Utility Tips: The KLICKfix Lightclip

Rixon and Kaul Light Clip.

Ok
So you have your bike kitted out for some serious utility cycling.
That may well include a front basket.

The problem:
So then you mount you light on the handlebar, and tha basket and load gets in the way, so you can't see the potholes, and other folks can't really see you so well.

Long-Term Review: Pacific Outdoor Shopping Pannier

Pacific Outdoor Shopping Pannier (right), shown here with a BikeBins pannier (left)

I bought this pannier (just one), on sale, for a bit less than 20 pounds ($32, 24 Euros) in August 2014, so I have had it a bit more than four months at the time of writing. Iirc, I got it from SJS Cycles.

Long Term Review: Aldi Bikemate Roll-Top Panniers

Aldi Bikemate roll-top pannier, seen here mounted
on the extra-long rack of a Pashley Mailstar

Revolution mini-pump in the EBC winter sale!

EBC's sale is always a chance to stock up ...

As I mentioned in my last post, Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative have their winter sale on NOW!

I just thought I'd skim through the "sale" stock, not really looking for anything, but just to see what is what.

The mini-pump is dwarfed by the 17L BikeBins pannier

And I found that the Revolution Air Mini Track Pump I reviewed (and highly recommended a while back) is on sale at just £9.99 (that's about $16, 12 Euros).

I paid about 30% more than that for mine, and I am delighted with it.
My colleague at work, Richard, has borrowed it a couple of times as well, and he thinks it is both good and very compact, and he is impressed with it, too.



So now's your chance ...

Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative Winter Sale

The good folks at EBC have sent me their mailing about their after-Christmas sale.
The sale starts on the 27th December 2014.
I have a few EBC items here - I particularly like their mini-pump (with a gauge) that I take on my commute, and of course, my bike has a "I love my bike" oldie-style "dring-dring" bell from EBC too (that bell was 30% off in the sale!)

But, of course, there is more to their operation than that.
they do a wide variety of bikes, parts and accessories, and the co-op is, appropriately enough, actually owned by the folks that work there.
For us folks down South, we have to rely on the internet, but for folks from Manchester and "upwards", they can actually go to a store!

So, give them a look, and see if they have anything that suits you.
I know I will!

Where to get "short" spokes?

Sometimes spokes break.

While many online big names and "big box" stores sell spokes for "full-size" bikes, where does one go to get a spare spoke for a smaller-wheeled bike, like, for instance, the Cinzia folding bike I owned for 20-odd years?

While very popular bikes, like the Brompton, are catered fairly widely catered for, when it comes to the various lesser known brands, it gets a bit harder.

After some careful measuring up, I established that my folder needed a 192mm long spoke.
Go online to your favourite supplier, and just see if they stock 192mm spokes!

Bike Bins Pannier Repair

The replacement parts arrive

Sightings: Bloomsbury Bomber

Anna and I went shopping

Quite a bit of shopping can be carried on a pair of cheap bikes!
This is what Anna and I bought today.

Today, Anna and I went shopping on our bikes.
We took, obviously, our bikes (Anna's has a basket mounted on it), our one serviceable Bike Bins pannier, our Pacific Outdoor pannier, a cheap pannier from Aldi, and a rucksack.
I HATE wearing a rucksack while cycling, but Anna seems to quite like it (!)
Bit like the famous Jack Sprat and his wife, I guess :-)

Problems in Paradise

As many of you know, I live in Aylesbury, which is much more "cycle-friendly" than many English towns.
Well, as I was enhoying the local cycling infrastructure, I encountered a problem ...

VeloViewer goes Pro, and I look like stopping using it.

You have heard me raving about VeloViewer on this blog, and I even encouraged you to donate to the running costs  - I myself, donated a fiver ($8, 6 euros).
However, VeloViewer has decided to become a professional project, not just an enthusiastic amateur providing an add-on to Strava.

Pannier Problems

The mounting strip on one of our Bike Bins panniers
has a split in it!

Remember our long-term favourite pannier?
The Bike Bins hard-sided, lockable pannier?
Anna finally broke one!

And a Merry Christmas to you, too!

Mermaid with lights for Christmas 2014.
The lights are actually multi-coloured, but the green ones seem to come out looking much brighter in the picture!

