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So pleased!

My memories of Brasted was always riding the full hill from Brasted village as an effort, so by the top you're just trying to hold on desperately. I think it'd be hard to have enough momentum for a great time if you turned onto that segment from Pilgrims Way.

If you want to focus on that shorter segment, though, maybe you could ride the start of the full hill fairly easy, hit the gas a bit before the segment starts to give yourself a cheeky flying start, try and stay seated until the gradient hits double digits and as dbr says, save some for the end.

From memory, I think I used to try and avoid standing up before you hit the tree lined bit. You then shouldn't be too horribly exhausted through the corners, which feel evil. Having some energy for the part after the corners which actually mellows out a bit will buy you some time.

Everyone is different, but I'd try and ride a hill like that to power until I feel I have to get out of the saddle. With something this steep I also try to stay in slightly harder gears for longer than usual so that I've got something decent to push against. Often my mind tells me to shift right down but then I can't make the power I could if I were in a harder gear. I find this particularly true when I get out of the saddle. I'll generally shift down 2 cogs just before I stand up out the saddle.

Definitely #1. Being mortgage free sooner will be a huge deal, and as you've shown in your workings, saves you what is a really significant amount of money for most people.

I also saw Paul Foot do this show a couple of months ago. Completely agree. Best comedy gig I've ever been to, but obviously also some really dark horrible bits in it. I felt so weird coming out, reflecting, and thinking wow, that was really "good"!

To hammer the frozen sausages into his lawn, right? 😉

I just looked up said racist twat as I'm semi local. Turns out he lives just down the road. Makes sense now why a load of reform boards have sprung up locally just on roadside verges.

He doesn't actually live where his bio on the reform website says he does. It says he lives in Denby, which he likely thinks sounds posher and better known than the village he actually lives in. What a tosser!

You may well have guessed I'm not in London. Being in rural Derbyshire helps with having some spare space in the garden.

Back to answering your original question, though, I'm afraid I don't know of any good shed builders in London, but if I were you I'd actually look for a good joiner who comes recommended, or at second preference a decent general builder. Others may disagree, but if you're set on getting a pro in to do it, and it sounds like you care a lot about quality of the end product, I think those are the 2 trades most likely to leave you with a great result.

Yeah, I agree. Tool costs for smaller jobs often mean it's cheaper to pay a pro to do it. Similarly, sometimes you might just want to pay a pro to do it. A lot will depend on your financial position and the amount of free time you have. With 2 young children, I can imagine that in the future I'll be paying a pro to do a thing much more often than I did in the past!

I think you'd be surprised quite how much DIY would save. I'm currently considering an 8m x 3.5m DIY build, and its currently looking like a DIY build will save me at least 20k, even factoring in buying all the right power tools. It's a big time commitment, though.

Aaah that was good!

If that's the case there's no way I'm going for it. I'll be interested to see their calculations and what they can guarantee me. Until it ends up making financial sense for the masses, adoption will remain low. I still can't believe that they're putting gas boilers in brand new build homes. Surely those are a no brainer for a mandatory heat pump install.

Ouch! So presumably you've decided to stick with a gas boiler until things change significantly and the prices of heat pumps come down?

I had a heat geek round today to do a survey with a view to putting in a heat pump. I was very excited!

Full details to come in a week or so, but it looks like it's gonna need to be a large pump. The heat geek calculator was telling him it would need to be 12 KW, mainly on account of solid brick walls and a reasonably large home. We also want to be able in the future to build in 2 copper bath tubs in the garden. This I think is gonna be one of the big issues, as the units are huge, and there are very few places we could feasibly put it. I think most likely is wall mounted over our single storey rear extension. Apparently we'd need to brick or change to a non closing window there, though, as it is not allowed to be within a certain distance of an opening window. Apparently we'll need to get planning permission as it is a larger unit.

