Cycling UK Forum

LittleGreyCat wrote: ↑14 Feb 2025, 2:27pm So as I said, I am puzzled as to why some riders seem to decry using the full range of gears available.

I think it's more the relative change in "fashion" (for want of a better word although "set-up" might just as well apply).

Back In The Day™ when riders had a triple (often 30/39/53 for road / touring) and maybe 7 or 8sp at the back, it wasn't uncommon for cassettes to start with a 12 or 13. As chainrings have generally decreased in size and gone more to 1x and 2x, the way to get the same / similar range was to expand the cassette both to smaller cogs at the high end (Shimano now start with 11 as default, SRAM start with 10 and Campag (on their 13sp Ekar) start with a 9), and to bigger cogs at the low end (previously most cassettes would top out at 28 max, now even road bikes go up to 32 or 34, gravel and MTB can go to 50+).

So for those riders that refuse to move from a triple for whatever strange historical reasons, they're now stuck with 11-up cassettes and the unwanted high gear is upsetting for them. Obviously people then come along and start going on about "custom cassettes" usually involving chopping up bits of aluminium to make your own shims and spacers which is frankly way too much like hard work for not much gain.

Some folk get obsessed by the gear range (obviously bigger range= better, right?) so they'll go on about how only 3x gives them stupid low + bonkers high gears without ever really considering if they actually use all those gears, the massive cross-over range in the middle of if having a 550% range is really appropriate or necessary. Besides which, range is only a consideration if it's the correct range. No good having 30 gears but only the bottom 10 are usable because the chainset is too big or 30 gears but only ever using the top 6 because you ride entirely on flat tarmac.

To be fair, that latter point was a big failing of bike companies in the past as they all went for more gears cos more gears = cooler. I remember selling "commuter-ified" MTBs when they became A Thing - they looked cooler than hybrids, way more bombproof than road bikes so we sold loads. But they still had MTB gears (triple chainset) so it wasn't uncommon for them to come in for service with the outer ring and the smallest 4 cogs trashed and the inner and middle chainring (and the larger half of the cassette) immaculate. Big range of gears but entirely shifted too low.

Bottom line is that if you choose your groupset appropriately, 99% of riders should be able to get a spot-on range from any off-the-shelf componentry without having to resort to daft customisation. Problem is that many riders, especially the more traditional / older end of the spectrum, are still wedded to triple and as a result are hitting the compromises of never being able to fully use a big cassette because there's no mech long enough to cope with an 11-40 cassette on a triple chainset. Better off with an 11-40 and a 30/46 double chainset rather than trying to achieve wide range by a 28/38/48 and a 12-28 cassette.

Paulie73 wrote: ↑13 Feb 2025, 10:02am What about if I go tubeless would that be better ?

Before everyone dives down that rabbit hole, let's just go back to basics for a moment....

How old are the tyres? Cos if they're old and worn, that'll be part of the problem.

What is actually causing the punctures? Thorns / glass / flints etc getting through the tyre or something like a spoke poking through from the rim, a crack or lump in the rim tape or the valve pulling through the rim hole and tearing? You say you run high pressure so it's unlikely to be snakebite punctures but too high can also cause problems with overstressing the tyre or tube.

Cos until that is all sorted and known, we could go around for hours debating tubeless or massive heavy duty tyres but it won't solve the problem of a dodgy rim.

Also - what are the wheels (inc the size, 26", 650b or 29") and are they tubeless ready?

Carlton green wrote: ↑13 Feb 2025, 8:44am The problem with investing in staff is that staff are not fixtures, they either get made ‘redundant’ or otherwise leave the organisation and hence their skills are lost . The alternative is to have, if the project happens at all, work specified and lead by people without all the appropriate skills. It seems that there are no good and easy answers to that issue.

Part of the staff issue is that, due to the piecemeal nature of previous funding, the lack of long-term planning etc, it has been very easy to get rid of knowledgeable staff on the grounds of austerity, they're not pulling their weight, they've not got the pipeline of work to justify their continued employment and so on. So they get cut, the skills are lost, there's limited experience in the remaining workforce...

You see this in other areas too - the rail manufacturer companies in Derby are constantly on the edge of needing Government subsidy/bailout because there's no long-term planning or funding to give them that multi-year confidence of work. If they had that, they'd employ apprentices, train the workforce, be ready to go with new train orders. But they don't - so there's a resulting massive skills shortage for when the occasional bit of work does land.

Rien wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 3:05pm Does anyone have experience doing LEJOG this way? How easy is it to find last-minute places to stay, and are there regions where booking ahead is a must? Any tips for keeping options open without getting stuck? Also, if you’ve done this before, I’d love to hear how you managed accommodations along the way!

