Quite a good haul today.

Three buzzards while I was walling over at my brother's. Not sure why three, maybe one's a juvenile from last year and still hanging around.

On the way home I saw a couple of hares, one was just a small leverette. Then a barn owl flew up by the road.

Corvids don't like buzzards and will mob them to drive them away. They'll mob any large Raptor Bob. I can usually tell where the owl is should he escape due to the noise the other birds are making. Not just crows/corvids. Back in the 1980s we were climbing on a crag above Patterdale and noticed a l...

Bearbonesnorm wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 14, 2021 7:55 pm

We have very few here. I don't think they like the buzzards and Kites.

Corvids don't like buzzards and will mob them to drive them away. Not sure how they deal with kites. Not sure if buzzards raid magpie nests or the two species occupy a very similar niche so are in competition.

Rationalisation of range? Some models/styles not selling for whatever reason? Why continue to make poor sellers? Fashion? The semi-geodesic designs like the MSR or many of the Big Agnes tents give a lot of room for their weight, much more than the tunnel tent designs. That's a selling point - ours s...

I use one of these https://wildcat.cc/collections/toptube- ... p-tube-bag, not cheap but well made. Can get a surprising amount in it including phone (iPhone 6 which is about the biggest that will fit).

I think I'd take a stove and brews/food as a backup since you might not get anywhere at the right time but at the same time try and use what you find en-route. From memory Chris provides a good list of resupply points so you should be able to pace things to take necessary advantage.

The last time I got caught out (yes, there's been multiple times) was on the inaugural Braunton 150 when the storm came in. I'd got a lightweight "roadie" waterproof which just got pushed against my inner layers by the wind and everything "wetted through" I bought a heavier MT500 jacket after that, ...

Phil, that's one of the major reasons re: lamb, also different nations prefer different cuts of the carcase. At the start of WW2 the UK imported roughly 70% of its food. With the introduction of rationing and and increase in land in food production that dropped to around 56%. The problem with gettin...

It's the IP thing that concerns me most and the consumers desire for ever cheaper products that drive it. Why should I pay £220 for a Lunar Solo when I can buy a Chinese clone for less than £100? Simply because someone invested lots of time developing the idea, that's why. Perhaps not the best exam...

Went for a bit of VV square bashing yesterday. I was working over at my brother's in the South Lakes and given that it was forecast a nice day I took the Genesis CdF over and in the evening I rode around some of the lanes to the east of Kendal. Even though I grew up in the area I'd never been in thi...

Shaf, why the size requirement? Is it to go on a drop barred bike and so you need to limit the width? Slightly outfield suggestion - get one of the DrJon Strapdecks (they are on the Wildcat website) and use whatever bag you like along with Voile straps to hold it to the deck. I used this on the Cair...

Would sort of be nice Tony, but ... We've used up most of our resources like iron ore long ago when we were the industrial powerhouse/workshop of the world so we'd need to import that. Aluminium is an interesting one - it's infinitely recyclable and supposedly there's enough in circulation that if i...

Not an easy subject to be wholly correct on. Pretty well everything we own has some connection with regimes or countries we might feel uneasy about offering overt support to. Unless you grow your own food, raise sheep for wool, grow cotton for clothes, etc. then somewhere in the supply chain you'll ...

Getting the taping right is probably the critical part of tubeless. Clean the rim, doesn't need to be spotless but the cleaner the better. I use Iso-propyl alcohol. Leave to dry. The tape should be the same width as the external width of the rim. The reason for this is that it gets pulled down into ...

I got a Mezcal for the front wheel for the French Divide a couple of years ago but have left it on there. I think it was one of the few 2.6" tyres at the time. It's fast rolling, the only downsides are it's a bit skittish on damp surfaces and not brilliant in mud but no semi-fat or fat tyres are. Di...

Some of you mentioned checking regularly how much sealant is still in there. How do you do that? Take wheel off bike and let it stand for a few minutes to let the sealant settle in the bottom of the tyre rather than being spread around the tyre walls then give it a shake and you should hear it slos...

Happy birthday Stu. I just about remember being 50

As with Greg I've a Wildcat custom frame bag on the Spearfish, made to accommodate a water bottle as well:



I bought the frame from Ian Penton-Volk and it came with a custom Alpkit frame bag that didn't accommodate a water bottle.

Crikey, some high tyre pressures up in here :???: 20 - 25psi for me on a 2.4" tyre. 18psi on a 3" Mmm... Bob way back in 2014 explained thusly: "Tyre pressures are a whole different mega-thread :lol: A starting point would be your weight in Kg (to the nearest 5kg) divided by ten gives the PSI, so 7...

You are trading faff out on the trail for faff in the warmth and dry of your garage/shed/kitchen. The faff is typically frustration rather than anything else: most times it's straightforward but sometimes it just won't work. I fitted a couple of the same tyres to the same rims, one went up first tim...

No? Ah well. I've just eaten some marmite crisps which I enjoyed. The fatal thing to do is take them all out of the packet at once and put them on a plate. About half a potato's worth obviously. That's just weird - Marmite is the devil's diarrhea and should be locked away in a deep secure repositor...

When we stopped an An Cladach a couple of years ago the guy at the cottage at the start of the walk/ride in was somewhat dismissive/annoyed by "that book". Not sure if he was connected with the estate but he did note that one or two users were anti-social to other visitors, one in particular wouldn'...

A lovely day here in northern England, even ont' darker side o t'Pennines. So I went for a nice steady road ride and had one wildlife incident: a cock pheasant (stupid creatures, the only things on the planet with lower intelligence are their predators) that took off in front of me on a descent and ...

Like most I've a wide mixture of brands. The reasons for purchase are varied: availability - some years ago there was very little choice, I think there was only Alpkit, Wildcat and Revelate for bikepacking bags here in the UK for example; price - we all like a bargain, Alpkit is good value for gener...

Apart from the fancy tents noted in the other thread, I see Alpkit have introduced two new tarps, 3m x 3m and 4m x 4m plus, for hammock users, a midge net and a synthetic underquilt. They say the 3x3 is for hammocking - it'll be fine for their own hammock but a bit small if you've a longer hammock (...