Generic Touring Thread

http://3ennyj.tumblr.com/post/143287276200/thirty-hours-to-goa-part-one

So I've been invited to a birthday in Sardinia in late June and am thinking about cycling there - my initial route was just straight through France to Marseille and then take a ferry I'm trying to think of something a little more exciting but no longer than that distance (<1,000 mile). So which of these options so far do you think is the nicest for cycling?

1. London to Marseille (750 miles) -> ferry to Porto Torres -> Porto Torres to Cagliari (150 miles)

2. Paris to Rome (900 miles) -> Ferry to Cagliari

3. Paris to Barcelona (600 miles) -> ferry to Porto Torres -> Porto Torres to Cagliari (150 miles)

4. Fly to Berlin then cycle to Rome (900 miles) -> Ferry to Cagliari

Any other suggestions/opinions of which would be the best for cycling?

Paris Rome means a lot of mountains.
Paris Barcalona is pretty flat (ish)

I'd go for Paris Rome, get some big mountains in the legs. Plus piazza and coffee in Italy.

Cool I was leaning towards that route, any suggestions for a route through the Alps that goes in that sort of direction with lots of good climbs?

Depends if you come down France and tben across alps. Of go through Switzerland and tben into Italy.

Just don't take this route, it's brutal. https://www.strava.com/activities/313351033

I'll help you with a route, if you decide roughly how much climbing you want. Ridden most of that area. Also Swizerland is super expensive, so keep out if saving money!

http://3ennyj.tumblr.com/post/143335052480/thirty-hours-to-goa-part-two

thirty hours to Goa - part one

Thirty hours to Goa was a ride of epic proportions in every way and an experience like no other for me and Jason. Covering 615 kilometres in 30 hours of saddle time and 36 hours of total ride time in three days on brakeless track bike, my steed the Cinelli Mash Histogram, while Jason was on his Focus Culebro.