Not quiteCchristmas just yet, but it is the season for Christmas decorations.

So I got the lights out for Mermaid.

A slightly different layout than last year, as I don't currently have the front rack and basket fitted, so I just attached the lights to the frame with clear tape, rather than all the cable ties I had to attach thenm to the basket last year.
The battery/control box is taped under the seat - switch facing downwards to try and keep the rain out. The "switch down" technique worked last year, so here's hoping!

Flandria - winter dreaming

Flandria - one of the hallowed names of cycling!

While out and about in London last weekend, I spotted a Flandria.
"A what?"

A Flandria.
This is a Flandria, shown here with a "proper" Raleigh mixte.

A Flandria, shown here with a Raleigh mixte

Classic designs - the drop-handlebar Flandria and the roadster
Raleigh mixte

Flandria and Raleigh -
is that a well worn Brooks saddle on the Raleigh?

OK, schmOK.
So a blast from the past.

Flandria is linked with Merckx, Maertens, Kelly, and many, many other great riders, all of whom donned the Flandria "team" colours.

But more than that - they still make bikes.

Fixing a broken spoke - removing the gearset

Three tools for removing rear sprocket clusters.

Some time ago, I did a short piece on replacing a broken spoke.
It was, quite rightly, pointed out that, unlike the hub-gear set-up I illustrated, many bikes have a derailleur set-up, and require an additional step.

If you break a spoke on the "drive" side (that's the side with the gears) of a bike with a derailleur set-up, you usually have to remove the set of gears from the wheel in order to have room to get the new spoke in.

Plenty of advice is available elsewhere on the web for this, so I will just cover one topic which may be of interest to the rider about to undertake this for the first time.

Derailleur bikes, except Campagnola models, and some vintage models, tend to have one of two types of rear gearing.
There is the "freewheel" design, still fitted to lower-priced new bikes, including 6-speed Shimano SIS set-ups.
Then there is the "freehub" design, which is fitted to bikes with eight-speeds and above. There are a few older 8-speed "freewheel" hubs about, but the design flaws with that was a major reason why the "freehub" design has become dominant for more than 6 speeds.
If you have seven speeds, you could have either design!

Spa Cycles Steel Audax - winter dreaming

This little beauty is the Spa Cycles Steel Audax, and is now available for under £1000 !
(that's about $1600/1200 Euros).
And the steel frame is not just the "Reynolds, but only just" 520 that makers often use - it is the fancier 725, with better tensile strength etc. etc.
Carbon forks, too.
Lots of Shimano 105 parts too, which is outstanding for the price, at least in the UK!
Weight is in the 10.2 kg (about 22.5 lbs) range, depending on frame size.

Roberts Cycles - winter dreaming

A Roberts tourer (pic from their website)

Now we are in the season of long nights, my mind has turned to dreaming of bikes :-)

Let me introduce you to today's pipe dream - the Roberts touring range.

Proper bikes - typically with Reynolds and/or Columbus tubes, which have fitting for pannier racks, mudguards (fenders) etc.

Bit pricey, mind.
But plenty of options to choose from.
That's the thing about a handbuilt bike - you can ask them to make it just the way you want it :-)

Lidl lights failure

Remember these?
My great new lights from Lidl?

Problem.
The front light has failed.
I have only had them for about three months, and have used them almost daily for the last two.

The problem is the switch on the front light, which has fallen apart.

It is a pity, as they were lovely bright lights, especially the front one.
I know that a lot of manufacturing is about sourcing low-cost parts to keep the overall product cost down, but I am annoyed that the light failed for the sake of an extra few pence (cents) for a better switch.

On the bright side, at least the mount fits an older Lidl halogen light we have, so that is mounted on my bike at the moment. But it is nowhere near as bright.
It is OK for general riding, but not really bright enough to illiminate potholes etc :-(

As for the LED light - that's going into my "projects box". Maybe I'll replace the switch when I have time.

An older, halogen, light from Lidl mounted on the bracket from the new LED
light that failed. The halogen light is OK, but it is only half as bright !!!

