Shimano Ultegra Triple gear shifter

Is it your left hand (front) shifter? Seems to shift ok without a cable but won't work once there is a load on it? If so, try the following;

Undo the mounting bolt so you can access the back of the shifter (you can do this while the brake and gear cables are still connected). Next take a small allen key, think it's a 2.5 or 3mm but I'm not totally sure, and tighten up the small silver hex head you can see in the middle of the back of the shifter unit - that holds all the important bits of the internals of the shifter together - hopefully, your shifter now works fine. You might find you need to do this once or twice more but once you get it nipped up to the right tension it seems to hold.

Hope that helps.

Ive got 105 Triple levers and one of the first things i done was fix a shifting issue as the cable return wasnt working...was just a poor design and a little bit of playing with it/tightening the cable seems to have sorted it however I live in Norfolk...not much need for getting out of the big ring here.

Will find out more when I come back from Ireland.

IMHO the internal gearing mechanism used for the triple is shoddy and clearly designed with the hope that people will rarely use the granny ring.

Yes mine keeps going back for repairs fortunately the company who manufacture my bike are very helpful but one can not say this about shimano, am contemplating weather to ever use shimano ever again as they appear to be very unreliable.