So the idea of doing a bike tour was on my mind ever since I got back to India last year. The furthest I’d ever ridden was probably some 50 kilometres in Dubai. Endurance was never my thing. Daily commutes on the track bike was the only bit of cycling I did and I was just one year into my adult year of cycling. I was hooked. In love. Feelings similar to smoking your first joint and falling in love. (I still feel the same, nothing’s changed) Nonetheless, Jason and I planned our first “long distance trip” a ride to Makalidurga, which was around 74 kilometres from home. It felt so good to ride far out of the city into this unknown place (to me). There was some suffering involved and Jason did suffer too, he rode an under-geared single speed Btwin. The next “long distance trip” was a ride to Nandi hills with the boys. Looking back, things have improved a lot to where I am today. That day I did suffer. Climbing up that bloody hill with no gears on a 48x17 ratio was fucking painful! We called it quits on our way back when my tyre blew up near Decathalon. The idea of doing a long distance trip weaned away after these two rides. Funny how priorities change and life comes along. LBB was born. There were the everyday commutes. Commutes were laced with bouts of racing against cars, bikes and autos. Meat versus metal. Such a high. Cigarette smoking. Lots of ganja and those compounds from the organic chem lab. Lets not get into details but I was fucking going berserk. Meanwhile the idea of that long distance trip kept cropping up. There were these long ass holidays in between, Independence day, Diwali, and a couple others I can’t recollect. However nothing materialised. The next thing you know its the end of the year and you’re already in December. By now the idea of that long distance trip was reaching boiling point. Something had to be done. Jason and I decided we were riding to Goa. This was confirmed over a couple of chats on our Whatsapp group. Facebook status updated. Shoutouts made to folks near and dear. Shit just got real. We were riding to Goa! T-minus 10 days and we’re off. Usually people plan trips like this way in advance. Do some sort of training (mental and physical). Do a bit of route recon. Talk to people who’ve ridden out on the route. Errm we did no such thing. We did plan to do a ride to the toll booth and back, but that never happened. Instead we were partying real hard. It was December, can’t blame us now can you. Christmas, birthdays and a whole lot of awesomeness was happening. I still (can’t) remember Christmas night. Jason had second thoughts if I was really going to make it for the ride. 27th December 2015 was D-Day. To summarise things, I did not have a rack, a helmet, a GPS device, no route map and we did not have a confirmed room in Goa as well. Goa in December is absolute madness. Overpriced rooms, drugged/drunk tourists and frustrated locals. Where we really going to make it to Goa? On 26th with the worst hangover in my life I started getting shit done. First up was heading to Decathalon to buy spares. Tyres, tubes and a spare jersey with Jason on his KTM. I had messaged Pavan a few days earlier if I could borrow his Thule carrier for the ride and he was more than happy to help me with it. Next up was planning the route. Since we both have ridden/driven to Goa route planning was simply restricted to figuring out the biggest town we could stop after every 200+ kilometres. We planned a three day ride starting early morning and wrapping up before the sunset. Chitradurga, Hubli and Betul, Goa, these were the checkpoints. Next up was riding out to Crankmeister Bicycle Works to meet Pavan and get the Thule fixed. Nikhil helped me out and got that sorted. Next up was meeting Akbar who had lent me his tent and helped me buy bungee cords to wrap shit up on the Thule rack, a quick stop to Shivajinagar and 90 rupees later, we had a couple bungees enough for Jason’s bike and mine.
http://36.media.tumblr.com/340090433612f34c3e5bdfdb32955134/tumblr_inline_o642rwQiVg1u7v6dp_540.jpg
I wrapped up my bag and the tent onto the rack and planned to ride back home via JVV (Jal Vayu Vihar) to test the bikes handling. Jason and I bid adieu. Boy o boy, riding a brakeless track bike with 18kgs of cargo on rear rack changed the very characteristics of this machine. It felt like a truck on two wheels. Although I was running a 48x18, the bike felt like a 48x14 while braking in simpler words it felt like I was doing 120 kilogram squats every time I braked. Thoughts were rushing through my head, will I really be able to pull this off? Am I pushing myself on this. Goa on this bike? No brakes, no gears? May be I should drill a hole through the fork and get a front brake, just in case. Like I knew there was a crazy descent coming into Goa at Mollem. I finally did reach JVV and met the boys who saw my bike all setup with the rack, backpack and the inverted stem. Shit just got real they were saying, “Kill the scene bro”. Now I didn’t own a bicycle helmet at this point in time. So the next thing to get was a helmet. Shariq was leaving for Ooty the following day and Jason was kind enough to pick up the helmet from Shariq’s house and drop it off at JVV. We did some last minute checks and called it a night. The plan was to leave JVV at 0500 the next morning.
Day one.
My alarm sounded at 0330. I had hardly slept. The excitement of heading to Goa on a bike, I really cannot explain that feeling. Or may be I can. It’s that feeling you get before you get into something really exciting, like a new job or flying to new country or meeting your lover after ages. That’s the feeling. I could barely sleep. Now I hadn’t packed my bags, nothing. Everything was a mess, shit was thrown all over my room. Clothes, spares, bungee cords and what not. Before that I called up Jason and we fixed our time to meet up at JVV at 0445. The clock was ticking. I had to shower, pack and get the fuck out of my house and hit the road. The one thing I’ve learned being on the move, is how to pack quick and how to pack effectively. Rolled up a couple of tee’s, beach shorts, couple more tee’s, bibs, jersey, laptop, chappals, turkey towel, toiletries, spares, pump, some chikkis and voila I was done. I packed up my bag in 15 minutes flat. A quick weigh in and the bag was just north of 16 kilograms. I also had Akbar’s tent which weighed some 5 kilograms. I decided to drop the tent and just carry my bag. Quick shower, bibs and jersey on and I was ready. I bid adieu to my folks who were already up as both mom and dad took Blazey boy for his early morning 0430 walk. On my ride out to JVV I again saw them and waived to them goodbye. I was at JVV on time. Jason was already there waiting for me. We checked our bikes one final time took a photo of the bikes and hit the road. Fuck we were actually riding to Goa!
