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Cycle Tours / Re: Tentative Tour, London, Edinburgh, John O'Groats
« Last post by JohnR on April 06, 2026, 06:19:36 PM »That said, I have no clue what one stone weighs.My last two years of school plus university were during the main changeover from imperial to metric units. I can think in both and sometimes mix them such as 2 metres of 2" x 1" timber. A stone is 14 lbs (pounds) ie 6.36kg. Look in the shops and you will find items which weigh 0.454kg which is 1lb expressed in kg.
Our road signs never changed to km when the country nominally went metric. The official reason was probably that it would cause too much confusion although I suspect that cost was also a consideration. Some of our old road signs are cast iron so not easily modified (see https://www.countrylife.co.uk/out-and-about/in-focus-fingerposts-and-what-they-mean-235335 for some examples). Petrol is sold in litres while draught beer is still sold in pints and half pints although bottles and cans are labeled in millilitres which are sometimes round numbers and sometimes the ml equivalent of a pint. At least we've moved on from 12 pennies in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound (the money pound (£), not the weight pound) along with some other financial delights such as the half crown and the guinea. The new penny (which doesn't buy much these days is worth 2.4 of the old pennies).

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