Absolutely dreadful. That was in Ovando which is on the Tour Divide route and notorious because of the friendly shopkeeper who takes and upoads photos of pretty much all the racers who come through.

So far Brendan has had more sleeping time but has been moving a bit faster. Jay's stopped time is 1d 21h 4m vs Brendan's 2d 3h 11m. So Brendan has covered the same distance in 6 hours less riding time. I don't know anything about Brendan's ability to keep up that kind of sleep pattern. Jay is certai...

Calzzak definitely making the rest of us look bad - finishing 2nd in the HT550 with two young kids! :shock: Like most of the rest of you I struggle to get out as much as I would like. I've got an almost 3 year old who was diagnosed with leukaemia last summer and a 5 month old. It's fair to say that ...

Finale Ligure is pretty good if you like Italian food. You can swim in the Adriatic and mountain bike or rock climb in the hills around. There are companies who will shuttle you up to the summits of the mountains (1,000m+) if that's your kind of thing. I prefer to ride up and back down again.

Yes route changes slightly every year, but the name has been HT550 since 2013. It is never exactly 550 miles!

Dammit I think I need to get an Instagram account if that's where all the cool kids are hanging out. Also need to log in to Twitter which only gets used for following this race. What other social media do I need? Any HT550 content on tik tok?

Josh's tracker has woken up again - the 3 in the chase group are very close together!

Good to see Andrew Hutcheson doing well. I rode with him a bit on the 2014 edition and he finished 2nd ahead of me. As far as I know he hasn't been back since he scratched in 2015 (if I remember correctly with back problems).

lune ranger wrote: ↑Fri May 21, 2021 10:14 am Totally. Why ruin only one planet then there’s a whole universe to be exploited

Username checks out...

Brrr!
Gutted I'm not going to be there. Looks like the practicalities of getting there from France would have been a bit of a headache this year anyway even if I didn't have other reasons for not being able to make it.

Perhaps odd that I'm not a woman and am no fan of cricket.

Not been listening for long enough?

For me the article is missing a bit of nuance. For example "Yet as I stand and look at the mountain shelter I’m headed to, a small part of me... knows that no matter what I overcome to make it there, once inside the four walls, not all the potential hazards will be left at the door. And the rea...

We were with Pedal Cover for home insurance too (until we moved out of the UK).
I had a claim after my commuting bike was stolen from outside a pub. No hassle.

It snowed 15cm here on Monday and it's forecast to snow another 30 on Friday night, so could be an interesting Global Fat Bike Day ride on Saturday!

Thanks for the recommendation of Darn Tough. I have ordered some and will see how they go!

Sadly I'm out.

We should have a 5 month old child by then, and we also have a 2 year old who is currently being treated for leukaemia. Don't think it would be fair to leave the wife with those two for a week.

I would say that the route in the photo with green diamonds is not a right of way. It is on Access Land though, so there is a right to roam (but not with a bike) and hence the walkers on the Dales High Way can legitimately walk there.

I can confirm, having fished loch Dionard (from a boat) that there are no tracks around it.
The Gualin estate who own it also used to be funny about bikes using the track that goes up the strath to the loch. Don't know if that's still the case or if they now understand how land access laws work!

Me too!

As Pistonbroke, I use air, but don't have a compressor, so use a high volume track pump hooked up to a bar bung with an old presta valve through it.

Stripping the land of natural tree cover is one of the reasons we get these massive floods. Flooding has been getting worse in the last 20+ years, and that's not due to any change in natural tree cover or digging drainage ditches (that mostly happened hundreds of years ago in the UK and has started...

What alternative use are folks proposing for grouse moors? Most of them have sheep grazing on them already (albeit at low densities so they don't get rid of all the heather).
Surely the reason they ended up being grouse moors is because they're bugger all use for anything else?

I'd go for the Signal.

I did ride a rigid bike and like Rich my hands were numb for months.

There's a big difference between "keeping an open mind" and entertaining batshit crazy stuff like this for more than a couple of seconds.

I've got a baselayer that I've had since the mid 1990's and still use now and again. It has a hole in the shoulder, and my shoulder has a matching scar underneath from where I got hit by a sharp rock that fell onto me while I was ice climbing in Canada in 2007. Sort of feel like I have a bond with i...