http://41.media.tumblr.com/61e787f32da81cacef2dad34fb2f9a01/tumblr_inline_o642ug2WF41u7v6dp_540.jpg
Not far out, we were climbing up one of the flyovers heading to Peenya Metro station when I suddenly felt my bike slow down. The strangest feeling of brakes being applied and the bike came to a complete stop. I got off the bike and realised that the rack/pannier or whatever you call it had slipped down and was now touching my tyre. This was one of those WTF moments. For some good reason I did not carry a set of allen keys and the multi tool that I had did not have the length to fit into one of the many screws that had to be tightened to keep the rack at an optimal position. I jostled with it and tried to pull it up, placed my bag on it and the damn thing just slipped right back down. We were in a fix with another 600 kilometres to go. Thoughts were running through my head, is this a sign not to go. Argh fuck it! So I walked down the flyover next to parked truck and asked one of the chaps there if they had an allen key. None of them understood jack shit. Jason and I were wondering what to do now. A little more fiddling around and we decided we’ll head to Tumkur and get this fixed. What I also decided was that I’ll carry my bag like a backpack till then and we hit the road again. It was some 24 kilometres down that I realised I left my cheap shades on an electricity pole next to the truck chaps while fixing my bike. I was gonna ride my entire trip to Goa without shades. We saw a Shell petrol bunk and Jason signalled me to slow down to give them a check if they might have an allen key set on them. I jumped the barricade, ran into the bunk and asked the guy there if they had an allen key set. He came back with a sheepish smile saying sorry sir, the person who has access to the tools has locked the room and will be at the bunk only by 0900. The time was 0730. I ran back and we decided we’ll ride out to Tumkur and find a local bike shop and get it fixed there. My back had already started to ache by then. Just as we were about to start out, a guy on an Activa made contact with us and enquired what we were upto and where were we off too, this was just the start of a hundred times we were asked the same throughout our journey to Goa. So this guy actually wanted to help out and said we can drop by his house a couple kilometres inside and use his allen key set. I somehow wasn’t quiet convinced and Jason too. We thus decided we’d hit the road and aim for Tumkur. We must have been about 15 odd kilometres short of Tumkur when we pit stopped near a trucker stop, one to refuel and two cause my back was aching like a bitch carrying that weight around cycling, when I suddenly saw a cyclist pass by us with a pannier and what not. It took us a good few seconds until we both realised oh fuck!, that’s a touring cyclist, he’s definitely going to have a tool kit/allen key set with him. Like predators wanting to catch a prey, we quickly jumped on our bike and chased this cyclist down. I finally caught up to him and we pulled over onto the side barricade. While Jason made conversation with this Btwin rider who was riding out from IISc to Mumbai via Goa on a completely self sustained solo effort carrying a tent and what not, I was busy trying to figure out how does this rack tighten up. A couple of pulls and jostles here and there, I got the pannier up by a few millimetres away from the tyre. With the bag all secured and harnessed I could see the pannier slipping real slowly. I gave one final turn to tighten the screws and the rack was now in position. Exactly a two millimetres above the tyre. We all hoped for the best, did our customary goodbyes and we were off on the road again. While riding I was thinking, may be I should have bummed his allen key for the way. Just in case I needed it to tighten the rack. It was too late already. Now one of the things about riding long distance and semi solo is that if you have music it makes the ride more worthwhile. I mean that’s why headphones were invented right. That’s the reason cars, busses and even Harley’s come equipped with stereo systems. They give you company. Some thing to cling on to until you reach your destination. I for some great reason in the melee of this hurried, hangover’d last day hustle forgot to pack my headphones. I am a semi introvert at times and I guess that mode got switched on for this journey. I was loving the ride. The strain off my back. The beautiful December wind. The changing paint on the road. The sound of my chain grinding away as I pushed across the road. Since I was in this purist mode with no GPS data or cyclocomputer, I was just feeling the ride. I must have been doing around 28-30kmph. Jason and I kept taking turns pulling each other at a decent pace until Tumkur bypass, our first checkpoint. Now that I had the rack issue taken care off, we weren’t going to head into the city to get the rack fixed. We stopped at a road side chai shop, got a couple biscuits, some chai, replenished our water stock and we were on the road again. Now Jason has this bloating problem and this was really affecting him. I was hoping that this didn’t get worse as the journey progressed.
Our plan was to reach Chitradurga by sundown. Our ride plan was as such that we’d stop every 50 kilometres for about 5 minutes, hydrate, refuel, stretch and hit the road again. By now Jason and I got separated. I took lead while Jason was behind. We planned to have our next stop for lunch around 1. I remember passing by this place called Sorekunte, and for some reason I just couldn’t stop laughing at the name. Sore cunt was the only thing going on in my head. Felt a little mad for a while I suppose. There’s something about cycling. You notice the smallest of things on the road since you’re obviously travelling so slow. I remember the last time I saw a big rather long dead snake was when I was a little kid, in Tezpur, Assam. I remember the poor chap just laying on the road ahead of us. A fact unknown to a lot of people, Tezpur is a land of snakes. May be not the city but the Air Force station sure was. You couldn’t sleep at night. The only thing you’d here was the rattling and movement of these nasty creatures, probably one of the reasons I hate snakes. The bloody things gave me nightmares. While passing Sorekunte, I remember seeing this snake crushed to death. This poor guy must have been crawling along the sides of the road when something ran right through the middle of it. He was split in half. It was for the first time I felt sorry for a snake. RIP lil fellow, big fellow. The carcass must have been 6 feet long. Our next stop for lunch was just short of this toll booth. I shot a quirky video called “look ma, no hands no legs!” while approaching the toll booth. We completed 100 kilometres and stopped for biryani at this vegetarian restaurant. It wasn’t biryani, looked more like veg pulao. Nonetheless, with the “biryani” down the gut a few photographs taken, Instagram updated, folks on the Whatsapp group updated and we were off to Chitradurga. Another 104 kilometres to touchdown.