Living in a "compact" town with decent bus and train links

Map from "OpenStreetMap", but the annotations are mine.
Blue = schools for under 11s ("primary"), Red = supermarkets, Black = train stations,
Green = bus stations, Purplr Line = Bourg Walk bridge

For those of you that want to know what it is like living in a compact town ... (there is a scale, bottom left). To put it in context, the urban area of Aylesbury shown on the map above has a population of in the region of 75000. (new housing is still going up, so the census number from 2011 is like to be on the low side!)
This is where I live - Aylesbury. I live near the big "x" on the north-east side of town.
The blue dots are schools for the under 11s (three are "special schools" for those who, due to learning disabilities etc. need lots of extra support - and tbh, I think one of the three I have marked is for the older kids - so that's two for the younger kids).
The red squares are the supermarkets - EVERY major British supermarket chain is represented in Aylesbury. There are, of course, local, smaller, food stores on top of that.

Gotta be copyright of Chiltern railways, but I'm sure they won't mind me sharing their route map.
the map is about 7 years old, and there is now a second railway station in Aylesbury that is not shown.
It is Aylebury Vale Parkway, which is just a bit further up the spur that leads to Aylesbury.

The two black marks are the two railway stations - both connect to London (Marylebone), which is VERY close to Baker Street and the Madam Tussaurds waxworks venue. There is an alternative route that connects (via a change) to Birminham, and thus, to the rest of the country's rail network.

Map copyright Arriva, showing the Places one can get to with
an "All Zones" pass.

The green square near one of the railway stations is the Bus Station.
The purple line near the Bus Station is the "Bourg Walk", the $12.8 million walking and cycling bridge that was built a few years ago as the centrepiece of the town's cycle program.

Car-Free Cities

I am now a "moderator" on the "Car-Free Cities" community.

Why not share your views with my survey on "What one change would make folks cycle more and drive less?"

We all love cycling.

But what about taking it one stage further, and thinking about whether we should change the "Car-first" situation that exists in our towns and cities.

Does your town have a "pedestrianised" area?
How could it be made better?
Dou you use buses or trains much?

Do you prefer coffee shops to drive-thrus?

Why not share your ideas and experiences with me and a wider audience?

Go on and give us a try!

Update 23 Nov 2014
Another survey: What should YOUR local government concentrate on FIRST?
Are more cycle paths the best priority in your area?
Or would you prefer more trains, or better bus services, or something else?
Let us know over on Car-Free Cities

Recycling by bike?

As a lot of you know, I live in Aylesbury, a designated "cycle town".
Things are slowly getting sorted out to make more and more things possible by bike.

But what about recycling?
A rider can obviously cycle to the bottle banks that are pretty common in the corner of supermarket carparks, and we have a fortnightly "mixed" recycling collection from our houses in the "blue bin".

But what about the bigger stuff, or the odd stuff?

There is a recycling centre on the edge of town (the Rabans Lane site), and another just out of town, on the other side (the Aston Clinton site).

Can I go there on a bicycle to do my recycling?
First place to look is the council website, as they own the sites.
And, indeed, there is much helpful advice available there.

But there is nothing on bikes!

So today I went to the Raban's Lane recycling centre and asked the staff.
Apparently folks arriving on foot need a (free) permit from Bucks County Council - indeed this is hinted at, but not explicitly spelled out on the pdf download the council have on their website.
According to the recycling centre staff a few folks DO already visit on foot, and DO have the (free) permits.

But what of bikes?

The helpful staff said that a cyclist, with or without a trailer, would be treated like a pedestrian, and would need a (free) permit,
The good news is that cyclist are actually allowed at all, as I have heard some distressing reports from other parts of the country that only motor vehicles are allowed into their local recycling centres, with apparently no exeptions or exemptions.

How much does a bike cost?

How much does a bike cost?
There is a price that it is sold at, but is that the real cost to the buyer?

A lot of it is about priorities as well as wealth.
Anyone who has a mortgage or a loan and thinks themselves as having money to spare is merely choosing one thing over another, rather than spending "spare" money.
(same goes for buying motor vehicles and holidays when you also have a loan or mortgage!).
Some would suggest increasing benefits to be had up to about £1000 ($1600, 1200 Euro), then rapidly reducing benefits beyond
Indeed, one would expect the planners of the cycle-to-work scheme (a tax-subsidized scheme in the UK to assist commuters to buy bikes) have reached a similar conclusion, given that the scheme is capped at the same £1000.

