"My headsets a bit gritty"

That's what he thought, "might need a bit of grease"

you can see mud drizzling out of the bottom.


inside it was indeed gritty. Bits of broken bearing race in a tasty greasy paste. nasty.

(Not my bike! I hasten to state: just an example of how a fault can get gradually worse without you noticing just how bad it's got!)

oil shortage solved

now we've reached peak oil, solutions are needed. I propose scraping used oil off bicycles :-)

a strange find and a lucky one

Spotted this wierd thing in an access archway - it appears to me some kind of mutant push-trike.

Brian's bike: he had a fellow rider crash into his back wheel at a set of traffic lights (!) and his gear change went a little adrift, so we had a quick look. Fortunately I looked at the front of the bike as well as the back. The gear cable felt a bit iffy so I looked inside. It was down to two or three strands.
This happened as I pulled the cable through. Phew - caught it in time. This was a brand new cable only a couple of weeks ago, I guess the collision with his derailleur pulled the cable back hard enough to break the cable..

A heroic bodge and a sad one

This home made recumbent is heroic! it's like a 'bent rat bike. the chainset at the sharp end has a triple on it, going down to five of the gears on a freewheel at the middle, the low ring of which runs the chain back to the ?six?seven? speed freewheel at the back wheel. I can figure out how many gears that works out as.

It has a bit of rusty pipe to steer with, and I think that might have been a life-jacket to sit on. A work of sheer brilliance!
This on the other hand is just poor. How the 'mechanic' who fitted these didn't realise that it was wrong, I don't know. Could have been dead wrong....

A few wierd things from the coal face

You get some good odd things going adrift on bicycles. I thought I might post a few here.

This is a really well done bodge. Instead of using cable ties, we have a self-tapping screw holding the speedo mount on. If it was near the end of the bars, maybe OK, but right near the middle... I was scared by the potential for pain. Customer was advised strongly to get new bars, bet he hasn't.



The two above are of a pedal-powered narrow boat on the Kennet and Avon canal. HFCIT?
Arguably rather nice use of a brass hinge as as pannier and brake mount!! We did change this when it came in for a service.

August and not raining!

Took a day to go ride with number one son Jasper and his riding buddy Harry







www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=16318 Bikehike is a brilliant routemapping site, by the way. check it out.




These are at the bottom of the long descent off south Hessary tor, which is rocky and quite technical - you have to focus ahead to get a good line, but keep aware of the 'baby's head' rocks just in front. Lots of little airs and big grins.






Shady woods and cool streams.
Especially this - the Devonport Leat. We dunked our heads in this to get refreshed. Lovely and cool.


This is a view of the gateway to MorrrrrDorrrrr, on the old railway line heading for Princetown.

A different type of singletrack

View this map on Multimap.com
Bird's Eye view on Multimap.com
Get directions on Multimap.com

We have a friend, Dawn, who flogged her house and bought a narrowboat. A very sensible idea. We were lucky enough to have the chance to stay on board for the weekend recently.

This is the scene on saturday morning. My beer was lovely, you are technically not supposed to drunk 'drive' (reasonable enough tbh) but there is no-one to enforce it!
It is incredibly relaxing being overtaken by walkers, ducks and fast moving fish (probably - the water is not all that clear; you can't be sure if there's any fish in there!)

We got on board at Avoncliffe, and chugged down to Dundas. I cycled back on sunday to get the car, and I have to say it was a lovely ride, with no hills at all!