He also recommended a full re-pipe as some of the house is 200 years old and some of the ground floor radiators are using 10mm plastic pipes currently.

I suspect I might fall off my chair when we get the quote back. It'll be interesting to see what the estimated cost saving on energy per year will be and therefore how long to pay back the investment. With the current gas boiler the energy bills are really very frightening in the winter months.

It shouldn't be. Bike manufacturers should be doing this. My actual experience, however, is that it's almost always beneficial

They absolutely do. Watch any of Iain Tyrrell's videos on YouTube and he's forever test driving them. With high end and expensive stuff it's a real no-no to hand the car back to the customer without being sure it's 100% perfect

I need to repaint a bathroom ceiling in white. Current paint is bubbling a bit over the shower, and whoever did it previously looks to not have done a great job, as there's no paint right in the corners?

Any recommendations for paint to do this with, and whether to go saying or matte?

If not, I'll likely order some zinsser perma white in Matt white.

Look under "more" on the site and it references applying emulsion after application of the paper. It'll be fine for painting 😊

In our place the previous owner did lining paper and painting in a few of the bedrooms, and it looks terrible now. We had a decorator in to do one of those rooms and they said the issue was that whoever installed it didn't account for expansion of the lining paper, and so the joins now looks crappy.

If you don't already know how to avoid that, I recommend doing a bit of searching on YouTube and Google to make sure you avoid what sounded like a common mistake.

I'm coming to the end of a 12m fix with Octopus. Planning to move to their teacher tariff TBH, which would have been significantly cheaper over that time.

Should be fine. If I were you I'd weigh the books, add an extra 25% on top to be safe, and then work out how many of your chosen fixings are rated for that load.

Personally I prefer wall anchors to the toggle fixings you linked to. Main reason is the toggles need huge holes drilled, which are then harder to fill later if needed. Also more chance you'll hit some metalwork behind the plasterboard that you hadn't realised was there.

There isn't too much detail on the listing for the shelf, but it does say max of 15kg and mount on solid walls, so do double check on the shelf itself. 15kg isn't that many books, I don't think.

Fair enough, and it's a good thing we don't all like the exact same cars! Sorry if I came across as criticising your opinion.

I think my post could have been better worded if I'd just said something like "be aware of build quality issues and electrical issues".

I have owned 2 x Clios built in 2000 and my mother had an 04 Megane for 15 years. She must have spent well over 10 grand on fixing electrical issues during that time!

It's low mileage, but is a nearly 20 year old hot hatch from a generation of Renaults that had poor build quality and expensive electrical problems for 6k really a good buy? Colour is awful as well IMO.

Sounds like she's had to borderline bankrupt herself to challenge it as well. Feels like a complete miscarriage of justice ... It'll be interesting to follow what happens over the coming weeks in her case. I really feel for her.

I'm not an expert but I wouldn't have thought so. Saddle height should be set according to your functional leg length, IMO. As what you've described above gets better, I might expect you can tolerate a lower front end, but not a higher saddle.

Say what, that's more expensive than Shimano, no? I've no experience with that brand, but I am using rt-cl800 rotors that also game with an ultegra 12 speed groupsets and I've found them very good so far. Only about 400 km in, mind.

It's definitely an issue. For a while now I've been tracking the distance saddle between nose and what I call the "hood outside crook". Basically, the outside of where my finger/thumb junction will fall when riding on the hoods.

The problem is, there isn't a very consistent way to measure it between groupsets, so it's not as objective a measure as BB centre to saddle top, or saddle setback, for example. Not all levers have a completely flat bit followed by a pointing up bit where it's clear exactly where your hand will always rest.

Longest lever reach I have is the Shimano RS505, followed by SRAM rival, and then all the rest of my Shimano stuff is a long way behind that. All of them look shorter than that new SRAM Red. I've used shorter stems than usual where the lever reach is longer, but that also has an impact on other things.

Can we pls make a petition to standardise lever reach? 😉