However, is not the real test of a bike's "value" the opportunity cost?
What else could have been bought/paid?
How much in health/fitness/mental health benefits will be generated?
("satisfaction"/"happiness" I have included in mental health, as a severe lack of either often results in a decline in income)
How much money will be saved by not using other transport methods?
Will the bike save time, and how much is that time worth?
etc. etc.

I actually have the finance for just about any bike - but buying one would not change the way I ride much, and the "true" money cost would have to factor in the extra interest payments I would be paying my mortgage as a result!
A cargo bike would be nice (like the Pashley Mailstar I borrowed last summer), but as they are still being withdrawn from service and "consolidated" near me, it is quite likely I can borrow another next summer - so it seems pointless to buy a similar bike at the moment.

A trailer project will be where I am going next spring - taking garden stuff down to the recycling centre is a job for which we currently have no realistic alternative than a motor vehicle - and I want to change that. Since we live in a town with fairly decent cycling infrastructure, it seems a waste not to use it more!

How can I justify spending money on building a trailer rather than buying a new bike?
Well, the trailer is going to be quite cheap to build - I already have 4 twenty-inch wheels and an assortment of tyres (two from my old folder, and two from a worn-out freebie bike I was given that I stripped for parts).
A bit of wood is not that pricey.
Imagination is free :-)
And it will allow us to offset another cost - that of using a motor vehicle to go to the recycling centre.
So it really won't cost that much.

On the mental health side, I am as much a "wage slave" as the next man, and feel as drained by the corporate horse-manure as the anyone else, and a modestly priced construction product, when completed, will certainly makes me feel good, and using it will make be feel even better.

So next time you read that advert for the latest/greatest bike, just think about what it will really cost, beyond just the "sticker" price, and how much extra benefit (if any) all that money will buy.

Commuter issues: staff bike parking

We popped up to IKEA in Milton Keynes yesterday, and we were suitably impressed with the locked compound there for bicycles owned by the staff (workers/colleagues/whatever).
 

The covered, locked, "staff" bike compound at IKEA Milton Keynes. Creme de la Creme of bike parking!

Not every employer is thoughful enough to install a covered. locked, bike compound for the staff!
 

The three-quarters covered bike rack where I work. Although not "caged" they are not in a "public" area, and general site security has been improved in the last few months. Most of the rain is kept off, but a wet saddle is typical in heavy rain.
Yep, that's my bike on the right, with the pannier.

The uncovered, but "caged" bike racks in the centre of town for the staff that work for the county administration
(Buckinghamshire County Council). Note that three former car parking spaces now provide space for nine+ bicycles - and even in the pic shown there are seven. A few council staff also park in a secure secret underground carpark (obvoiusly covered!) that hardly anyone knows even exists. OK, so I've been down there a few dozen times, but I can't tell you where it is, or it wouldn't be a secret!

Yardwork and hardwork.

Not much cycling to report from me recently :-(
Across the Summer, while I was enjoying myself riding, the jobs at home were backing up (isn't that always the way!), and we are due to refinance our home loan just after Christmas.
So I'm still cycling to work every day, but not much else.

I have a minor job for a large company (FTSE 100 aka "blue chip"), and there has been a lot of work recently, and since I get paid for overtime hours, I have been piling up a bit of money for the future.
As some of you will know, houses in the South-East of England are frighteningly expensive, and we still have a home loan for about £100K (about $160K, 120K Euros), for a modest two-bedroom house. When we bought it just over nine years ago (our first house!) we agreed a price of more than a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS! Very cheap compared to London standards, but then again, we live about 40 miles from the centre of London! But it's a nice place to live: "Quality of life in Aylesbury Vale ranks as one of the highest in the country. And if you ask the people who live and work here what’s great about the area, they’re likely to mention the balance it offers between town and country, its sense of community, schools and low crime rate."Anyway, it is certainly NOT a big house with a big garden - it is a late-1980's "rabbit hutch" with "cardboard" walls and a "compact" rear garden,
Those of you familiar with the advert that ran of British TV featuring Fry and Laurie, where a flat is described as "compact and bijoux" will know what I am taking about :-)
It is a nice little house, but like all houses, things need a bit of work now and then.

