^ exactly. It's one of those things that you're shown once and it's a eureka moment and you understand what a rim well is for. It works just as well when taking a tyre off. Before I figured this out I would regularly snap tyre levers, swear a lot, destroy my thumbs etc etc. Once you know, all you h...

I'm just a grumpy, cynical auld feck though. I'm trying not to be ...... it's hard :wink: There are plenty of riders who have very little idea/skill/confidence in route planning This is the trouble. No one is born with the ability to do this, it's something which needs a little practice and in real...

I have been impressed by the GPS accuracy of the new iPhone. The X had terrible reception, much worse than my old iPhone 6 which sadly ended up on the sea bed, but the 14 seems extremely good. See this brief walking test before I got rid of the old one. Both phones in my pocket while walking to the ...

I have the bog standard Shimano double-sided pedals on my bikepacking bike, I think they are these or at least something very similar (model number has long since worn off). Currently available for a third of the price of the posher Shimano ones above: https://www.probikekit.co.uk/bicycle-pedals-cle...

have considered using an old phone as a dedicated GPS unit Battery life is pretty poor especially with the screen on. You would need a dynamo hub as you won't get a day out of it IME .also not many phones are waterproof ( and if they are you cannot change the battery ) For full-day rides if I think...

Am I alone in never having used a dedicated GPS unit? My phone with OS mapping does everything that I would want a GPS unit to do, the screen is better than most GPS units, and I'm carrying it with me anyway. Maybe for an extended tour in the wilderness with no power then batteries would be an issue...

It does raise an issue with mapping apps. Generally if I was using the base map layer then I would expect the paths shown to actually exist, either as a trail on the ground or at least as a right of way (which of course doesn't always exist on the ground). Following "suggested routes" is o...

I've just checked Openstreetmap's site and there's no path heading north from Causey Pike so as Dave says, the person was probably following someone else's route. The OSM layer on Outdooractive certainly shows a path in the location mentioned in the article, which isn't there on any other map layer...

I have no idea where my bathroom scales are, as most of the contents of my house are still in storage due to building work, but I reckon I am currently around 83-84kg when I should be more like 77kg. Almost three years of working from home and no bike commuting has taken its toll. So getting back th...

sean_iow wrote: ↑Wed Jan 04, 2023 4:05 pm I've not ridden this

https://bikepacking.com/routes/bikepack ... -quantock/

But it's on my list and as it was devised by Lars it will be good riding. Might be of help.

Definitely! So that leaves roughly Warminster to Taunton to join up. Off to study the map again...

KAW to Winchester. Winchester to Southampton ( bit of a main road blast but not too bad) across the water and into the New Forest, Bournemouth, Purbeck, bit of Dorset Ridgeway or pick up the Old Chalk Way to Lyme Regis, East Devon Trail to Exeter and cut across to the Westcountry Way ( or even ride...

I started this year with a frozen shoulder (dodgy injection most likely) which made cycling impossible for the first 1/3rd of the year at least (and stopped all mtb for 6 months). Covid jab? I had a really stiff and painful shoulder early last year which seemed to come on a couple of weeks after th...

Thanks. I've been in touch with them and they have enabled my access to download my legacy mapping and it's working now. Bit ridiculous that they don't do it automatically, many ex Viewranger users will be paying out for an OA subscription unneccesarily if they don't know about it, but I guess that...

Hello Boners, from a lurker! In the spirit of New Year plan-making i've been pondering a route from my home in Hampshire to my parents' in north Devon to do when it warms up. The King Alfred's Way route passes 10 minutes from my door, and my parents are on the Devon coast wirhin spitting distance of...

I just tried downloading maps and I also get the "upgrade to pro" message - even though I still have the "Pro" shield icon displaying at the bottom left! If I tap the "find out more" button I get a screen headed "upgrade to Pro+" which again suggest I am alrea...

I've never met any of you lot and to be honest I don't sleep in a ditch nearly as often as I ought, but I greatly enjoy lurking here, reading your tales and watching your videos, and I feel like in some way I have got to know some of the characters here. So happy new year all of you and, Stu, I am g...

I’d prefer a laser that beams an order in to the nearest hostelry, Batman-style, when you’re not going to make it before the kitchen shuts.

My Shimano brakes tend to do this when I leave my bike hanging vertically on the wall for any length of time. I assume it is some air stuck somewhere in the system that bleeding can't find. It's a bit of a pain but a few decent pumps of the lever before setting off seem to sort it and (so far) it do...

I'm yet to really try the app, and am expecting disappointment, but maybe there's hope. The website is better than VR's to be fair, and since they've transferred all my data (over 500 tracks going back to 2013) it might be good for route planning and managing routes/tracks of nothing else. Not happ...

Viewranger was great and perhaps I am a lone dissenting voice but I actually think Outdooractive (which replaced/killed it) is not that bad. It's certainly a lot better than it was when it first took over, so give it a chance. It seems to have lots of unnecessary fripperies but if you ignore them an...

Sorry to resurrect but this reminded me that in the Tokyo Olympics last year the finish line area of the triathlon was a total pukefest. Might also have had something to do with the state of the sea water they had to swim across though!

I think they re branded as a ‘national park’ in 2015 so it’s on all the publicity material to try and improve visitor numbers, but it doesn’t have the same legal status ( I think due to the lack of a boundary??) . There is a national park boundary marked on the OS map in the same style as other nat...

I've never ridden a Rohloff. Do they have much of a delay when shifting? I gather you can change gear when stationary which would help avoid the "oh bugger I've stopped in the wrong gear" faff of spinning the wheel to change. I made the mistake of trying to change halfway across the casset...

I have been using Outdooractive quite a bit recently and it is actually growing on me. Still not as intuitive as ViewRanger but it does seem to do the job pretty well and following routes is easy. One major annoyance though, when you have voice navigation on. It regularly announces "You are abo...

So according to the wording of their rather vague emails, if you had previously bought tiles on Viewranger then you should actually have continued access to the whole country OS maps after the subscription finishes? I suspect that's not what they mean, as it seems rather generous. But maybe it is, a...