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It the noise on the line that's knocking your speed down. You'll have to sit tight and have a meaningful conversation with the wife or do the washing up. If the engineer who arrives is very young & has a nice clean hi viz on, your in trouble.

On E-Bay No 291787514817

if leaving it standard, you'd be be better with an MT65 than a Type 9, as although first is still a poor ratio for a Westfield, the rest of the gearbox is much better. However, you'd have to be mad , and will forever curse yourself down the line if you miss the opportunity to get a gearbox with a "good" set of ratios in there. It transforms how the car is to drive. In fact, many find it the best single upgrade done to the car. I'd agree, for road use (mainly), a dog box wouldn't be for me either. And these days, I couldn't live with a straight cut box either, not for the road. But BGH, SPC etc still have some great gearbox options with way better ratios and either proper helical or semi helical gear sets that will not deafen you!

Paul, I swapped my broadband router also with a TP-Link, specifically the TD-W8970 (300 Mbps Wireless N Gigabit ADSL2+) The difference was night and day. I'm guessing its about 6 years old now so there will probably be a refreshed / better model by now. In terms of wifi, whilst the TP Link improved things dramatically, our mobile phone signal had historically been terrible (both network and wifi) I pressured EE for a "switch box" which now gives us 5 bar signal strength in the house and garden, whilst before we had to hand out our front bedroom window to catch half a bar. The TP Link soted our broadband and wifi issues, the switch box revolutionised our mobile network strength.

Weather permitting I'll be coming along, I won't be going to see the poppies but I'll meet you there. Anybody else from Yorkshire wanting to tag along??

Water ingress somewhere along the way between you & the exchange is always possible. Overhead lines end up underground or in a cabinet eventually. That'll get your line crackling and will play havoc with the frequencies used for ADSL. Try looking at the admin pages on your router and see what it thinks about the internet connection - may be some clues there. FWIW, I had a line fault at my old place - it was completely open circuit where a nail had been put through one leg of the line by a clumsy contractor. I didn't realise for about 3 weeks due to two factors - a) I have no friends so the fact the phone never rang wasn't unusual, and b) the ADSL kept on working and I didn't notice it had slowed to about 2Mbps rather than it's usual 8Mbps or so. Because the fault was 'dry' there was enough capacitive coupling for the ADSL to work. If I hadn't seen it myself, I might not have believed it. Put in a new drop from the overhead line termination box and all was well again.

Thanks for posting a proper link!

Really Really looking forward to the Panda & Smeg Bonnie Scottie Tourie now

The crackly line is the issue here. It won't effect your voice calls as such, but broadband is a lot more sensitive and 'Noise' is an indication of the quality of line.......it will stop your broadband straight away. Your right to go through the process of elimination swapping out micro filters and routers if you have them but I suspect in this case there is nothing wrong with either, or, I bet your internal wiring. My money is on a problem locally to you, aggravated by as you say, recent wet weather and storms. I don't trust their testing of the line from their end method, I've had that proved wrong in the past before. It needs an engineer locally. Somethings got damp I reckon.

I suspect the inconsistency of reports about printer reliability on wifi is as much to do with operating systems and drivers as it is to do with wireless per sé As a network engineer (and I'm pretty good with wireless...) I see my fair share of good and bad wireless, good and bad printers, good and bad PC's and tablets and good and bad users. The ONLY thing that removes most of those reliability factors is a wire.

Fantastic pics Geoffrey! Makes me realise how few I took in the Alps but then again the weather gods were on holiday in Scotland and left the Trolls in charge of Europe it seems!

If the line is crackling I thought tag was a sign of defective supply wire to house.