Our (small!) rear garden had an area of wooden decking, and it was rotten in places, and too far gone to make a repair economic, so we ripped it out, with the plan of replacing it.
For a pair of amateurs like me and Anna, even ripping out the old decking was a major job in itself!
While some parts were so rotten, they fell apart when kicked, other parts were pretty solid (and heavy!).

Then there was the actual rebuilding job.
The owner of the house two before us has built the decking himself and had made a couple of fundamental errors, including screwing it to the conservatory wall ABOVE THE DAMP-PROOF COURSE.
So we vowed to "do it right".
What did we (me and Anna) know about construction?
Not much!
So a lot of research went on before we even started.
We decided to use concrete pillars to mount the deck on to avoid screwing it to the consevatory wall.
But neither of us had ever worked with concrete before.

the main foundations and wooded structure for our decking

So more research, then finally, just give it a go, and see how it turns out!

Anyway, the whole project has been going on like that -
slowly!

But we are getting there, and although our work has been painfully slow, we are getting pretty good results.
We have also managed to fund the entire project from my overtime at work, so we have taken no debt on at all to pay for it, so that's got to be good.

That's the main part of the job done - just the edges and the flower bed to sort out!

Just think of all that sawing etc. as "cross-training" :-)

On the refinancing front, we think we have that sorted out as well.
We were expecting the usual long (as in 90 minutes) financial interview from the bank, and me having to collate and bring sheaves of payslips etc, with me.
Lo and behold, the bank seems to have introduced a "quick and easy" refinancing option for existing customers who just want a straight refinance (no changes, no increases etc. etc.).
Just a quick internet form, click a button, and they send out a paper contract to sign and return.
Done that, and now I am just awaiting final confirmation.
Seems a bit brief for a loan of $160,000 !!!
So I checked with their helpline number, and was told that they were not altering their risk, instead they are essentially just altering the details of my existing loan.
Hey, ho.
The long and the short of it is that the new deal will save me about £3000 ($4800) in interest payments over the next two years.

A bit of financial planning is always handy. The blue line is the amount remaining if we had kept our original 2005 mortgage to term.
By the Autumn of 2012, we had got slightly in front of schedule, and the red line is the predicted amount remaining from our re-financing of that period. The mortgage term is longer, which is why the line is flatter, but the payments are also smaller, which allowed us to get to ...
Our most recent re-financing deal, which is the green line. The gap above the start of the green line and the red line above it is a measure of how much we have overpaid in the last two years.
We have a number of small financial investments maturing in the next five years, or so, too, and that gives us the purple line, which is hopefully what we will achieve.
When dealing with banks and loans, one might say that "a penny saved is tuppence less in interest!"

So what has all that got to do with bikes?
Well, "all that" is why I have not been doing much mileage recently and not spending much time on cycling forums ("communities").

Don't worry though, I haven't "gone off" cycling!
And some of that money we will be saving on the home loan finance package will be used for a substantial upgrade to Mermaid next Summer!

A New Section of Cycle Route

The new Western Link Road links the A41 and the A413 on the North-West of Aylesbury, in South-Easy England.
A wide dual use (cycle and pedestrian) pathway was built adjacent to the road as part of the project, and both the pathway
and the road opened at the same time. With a 2.2 km stretch with NO SIDE TURNINGS OR JUNCTIONS (!!!) this has become instantly popular with Strava Athletes, some of whom appear to have sneaked in to the construction site, as they have posted results BEFORE the route was officially opened!

The new route joins the Berryfield housing area with
the Buckingham Park / Weedon Hill housing area.

The new route gives a MUCH safer pedestrian and cycle route for the
children living in the Buckingham Park area to get to school (their school,
a nice newly-built one, is in the Berryfields area)

A nice new bridge crossing the lower river/flood plain area between Berryfields and Buckingham Park.

 As well as the cycle infrastructure provided by the road itself, it also seems to have lowered the amount pf peak hours traffic in the central area of the town by a bit as well, which is an additional bonus for cyclists and pedestrians. However, the roads at the end where the new link road comes out on the A413 (i.e. Weedon Road, Douglas Road and Oakfield Road) have become more busy as the traffic that has diverted North from the town centre rejoins the existing road network to continue their journeys,

End of Summer

Past the Equinox now, and Autumn is well underway.


