Approaching the 25th Anniversary of the Cycle to Work scheme, the question being asked is, has it been successful? Introduced in the Finance Act of 1999, (The Green Transport Plan) over 200,000 Employers, have signed up to the Scheme and it is estimated that well over 1,000,000 people across the UK have saved money, on a bike and/or accessories for use when cycling to work. The Rules, were initially quite complicated, but they have now been eased, to make the Scheme far more attractive. As a Salary Sacrifice Scheme, the cost of the equipment is recovered, by the Employer, from the Employees Gr ..read more

The 2023 Men’s Tour Down Under was a road cycling stage race that took place between 17 and 22 January 2023 in and around Adelaide, South Australia. It was the 23rd edition of the Tour Down Under and the first race of the 2023 UCI World Tour. The race was won by the Australian pro Jay Vine of the UAE-Team Emirates, after taking the lead on the third stage of the race and holding the race leader’s ochre jersey to the finish. Vines’ winning margin over runner-up Simon Yates of the Team Jayco-AlUla was eleven seconds, and Team Bahrain Victorious’ Pello Bilbao completed the podium, sixteen seconds ..read more

Heart Patients Complete 100 Mile Cycle Challenge Wigwam® Holidays is currently running a campaign called At Home, Outdoors – a video series telling stories that showcase extraordinary connections with the great outdoors. The latest episode; Electric Cranks, features an inspiring group of heart and lung transplant patients from Wythenshawe Hospital who use electric bikes to aid their recovery and well-being. In June, the cycling group rode 100 miles along Hadrian’s Wall, from Bowness-on-Solway to South Shields in order to further pioneer the effectiveness of the LVAD and raise awareness of thos ..read more

One of my all time TV show is back on our screens in January. Series 17 of the Apprentice will officially start on Thursday 5th January with a new batch of aspiring ‘wannabes’ showing off their (non)existent business skills in an attempt to secure a £250,000 investment from Lord Alan Sugar. This year, the 18 candidates, will be thrown in the deep end right from the start, with an episode which will see them travelling to Antigua where they will be tasked with creating and selling excursions to tourists. With subsequent shows, candidates will be creating their own cartoons, cooking and selling ..read more

As another year comes to a close, it is time to look back at some of the interesting high points of 2022. The weather at the start of the year was very mixed with temperatures about normal. Some nice bright days and some dull and miserable ones. In other words – an average winter in the UK. We had an early Spring and Summer with a few hot days. However, as usual, the North West missed out on the really sunny days, so very few outdoor miles were added to the year’s total.  Autumn lasted until early November, when suddenly we were freezing and the rain was unceasing. By early December we we ..read more

After a lot of Autumn Promises in the way of update for my Virtual Cycling ‘games’, not a lot has been delivered. So I have been looking further into my options. CADEsport: they came up with exciting developments, and a lot of new ‘stuff’… however, when it came to downloading and running the game… my laptop just wasn’t powerful enough, and there were just too many errors. So, CADEsport had to be abandoned. VirtuPro Cycling; another possible contender, with an update in October, and another one early November. (This date was totally missed and we are still awaiting the latest update). Certainly ..read more

After 5 long months, the new version of the VirtuPro Cycling Game was ready for release. The “soft launch” of version 48.6.0.0 was available to download from Tuesday 18th Oct. 2022. As per the instructions given, I deleted all the old VirtuPro files, and continued with the installation. The files were 7.4 GB – and was very slow to download – the install was obviously ‘throttled.’ At about 70% and 50mins into the download, it basically crashed with the message – “An error occurred while preparing update. Failed to prepare task. The remote name could not be resolved: cdn-veloton.cyanide-studio.c ..read more

CADEsport v1 was eventually ‘soft launched’ on Saturday 1st October, with a full launch to be Thursday 6th October. The launch invitation was limited to followers of CADEsport who had supported their Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and members of their various Facebook Groups. Overall, the download and installation went fairly smoothly – a total of 240mb of files were safely installed. Once installation was completed, registration was the next step, along with a choice of running the programme in Low Definition; High Definition and 4K. (Currently 4K is not available.) Choosing Low Definition ..read more

The Tour of Britain has a proud heritage going back to the Kellogg’s Tour (1987 – 1994) and even further to the Milk Race (1958 – 1986) and back to 1945 for the Victory Marathon. Originally the race was for amateur riders only and it wasn’t until 1985 that a mix of professional and amateur riders took to the roads. The current professional version the Tour of Britain started in 2004 when the winner was the Colombian rider Mauricio Ardilia of the Chocolade Jacques-Wincor Nixdorf Team. There have only 2 British Winners of the modern Tour of Britain, Bradley Wiggins in 2013 (Team Sky) and Steve C ..read more

It’s Friday 1st July 2022, it’s cold, wet and windy here in Copenhagen; and the 2022 Tour de France has just started. This annual sporting event is being contested by 176 riders from 22 teams; over a distance of 3350 kms (2081mls), ending on the Champs Elysees in the centre of Paris on Sunday 24th July. What does this, the 109th edition of the race hold? Over 24 days of racing, there are 21 stages; of which 6 are Flat stages, 7 are Hilly stages and 6 Mountain stages. There are also 2 Individual Time Trials. However, no Team Trial this year and this was always my favourite stage. This year ther ..read more