Hi, thanks for the link, but these are 2 totally different frame sizes - i am looking for a 585L, and the offer is a 535L.

I am looking for a Sherpa in 585L, so that makes it a Mk2 i guess. For rimbrake and with derailleur hanger, no Rohloff. Frameset only, it needs to be shipped. Thank you, Martin

Weird Stuff Goin' Down

About a week before I made the attached painting, we'd watched the Mating of the Herrings, kippers still at sea, at a large bay further north on the coast. They absolutely filled the bay, and churned it up as predators joined the party and the male fish fought for possession of the females. A week later this is Dunworley Bay, a tiny, tight little bay, a few miles down the coast, nearer darkness than dusk, glowing something unearthly. A Council health inspector who was with us thought that the detritus from the melee up the coast had by some trick of the currents in the Irish Channel been washed into this tiny bay and trapped there, and rotted away merrily. The large dark grey shape near the bottom is a dead predator on the predators of the herrings, or perhaps even another layer up, too big to be seen alive in this confined bay. The grey shape nearer the middle of the image heading for the exit was probably a large sand shark, a scavenger who'll eat anything and is the curse of anglers. Further out the weather was so bad that I couldn't quite tell where the sea started and the disturbed clouds began; it's the first spatial definition you lose when the weather here turns nasty. Closer in, whatever the slimy corruption was lit up the small bay and the cliff like a movie set. The ladies hanging on to my Goretex mountain jacket were telling me to hurry up with my painting because we still had a couple of hours on the road to get home and they feared the wind would blow us over the edge into the eerie muck below. (Not at all unlikely. An Australian friend who came to visit us, despite my warning not to come after the end of September, got delayed by his work for Médecins Sans Frontières and turned up nearer the end of October. He got blown over the edge at the Cliffs of Moher, on the other side of Ireland on the Wild Atlantic Way where we normally took guests after showing them The Burren, an Irish version of a desert -- yeah, truly --, and was saved from a messy death on the rocks a couple of hundred feet below because he was wearing my cashmere overcoat tightly buttoned up, so that when I grabbed the collar and his shoulder it didn't split and he didn't fall out of it, though he had bruises on his shoulder front and back where my fingers had dug in and on his neck where my knuckles had pressed in precisely to hold him in by friction; the coat wasn't damaged. The next year someone put up a rail there, perhaps the gift shop -- you can't sell trinkets to tourists who've fallen over the edge.)

matt you won round one round two will be a doddle.
look forward to photos of your first spin when all is done and dusted.

meself i have near enough all new gear bought just this minute bought a backpack monster of a yoke
ill have to go into training to carry it 
my plan for this year is to load up the car with all my gear and bike head up north do a bit wild camping
thats where backpack comes in, if all else fails (usually does with me )i.ll find a campsite set up tent and cycle the local country lanes.

anyway Matt you'll be in my thoughts my friend have a great year.

anto.

Andre, the two tunnel pictures are actually opposite walls of the same tunnel. One wall is tiles made from children's art, and on the other side, they let the grown-ups play.

Jumping back in time from the cycling road, here are some pics from my last week on tour.

1 and 2   Japan has done an incredible amount of flood mitigation work along many of the rivers. A bonus for cyclists is that a huge majority of the rivers have paths on the dikes. This one went for about 20km along the Chubetsu River, near Asahikawa. (The path along the Tone River near Tokyo spans 230 car free km!)

3  Cycle art along the bike path. This particular path wasn't too well-maintained and right after this part, it became impassible. Luckily, a little bushwhacking brought me up to the top of the dike, where there was a smooth path.

4  There is a famous animation studio in Tokyo called Studio Ghibli. One of their more famous movies is “My Neighbour Totoro”. (Adapted for stage and currently at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London. Go see it if you're there. It's great) A character in the movie is a bus that is a live cat. Someone near the town of Fukagawa took an old bus, decorated with characters from the movie, and put it on an empty lot. Great fun. Totoro is the happy grey marshmallow just above the  bike’s saddle.  I highly recommend you give My Neighbour Totoro a look. The animation is absolutely stunning. Another one by the same studio worth watching is Spirited Away.