Advantages: everything you could want from a bike shop
Disadvantages: you can get carried away

...they aren't - I suspect some of the staff have best friends who own cars, but I'm not sure they would let their daughters marry one) - but it IS all about offering serious alternatives. I especially like their range of what's now called 'Hybrid' bicycles; something as equally at home on a city road as on a muddy cycle track. In olden days these would have been known as 'shopping bikes' - nowadays they take a 'comfortable' frame, attach road wheels, multi-speed gears and decent brakes - a compromise between the skinny racing cycles with razor thin saddles, and massively chunky mountain bikes. They actively support pro-bicycle groups such as 'Spokes' - lobby local and national government to provide better facilities, and basically spend a lot of time pointing out that the internal combustion engine isn't the bee all and end all of private... Read review

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Advantages: Generally doing a good job
Disadvantages: Room for more clarity. Safety of non-English speakers compromised

...to define. The Code speaks of activities you MUST do, but I can think of blue circles that are essentially only advisory showing activities that CAN be done. The most typical blue circular signs are orders to turn left or right. However, a blue circle with a white bicycle represents a “Cycles-Only” lane. There is no implication that a cyclist MUST use it, however suicidal not to do so would be! In fact, its true meaning is more in line with the red circle depicting “No Motor Vehicles”. Maybe it would be safer to explain that blue circles normally represent things you MUST do, but on occasions are only giving permission. Now for the reason behind those diagonals on selected red circular signs, or at least this is the reason we have been given. Take “No Left Turn”, for example. Imagine being a colour-blind road-user, (which... Read review

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Advantages: Price, Components, Performance
Disadvantages: Lack of "street-cred"

...When I was little, I got a TCR racing set for Christmas. In those heady days, TCR stood for "Total Control Racing". Something like a Scalectrix, but without the slots, so the cars could change lanes. In July of this year, I bought a new bike, a road-racing bike from the Chinese manufacturer "Giant". It too is called TCR, but this time round I've no idea what it stands for. What I do know is that, for the money, it's a fine piece of machinery and over the next virtual page or two, I'll tell you exactly why. Spurred back on to my bike, after more than 10 years of neglect, by a declining level of fitness and an expanding waist-line, I started riding again at the beginning of this year. For the first 6 months I rode my mountain bike on the roads of Essex in an attempt to get fit. My fitness did improve, but every weekend I would... Read review

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Advantages: Don't be a Rager !
Disadvantages: Road Rage can Kill

...for and stop using it like a flippin’ tank. Mothers on bicycles with trailers. This is at the other end of the spectrum, when it comes to the school run, not strictly road rage, but I will mention it here because it makes my blood boil, and is an accident waiting to happen. I live in a busy and bustling city where bicycles are becoming and have been a popular means of transport for some time and many eco-mothers have a contraption, which is like a baby buggy, at the back of their bikes, like a trailer type of arrangement. It reminds me of the Sinclair C5, in terms of road safety standards. These things are fit only for country roads and cycle tracks (or the pavement, but don’t get me started on cyclists on the pavement), and yet every day I see these vegetable crunching eco-mothers, most of them with straw sticking out of their hair... Read review

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Advantages: Light weight
Disadvantages: Not the top of the line product

...cheap pedals with the bicycle, but if you want to upgrade your pedals to a clip type pedal have no frets it is as easy as 1,2,3. All you have to do is take either an allen wrench or regular wrench and remove the pedals from the crank shaft. Maintenance on this bicycle is not much more than you would expect for any road bike. The wheels need to be trued every so often, which is more often than you would see on a Mountain bike but not to frequently. Ensure that you keep the crank set gears, rear cog and chain well lubricated and maintain the proper tension on the front and rear breaks. With the high pressure style tires you will need to ensure that they are inflated up to pressure (most road bike tires are between 90-120 psi) so not to damage the wheels. Damage to a wheel for a road bike can cost a bit more than your normal touring... Read review

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Advantages: saves you walking home!
Disadvantages: be prepared to get your hands dirty

