A fine collection of rides in your extended neighbourhood, Adrian!  A lot of familiar names in your "climbfinder"    A steep ride out of Litton Cheney, for sure.

The Ottawa Valley, where I live, has a collection of climbs on both sides (Ontario & Québec) of the river.  Before I joined the Church of Rohloff a decade-plus ago, I rode an Eclipse, a nice ti-framed bike which was the house brand of a local bike shop.  I spent a decade trying to find workable gear ranges. (I made my life more complicated by doing medium-heavy touring on a light-medium tourer.) 

I finally settled on 24 - 34- 44 at the front, and 12 - 34 at the rear.  This was on a 9-speed bike, with a Shimano T-105 groupset. And, I stopped using the Eclipse for anything other than day rides and light overnights...

Cheers,  John

I noted above on rack bolts, fender bolts, I use thread locker.  A lot of bike shops do not even have any thread locker in the shop, that is not as common as you might think.   Water bottle cage bolts, a bunch of other fittings, I grease the threads first.  You do not think of grease as being a good way from keeping a bolt from vibrating loose, but it actually is pretty good at that because grease is very very viscous.

There's some useful discussion of grease in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqiTtlVo-xA (starting at about 10 minutes). My conclusion from that is (i) lithium-based grease where low friction is needed (eg bearings) and (ii) a calcium-based grease where high friction is needed (eg on threads). The guy highlights that most branded bike greases don't say what's in them.

Thank you all for the advice, think I'll start with replacing the pads with Koolstop thin line salmon or dual and see how it goes before adjusting the straddle cable... lots to learn!

Powder coating can be a bit of a minefield, there's a range of both coatings and techniques, I've seen some really exquisite paint like finishes and some that would be disappointing on a garden gate. Ideally you need to go by personal recommendations, preferably from those who had it done some years ago. It isn't even the case that paying more gets better, there's a local company that works primarily with train components who's work is the smoothest deepest gloss, but you have to accept the colour they're using and even then they're not always interested.  If you're lucky and meet those criteria, and do the frame prep yourself, it's very cheap.
I use Maldon Coatings, well twice, I chose them on the basis of seeing several frames I was impressed by, bikes and motorbikes.  They do things a bit differently, an alkaline paint removal to lessen the need for blasting which when needed is done with softer plastic beads, phosphate bath which also cleans out the inside of the frame, then a frame inspection, followed by epoxy primer, then as many top coats as you've paid for.  If you want decals they'll lacquer over them with a polyester two pack, or you could choose a clear final coat and decide on the level of gloss. Then all work carries a five year anti corrosion guarantee.  You pay for that of course, I think the last frameset cost £160, without going overboard with extras.  I'm not saying I couldn't have got a good job done cheaper, but I was happy to pay the extra for the certainty.  They don't want you to do any frame prep, apart from it being clean, they use specific rubber bungs for the treads, it doesn't leave the abrupt edge you get from using bolts.
https://www.msbpcl.co.uk/our-work/bicycles/

Thorn of course have moved away from powder coating, on to a DuPont two pack polyester wet finish.  I've been impressed, where it gets a knock, it tends to result in a scuff rather than a chip. And the depth of colour is excellent, the photos don't do it justice.  If I were refinishing another frame and I was wanting it to look its best, I'd have this done, or at least a polyester top coat.

If you do fit decals will you have to spray lacquer over the top?

Usually decals on powder coated frames are not lacquered over.  even on new bikes such as Surly or even up market ones like Shand.  Thorn were a bit of an exception, not sure how it was done, but the lacquer wouldn't have been as tough as the powder coat.  You can get clear PC, but it requires a temperature that's likely to burn any decal.