Cycling UK Forum

Last year we spent a week in Rothbury (just to the east of the national park) and had some great rides. But not into the park itself, to few road options. Even from Rothbury there were some great roads up into the hills but they were out and back dead end roads (you could loop round on some but only if the army wasn't up to wargames).

We've also holidayed just further north in the Tweed valley and the road network there yields a lot more routes, more frequent towns for breaks, etc. So no disrespect to the national park but head north.

Air inflated tents are all the rage for medium to large. Don't know if any have filtered down to 1/2/3 person but worth a hunt.

Yes, if you can find a shop that will do it.

I had the same done to a 531c, plus cable bridge, additional bottle cage mounts and rack mounts. That bike was ridden for a good 10 years and only got retired when a redundancy package lead to a new off the peg.

Sadly the shop that arranged it for me in Shefford has closed now. Yes it could be argued it might be cheaper and easier to just hunt for a frame already fitted out but it did feel nice to have given a frame a new lease of life.

Hopefully it will all be taken on board as a training exercise the the worlds in a few months time if any of the same people from British Cycling are involved (though on that evidence we have to hope not).

I know organisations like ASO are sometimes regarded as bullying, but the broadcast (or frequent lack of) issues this weekend make you understand why they might be heavy handed and paranoid about things being done their way. A few days like that in the Tour would probably lead to serious sponsor and broadcaster complaints and requests for compensation.

I watch a embarrassing amount of cycling on Eurosport and find it hard to believe all the wilds of Belgium, Spain, France and Italy have a better more consistent signal than Norfolk. If you watch the video again, things like the way the picture quality degraded each time the camera bike hit a bump make me suspect that signal coverage is being used as an excuse and someone got the equipment choice for the actual filming very wrong.

They were like most any bike races, lots of waiting for the action to unfold. Admittedly, that feeling my have been exacerbated by, as far as I could tell, there only being two cameras and one of those frequently at the back of the peleton.

Yes, the women's peleton did seem to switch off very early, and the two drops riders should be made to watch the video of how the two Ineos riders tag teamed poor old Dowsett and then mugged Archibald.

Praise for Boulting and co for coping with the nightmare of being the only thing on screen far too often. Would love to know how diplomatic his feedback to British Cycling was.

We watched in person at Holkham and the telly replay certainly didn't really capture how much those two short circuits really broke up the men's peleton.

We also watched the time trials on Thursday and yes, there was some grump muttering about how he hadn't known anything about not being able to get out of the village. I refrained from joining in and pointing out that all the details were on the two village notice boards and in the local free newspaper and I'm sure various other places. As they say, you can't please all the people all the time - though there are some who like to have a moan so maybe they did.

It was worth going just to see (we picked a fast but complex corner) the degree of difference between the under-23s and the Elites. Whilst the former weren't slouching on speed, it was surprising how less certain and committed they were when having to manoeuvre. They wobbled and adjusted through the corners whereas the Elites were mostly on fixed rails. (that said Egan Bernal's last time-trial corner in the Swiss Tour was a brilliant example of surviving getting it totally wrong).

Because the only way those behind a failed organisation that most people have never heard of can save face as it closes down, is to pretend its a strategic merger.

Cheers All,

Some food for thought. A train assisted week to/from a Cork-Galway dash might be just the thing to rehearse some parts of the potential end-to-end.

Many thank.

Plans for an Irish end-to-end collapsed due to work leaving no time to plan and now no time to actually do. But schedule still leaves the possibility of a week in their.

So any recommendations for a good area to do a fixed based Irish taster holiday?

Whoops, I should wake up and spot the difference between an i and an e. That said, percentage figures are still much more meaningful that absolute numbers due to the aforesaid variation in country sizes.

I couldn't find a good and reliable break down of the figures, but for EU countries, the number one emigrant destination for the majority of countries is Germany. And for the UK the number one emigrant destination is still Australia.

(And I didn't say anything about it being interesting! (or not))

Hardly surprising given that it has the 3rd largest population. They, the top five nations being German, France, UK, Italy and Spain, all have populations that dwarf all the other members by significant margins. In fact, even the immigrant populations of any of those 5 are larger than the whole populations of some other EU members.

So ranking on absolute numbers is pretty meaningless. In percentage terms, the UK is only 7th for both intra-EU and extra-EU immigrants.

But of course no-one gets anywhere near at the immigrant population levels of the Vatican.

Oh, the glorious absurdity of misspelling "misspellings" - should have turn on your spell checker.

Yay... 10,000 posts. Well done everyone. Now get back to your Christmas shopping and hopes that your drone in under the tree.

And for those already making New Year's resolutions; remember, no backstops.

Nooooooooooo.........

We can't let a day pass without some Brexit twaddle. Let's not have a return to the normal insanity when there's still plenty of Eurotrash to bandy about in some comical game of wiff-waff.

And certainly not when we're so very close 10,000 posts. Super excited to get there.

So, as your starter for 10... Isn't it odd that the rabid supporters of UK sovereignty can't spot that the "United Kingdom" contains multiple countries sharing common rules and regulations for mutual benefit (we won't mention that two of those countries were seized by military force and the other reckless bankruptcy).

Hope that's enough to relight the fire.

Phhh, Wensleydale is foreign muck bought here by immigrants with their weird foreign ways. Not a true blue cheese like Stilton.

Mick F wrote:

sizbut wrote:Singularly missing the fact that the remainers aren't arguing, they know what they want. It's the Brexitiers who can't agree on hard/soft/slightly gooey/whatever.

This leaver isn't arguing. I know what I want and I'm not trying to convince anyone. I don't need to.

Maybe, but you've been asked what you want and there was no answer. Just repetitive mentions about "the future", not even "bright future" or "better future". Let me help you, the future is guaranteed, happens every second (up and until the big Crunch/Freeze/Rip/Bounce, cue more than 600 forum pages without even needing the revisionist God squad). Meanwhile, we just have the Cosmic uncertainty of Brexit.