http://40.media.tumblr.com/bde02539710116979881fb0a996a0ab9/tumblr_inline_o642w3wL2u1u7v6dp_540.jpg
So this was a feeling that Jason and I were going to feel for the next three days. The first 100 kilometres doesn’t seem that bad at all. I mean you’re excited, its the morning, the sun is glorious and you have a sense of immense gratification when you finish a 100 kilometres. May be that’s just human emotion a sense of victory. 100 is such a fuck all number. It gives you that false sense of glory. OMG I just touched 100km/h. OMG I just got 100/100 in math. Fucking 100. Hate that number. The reason I’m saying this is, the next 100 kilometres till you reach your destination is hell. It’s kind of hard. It’s that time when you realise, why in the name of fuck am I even doing this?! Why is it so hot? Why why why? Riding/driving on these highway roads feels amazing right, on bikes or cars may be. Smooth tarmac, high speeds and good music. Well we were riding cycles, at around 25km/h, on rolling terrain, with the sun right above us and no music! It wasn’t that hot actually, it was alright. The road were beautiful. Smooth as fuck. Traffic was a bare minimum. I have never felt safer on a road than on the highway to Goa. With the wide road construction project there is some goodness that comes out of it. Us cyclist have the far left shoulder that no one steps into. You have your usual villager folk, who ride their two wheelers on it, or some other villagers who come in the opposite direction on that very shoulder, but they’re cool. They’re harmless. The one thing they do, do, is stare at you. They’ll check you out top to bottom. I now probably have a faint idea of what women feel like when dudes ogle at them. Every village we by passed on NH4 had the same model of construction when you hit their by pass. It felt like one of those deja-vu moments when you pass by them. Sometimes it felt like I was doing loops. The only gratifying thing was to see the board saying, Yalayuru, Manangi Thanda etc etc. I knew we were making progress. The number to Chitradurga kept dropping from 100, to 75, to 50 and then 30. I was now 30 kilometres away from Chitradurga.
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The land of windmills. I knew what windmills meant. A shit load of winds. Headwinds, tailwinds or crosswinds, that was something I had to figure out for my self. By now the time was around 5PM and the deadline of finishing up at 6PM/Sundown was getting close. Jason was somewhere behind. I knew he would be fine. As I approached Chitradurga, I whipped out my phone and took a shot of the windmills right in front of me. And I was now heading right onto some sweet sweet headwind. Boy riding your 185th kilometre of the day, the first time you’ve ever touched such a number and to be greeted by the sounds of wind just pushing you back is something I tell you. I loved it. I was now some 10 kilometres away from entering Chitradurga town, when the road curves to the right and you enter this valley of sorts. And suddenly the winds stop, they change direction and you now have this glorious tail wind just pushing against you like you’re a sail. The ride down that valley sort of road was just awesome. I must have been touching 40km/h at this point in time when I unclipped and bombed by way down into Chitradurga. My goal was now to find us a lodge to crash for the night. I was scanning the horizon looking for boards that said, lodge, hotel, rooms, something. I couldn’t find jackshit on my descent. There was an opening in the valley like road and I entered a bylane. The first thing I saw was this board that says lodge. It looked like a textbook lodge. Shanty, basic and cheap. Just what I was looking for. I make contact with a guy over there and tell him we’re two of us looking for a room for a night and we’d like to keep our bikes with us, as we’re riding to Goa and the last thing I’d want is to keep my bike outside and have them stolen. All this spoken in bits and pieces of Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam and English. The lodge guys somehow got my point and got us a 3 bed, room allocated to us on the first floor. The room looked clean, had a TV, a bathroom and an Indian pot. The last time I took a dump at an Indian pot was back in boarding school. Nostalgia moment looking at the pot. As I was settling down I called up Jason and told him that the stay for the night was sorted and gave him directions on how to find the lodge. It was right on the main road itself along the valley like section. Shaanti I thought to myself. An end to day 1. Just as I was going to step in for a shower I got a call from Jason. Trouble. He had a flat and he was 10 kilometres away from Chitradurga. Now Jason did not have the tools nor was he comfortable changing tubes. The plan was to now meet Jason and get him back to the lodge. I quickly put my jersey and bibs back on, wore my chappals, and went out looking for an auto. I found this bright pink looking auto guy for some reason and told him the situation. Now unlike your regular Bangalore auto guys, this chap was such a gent. He said lets go quickly before it gets too dark to get Jason back here. When i told him we came from Bangalore on our cycles and that we were on our way to Goa, the look on this face. I remember seeing Jason next to the VRL depot on the other side. We made it. Unsatisfied with the shitty veggie biryani had for lunch I discovered this biryani shop just a few hundred meters away from our lodge. A quick doobie and I was ready to belt some mutton biryani. We ate like animals. The way your body craves food after a 205 kilometre ride is just amazing. Three cokes, one and a half biryanis later I could say I was satisfied. We asked the owner if there were any breakfast joints open for the next morning as we were looking to start early to reach Hubli, which was around 220 kilometres away. He gave us directions to this apparently awesome idli-dosa joint near the LIC building which we later did find with no hassles what so ever. We trotted back to our room, I washed up my bibs, jersey and socks and we called it a night. The next day was going to be one interesting day and little did we know.