It has been dark on the way to work for a few weeks now, but I am enjoying the light from my new headlight.

It was quite a Summer - first there was the
London to Brighton Bike Ride on old Post Office bikes.

Then I rebuilt Mermaid

And I did my first "century" ride

On the "Home Front", I have a new, larger, shopping pannier,
which means I have been doing my biggest trips to the grocery store too!

So, all in all, a great, and varied, year, with the other main highlight being when I broke the original cranks on Mermaid, and used a set of short 152mm cranks from a "teen" bike as a stop-gap fill-in until I got the parts for the rebuild of Mermaid mentioned above.

Add caption

Wonder what else I can squeeze in during the next three months before Christmas?

Playing with Velo Viewer

Many of you will have heard of Velo Viewer, a useful little program/utility/"app" that provides additional features that supplement a Strava account.
I started trialling Strava in the Summer, and I find Velo Viewer to be supportive of my efforts, and therefore I am more likely to ride more as a consequence.

The main feature that Velo Viewer offers that improves Strava is the idea of relative performance.
Strava tells me how I have done in absolute terms (10th place, or whatever), while Velo Viewer also gives me a relative score based on how many other folks have ridden that section.
Is second place amongst five riders better than 20th of 50?
Velo Viewer answers that question.

Veloviewer also does a nice little "summary" score, just taking the best quarter of your non-downhill rides (the cut-off is actually - 0.25%), and averaging them out to produce an overall score.

My segments, ranked in order of their Velo Viewer score.

You can compare this score with your friends, even those in other cities and countries.
So I can see how well I am doing against, for example, a rider 200 miles away.
If a little friendly competition results in more riding, then that sounds like a good thing!

The reason only the best quarter of the qualifying scores are used is that if a rider goes for a long ride (say 100 km or miles), then the rider will be going through a lot of distant segments at a "steady" pace, while a local rider can just go out and treat each Strava segement as a short sprint in its own right.
The analogy would be like comparing 100 meters running track performances with marathon running - many of us could run a particular 100m section of a 26 mile course rather well compared to a marathon runner doing the whole course, but what does it prove? It would also encourage folks NOT to run longer events, as their "summary" scores would be worse as a result!
THAT'S why Velo Viewer uses just the best 25% of scores.

And on that subject, my recent 100 mile ride really took a chunk out of MY Velo Viewer summary score, but at least I can "work my way back up" by selectively sprinting enough local sections, without worrying about the sections more than 20 miles away (where, of course, all the top spots are held by local (to them!) riders doing selective sprints)!

There are lots of other features I don't use quite so much, like an Activity Wheel, a "Heat Map", slope analysis, a 3-D segment visualisation, a segment list sortable by a number of factors (such as distance, location, leaderboard placing, slope, maximum speed, % behind the KOM etc. etc.) AND with various filters that can be applied (e.g. hide all the downhill segments). There are, of course, a lot of other little features and analyses that can be displayed as either a table or as a chart, and the feature list just keeps improving as the program is updated and expanded.

So there you have it - Velo Viewer is a useful little tool to allow you to get more out of a Strava account.

But as it is a small, private, "enthusiast" project, don't be afraid to make a donation to help with the running costs. How about donating, say, ten bucks if you really like it, and use it a lot?
Too much? How about five bucks then. Don't get much for five bucks these days!

What about me?
Did I put my "money where my mouth is"?
Yep. I made an online donation via PayPal.
For the amount of hours of pleasure I have had (and intend to have in the future), it is a small price to pay!

Now I just need a decent weight/diet tracker that integrates with Strava ...

Update: 13th December 2014
Now that VeloViewer is going "Pro" with MUCH reduced functionality, I an not expecting to be using it much longer.
I can no longer whole-heartedly recommend it to you.
If it does something you like and need, then good.
But for me, it is just not worth it, unless some major extra functionality is added, such as a decent weight tracker.

