Generic Touring Thread

Any experiences taking the bike on the ferry (Portsmouth to Cherbourg)? Any extra charges? Do I have to book it on advance or can I get the ticket the same day?

There's usually a (minimal) charge and limited availability so worth booking ahead I'd say. I've never had a problem with availability but you probably don't want to start/end your holiday with "sorry, there's no space for you and your bike until next week..."

Brittany ferries has it as an option when you book online.
I presume they charge you extra for taking it.
I'm trying to book with them for next year but you can only seem to book 5-6months in advance.

What sort of ride are you doing from Cherbourg? A friend and I are planning on a 3-4 day easy pootle around the D-Day beaches.

Cheers guys! I'll try to figure out the exact date I'll be taking the ferry so that I can book it in advance and avoid any issues.

@Tomo187 I'm leaving London by the end of next month and riding back home to Bilbao across the western coast of France.

I taken the ferry from Portsmouth, pretty painless, but if it rains there is a small bit of cover on the right of the holding queues, roll up to the front as the bikes get loaded first.

Cycling from Paris to Biarritz via massif central next week. Hurray! I'll be navigating with garmin 800 - reckon I'll be okay without routes? Planning to just drop a pin and follow.

Any tips for cycling south out of Paris?

Nice! What's the thermos set up?

You'll be fine. But the garmin can navigate you down some shitty 'roads'. So you need comman sense. I'd plan ahead tbh so I can go through nice places and not the places the garmin deams best. Even if you don't make routes, have a good look at a map before and work out a rough route idea an write down some points to head to and use the garmin as an aid and not the sole tool.

It's great and is brilliant for winter training rides.

http://www.bikebuddy.co.uk

Teamed with a Thermos flask that holds about 750ml.

Cycling southeast or southwest out of Paris there's some nice routes, but straight south it's nothing attractive for the first 10-15km or so out of Paris proper. The river route south along the Seine is pretty ordinary, and takes you through places like Villeneuves-Saint-Georges, which are interesting if you want to see a bit of the poorer side of suburban Paris, but anything but scenic. The cycle route that goes from Vanves/Malakof down to Massy (where it swings east), goes though nice-ish park bits nearly all the way, but it's very broken up and slow, full of walkers, prams and pushchairs, so will take you ages. Most scenic way out would be southwest, you can cycle straight up the Champs Elysees to the Bois de Boulogne, through there and through Parc de St Cloud to Versailles, and down through the big national park area, Haute Vallee, but that's a bit of a detour from straight south. If you want south, I'd say just pick a not too busy road and follow it straight south for 15-20km until you hit forest or farmland.
And agree with Skinny, do a bit of planning, check out roads on street view to give you an idea.

Thanks guys. I'll be leaving Paris around 1pm on Wednesday; do you reckon that path down to Massy will be busy at this time?

If the weather is nice it will probably be full of lunchtime strollers.

I think I'd like to do some touring later in the year, early October-ish.

Thoughts were to ride from London to my girlfriends parents house in Barcelona.

Has anyone On here done this before? Wondering how long it would take and if there were anything I should watch out for/general hints and tips.

Can anyone recommend me a bike?
I was thinking about buying a pompino and doing some fixed touring, but my knees aren't great and I have a feeling it wouldn't get much use - I'm very lazy and would like to have as few excuses to not use it as possible.
Can anyone recommend any frames? I was looking at the Kaffenbach, but I've decided it would also be nice to look out for a nice tourer on eBay as I don't fancy the look of many otp ones. I've always really loved GT frames - are there any good GT bikes that would make a nice tourer. Off road capabilities would be a big plus.
Cheers

GT Grade.

Suffered like hell with my hands last year so I'm looking at some butterfly/trekking bars. Do people change stem when they angle them or back or just go more upright? Girlfriend has wrist problems from a break earlier this year so need something with a lot of options for her too

Like this

Locking up was mentioned a while back. This was the only response:

kabrus.co.uk/xl505.html
around chain, chainstay and a spoke
+
planetx.co.uk/i/q/LOCPY7/sagi­saka-y-7-japanese-cable-lock
through the alarm lock, around chainstay and around a pole or whatever

Anyone have any other suggestions before I go for it? Seems like a pretty solid lock setup to be fair

I'd probably get a longer cable too to protect the front wheel with dynamo

So I’m looking for some advice with my touring build which I will be taking to Istanbul this Summer. My last ride got stolen so, short of money, I decided to build something using spares I had laying around and an old chromoly Raleigh MTB frame I found on eBay.

Photos here:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B02JtdOXmy9eLc
(current build thread: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/251594)

The Raleigh frame came with some late 80s Rockshox which had a tiny amount of travel compared to modern sus forks (about 5cm) - so I was concerned that conventional rigid fork replacements would be too long and send the original geometry out of whack.

After talking to Thorn though, they dug around in their warehouse and found me a pair of out-of-production Raven touring forks, which we hoped would be neither too long or too short. Initially the ride was fine, but my reach was stretched out (think I may have cut the forks too short), so I put on a much smaller 70mm high-rise stem.

2 months ago I then took it for a short tour through Wessex, Somerset and then Snowdonia, and began getting achilles tendon pain early on. I rode through this, until I got to Snowdonia and did my first mountain where it became unbearable. I was then out of action for a few weeks and have been taking it easy since.

The obvious cause of this was having my saddle very high up, which causes you to stretch out your tendons and paddle / tiptoe as you ride. But I’m also worried that the geometry of the bike might be contributing too (it’s one thing to lower the saddle, but to have this happen again in the middle of Romania would be a disaster).

Currently my head tube angle sits at 61 degrees and my seat tube angle at 65 - which as far as I know is very slack, and would cause the bottom bracket to be much further forward from my saddle. It generally feels comfortable, but also I find climbing a little harder than on other rides.

Could the position of bottom bracket to saddle be exacerbating forces on my achilles tendons? Also will it make climbing harder? And what kind of geometry have I created here (ie. is it a monster)?

Any help much appreciated!

Make certain you have these guys bookmarked:

http://www.bisikletgezgini.com/

for most cycle touring needs in Istanbul.

Welcome to my world.

Doesn't matter what I've tried with mine (Same era bike, hence very similar and slack geometry with a huge spacer stack for me) and nothing has really made the bike comfortable. The moment I hit that 70 mile mark, I'll have to get off the bike with every 10 miles to stretch out so I don't kill my tendons/spine.
I noticed that any sort of incline puts a lot of strain on the lower part of my legs, and feet like I'm overusing my calves due to the seat being so behind the BB. Always puts me out of commission for so long..

I have no idea what to do. Trying riser bars one last time, then probably moving to something more appropriate.

Google maps on iPhone does an infinitely better job of routing for bikes than the g800.

In the past we've used the iPhone to plan the next days riding and written the directions on brevet cards rather than use Garmin's routes.

Just found this - http://bedsforcyclists.co.uk/articles/2014/04/13/how-to-plan-a-route-in-google-maps-and-export-it-to-gpx-your-phone/. Garmin x google maps should be perfect right?

Ride w gps is the best way to plan routes. Using google maps background. And then double check the route on streetciew.
Or go onto strava heat map and look there too.

Yeah obvs - if you just want to draw a route there are better tools than Gmaps.

Gmaps knows where quiet roads and dedicated infrastructure is. You can see it when you tell it you are travelling by bike. So if you say 'by bike, how do I get from a -> b' it will most likely give you a good starting point. G800 does not know where this stuff is, and doesn't really know what are quiet roads and what are nasty roads. So the routes it suggests tend to be horrendous, in my experience.