Cycling UK Forum

All french trains take bikes in a bike bag.You will get around 2-3 trains a day to most destinations excluding the t.g.vs that will take them without a bag. Eurostar charge £20 to take your bike this has to be taken 24 hours prior to your departure and travels seperate and you pick it up at your destination, or you can use a bikebag and it travels with you free of charge. Go to the s.n.c.f (french railways) website and you can book your trains and your bike onto trains and either have your tickets delivered or pick them up at a station in france.Also you can try the eurorail website there are based in london they will also book your trains and tickets for you.

Currently, you can pursue damages claims through the civil courts. Where there is a criminal conviction relating to the same matter, it will be easier. You can either pay a lawyer directly or use a "no win, no fee" contract.

Not sure the CTC could add much value to the process beyond the current legal advice service and their contacts with cycle-aware legal firms.

For the last few years I've been using Michelin Axial Pro of various sorts, and I'm extremely happy with them except for the fact that on steep hills in the slightest damp the back wheel spins. I've now put some Vittorias on that have a smooth central bit and a tread on the sides but they're no better. I'm also worried about the corresponding lack of grip on the front tyre, which I'll only find out about when I eventually have a spill.

Can anyone recommend light tyres that have a herringbone or similar tread all over?

PS the problem isn't one of shedding water - i.e. I'm not after a smooth tyre with grooves - it has to have a tread all over. All I can finc in catalogues is either slicks, slicks with grooves, slicks with tread on the sides, or cyclocross knobblies.

troy

Todays digital cameras are used in advertising and they dont need to be hugely expensive either. The Fuji 602 Pro recently superseded was going for as lttle as £299 recently and has produced many an ad picture!

Marc S Taylor

I really appreciated the effort to combine all the useful information on cross-compatibility between Shimano and Campy in one place. I'm specifically interested in running Ergo levers with an older Sram/Sachs Di.R.T. derailleur (which is directly Shimano compatible) over an 8 speed Shimano spaced cassette. It looks by the article that 10s Ergo levers should do the trick. Does either the author of the article, or anyone else, have specific experience with this setup, or is the suggestion that it will work based solely on calculations? Thanks in advance!

l would recommend the Carryfreedom Y Trailer. They come in 2 sizes with either 16" or 20" wheels, l have the smaller size.
lt is very quick to dismantle and is quite robust. The latest edition of ' Velovision' magazine has a roadtest of cycle trailers, the testing ground was the himalayas!

Many firms have a normal O1 or 02 number as well as the 0870 number. As mentioned before, many people have other phone service providers. I have two, 1) Tiscali 2) Skypeout.
The first one gives my normal incoming service (it can be used for outgoing as well), my normal outgoing service is via Skypeout (Computerised) which provides me with calls to a large part of the world for 2cents? or 1.4p per minute. However, when I use either services it costs much more for 0870 numbers. We have no choice with the CTC Head Office as they do not have their previous 01 number.

We're off to sunny Holland at the beginning of May, and planning to 'do' the Frisian Islands. Wondered if anyone had any tips regarding ferries. either island to island or mainland to island. Have trawled tinternet but not found much in the way of hard info!

You'd have to buy millitary maps (e.g. from The Map Shop at Upton-on-Severn) and use either lat/long or the Spanish or Portuguese national grid that's printed on them.

You can also download basic roadmaps from Mapsource. However, as we discovered only last week, this data is not all that reliable. (We were on the main road from Benidorm to Alcoi, but according to Mapsource that was over to the south on what are in fact a load of little back roads halfway up a mountain!

According to Mapsource and the GPS there should have been no tarmac under our wheels, but having toured through this same area many times during the past 20 years, I know for a fact this road has been exactly where it is for at least that long!

it's ok, i am getting to grips with it. i just needed some time to concentrate on the various functions etc. it'll be great. does anyone know how i might use it when in france and spain? i don't think michelin maps have the right sort of grid to enable gps navigation. is there a national grid in either of these countries that the GPS would recognise. alternatively how do i find out exact latitude/longitude co-ordinates of cols, villages, etc in these countries?

If you are talking about economy, what about the Cyclemaster of the 1950's, did around 240mpg with a 25cc engine. It couldn't zoom past a cyclist either. Many older cyclists probably zoomed past the Cyclemaster's.

Britanny is good, civilised motorists, good food & campsites. You can use British bank cards either in the Supermarche or the bank machine. Hills are available if required, but the northern coastal strip is pretty flat. Plenty to look at from standing stones to churches.

And I think you may have missed my point. By eliminating some of the FIXED costs of car ownership (so-called road tax and third-party insurance) and paying for those things out of an increased levy on fuel, the total costs to those who use a small car and use it sparingly are REDUCED. It is the high-mileage drivers of large vehicles who end up paying more. As they are a minority, the only thing that stops this being a vote winner is the stupidity of the general public, who tend to ignore the fixed costs and only count the cost of fuel.

By all means improve and subsidise public transport, but how do you raise the money for that except by taxes on motoring? Increase the fixed costs and you drive people to use their cars more. Only by reducing those costs at the same time as increasing the tax on fuel do you have any hope at all of selling the idea to a necessary majority of the public.

It's mainly the rural rich who use living in the countryside as a pretext for their profligate mileage. I was born and brought up on a small tenanted farm, so I know very well how it is for the rural poor. My parents drove into town once a week, for the cattle market and to do all their shopping, appointments etc. in one hit. Since they couldn’t afford either the time or the money for gadding about, our annual motoring mileage was way below the national average, despite living in a tiny isolated village with no shops and no public transport.

Anyone doing this. I have seen racks for the suspension forks. I have also read about people using trailer. Is there anyone that has done either and what do you think.
I have two Specialized Bikes a Sirrus and a StumpJumper. I don't envisage doing more than 50 miles per day.

Spen, your last paragraph mentions a lack of thought for others, that is exactley the problem, coupled with the fact that when a person gets behind the wheel of a car their whole personality changes, and they become extremely jealous about other road users gaining one inch further in the traffic than them, God forbid you cycle past them, either on their inside or legally on the offside, plus a lot of them are fat lazy ******** who think they own the road.