AllanM

Good fun today. Thanks to Daryl for his excellent pacing and general encouragement and to Charlie for playing the shouty role and keeping everyone going...good cop bad cop.
 
Highlight however was McGinty's chicken soup and whoever brought the millionaire shortbread. Too obsequious?
 
Hope the wife didn't give you too hard a time Chung!

Allan,
 
Will you accept ginger bottles?
 
(anyone who needs to ask, don't)

Last year one of the Drumlanrig organisers, Dave Moss, organised a 7 day, 550 mile, Tour of Scotland on behalf of the Tearfund charity. There were 13 riders including Andrew Dunn and myself and it was excellent, basically like doing a good club run every day for 7 days.
 
This year Dave has added another route, up the west coast and Hebrides, and is looking for a few more riders. The route:
 
http://www.tearfundc.../TouroftheIsles
 
I imagine the arrangements will be along the same lines as last year: accommodation in youth hostels; great home cooking from Dave's camp followers; support van transporting bags and providing mechanical support and food and drink.
 
If anyone is interested contact Dave on [email protected]

Pastrami?
 
 
Chung, Mark & Paul...that's the ferry booked, £370 total, £92.50 each. I'll PM bank details or pay cash or by cheque, whatever suits.

I said a pasty!
 
Pastry for breakfast. jeezo.
 
 

Mark, Chung, Paul
 
I'm inclined to take Mul's advice on food, although a man who confuses 8 pints of Hoegaarden and a pastry with dinner may have issues!
 
Booking a car, a 4 bunk cabin and dinner on the return trip comes to £370 inc £4 credit card fee. If you're ok with this give me your full names please and I'll complete booking.
 
Ta

Some info on travel options.
 
Flights don't seem to work as the Paris airports are 150km south of the start at Busigny, Brussels Charleroi is 125km west of Lille, I can't see any flights from UK into Lille and costs are around £200 once you include bikes. You can Train it from Glasgow to London to Lille in 1 day but the cost looks like about £245 return per person.
 
The best Ferry options look like Hull to Zeebrugge or Newcastle to Amsterdam. Dover is along way from Johnstone.
 
HULL - ZEEBRUGGE
Out 18.30 Thur 10th April arrive 08.45
Back 19.00 Mon 14th arrive 08.30
 
Cost £250 for a car and cabin with 4 bunks.
Around 640 miles of driving, petrol cost around £100.
Total £350 = £88 per person for 4.
 
Total cost is not much less for 3 people, so £116 per person for 3 per car
 
NEWCASTLE - AMSTERDAM
Out 17.00 Thur 10th April arrive 09.30
Back 7.30 Mon 14th arrive 09.00
 
Cost £388 for a car and cabin with 4 bunks.
Around 660 miles of driving, petrol cost c£100
Total £488 = £122 per person for 4 or £163 for 3 per car.
 
I'm not familiar with either of these ferries. Anyone with first hand experience or a way to get better costs?

Allan
I bought this turbo a few weeks ago http://www.wiggle.co...yer-vr-trainer/
 
Its early days but so far so good. It connects to a laptop to give a really full display of distance, speed, cadence, gradient, power and heart rate in both numbers and graphs. It works with an analogue (as oppossed to ANT) heart monitor, around £15 from Decathlon. You can save your routes and workouts, hopefully to show improvements over time!
 
It comes loaded with various routes and films to follow and a one year multi player license which may or not be useful. So far all I've done is ride against the clock varying the resistance to get used to the machine. Time will tell which features are useful and which are gimmicks.
 
Cheers
Allan