material. I'm strongly in favour of the plus. I was initially worried because the material is significantly thinner than the classic PVC - and the waterproof PU coating is on the inside of the panniers only. I thought that this coating would be damaged by hard objects jostling around inside the pannier, but have so far had no problems with this (about 9 months daily use only). The outside of the plus material has so far proved to be more resistant to abrasion than the classics - the outside of my kit bag got damaged by the straps I used to secure it. The thin material is a lot easier to roll over to seal, meaning that a waterproof seal can be acheived more easily with less turnovers, meaning in turn that they can be filled more. The classics are quite stiff - and get stiffer still in cold conditions. PVC is more polluting to manufacture. If I was buying again I think that I would go with the convenience of the bikepacker plus lid design. I'm sure that they would be adequately waterproof. One thing I'd definitely recommend in any case is buying an extra anti sway hook for each pannier as I found a single lower hook disengages quite easily over rough ground.

Does anybody have experience of using the B and M Toplight line plus in wet conditions? I am fitting one of these units to a friend's bike - overall the quality seems to be very good, but the light is totally unsealed and I can even see through a small gap into the light and pcb - I can't imagine how this could not be an issue.

Is the Michelin 1:200,000 atlas better than the AA Big easy read 1:150,000? Smaller scale obviously but is it clearer?

Thanks for all of your answers, it's given me plenty to think about.

I don't know if anyone has suggested them yet, but how about these? Only for 700c wheels
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/halo-twin-rail- ... -with-bpp/

How long did you leave the plus gas soaking in the seat tube for? A couple of hours is nowhere near enough. It needs to be at least overnight and preferably 48hrs, frame inverted and enough of the stuff in the seat tube so that the entire seatpost inside the frame is completely immersed. Then try the hammer and vice.

julk wrote:That way you get lots of choice of seatposts, the ones with two bolts (fore and aft) allow for very fine adjustment of the saddle angle.

This is true, and whichever angle you choose is held rock - solid by the 2 opposing bolts

I don't really know how noticable a change in layback would feel - 2 bolt layback posts tend I think to have slightly less layback than 1 bolt posts. There is this for use with 1 bolt seatpost designs, pretty ugly and I guess you would have to lower the saddle to compensate and therefore wouldn't be able to get the stoker stem high enough.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VK-BICYCLE-BIKE-C ... 2379wt_904

I'd go the shim and double bolt seatpost route that jolk suggests - Shims are cheap, barely noticeable once fitted, with just a tiny little lip around the top of the seat tube. You could buy a second one and cut it so that it is just hidden under the stoker stem clamp. These shims are the same price and postage free at Wiggle. A seatpost with shim is just as secure as using the 'right' size seatpost. Many of the older bikes made by the extremely respected British MTB company Orange used high quality 'Use' brand seatposts together with a shim as original components.