Long time no see

@belugabob I've been in a few different hotels in recent years and never had any difficulties with keeping my bike in my room. I always take a couple of newspapers with me to spread out under the bike to stop any drips of oil/water etc getting on the carpet. One hotel even had a nice timber post in the room, for me to lock my bike to. One of the hotels had a secure lock up room for bikes, but were happy for me to keep the bike in my room because it meant I didn't have to drag away a member of staff to get my bike at busy breakfast / check out time. When I went to stay in N Yorks for the 2019 World Champs, the only inconvenience was breakfast being crowded because the Italian Junior women's squad's bikes were being stored in the main dining room! The only slight downer is looking like a bit of an eccentric as I carry my bike down the stairs and through reception in cycling kit.

Another one for the "just because we can doesn't mean we should" pile for me I think, my cheap (£35) photochromic glasses that I use for commuting at dawn and dusk may take 30 seconds to adapt fully to changing light but they start pretty much immediately and I hardly ever feel that they are too dark or not dark enough; if I hit a patch where they really are too dark, sudden tunnels et cetera, one quick hand swipe (same as with these) moves them down to the end of my nose so I can look over the top of them. No precious battery resources wasted, nor the price of a decent secondhand bike.

Great report, sorry, yet another great report, about LTNs which the MSM will instantly leap into action, pens poised, recorder buttons pressed, camera shutters primed, to ignore completely. It's simply not controversial enough. The lurid claims of the anti-LTN mob, of congestion, pollution, danger, plague and pestilence, will however, be front page news. The media in this country actively works against the best interests of the population, with a few notable exceptions: the ITV expose of Reform was good, very good.

This is the arsehole who insisted the Brexit would make the country (and world) a better place. The sooner we stop reporting on any bullshit that leaves his mouth the better.

Undoubtedly this is clever technology, but I wonder about the safety aspect of having to take your hands off the handlebar to switch modes. I get that the rapid response rate improves things to a degree but if I go from sunlight to shade on a poor quality road (of which there are many, as we know) do I want to take one hand off the bar in order to lighten my glasses….? Photochromatic may be slower but will get there without intervention (and at far less than half the cost).

@Rendel Harris - perhaps there is a gap in the market for hyadrationpak.com?

@kingleo I'm sure they may be but Lime's UK profits last year were around £4M; a standard 27-bike docking station costs around £100,000 installed and they have around 50,000 bikes in the capital. £185M would be a big ask for a £4M p.a. operation, even if you could find 1800+ suitable sites, which would be next to impossible.

@belugabob At a certain Scottish branch that shall remain nameless just in case any of Premier's brass are reading we turned up shattered with filthy bikes, when we asked the manager if there was somewhere we could clean them he said, "Ach it's just mud, it'll hoover off in the morning, up ye go!"

@Rendel Harris, I would have thought that the e-bike companies' owners are mega rich; they can afford to put lots of e-bike docks in place. The problem is that they are an outstanding business success; they are too successful, from nothing a few years ago to what we see now.

With reference to a hotel where " You can take your bike right into your room" ... Premier Inn have been doing this for years and therefore have had lots of our custom, on multi-day trips. Not once has any member of staff batted an eyelid - in fact, on one occasion we asked if they had paper towels to clean our bikes before we took them inside, and they shrugged then gave us 2 enormous fluffy white bath towels (needless to say, they weren't white for long.