Killybegs

What a depressing photo.

My first bike (second hand) came with straight handlebars (Dad insisted as he thought drops weren't safe even though I was paying for it out of my savings!). Before long, I bought 2nd hand drops, shorty aluminium mudguards and painted it light blue. Dad went ballistic! I and my mates had great fun on the paths in the local woods. Kept that bike for years until it was stolen.

This one is a brute that I found while cycling round the coasts of Devon and Cornwall a few years ago.

I've done 6000km on my emtb. I am on my third chain but the SRAM cassette has very little wear. Ebikes put a lot more strain on chains so it really is important to back off a little when changing gear. I clean and relube the chain fairly regularly, more so when I am riding off road.

It's also worth checking how much your chain has stretched on a regular basis. Worn chains are serious destroyers of cassettes. I bought a little tool that tells you when your chain needs changing.

Here's a little story about today's bike ride that touches on the discussions of both tube v tubeless and ebikes. Before setting off this morning I decided to put a bit more air in the tubeless tyres as only 10% of the route would be off road. I should really have changed back to my road wheels once we got back from our trip to Scotland, a week ago, where we were riding largely off road. However the presto valves did not want to budge and I had to resort to a pair of pliers to slacken them off. As they had been troublesome for some time, I changed the inserts and pumped up the tyres. 9km into my ride, I found that the rear tyre had lost pressure so returned home. It didn't seem to have gone down anymore so I pumped it back up and went in for lunch, after which I did the sensible thing and swapped the wheels, a very quick exercise with through axles. This evening the tubeless tyres are still holding pressure. I think the seal on the rim probably broke when the tyre was fully deflated and took a while to reseal. Now onto the ebike thing. My 18km morning ride was fairly flat and I averaged 25km/hour. In the afternoon I covered 32km with just over 1000 feet of climbing and averaged 23km/hour. Now that meant working pretty hard on the ebike as I was not using a high level of assist. There is no way I could have matched that on my road bike as I would have been in a much lower gear using a similar amount of effort on the ascents. As I said earlier, it's each to his own but I do seriously enjoy riding my emtb. Hope that wasn't toooo boring! Here's a couple of pics from the ride.

It all depends on who you are 'cheating'. If it's others, as in a competition, it would only be cheating if you didn't declare that you were on an ebike. If it's yourself, then you can't really fool yourself into thinking you are suddenly a better rider. I was very anti getting an ebike for a long time but then started talking to anyone that I saw with one, asking them why they bought them and what difference did it make to their cycling. Many of them said it was to keep them cycling when they were thinking of giving it up either because of advancing years or injury. As to keeping fit, you can work just as hard on an ebike as on an ordinary one if you so choose. You will just need to stick it in a higher gear. One up side of this is that you can fit in longer rides than you could before, for the same amount of effort. As ever, it's each to his own.

Just back from a very pleasant 16km spin around the lanes between showers to blow away the cobwebs. Weather looks better for tomorrow so hopefully will get out for a longer ride then.

I had one back in the eighties, it came with the bike from new. Can't say that it made any difference. Head winds? Not a problem with an ebike!

41535 looks rather sad and neglected on the storage siding.

They can be a bit hit and miss. When we bought our new wheels with the tubeless tyres fitted, the latex free sealant worked pretty. However I was unable to source the same product later and the 'environmentally friendly' substitute was useless. As we are running Continental Mountain Kings I decided to use Continental's own sealant. To date, this is performing well with no loss of pressure. The rims and tyres did need cleaning before changing the type of sealant.

I have had disc brakes on my last two mountain bikes, cable on the first, hydraulic on the current one (which is an eMTB) and they are great. I have two sets of wheels, one pair shod with Shwalbe Marathon Plus MTB tyres (which are bullet proof) for tarmac and gravel (but not great on trails) and one pair shod with tubeless tyres for when I am out on the trails.

The great thing about mountain bikes is that you can get to some great spots like this one high in the Lowther Hills in Dumfriesshire and it's great fun coming back down.

Dodging the showers at Seaton, Devon.

Here's a rear view, loosely based on the prototype.

Sadly not. It must be getting on for 30 years ago that I built the model and I no longer have any drawings pre 2001, when I moved to Ireland and started doing most of my drawing on CAD. I remember we had a great day measuring it up and probably spent a disproportionate time in the bar. I can't remember whether the barmaid was based on the prototype!

Just been catching up on Marsh Sidings. It's looking great. The Fountain Inn was used as the prototype for the Railway Inn on Clinkerford.

not to mention track and buildings!

Solved it. I found 4 small tags at the corners of the floor

Has anyone any experience of dismantling one of these (Ref R4880A). I need to get the bogies off to convert it to P4.

Self adhesive labels might be better.

2822 is now just about ready for the paintshop. A couple of things to do in the cab and the ATC shoe to fit. I now have to get the wheels ready as I should have a gearbox arriving this week.

Our local beach this morning.

Managed to get a couple of pics yesterday. Sorry about quality. Max zoom on phone through closed window then blown up again!

A pair of mallard have taken up residence on our pond.