Cycling UK Forum

Indeed.

I reckon it’s a brand and product that could grow under good management, because it has slightly hidden its light under a bushel in recent years.

I had one of their saddlebags in the 70s, a secondhand one as it happens, which I accidentally ruined. When I had more time for cycling again I after retiring five years ago I thought how great it would be to replace said bag, but I honestly thought they’d gone out of business in the early 90s, so bought other bags instead. When I eventually realised they were still going, I put in an order pronto and was delighted with what arrived.

If they got the product into wider mainstream distribution I’m sure they could hugely increase sales.

Just think about it: how many super-yachts, villas, and carbon-framed, full-suspension bicycles could you have if you had an entire country and it’s population to exploit?

A small up-front investment in corrupting a voting system, or raising an army is surely worthwhile.

I think you’ve misunderstood slightly.

The traditional thing to do is buy a presidency, then exploit it for your own benefit. Quite normal in some places.

So, you pay me, not the other way round.

If you want to be a monarch, it’s a bit harder. You need to raise an army, then overthrow the existing monarch and have yourself crowned. Not really something anyone has done much of in Europe since the Middle Ages, so possibly best if the army consists mostly of knights in armour and archers

Besides agricultural impact, a couple of other things that need to be considered in thinking about ‘upcycling’ existing bridleways are historical context and landscape context.

Some bridleways in some places are very ancient, and their form is integral with the landscape, things like packhorse routes in the Dales, Ridgeways on various chalk down lands etc. Even some lowland bridleways are the ghosts of drove-roads.

One would want to think several times before changing the character of some of these ancient route-ways.

Worth asking what evidence exists to suggest that a blanket 30mph would reduce accidents, and if so how much.

Hmmmm …… so who is the titular head of the armed services then? And, who formalises the formation of a government? And, other little jobs like that.

There are tasks that any country needs to have done in order to function safely within a constitution (even if it is a constitution as opaque as ours). If things like transfer of powers between governments aren’t looked after properly it isn’t long before violence ensues, and if the armed forces are loyal to transient politicians a military coup is practically guaranteed.

The basic question is whether those jobs are better done by an elected president, or by a constitutional monarch, and there are pros and cons of each, and examples of presidents and monarchs who do good jobs, and presidents and monarchs who are corrupt and self-serving.

Physically, great lengths of most bridleway are only suitable for enthusiasts on specialist bikes, yes.

But, ‘going for them’ in the sense of attempting to upgrade them by surfacing is, IMO, not likely to be the best or easiest way to secure inter-village routes in anything like all places, is what I’m trying to say.

Inter-village routes are best selected using deep local knowledge, and anything which smacks of a blanket solution could easily provoke hardy opposition and trouble, rather than help.

It might be more productive in the long run to set-out a framework or code of practice for selecting and designing routes, one which draws attention to lots of options, rather than be too definitive.

It’s all in the detail, isn’t it?

That one I showed would effectively become two fields from a ploughing and crop perspective if bisected by even a very basic surfaced path. Doing that would sterilise a fair area, with a noticeable increase in ploughing and harvesting time (lots more turns) and a drop in yield ……. That’s why farmers grub out hedges to make big fields. These RoW straight across big fields are often the ghosts of long-gone hedgerows.

In grazing land it’s a lot simpler, very little interference with agriculture, and where the bridleway runs along a hedgerow and is left as a mown strip already then also fairly simple.

Your (4) would be really challenging to implement, because converting many bridleways to any surface, other than “agricultural soil”, would ‘sterilise’ from agricultural use a great deal more land than the path strip.

Here’s an example. This is a bridleway used quite well by horse riders and cross-country cyclists, and well respected by the farmer, who cross-runs a tractor over his ploughing to mark the route and take the worst of the corrugating out. If it was surfaced, the farmer would have to alter his entire ploughing plan, and probably loose crop over a ten metre strip.
I’d really like to see a growing network of traffic-free inter-village routes, but I don’t think co-opting existing bridleway RoW would be anything like the whole answer. To me it seems something that needs a detailed look at local circumstances, using in-depth local knowledge (parish councils would be good at it). In some cases, the answer might even be to convert very-little-used existing highways to restricted byways, for instance, or to use public money to upgrade access tracks within farms in exchange for public access rights.