Quite the read that. Sounds awesome.

Side-note- several years and only 2 micro tours to my name since starting this thread...
Me and a friend are going to do a micro-micro tour along the green route to Paris. Gonna have fun rather than 24hr it (which was original plan). He'll be on Pinkhouse, I'll hopefully be on Greyhouse- and I can't wait... Bring on early June.

That looks brutal, did you sleep much/at all?

I'm keen to avoid Switzerland. Ideally I want an Alpine section I could complete in 1 day so I don't have to spend a night in the mountains so I reckon something like 15,000-20,000ft.

Think 4h first night, 3 2nd and none 3rd. Rode liek 36h straight!
Was mental, fun too.

Watched the giro on the first day, so loads more stopped time than real.

30,000ft more elevation that this years TCR from Clemont - Croatia, in same distance ;)

I reckon come through Jura, then cross from switzerland into italy between turin and milan, then head through tuscany. Seems simplest way.
Crude eg.

Or this would be nice...

2 Attachments

If you take the route similar to @skinny suggested, and hit the alps around Geneva you can cross over the Great St Bernard pass between Switzerland -> Italy and then take the Aosta Valley which is gorgeous.

I walked over it in November and there's a monastery at the top at 8000ft you stay at for cheap, it is spectacular and well worth the visit. Also the place that St Bernard dogs first came from.

a photo from I took from the front door of the monastery when I was there

Thanks guys, come up with this:
https://www.strava.com/routes/4780057

The ferry across geneva is nice.

5 - Cycle london to nice. 4hr fast boat to calvi. cycle to bonifacio. 1 hr crossing to santa teresa di gallura. cycle to wedding.

Anyone have any good recommendations for a wild-camping spot on the downs (north or south downs) - ideally on a ridge with a nice view for the morning?

Cheers

What pressure should one run Schwalbe Marathons at? The outfit will probably weigh 95-100kg including me.

How long is a piece of string?
Depends what width tyre, the road surface (or lack of) and the weight distribution. Probably if you're on rear panniers then assume 35/65 front/rear, 45/55 if you're a front loading guy.
There's a plot here you can look at for suggestions on pressure based on those considerations. If you Google this topic (or summon @edscoble) you'll find many sides to the argument.

Thanks. That's a very decent starting point.

I camped here a year ago:

Should be able to see the sea in the background in a clear day. It´s pretty close to Seven Sisters cliffs (between Eastbourne and Seaford) and I actually found it using Street View.

Here´s the link: https://goo.gl/maps/KmNp2Tg28752

That looks absolutely spot on, thanks! Planning on bivvy-ing so may find somewhere slightly less exposed, but the view and general location looks perfect... cheers

Has anyone tried touring using just a european road map with pages you might need torn out. Or is there some sort of cycling specific version of this available?

I will be doing some touring but without specific destinations, I quite like the idea of just pootling along and stopping for lunch to look at the map and see what looks nice etc, maybe google a few things nearby.

Part of me just wants to follow a compass and my nose, with a map as back up. But I don't really want to end up on shitty roads regularly or cursing my romanticism when I end up in shitty places...

I haven't used a garmin before, mainly used my phone with google maps etc in the past in the uk when riding or touring, and would have this as a backup.

So I'm cycling from Birmingham to London this coming weekend to collect a tandem. Any advice on the best route to take?

Are you riding the tandem on your own? I wouldn't want to do that for that far - Virgin let you take tandems on the pendolino trains? It's how I got mine back from Manchester.

Fortunately not, the stoker and I are getting the train early early saturday morning, and hoping to ride it back in one day, looks to be about 120 miles..

I plotted this ride last year to get out to a mate's stag, would cover you 70% of the way I guess and the route was lovely! http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/678057496