adamx cycles

"My headsets a bit gritty"

2009-12-05T17:26:00.004Z

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

2009-09-07T21:50:00.002+01:00

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

a strange find and a lucky one

2009-08-30T15:57:00.003+01:00

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

2009-08-20T17:40:00.006+01:00

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

2009-08-18T15:29:00.006+01:00

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!

2009-08-18T14:57:00.014+01:00

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

2009-04-07T17:00:00.003+01:00

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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!

Princetown in the spring

2009-03-15T17:24:00.001Z

A loverly spring day, lambs frisking, mountainbikers scattered all over the moor

View map of Princetown, Yelverton, Devon, England, PL20 6 on Multimap.com
Get directions to or from Princetown, Yelverton, Devon, England, PL20 6

Out of Princetown on the bridlepath south passing South Hessary Tor, first right and a lovely loooong rocky track

down by the wonderfully named Crazy Well Pool into the woods and up by Blowing House ruins. Found some trolls in a cellar.

We followed the Devonport Leat SW then cut north along a cycle route to join the disused railway line. Granite sleepers are harsh to ride over!

Grinding up the hill to cut off a corner where the old line went looping around King's Tor, joining the road just west of Rundlestone, and following the road back to princetown, for a reward

There's Princetown brewed Jail Ale at the end of the rainbow :-)

Dartmoor Epic

2009-02-22T12:45:00.005Z

Pete from Braking Wind had suggested a ride on Dartmoor, fine idea!
I drove down with Jasper (#1 son) and Harry (Jaspers buddy) to Pete's place near Bovey Tracey, to meet him and Emmet.

We rode down to Bovey, then up Lustliegh Cleave to Manaton,

View map of Manaton, Newton Abbot, Devon, England, TQ13 9 on Multimap.com

THe woods were beautiful, sun spearing through the trees, mud and rock at grippy consistency, good temperature... big big climb to Manaton. Then round to Jay's Grave, and on to Hound Tor where someone had left some furniture in a field.

Ace! There was snow still lying up here too, so there was some slippy slidy falling off fun, before attacking the descent to Manaton. Hilarious Dartmoor rock chiutes and boulder rolling down off the moor and back home for cake.

Exmoor in winter

2009-02-22T12:06:00.006Z

In between Christmas and New Years I got together with a couple of people I hadn't seen since quitting Bike Shed to become an instructor. We met up, did the usual twiddling around of cars and headed for Exmoor

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Carhampton, massive climb and massive descent to Dunster, up over the ridge and a rock crashing drop to Wooton Courtenay, back up and over and looping round home. 20 miles to the yard and 5500m of climbing according to Dan's GPS!

Exmoor = middle earth. If you look carefully you can see a hobbit riding his mountainbike up here
there was this sign saying unsuitable for motor vehicles....

singlespeed moving fast!

Below: helmet hair as a proof of ride quality!

some watery bint proffering a singlespeed out of a pond is hardly a sound basis for a government

Dratmoor revisited

2008-08-20T17:10:00.005+01:00

Having waited a week for the weather to tidy itself up ('summer' 2008 will be remembered)...

Went for it. Anton, a French student who is staying in our village had expressed a keen interest in going for a ride on the moor. So I decided to just get weathered.

Actually it was fun, not cold and it didn't rain for the first hour or so. The picture shows a bit of our route that was described as 'this is a potential mudbath' which it was.

Later on the water was a little higher up the leg. Here's Anton crossing. I'm standing about halfway across.
The route was a good introduction to Dartmoor, it climbs out of the village of Postbridge gently (muddy) drops over the shoulder of the hill (fordy) then dives north through farm land, and suddenly you're climbing a high valley. There's a fabulous rocky singletrack descent and then through forest to the roasd, through some bridle paths and back to the start.

Dratmoor

2008-08-13T10:22:00.006+01:00

The British 'summer'. Bah! I finally have a day free, some riders had asked for an introduction to riding off-road on the moor, so I planned a nice ride on Dartmoor.

An easy 16km route on the high moors, Postbridge to Challacombe Down. East from the village to Pizwell, and north over Challacombe down then looping back south through the forest of Soussons Warren to the PUB.

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Gale warning issued by Met Office. Torrential rain, tree-felling winds, good day for experienced riders to have a soggy mudfest, but not really a good day to take riders of unknown skills out in the wild world.

As the great philosopher says: D'oh.