...---THE SCENARIO--- One minute you're hurtling down the hill with the wind in your hair, the next you've shot into someone's garden after squashing a baby hedgehog. The bike tyre is buggered and you're going to have to fix it - but how are you going to get it off? ---FIRST CHECK--- If on the road, first, in order to detect a leak you can spit on your fingertip and put a film of saliva across the top of the valve to detect a leak. If the valve is not faulty then check the tyre for anything that may have caused the puncture, such as a nail or a piece of glass (or hedgehog spikes!) and note its position. ---REMOVING THE TYRE AND TUBE--- Upturn the bicycle so that it stands on its saddle and handlebars. Unscrew the knurled nut holding the valve assembly and push the valve up inside the wheel rim. Next insert tyre levers (I use... Read review

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Advantages: They are my memories. I'm recording a little bit of history
Disadvantages: Self indulgent?

...it is not apparent from the map, we were also at the top of a promontory geographically speaking so that there were quite steep gradients down the roads to the north, east and west. In the earliest years of this decade, the focus of my perambulations was along Fosse Road North and was bounded by the railway bridge which carried a still-working goods line. We would sometimes detour off Stephenson Drive to watch the trucks shunted along the tracks by the old steam engines. There was a modest tree lined open area - the Fosse Road Recreation Ground (Fosse Park) - where the kids kicked footballs, rode bicycles and played on the swings and the dogs exercised! I still have a papery scar on my shin where I tore it on a rusty brake handle falling over a bike when playing as goalie!! The other side of the road was lined by a terrace of large Victorian dwellings... Read review

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Advantages: Speed camera warnings, accident blackspot warning, gets you there
Disadvantages: annoying audible in average speed camera area

...I bought a road angel navigator 6000 a little over a year ago now, i got it second hand for £50 as it had no sd card that contain the maps included, i was quite happy as my friend had one of these with the sd card so i figured i could just make a copy of his card, insert it and away i go. This is what i did and hey presto off we go no problem at all. To be honest i don't actually find the 6000 to bad although i notice a few people have come up with some horror stories regards the software not giving them the correct information. Its a simple basic machine that does what it says it does. I have used it on several occassions when travelling round glasgow, edinburgh and birmingham and find it to be of satisfactory use. Ok so there are a few bad points to it but you almost come to expect this with everything in this day and age... Read review

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Advantages: An expansive lyrical visionary dreamland
Disadvantages: Makes you wanna road trip sooo bad.

...I always knew I needed to escape the squalor and opression of life. I just never knew how. Until I read on the road by Jack Keruoac( who was quite hot in a James Dean kinda way but apparently a terrible sexist). It challenged my perspective, and ruined my cosy little life plan. On the road is so much more than a roadtrippin' travelogue. It's all the joy, sadness, limitation, freedom, love , hate, craziness ,heat and sweat of life.Our narrator Sal Paradise is a writer of the infamous beat generation. We're supposed to follow him, but everyone knows Sal's crazy monkeyboy buddy Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassidy in disguise) is where the real action lies. The book hurtles through smokey nightclubs, blue starry city nights across America in hot pursuit of...well, Dean mostly, and all the bug eyed wide open spaces and sleazy city scapes... Read review

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Advantages: Interesting look back on road haulage in the 1950s
Disadvantages: Not really any

...Whilst wandering around the shops of Shrewsbury, we decided to look at the Scope charity shop. I noticed that they had started selling a range of new DVDs produced by a company called Delta, of Orpington in Kent. (you can contact them at 222 Cray Avenue, Orpington, Kent, BR5 3PZ or via www.deltamusic.co.uk) Delta are marketing the films produced by the British Transport film unit. The first one I bought (I'll be going back for more!) is called 50s Road Hauling. The first film on the DVD is called Dodging the Column and was produced on 1952. (You'll note that the person who thought up the title has the same irksome habit of producing appalling punning headlines as I do. Sorry. But we just can't help it. Apparently for a time the road haulage industry was privatised, hence the British Transport Film unit and the use of the Lion... Read review

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