Cycling UK Forum

Good point about the rim tape; it's an easy one to miss as a beginner. You're so focused on thorns and glass coming through from the outside, you forget to think about what's on the inside too.

I learned about rim tape is for the hard way, in the weeks after my GreenTyre experiment. I had an unusually rapid spate of punctures, all of them caused by spokes sticking through the original tape! Now I wonder why that happened.

Incidentally, going back to the 'self-sealing' gunk - I've only tried Halford's ready-filled tubes, and also their orange do-it-yourself bottle, but neither of them seemed to form the skin that everyone talks about. They just carried on leaking into the tyre. My home-made custard probably would have been more effective. (And cheaper.)

Ironically, the only ‘puncture’ that the Halfords orange gunk managed to seal permanently was, you guessed it, my inner tube valve. Huzzah.

www.vallfosca.org/

WKB you CANNOt do a good search for hostals and things in Spain without a Provincial map of the
area.

(I was just racking my brains why neither you nor or I could get any good search results, as luck would have it I have got the Girona and Llerida maps)

Good results can only be obtained by looking at the [b] Valley of ... links. They are very proud to be members of the Valley of fosca or valley of dogs or whwtaever and there are vast numbers of highly gifted but amateur sites providing all the info you need throughout spain based on these search details!
I had forgotten sorry!

If you have not got the Provincial map (Stanfords online), you cannot do the search a la gar. If you have, you will have every night booked way before you leave.

Try the above link and then try these for various valleys lower down the mountain peaks on the spanish side in the bGirona[/b] department...

For the above I keyed in google Vall de Fosca
and got the above hyperlink.

That should solve your problem and I must remember it for anybody else who asks. It is an important one for spain. In some ways, like the Welsh and the Scottish, they love their valleys
as much as they love their mountains.....
so must you!

This first appeared in 1952 and lasted until 1957. Judging from the frame number (T238447) and the absence of chrome forks and rear stays I have an early 1952 frame. The catalogues state that it came in two colours (electric blue and lustre orange). Mine is neither; it is more of a deep red. Indeed, it could be flamboyant carmine which was used on the Lenton Sports in the 1950s. Does anyone know if other colours were used on the early 'supers' or where I might find out (tried Retro Raleighs and most usual suspects on the Internet). The frame shows no sign of having been repainted and has the original decals.

Hello People!

An intoduction: I am not a member of this or any other cycling organisation but I was told this would be a good place to get advice from a cycle shop of some repute in Derby.

This is a bit long but hopefully someone can advise.

My problem is this: I would like to do a long journey by bike, (to Hong Kong from Birmingham), but don't know one end of a bike from another. Neither of my two (old and inappropriate) machines will stand up to the task and wish to purchase a dedicated fit for purpose touring bike.

I have looked at the literature from various companies but it may as well be written in Dutch for all I understand. To me a bike that costs 600 pounds looks very much like a bike that costs 2000 pounds but surely that isn't correct.

My question is this: what should I be looking for when I read the literature? And what does it all mean. I am aware of certain things, for example the bike needs a decent amount of gears, the frame needs to be strong, et c. However what is the difference between cantilever brakes and 'V' brakes and which one is more appropriate. What is a deep drop frame and what is the head post and why is one head post better than another. I would like to know what I am looking at so I can make an informed decision.

This is a bit of a broad question but if I need a bike that will get me to Hong Kong then I want to know it won't fall apart half way across Turkmenistan!!

If you have read this far then thank you. Hopefully one or more of you knowledgable people will be able to help me.

Regards,
Paul

Hi Jonathan,
What held the badge on first? It probably was a couple of soft copper rivets, only 1mm or so thick.
Surely a good ironmongers could help?

Pop rivets woudn't do it well, neither would self tapping screws. Why not try getting hold of a thin brass welding rod, and making your own little rivets with a small hammer.

Hope that helps.

Mick.

That's where I started off.

Sustrans' on-line mapping is abysmally slow. They do sell hardcopy guides to routes, but I can find my own way along unclassified roads.

I did find the reference to the Nick Cotton book on the Sustrans site and was about to send off for it until I discovered the review.

Anyway I know some reasonable tracks in my neck of the woods which are neither marked on the Sustrans maps nor the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map website. I seem to remember collecting a list of corrections to the Sustrans map in my neck of the wood, but the local manager didn't seem very interested - I supposed that Sustrans is no longer interested in keeping the on-line maps up to date.

It's not that easy to see a motorist using a mobile
but what good would it do taking the number of the vehicle and reporting. Would they come round and take a witness statement?!

I fear that JUST mobile use offence is not viable as a charge. I can hardly think of any such circumstances;

The problem is..... neither is it when they have
damaging accidents from the same cause.

Minimum £200 would be more appropriate and £500 as a maximum..... Magistrates are not in business for fine.... and £30 takes as much time as £500 for them to earn in such circumstances.

The Unit was a BSeen101 but their website (Bseen101.com) is gone. I think the actual manufacturer was something like Ctronic Designs (in Bristol I think).