How very weird!

I posted on one of them earlier and the post simply disappeared into e-space ……. Maybe the two threads exist in parallel space-time dimensions and my posting fell down a wormhole.

“It's hard to see anything in favour of selecting the head of state by accident of birth,”

There is possibly one thing in its favour, which is that “appointment by accident of birth” avoids the competition between ambitious individuals with big ideas about their own capability that characterises the selection of heads of state in many other countries.

Of course, a great deal depends on the constitution of the country, the exact role/powers of the head of state, and the qualifying criteria for candidates. The USA has a fairly powerful executive role for their head of state (not unlimited power by any means though), likewise France, but not all republics do, Ireland’s is I think similar in role to ours, ditto Germany.

Personally, I used to be a fairly convinced republican, but now have a growing appreciation of the usefulness of having someone appointed as head of state by accident of birth, although as Tom Paine pointed out c250 years ago it does solidly guarantee that a truly useless one will arise periodically (Edward VIII?). What I’m still entirely opposed to is the vast retinue of hangers on, ordinary mortals somehow given special status for no good reason. At max we need the incumbent, an heir, and a spare, which I think is what he Netherlands manages with (and their monarch used to be famous for riding a bike, so their system can’t be all bad).

Are you effectively suggesting a blanket 30mph limit on roads less than a given width, or only on those formally identified as “single track road with passing places”?

Personally, my experience is that it is “very narrow, but not formal single track with passing places” roads, the “squeeze by” ones, that are the more hazardous, whether cycling, driving, or walking.

Most drivers on them are very considerate, I’ve several times had vehicles stop, and the driver wave me on a bike past, but it only takes one careless driver.

Last week, on a long, dead straight section of a “just about squeeze by” road a woman in a car came straight down the middle at probably 45mph, no slowing or moving slightly to the left as we converged. I would unquestionably have been hit by her if I hadn’t cycled off onto the verge, which was fortunately dead flat, mown grass, with no kerb or ditch.

I’m a bit unconvinced by the flu comparisons that are used to reassure us all that covid isn’t a big deal any more, because they only deal with one part of the risk equation, the range of outcomes if you catch either disease.

What they don’t deal with is the probability of catching either in the first place.

Making numbers up for illustration: if a person is one tenth as likely to die from covid if they catch it as they are from flu if they catch that, but is ten times more likely to catch covid than flu, the risk of death from each is the same.

Anyway, personally, my precautionary approach wasn’t driven by fear of a really severe outcome if I caught covid, because I’m reasonably fit for my age (62), and well vaccinated. No, it was driven simply by not wanting to spend a couple of weeks not well enough to enjoy bike rides and whatever other good things life might offer.

Number to watch is hospital occupation. Currently c2000 people in hospital and rising. NHS will have to start cancelling other care again if it gets to c3000.

Get used to riding your bike loaded in the way it will be “on the day”.

I suggest this not so much from the point of view of your stamina as from a point of view handling. The positioning and loading of panniers, even with as little as 10kg of gear, can subtly alter the “feel” of a light and nippy bike like yours, and I’ve found that to be important once you go off of well-paved roads/paths onto rough ground, although that may be irrelevant to your trip if it’s all road.

And: wear hefty lipstick. That thick white sunblock stuff cricketers use. Even in a typically British summer lips seem to dry-out and chap, and if it’s actually sunny they disintegrate painfully.

Tyres. I don’t know what you normally use, but you don’t want the morale-sapping grief of loads of punctures, so choose some tough ones, even if that comes at a slight weight and rolling resistance penalty. Schwalbe Marathon Plus are very popular, but I prefer Continental Contact Plus. I use 37mm which cope with every surface bar deep mud and sand.

Pump. I’m not sure I’ve found one I would heartily recommend, but you need a decent one with you.

Have you fitted a new chain recently?

If you have, that’s yet another possible source of creaking to add to the list of possibilities, because a fresh chain being fitted to an already overly worn ring will creak under load until it wears in.

I’m not going to tell how I know this, because it might betray my folly/incompetence.