Porsche 911 (996) Tiptronic - good? Paging TDM!

Yea that's pretty much it, he cycles to work (like the rest of Cambridge apparently!) as does she, and apparently everything else is in very comfortable walking distance. I dunno if that just includes the supermarket and stuff. So the car just sits there, not getting used for most of the time.

Hmm. Cambridge isn't exactly designed to be uber-cycle friendly, it's just evolved that way due to there being lots of them about. There's plenty of cycle-unfriendlyness going on. But yes, it's still great to be able to get around in the way you can there.

You're sounding disturbingly like me, and I'm a beardy cyclist weirdie. Except I'm not really central (rural Yorkshire), but all the shops etc I need are within 1.5 miles of here.

Car gets used for fun things, not utility - not even commuting.

cheers, clive

I bet it gets to the point where he often wonders if he should just flog the car. If I was in that situation and didn't even use my car to go to work, I'd be bloody tempted. Only thing is, for the odd trip away, it's bloody handy, and it's all very well saying "well, you can just hire a car when you need to", but hire car companies either do dull mid-range boring cars, or expensive exotica, or possibly expensive upmarket modern cars. Generally there's bugger all out there that have the sort of cars a lot of us would actually choose to buy on a banger-esque-plus-a-bit budget (i.e. £1k-£3k) or possibly on a nearly-new-mondeo-but-nicer-and-more-interesting budget (like SteveH's current dilemna).

I might start a new thread about this actually.....

My car gets the same use! My mum an dad commute via car, mum used to cycle cos it's only a mile or so, but she only gets 45 mins for lunch and likes to come home, so it was taking a massive chunk out of her lunch hour. So she uses the Arosa now, which to be fair is what it was bought for, she was just gonna use it in winter and to take the dog to the beach. It's a 1.0 and is pretty crap, but it's perfect for that use, as we don't have to care about it too much and can just let abby get into the back and onto her doggy car protector (clips round the front and rear head rests and makes an almost hammock like setup). Dad commutes in the Mondeo, cos it's about 4 miles, down some majorly rural roads, including a monster of a hill you wouldn't wanna cycle up every day.

I am also in rural Yorkshire, just near Filey - where are you?

I'm a big fan of the thinking of that last sentence generally - not just car, but walking as well. I'm a multidrop delivery driver by day, and I'm always working things out to the nth degree to avoid walking as much as possible - i.e. I'll make sure I go down a street so that the house I'm going to will be on the driver's side, and if it's a small package, I'll make sure it's in the cab with me. People think it's 'cos I'm lazy, but it's more the case of that I actually quite like walking as a leisure activity now and again, and I'd rather save walking where it can be in the company of mates and nice surroundings, and not boring work-related stuff. Same with shopping - I hate the fact that supermarket shopping takes up valuable time that could be spent doing more enjoyable things, but I've never got around to properly setting myself up with an online service, nor the whole ethos of not actually looking around at stuff. But I long for the days where I've got everything else organised so that the only times I leave the house are purely for social/leisure activities.

My dad is like, 63, and he does online shopping :-) He uses Tesco, and it's well good, it saves your last weeks shop, and if you bought stuff that was on offer, it tells you whether it's still on offer, cos if it's not you might not want it etc. So he basically just changes what offers he gets each week, and leaves the 'everytime' stuff as it is - unless something is replaced by an offer etc.

We've just found out Asda deliver to us somehow - the near Asda been in Hull or York, both like 50 miles away heh! So, for £4 on a Tuesday, we could have our shopping delivered from Asda, but dad doesn't want to learn it all over again and likes Tescos hehe.

Other side - Settle. I suspect however our definition of "monster hill you wouldn't want to cycle up every day" may vary :-)

cheers, clive

Oy, that's my stomping ground, or was. Still spend a good few weekends down at my folks. If you see someone wheezing along on a metallic green Cannondale, chances are it could be me...