| Evans Cycles | Seem to be linked to the CTC; at least the CTC magzine quite often has an insert. You can get 10% off as a CTC member which is quite handy. Various posters to cycling message boards don't rate their service or delivery, but I've found them fine. |
| Spa Cycles | Where I got the bike. Large range, and pretty reasonable, especially with the offers on previous years' stock. You do have to do a bit of assembly yourself though. |
| BikePlus | Used these when I decided at the last moment to get a proper saddle. Cheap, and arrived on the doorstep before 9am the next morning, which seems from other accounts to be typical for them. Highly recommended. |
| Halfords | Got to give them a mention, though keen cyclists would no doubt see it as akin to having an entry for McDonalds in a Michelin guide. Used it for minor things - an extra cycling top, spare inner tubes and brake blocks, pump, multi-tool, that sort of thing. Ok for that. (Update: though if you use the link on thet left you won't get back here. Make that a useless bunch of wasters.) |
Discussion boards, some of which are extremely useful. As always, it depends on the type of people hanging out there.
| Cycling Plus Forums | Especially Touring and Expedition. Probably the best I've found. Whatever you want to do, there's someone who's either done it or is doing it right now, and will offer advice or alternative suggestions you might not have thought of. Generally very friendly, with a minimum of patronising habitues. |
| CTC Forums | Again, try the Touring & Expedition forum, and also the Bikes and Bits Technical Section for good advice from very experienced people. If you're a member, there's also a large database of route descriptions from people who've done it before |
| uk.rec.cycling | Some good stuff, but I find it a bit tedious. Good place to go if you think you've got a strong opinion either way on something like cycle helmets, cycle paths or Sturmey Archer gears, because you'll always find someone who thinks you're a pusillanimous equivocator. |
| cam.transport | Much like uk.rec.cycling, except some (often trenchantly expressed) input from non-cyclists, and slightly livelier. Make sure any postings are carefully worded and punctuated though, otherwise the resident pedants/apostrophe police will be on your case. |
| EndToEnd | A site which describes several bike rides, including a trip from Nordkapp to Copenhagen. This is what all sites would like to look like when they grow up, in the way it presents and organises information. In particular as far as I'm concerned, there's some invaluable advice on the tunnels in north of Norway.Check out the links on this site for ride-logging software created by the author. |
| Fra Kapp a Cabo | Log of a trip from Nordkapp down to Gibraltar. From my point of viwe, the interesting bit was how to get up to Nordkapp in the first place. |
| Nordkapp-Gibraltar | One of the rides undertaken by a Danish nutter who did it the trip in 18 days, saving time by not washing for the first week. Good luck to him. |
| Weekend Climber | Nothing to do with cycling, Nordkapp or even Europe, but the author implements a simple slideshow for which he offers a how-to and which I shamelessly swiped for my own log pages with a few minor mods. |
Created on ... April 11, 2007