Generic Touring Thread

Got to Wick just after 11pm, camped on beach.
Day 1- Wick - Jog - Thurso 38mi ish. Camped on cliff top in perfect weather.

Aiming to get to Tongue today but anything beyond Strathy will be fine.
Camping kit working fine, my rear mech is playing silly buggers in crawler gears but think I've cracked it.
Pics when I have wifi..

Are you after road or off-road?
I used to live in Ashburton, on the other side of the Moor, so can recommend some routes.

I have booked August 8-17th off work and I'm thinking about doing a little solo tour,

I'm thinking to take a cheap one-way flight with the bike.

1 week of touring, no more than 100-150k per day and It must end at Calais or Dieppe where I can get the ferry back to England.

Does anyone have any route or flight destination suggestions?

Thanks! I'm on a rigid touring bike with camping gear but it'd be good to get away from the roads

I'm doing St-Malo to Bordeaux next week, flights were cheap to bordeaux airport and you could do pretty much the same thing in reverse

Bargains on gas canisters here

Planning my first short tour at the moment, riding from Hampshire to Munich in September.

Plan is to head up to the North of Belgium to see family and then travel South-East through Germany to Munich.

Given myself a month, should allow enough time to be a tourist.

Any recommendations/advice very welcome. A bit nervous but looking forward to it!

We did a tour to just outside Munich with a start up into Belgium a few years back. Words here. I can't offer a particularly informed opinion, but remember the Romantische Straße being pleasant, and the Black Forest being hilly and full of motorbikes. We also followed a river (the Donau) for a while that was very popular with cycle tourists (never seen so many Ortliebs!). The Marne au Rhin canal was ace too. I think my favourite spot of the whole run was an idyllic overnight stay at La Ferme Michel, Issenhausen, just north of Strasbourg.

Day 2 - Thurso - Syre 44 miles
accepted everyone's advice and ignored the sustrans route and followed the river Navar on the B-road.
Camped next to this mission as it meant we could put our bikes in out the rain and steal Jesus's electricity to dry our shoes.

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Day 3 - Syre - Lairg 34 miles
Woke up to rain, rode through an awesome forest and along Loch Navar which looks exactly like the image on a shortbread tin.
Rained all the way to Lairg so we've just given up for the day and going to pay for a campsite so we can dry some stuff.

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Anyone have any experience/advice of touring with a child? I'd like to do something short with my son (3yo) who can either go on the seat on the back or in a trailer. Pros and cons to both but the main one is he can be dry in the trailer if it's pissing it down all day. Not really fair to make him sit in the cold and wet all morning.
We can probably only cover shorter distances (20-30 miles a day) because again, making him sit there getting bored all day isn't really fair.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/286251/newest/

There's a thread for that

Camping at Thurso the other night. Cooked in the watchtower and camped on the cliff.

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Midges and rain can fuck off now.

Haaaaaa! Sorry. Shouldn't. But midges. Great photos though, so there's that.

How does everyone cope with using a frame bag that renders bottle cages a little unusable? I hardly drank anything on the dun run at the weekend because I couldn't access them that easily in the dark.

Or am I already answering my question about trying to access bottles... while I'm riding... in the dark...

I'd keep a bidon in the bag itself so its easy to access, then when you run out swap it around with the more difficult to reach ones.

if you have space in the bag of course

Side-access cages? For example...

I use one of these and have a bottle to hand above the stem:

https://www.alpkit.com/products/love-mud-bheesty

Thanks!

Haaaaaa!

You are a bad person. Midges are never a joking matter.

I know quite a few of the TCR people use a camelbak/bladder inside the frame bag.

I use a side access cage when I've got two bottles on my frame (small frame) and it works fine.

Alternatively the King cage top cap mount. My girlfriend has them on two of her bikes and loves them.
I'm personally a fan of fork mounted cages, but they're not always possible on forks that taper, or carbon forks.
Seatpost is also an option.
I've moved away from using saddlebags so the seatpost becomes another good place for water storage.

Day 4 Lairg - Chanonry Point - 55miles
Sneaky camping on the edge of a golf course tonight. Waiting for the pastel old racists to finish up so we can pitch up. Worth it for this view

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