Not LEJOG but it's basically the same for any tour...

Stop at lunchtime and work out roughly where you'll be by evening, this of course depends on weather, terrain, your average speed, any particular places you want to stop at (tourist sites etc).

Look on booking.com and also Premier Inn / Holiday Inn websites (the latter two do not advertise on booking.com).

Find something appropriate and book.

PI and HI both offer options to book a long way in advance and cancel with no fee up til 1pm on the day of arrival so you can often find rooms available at very short notice from where they've been booked then cancelled. Both chains are fairly no frills but they do allow bikes in the room, they're an excellent (safe, reliable) option for cycle touring. I've used that approach a number of times, literally booking something for that night at lunchtime.

Be aware it can sometimes cost more doing it last minute rather than a long way in advance but it gives you way more flexibility. If there are places where you know you'll be for a night, you can book them a fair way in advance.

Mercian are a (mostly) custom frame builder - although they do have a range of "stock" frames - and they did custom paint jobs too so it's unlikely you'll find an exact match to whatever you have just from looking at pictures online.

There's a multi-page thread on them here because they pretty much went bust a few months back before being saved by a consortium of Derbyshire businessmen.
viewtopic.php?t=161005

Your best bet is probably just to contact them directly with some photos of the bike and (if possible) its backstory like who you inherited it from. I've no idea what their record keeping is like or if they'll even have records going back to the 1990's but they should be able to give you some more info on it.

mjr wrote: ↑12 Feb 2025, 10:01am Some have pointed out that this is still less than even one road project. It works out to £5.49 per person, so still needs a lot of local funding adding to hit the recommended £20 per person per year.

After 12+ years of austerity, piecemeal / short-term funding, no long term plans etc, councils simply cannot spend any more money.

They have no established pipeline of schemes (because there was no point developing those when funding was so scattered and minimal), their back room functions (procurement, legal, finance, planning) have been hollowed out by years of council cuts due to austerity so they have limited planning expertise to call on...

You could give 3x that amount of money but they'd be completely unable to spend it.

I also hate the idea of funding based on "well it's x amount per head of population".
Develop a scheme, cost it, fund it properly. Doesn't matter if it costs £2 per head or £30 per head, so long as it's the correct infrastructure, built to the required high standards.

mattsccm wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 7:20pm Like it or not any bike will soon become outdated. It won't be any the worse to ride but parts will become harder to find fashions will change and we are all liable to that in some way and our bodies get old and need different things.

100%.

I find the concept of a "forever bike" quite strange - no-one goes out to buy their "forever car" or "forever phone" or any other utility for that matter. Even buying a house, while you might live in it for the rest of your life it'll need some changes, improvements, maintenance and potentially some fairly serious renovation or remodelling over that time.

You accept that things change, progress happens, you'll need a new [thing] after a while and even that personal circumstances change - you won't be racing / touring the world / needing a child seat forever and a new / different bike may be necessary to better reflect those circumstances.

Also, as perfectly illustrated in the post above from Pendodave

Cyckelgalen wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 8:28pm I am new to Campagnolo and assumed that their cassettes were identical to Shimano in spacing because I read it somewhere online.

They're not - there's just about enough of a difference in 10sp to make mixing and matching unlikely to ever work properly although naturally that doesn't stop people bodging the crap out of it and calling it "Shimergo" to sound cool and engineer-y while hiding the fact that it's a total mashup.

Probably worth a complete strip and rebuild, assess what parts are actually viable and what needs replacing. If the drivetrain is as worn as you say then changing one part will only highlight the wear on other parts and you end up chasing problems around the bike, never quite fixing anything.

You may even find it preferable to sell the existing wheels as is and buy some replacements with a Shimano freehub, I bet it'll work out more or less the same price as finding and buying a freehub for the existing wheels and changing it over, especially if the hubs themselves need a service or the rim walls are excessively worn.

andyngfellow wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 11:38am Very helpful Nicholas - I haven’t updated software recently but will check which version this afternoon. Many thanks.

While you're checking software version, see how many activities are stored on the Garmin. IIRC, the maximum is about 200, once it reaches that it kind of "closes" the viewing options although it should still save rides. Assuming you've saved all those activities to your RWGOS account, you can just delete them off the unit.

Unsurprisingly, Garmin works best with the partner Garmin Connect account - trying to use third party stuff like RWGPS is often something of a bodge. Macs (and Linux systems like Chromebook) can also be problematic, they much prefer talking to a Windows system.

