Recent content by sjcprojects

I rode out to Jodrell Bank today to take a look. It wasn’t the most scenic ride, but it was worth it for this impressive sight. Unfortunately I couldn’t really get a good photo of the front of the big radio telescope, though. On the way back through Knutsford I happened to go down a road where...

Yes please - I’ll PM you shortly. Thanks.

To be honest, I just miss the good old days of everything starting at 99p. Though, as a seller that did backfire a few times; I once sold a decent office chair for 99p. The buyer paid with a pound coin, and did generously let me keep the 1p change…

Yup, I have that Roger Phillips book too. Quite often my heart sinks as I open a section and I’m reminded that there are seemingly endless species that all look extremely similar. Sometimes I’ve managed to correctly ID a few tricky ones (at least, that’s what I think). I do also use my phone for...

It definitely feels like that. I’m sure I’ve won other items where the end price has been exactly my highest bid. All rather odd. I can’t blame eBay for the focus on BIN prices, though - people just don’t want to wait these days. I used to get so many people asking ‘what will you take for...

It does almost feel like eBay is trying to phase out actual auctions in favour of everything being Buy It Now, with the way they are messing with the auction format. Yesterday I put in a last second bid for something, my max bid being £26. I won, and the item sold for £26. Okay, great. But...

Apparently they are edible, although it seems a shame to eat one, and I doubt they are anything special. This year I’ve eaten some decent field mushrooms and a very nice cep (aka penny bun). On one ride I wondered about the feasibility of putting some in my back pocket but probably wisely...

Here’s an autumnal scene. As there’s no ‘mushrooms and bikes’ thread (yet, admittedly that would be very seasonal), I thought I would share this here. It’s a rather fine parasol mushroom. Also, this follows on from the nice fungi content from @Betsy on this thread a while back. I am something of...

I got this for £25, on the assumption that the frame is toast, as the top tube rust looks pretty awful for starters. It’s certainly one I won’t feel bad about stripping for the 105 bits.

This one's another big one – St John's Church, Ranmoor, Sheffield. It's fairly local to me, so I took a small detour on the way home. It was built in 1879, but the main body of the church burnt down only 8 years later (did the locals do something to displease God? ;)) , leaving only the tower...

I was going to say the same myself, but as someone who has never bought a new bike, I’m very far from potential customer material anyway, so I’m probably not well placed to judge. The timing doesn’t feel great, but I guess we’ll see…

Yes, the price for fitting decals is one reason I didn’t use Mercian when I was looking to get a frameset restored. They are definitely on the expensive side in general. But this was before the new ownership, so they’ve not upped their prices.

The website certainly looks a lot slicker than the old one. They’re obviously catering to current trends with what they’re offering, which explains why I’m not interested in any of them 😆.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cze63n0zynjo The headline ‘failing bike firm’ is not at all correct as far as I know, they didn’t have financial problems, they wanted to sell the business for a variety of reasons, but didn’t find a buyer before the voluntary liquidation happened. Which is...