Out and about - another four bike sightings

Going Dutch in Oxford - a bakfiets makes for a substitute for a small motor vehicle.
This one is a bit like a bike with a big wheelbarrow at the front, and can carry
passengers or cargo

practical, efficient, transport for a lady with two trailer passengers

Not seen one of these before.
It's a 15-speed Gitane Glacier, in a poor state of repair, but still in use.
Gitane was one of the big French manufacturers, along with
Motobecane and Peugeot.
"Back in the day" riders such as Hinault and LeMond rode
Gitane machines in the Tour de France.

You're never too old for a bike (or in this case a trike).
A gent in Oxford enjoying a ride in the city centre.
The rear basket is a handy way to get groceries as well!

Mermaid's repair/rebuild

Bike components wear out.
Bits get changed as time goes on.
Mermaid had developed several faults after I broke both the cranks, so it was time for some major repairs.
While I was there, rather than just substitute "like for like", I made a few upgrades as well.
A new pair of tyres, too.
Schwalbe Marathon Plus, naturally.

New bike lights from Lidl

New bike lights from Lidl. Rated at 30lux/1watt for the front, and a fifth of a watt for the rear.
They don't look that bright in the picture because I am using a 4W LED table lamp only about
15cm (6 inches) away to illuminate the photograph!

Went to the Lidl cycling promotion today.
Got a set of new lights for the winter.
1 W front (rated at 30 lux), and a 0.2W rear.
It seems to throw a decent beam up the garden, even though it isn't dark yet.
As I do most of my "night" commuting on an off-road cycle route, that'll do nicely!
There is also a 30/15 lux high/low power button on the headlight that I'll need to fiddle with, just to see what it does :-)
The lights come with "disposable" batteries, but the instructions say they will work with rechargeables too,
So when the included batteries need replacing, I'll be fitting rechargables!
The headlight even has a recharging socket on the bottom! (but no charger in the pack),
I guess it is the same pair of lights being packaged in a number of different ways to fit more than one price point!

Anyway the beam is noticeably whiter and a good bit brighter that the 2.4W halogen light we bought from the same store a couple of years ago, which, iirc, was rated at 15 lux, rather than the 30 of the new unit.

Update: 1st November 2014
When the "standard" batteries included in the pack ran out, I put four 1.2v NiMH batteries in the light instead.
And it works!
Although the nominal voltage to the bulb has dropped from 6v (4x 1.5v "alkaline") to 4.8v (4 x 1.2v NiMH), it has no effect on output.
I rather suspect that the 6v battery input was regulated down to a similar level to the 4.8v input anyway!

Now for the second test - can I recharge the NiMH batteries IN the light, using the charging socket on the bottom, and an old charger I found at home?
Yep, that works too!
I have a 6v, positive centre, charger that came with a haolgen headlight I bought from Lidl a couple of years ago and it works fine.
(I also have an even older 7.5v charger that came with an earlier light set from Lidl, that isn't suitable, and, very sensibly, Lidl have put a different "tip" on the cable of that one, so it won't fit into the lamp's charging socket anyway!)
To date, I have recharged the NiMH batteries twice so far, both times "in situ" (that is to say, without having to take the light apart).
Takes all night to charge, though, but that was true of the halogen light set that the "old" charger came from, too!

So my earlier guess was right - the front light from this set IS exactly the same as one that would be sold with rechargeable batteries and a charger (at, presumably, a higher price point!)

So if you have a 6v +ve centre charger or a universal charger with a variety of tips) then this light is even better value, as the included batteries can be swapped for four rechargeables, and it works fine, AND the batteries can be recharged without taking the lamp body apart!

One other thing, although the (plastic) mounts could be a bit more robust-looking, they are fine for the price this light is sold at, and the front mount has a useful "pivot" feature, so it can be swung a bit to the left or right, which is handy when coming up a cycle path next to the "wrong" side of the road, and one doesn't want to dazzle other road users.
The rear mount is a kind of clip round affair, which is pretty adapatable in what it can be mounted to - much more than most of the cheap rear brackets whic seem to only really fit a seat post. I have strapped this one to my rear luggage carrier (which is where I like my rear light!)

So all in all, 10 out of 10 for value!
as for durability, only time will tell, and I will write a proper test review when I have used it a bit longer.

But so far it is a fabulous light that only cost me in the region of 10 bucks (about 6 or 7 pounds)

Update: 23rd November 2014: The front light doesn't work anymore. Grrr!