Paulie73 wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 9:16am Reply about the single speed fixie that needs a new crank and rear wheel cog but unsure of what gearing ratio to put on it for flat terrain and some hills ! I bought the bike second hand like this ?

It would help greatly if you could expand on:
what the bike actually is
what drivetrain is currently on there and the state of it
what your experience of riding fixed on the road is (much as I've done thousands of hours on velodromes, I absolutely hate riding fixed on road, I much prefer singlespeed, where there's a freewheel)
what terrain / distance / average speed you'll be riding at.

FWIW, back in the day the "traditional" roadie clubman fixed gear (usually a winter bike) would have a ratio of about 2.6 : 1 so roughly a 42:16 although you can go a bit bigger for faster riding, something like 48:16; any higher than that and hills start to get quite problematic.
Also, any smaller than 42:16 and things get very very spinny on the descents as the pedals want to rush around at 150rpm!

Powysbiker wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 12:12am I just wondered if anyone knew of a list of friendly sites which had been compiled.. it's something which IMO would be quite useful to an increasing number of people nowadays.

It's certainly something that campsites, B&Bs, holiday lets etc should be considering. Also ask what sort of power they're providing; on many campsites the external hookup is not as powerful as a regular home socket.

Is your battery removable or is it semi-permanently fixed within the bike? Removable ones, it could be as simple as just handing it in at reception and asking them to charge it.
Non-removable, you're starting to get into the realms of where a bike can be safely left (ideally indoors or at least under cover) for 2-3hrs minimum.

You mention Way of the Roses... I did that ride (on an unpowered bike) last year and passed quite a few e-bikers, it seems to be pretty popular for a 5 or 6 day e-bike tour. Saddle Skedaddle run some trips:
https://www.skedaddle.com/uk/cycling/ho ... view.rails

Might be worth getting in touch with them and asking what overnight stops they select and any logistical issues they've faced with overnight charging.

tatanab wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 8:29am Agreed that with downtube levers it is sometimes difficult to safely change gear - example being riding wet flint off road tracks on a 1970s touring bike. I found that when I started using indexed levers I changed gear more often, probably because I could, and when I started using Ergo levers I changed gear even more often.

Yep - my very first bike (Dawes Audax with DT shifters), I'd often "push through" on a hill, forcing the pedals around or there'd be a brief whirlwind of legs at the bottom of a descent as I found a flatter / safer bit of road to change back up.
Now, I'm just in the right gear.

deeferdonk wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 7:30am Rather than shift instinctively with the twitch if a finger you have to process your environment, remove your hand, balance, shift, feel mechanical sympathy.

I'd rather just have gears that worked safely and efficiently. My enjoyment comes from riding the bike, not from processing "is it safe to change gear now?" or "ooh, feel that cable move!"

You get the same argument with cars, the whole "pure driving experience" cliche. Then you watch them struggling to find the right gear...

There's a good GCN video here of a vintage (50-year old Eddy Merckx road bike) vs modern (Condor with Super Record Wireless). The video was made in 2023 by the way.:

https://youtu.be/MlM9KoD5lXo?si=2kyXftTLuU5vUq4g

Key comment for me was him picking up on that point about "soul" and saying (about 11:40 in the video) that at no point does any of that retro stuff enhance the "soul" of cycling, it's just a limitation.

niloc wrote: ↑11 Feb 2025, 7:35am Why do most riders always have their hands on the hoods? - what's the point of having drops?

As it happens, GCN have just done a video on that very subject!

https://youtu.be/0vLUJyuWeXM?si=ZlcfHnfMn0z7lurh

Traditional "racing bikes", back in the day had saddle and bar height very similar so a deep drop was the only way to get aero plus riding "on the hoods" wasn't as much of a thing due to the fact that early drop bar / brake lever designs simply weren't comfortable or ergonomic. You rode on the tops or in the drops.

Now of course with proper ergo levers, you've got the option of "on the hoods" riding and the much updated geometry of most road bikes places the bars lower than the saddle giving the hoods as the natural place to put your hands.

Somewhere, it's not reading the map.

First thing is to plug it in to Garmin Express and see what updates are available for it; I'm willing to bet it's just trying to read a "no longer valid" basemap (assuming you've not flown half way around the world and you're suddenly in an unsupported region....?)

mattheus wrote: ↑10 Feb 2025, 5:22pm Even Lance (remember him?) used them for the left shifter long into the "brifter" era.

Yep - a weight saving thing in the mountains where there's limited front shifting and once you're in the little ring you kind of stay there for 20+km so the very ccasional times you need to reach down and change is not an issue.

Back then of course it was all about weight, not aero or ergonomics.