It was radio controlled but had some flaws: it tryed to run 5Watt halogen bulb from 5AA cells(short 1hour run time!!) and neither this front lamp or integrated tail lamp passed any standards preventing it from being an all in one solution.

I thought if the Bseen101 company had disappeared, then Brompton might buy it or units/spares might appear in surplus sales but this seems not to have happened.

I think right (major) turn indicator on a brompton has some use, due to the light steering, but no Brompton user has ever said "I wish I had one", upon seeing mine, so, the small number of people wanting indicators will just have to do some DIY.

How can we get the message over to pedestrians, who seem to walk several abreast down roads, always with their back to me? I ring my bell, but they don't seem to hear it. I don't really want to put twin Maserati air horns on the bike, but neither do I want to hit one of these dopey bi-peds.

Suggestions please, preferably non violent or abusive.

Yes, then it will be knee and elbow pads.

I have come up with an idea: The BMA have convinced me that cycling is horribly dangerous and I need protecting so I am going to do so: I will buy a large metal, Range Rover shaped box, made very solidly, and for added protection I will fit bull bars. Unfortunately I will need a 4 litre V8 engine to offset the wieght disadvantage. I passed my test 2 years ago in a 1.2 corsa and have barely driven in 18 months but I have the license to drive a big powerful car so I must be capable. There is no evidence of risk compensation actually existing accordin g to the BMA, so I don't know why I was cutting up cyclists today in this new protective gear because it can't be the fact that I felt cocooned and safe. Someone did suggest that I am being selfish by driving a big vehicle for no good reason, contirbuting to global warming which is likely to kill MILLIONS if not billions of people but I was just so scared that I might hurt my head like the BMA said every cyclist everywhere does. The cost to the taxpayer of the increased damage I will do to the roads or the treatment I will need for heart disease is neither here nor there - this is about my poor little head which I now have about the same chance of injuring despite all this protection.

Sarcasm - the lowest form of wit, but fun.

Andy

exRTR, I am afraid you have not answered my question.
I am not a stalwart defender of Sustrans, but neither do I wish to see them blamed for the failings of others. I can think of locations where cycle routes have been designed, built and supposedly maintained by three different bodies, the trunk road authority, the local authority, and Sustrans.
It is not only the public, as you suggest, but cyclists who should no better, that pile all the blame for inadequacies on Sustrans.
That was why I asked the question, how do you know who is actually responsible for the route you are complaining about?

The biggest market for battery lamps is on American-style "naked" bikes with neither lamps already nor any luggage, so the makers of those can afford to ignore handlebar bags etc. and take the easy add-on option of clamping their wares onto the handlebar and seatpost.

The biggest market for touring luggage, on the other hand, is Germany and neighbouring countries where most of the bikes have dynamos already. Hence dynamo lamps generally fit onto some place like the fork crown or mudguard where they won't be obscured by luggage.

The person who wants battery lamps and luggage is thus the hapless victim of a cycling culture clash between America and Germany!

I often wonder if the so called sustainable transport charity really reduces car use that much. After all, many of their schemes/"facilities" are very leisure cycling orientated - leisure cycling is great but building tracks is hardly a pollution free activity and neither is putting bikes in or ona car to drive to the start of said track.

I saw one of our local councillors yesterday who has, in the past, banged the drum for re-cycling, he didn't know any firms who re-cycle the waste materials collected and didn't know of any products which are made solely or totally from recycled materials and neither do I ... anyone??? I recall Friends of the Earth sending me a catalogue once which listed certain products, Xmas cards, etc. made from re-cycled paper. Chairman Mao once decreed that the Chinese people must collect Iron and re-cycle it, small smelting furnaces opened up all over China but the iron produced was of such poor quality it was fit only for ships ballast..one only needs a certain amount of ships ballast. A friend who knows tells me that the alloy recovered from cans is not fit for use in aircraft manufacture..is it?

How on earth would people get by if car tyres were as unreliable as bike tyres?!?!

I learned to ride a bike six months ago so I could commute into work, and avoid having to buy another car when my wife started her job. Unfortunately, my 5-6 mile route involves a short but unavoidable section which is always littered with broken bottle glass. As you can guess, I am getting fed up with all the punctures. I have fitted Halfords self-sealing inner tubes, and 'Flat Away' Kevlar tape inside both tyres. Neither of these measures seem to help much.

I am getting close to ditching the bike and buying a second car instead, especially now that I've discovered how much it costs to equip and run two wheels. (Forty quid for a pocket torch?!?). However, before I throw in the towel on my eco-friendly experiment, I would like to give it one last shot.

So my question is this: given that I don't care much about performance, weight etc., is there any kind of back wheel or inner tube that I can buy that will really be 'bullet proof'? Surely someone must have come up with a foam-filled tyre, or something with walls as thick as a rhino's backside? I have a sprung seat-post (my only good investment so far), so I would be entirely happy to run on solid wheels, if I could find them.

Please help, or I will buy a fume-belching diesel 4x4 with bull-bars in protest.