Steve_M

It’s been *cough* 34 years since I last did by proper coding - though some will argue that COBOL wasn’t proper coding - excluding some Lotus Notes development) but that looks remarkably Basic like (which I only did briefly in 1983).

We had an overnight just two minutes up the road in Strassen, at the Hotel Strasserwirt. It was “very nice” to quote my good lady. Do you usually stay based in a single location and ride out from there?

I will caveat my point about it. The hotels we stayed in while in Italy were really rather good, amongst the best we’ve stayed at on any of our tours.

That was our first attempt, the right bend turned out to be too tight. We’re using 18mm thick kiln dried white oak - it really does need to be steamed to form a bend.

I made a form fixture to clamp it to, and used a Heath Robinson steam box out of scrap ply, with a wallpaper steam stripper to supply the steam. I made a few shallow cuts across the back of the skirting to help it bend.

You’ve pretty well described our touring… booking hotels day by day. We had some issues finding accommodation within budget in Italy. We were amazed how expensive it was, on par or more with Switzerland. We resolved the issue by revising the budget upwards.

Thanks for the info’ . We weren’t too far from the Lacets de Montvernier in 2022 … we passed by St-Jean-de-Maurienne at one point, so less than five miles away. It looks like we need to return at some point…

I’m glad we did the Stelvio as it’s the last of the three highest paved through roads in Europe for us*. I will never return to it. Too busy, particularly at the top which was horrendously busy. However, looking at the photos tonight - we’re creating a photo album as we do for each tour - it’s reminded me that the scenery is generally rather good. *There’s a bit of hypocrisy for you, by the way - we walk in the Lake District and use Wainwright’s books as guides but are deliberately not “doing all the Wainwright’s “ on the basis that we don’t set leisure targets or have tick lists of “must do” things.

A phrase often used by my kids as teenagers.

We did Col de la Morte last year. It was fine. As you pointed out, many of the dangerous roads are only dangerous because of the way they’re ridden. We were fascinated, and a little unnerved, this year by other’s riding decisions on a few of the passes. Particularly the Stelvio where riders were diving down the outside of a line of traffic, late braking for a hairpin with full expectation that others will make room for them. Then there were those who were riding into a blind bend on the wrong side of the road (that, or they had X-ray vision). Photo taken by my pillion as we ascended the Nufenen pass.

I don’t usually take mine off the road over winter but it went on SORN when its MoT went out of date at the end of October. Having injured my hand I wasn’t able to ride it to the MoT until late November and there was no point losing a month’s RFL for the sake of waiting a few days. I’ll tax it in December, I thought. But then the snow came and riding on snow and ice isn’t that much fun… So it’s sitting indoors, Optimate on, waiting for the weather to improve. In the mean while it seems I still have much DIY needing to be done on the house. PS. The steam bending of the skirting board experiment went reasonably well…

I have referred to the Dangerous Roads website as part of my research ahead of our tours. Not all roads on there are suitable for the touring we do - many of off-road, for example - but it’s a great starting point when heading somewhere new.

I popped into my garage / workshop / materials store with the thought that I need to rearrange the one racking unit which I keep some of my tools on. A quick one hour job to set the shelves to new, better positions. Oh bugger. I hadn’t taken into account the knock-on effect on the organisation of the rest of the tools etc. Nigh on three hours later I’ve stopped. Not finished - I’ve merely reached a point where, if I don’t stop, I’ll be there for several days. I have in mind that I need to make wholesale changes to the layout but I’ll need a long weekend, or week, with dry weather so I can take everything outside, build new storage and then put everything back in its new place.

They’ve just installed average speed camera on the A689 past Carlisle airport. I’m going to hazard a guess that there will be few fines ‘cos most days the traffic is driving at 50mph along there. Good news is I get to practice overtaking when on the bike.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder… the biking world is relatively conservative (little c) and isn’t always open to change. The jaw-dropping utterly gorgeous 916 set a high bar for Ducati aesthetically so any subsequent design replacement was unlikely to be well received. I thought Ducati did an excellent job. It’s too late for me now but I still desire a 916, mind.

Beat me to it. However, I also considered the CRF. The CRF300 seems to be an update to the CRF250 - a bike I’ve ridden and found to be great fun on the trails and back roads of Wales around Cader Idris. If the MCN review of the CRF300 is anything to go by then, as long as you’re not spending a lot of time on the mainland, it seems a sensible option as it’s capable of maintaining NSL speeds, and has some off road ability for the trails and tracks. A couple of things to consider with regard to the trails and tracks. You probably ought to consider fitting tyres that are 50/50 road/trail - I assume there are tyres that do that for that size of bike as there are options for mine. Road tyres are rubbish off-road and knobbly off road tyres are not confidence inspiring on tarmac. The 50/50 compromise, I’m told, works well enough on each surface. I would also look for someone to give you training in trail riding initially. It’s a slightly different skill to road riding.

I’ve never been to the IoM but were a little concerned after receiving a text warning of roaming charges ‘cos we were connected to an IoM mast. We were in the Wasdale valley at the time. Something to be aware of next year as we’re taking our annual walking holiday based there.

I recall the issue of contaminated fuel. Though I was not affected my sister in law’s car needed significant work doing - paid for by the fuel supplier. It was a localised - to the south of England - issue manifested in supermarkets. Tesco being one of them and the reason why we avoided supermarket fuel for some years. Even now I rarely use supermarket fuel. Fuel contamination 2008

Damn, riding in the wet. Damn those were the days.

Absolutely. Last year we intended to ride the French alps, Switzerland, Dolomites and Tirol. The passes closed early, while we were there in September, so we headed south to include the Verdon gorge etc (we did the intended tour this year, incidentally). It’s the reason why we only book the ferry in advance and then make everything up as we go along - a bit Agile project management rather than waterfail…. Anyway, here’s a couple of quotes …

Well worth a look. Some great scenery and some pretty fair roads. Photos from our 2017 trip. The first is from Mirador del Fitu, the second is a little south east of Vega de pas.

It’s 800 miles of mostly tedium from Calais to Santander. For us that adds at least a night, possibly two, in a hotel in each direction (say £100 per night - £200) and, conservatively, £200 in fuel. Plus tolls - last year set us back £50 for one direction down to the Alps. Discounting the bike’s running costs that’s already at least £500. Add the loathsome channel tunnel at £100 for a return and having to negotiate the bloody awful M25 I’m happy to cough up another couple of hundred for the relative convenience of the Santander ferry.

I’ve already looked. I did a comparison between the ferry to Santander vs ferry to St Malo and ride down. The ferry edges it on cost and you don’t have the awful trudge down through France. I must admit I hadn’t considered the Ireland Route which might work for us given that we’re only 2 1/2 hours from Cairnryan. Edit. The Rosslare to Bilbao ferry and return for early / mid September is coming in at €830. I haven’t looked at the prices crossing from Cairnryan to Ireland but I suspect that aggregates to take the cost to be around the same as the Portsmouth to Santander crossing.

Hello from a GS rider.

Depends on which part of the garden. The bit at the top close to the house is merely sodden, the area down by the stream is marshy and then some as is the field.