Gave up on the ebay engine.... oil pouring in through stem seals, why do people try and diddle others on ebay.... what a right C$%t Anyway, another plan in motion....... fighting time though! all going well though and ill be there

So - more tales. After a good night's kip at Konstanz, we needed to divert to the nearest bike accessory/dealership to try and get a Hayabusa battery for Mick's ailing Dax before heading off on a long run across the b roads and mountains to the Alps proper. My mate Tony - the keeper of 'the route' - eyed up my Sat Nav and agreed we were programmed to go in the right direction. Now, my Sat Nav wasn't really a Sat Nav - it's an iPhone with both CoPilot and Google Maps on it (and I had 500mb of data per day to use) - and it had led us all a merry chase on more than one occasion by now (including the night before sending us to the wrong Hotel Sternen 30 miles away), causing delays and frustration (mostly me being frustrated i have to say - the lads were very good at not lynching me). So I was also keen to get to the bike dealers to see if i could grab a decent bike (ie waterproof) "proper" SatNav that we could actually load pre-planned routes onto (which the %$&*ing iPhone simply won't allow you to do and Google maps constantly tries to be helpful and re-route you!). So we follow the iNotNav to the bike shop - and of course it takes us to the wrong place - cue yet another round of 6x cars try to do an about-turn on a narrow street scenario. This had happened quite a few times by now and was getting tiresome and leading me to compare the iNotNav with a Frisbee. However, it would be a very expensive Frisbee, so I refrain from launching it. After a bit of time at the shop we emerge with new Li-Pol battery (weighs nowt!) for Mick, a Garmin Zumo 390 for me and a waterproof suit & assorted exhaust clamps for Chris. I think there were a few more purchases too - the shop did brisk business for sure! Again, the bikes were off long before us as we were fitting parts and doing roadside MacGyvering so we once again set off relying on my iNotNav due to no time to load up the Garmin. We decide to stop off for coffee after an hour or so of fighting through little towns and lots of traffic and then set off once more. After a few miles we are back on single track roads that looked just like the other single track roads we have used and then as we pass over a rickety wooden bridge it dawns on me that we are going back the way we came! With nowhere to do a six car shuffle it takes a few miles to finally pull over and admit defeat with the iNotNav - so I ask Peter to be Red Leader as I can't follow my useless bit of pants tech another mile! Now - yes, i know you should not rely on SatNavs and should use proper maps, but the plan was always to follow my mate Tony (with proper maps & routes and knowledge) and use SatNav as backup. We turn around and head over the rickety bridge yet again and follow Peter's TomTom Rider. However, little did we realise that he'd set it to not only 'avoid motorways' (good) but also put it in "find windy roads" mode - so while we were heading in the right direction, we were also going through every little town, village and farm road on the way! Needless to say, it took quite some time to eventually get anywhere near our destination - and despite the fact that we did get to blat along some rather lovely roads, it was getting late and our old buddy Mr Torrential Downpour was waiting for us. We finally neared our destination and when we pulled over at a toll plaza I asked Peter if he had the actual hotel programmed in - which was a 'no' - so I used my mate's "location" sent from his iPhone and got it to plot the destination. Well, you know what's coming and yes, you are right - the iNotNav took us close, but not quite close enough - then my mate then phoned and said he could see us and we were heading the wrong way. So yet another 6x car about-turn up a single track lane ensued! Then to top it all, my mate then said we were heading the wrong way AGAIN - so another about turn was needed. By this time I had had it with technology and was about as approachable as a Russian football fan with a Kalashnikov. After I'd wrung out my wet pants, showered, changed and sank a few beers, things were looking slightly better and so it was off to bed to see what the next day would bring!

A few pics from Saturday.......

The problem I have with all this eco-drive, is the disproportionate focus on cars. OK in city centres it may be a major problem for air quality but elsewhere I am sure there are bigger energy gains to be had in lots of other ways. Growing up my dad would never turn the heating on once the clocks had changed ... it was summer now !! I would say most offices and houses that I visit are continuously heated to 21 or 22'C. How many children are taken to school by car when we used to walk, how much energy is wasted on packaging etc etc. So because cars are an easy target to regulate and the problem is solved by someone else they get too much focus on them IMHO. Also if we are going to focus on cars .. let's make them lighter and smaller .. not just electric. David