London to South of France this summer...

Battery will die.

GPS struggles to beat 5 hours and if you're using it you want to be able to trace the route.
It's a shame they haven't made dynamo chargers for them really.

Maps are better, they survive all the weather and are easier to lay out on bar tables and plan route changes on.

o.k two dyno hubs plus two bottle dynamo, bit of electroics andmake your own charger.

Lots of Audaxers swear by GPS (Garmin) and fellow evil genius Kaspar von MetroKontrollar has one for his Dartmoor rides. He swears by it, but I'm with David. I used Microsoft Autoroute and it is blinding for finding mad routes and giving you kilo counts, it takes all the fun out of it.

Like the man said above, sometimes it's cool to just follow your nose and get a bit lost.

Oh shit, I must be negative street-cred by now.

Phew! That's better.

Buffalo Bill Anyway WTF am I posting about map-holders on a fixie forum. Whoops! There goes what little remained of my street-cred.

Nothing wrong with mapholders, no good riding fast in the wrong direction :)

For a tour like that a gear around 68" should be ok and if you have a flip flop hub stick a lower gear on if it gets mountain like.

68" is the popular gear for long distance Audaxing on fixed, most hills that you can't get up on that you can walk just as quick anyway.
Cheers Steve

"Nothing wrong with mapholders, no good riding fast in the wrong direction :)"

...and positioned properly on your bars you can hide your speedo and not watch those long miles ticking by, one by one.

South west of france is one of my favourite areas, Bordeaux is a great city and the Vendee is just beautiful

If you have the time, cross the pyrennees (only a little part) and head for San Sebastian in Spain, it's the most stunning city you'll find. Almost 270 degree crescent beach in the centre of town, great bars! beautiful girls!

I'm not a surfer, but buffalo bill's right, you'll be spoiled by the roads

i'll be riding in les arcs in august, ragging my hardtail down singletrack (lift assisted) 20k descents

i can't wait

glow i'm thinking about doing some touring this summer too, possibly coming back from bilbao or to eastern europe, thinking of flip flop hub, fixed/free mercx style? any suggestions on ratios?

i love this idea.

Yessir to the devon massive...the only place to go....dartmor is he best..quite likelondon as well..me gonna go and see exeter at wembley tho for the play off final..bet none of you know what i an talking about...safe

Artful Dodger Yessir to the devon massive...the only place to go....dartmor is he best..quite likelondon as well..me gonna go and see exeter at wembley tho for the play off final..bet none of you know what i an talking about...safe

um, that'll be Exeter's effort of gettin back into the football league. I'm from Plymouth so know all about Exeter (Devons second biggest city ;) )

Fixedwheelnut [quote]Buffalo Bill Anyway WTF am I posting about map-holders on a fixie forum. Whoops! There goes what little remained of my street-cred.

Nothing wrong with mapholders, no good riding fast in the wrong direction :)[/quote]

This was what my map holder contained for most of 4 months touring in '05. As you can probably imagine.. I was lost a lot of the time! :D

i

grimbergen, i love that shit, worked in belgium for 3 months and got a taste for it. mmmm beer.

As you can probably guess.. I also am quite partial to the Belgian brews.
cocks head and watches flashback bubbles appear to happier, warmer and drunker times

Cunt

Battery will die.

GPS struggles to beat 5 hours and if you're using it you want to be able to trace the route.
It's a shame they haven't made dynamo chargers for them really.

Maps are better, they survive all the weather and are easier to lay out on bar tables and plan route changes on.

Did anyone use a mobile phone with gps maps, eg. iPhone, G1 or Nokia?
I'm going to cycle from cologne to london and I need a new mobile anyhow.

To do some planning, especially to estimate the climbs and descents, check out www.bikemap.net

cheers
joerg

I think mobiles with GPS get even worse battery time than stand alone GPS.

Sony Ericsson C905 - fully charged to flat in time taken to drive from Bermondsey to Banstead. Oh, and Orange GPS is pants too.

Did you use it the whole time or just at keypoints, to get some orientation?

I better start looking for this map holder...

I left it on the whole time - approx. one hour. I knew the route but was just trying it out as the phone is a new upgrade and the orange maps came as a free 5 day trial.

If you intend to just turn on the gps from time to time to check your route it may well do the trick. I don't suppose you'd want a mobile strapped to the handlebars anyways.

Even when driving to somewhere strange using sat nav I always like to look at the destination / route on a map just to get an idea in my head where I should be heading. Sat navs sometimes seem to take some weird and wonderful routes.

As an aside I also stuck the mobile on the dash and videod my drive home the other day - don't ask. That wiped the battery out pretty quick too.

has anyone done london-paris fixed?

me and texas might be doing london - madrid in a couple months time fixed but with granny gear flip/flop hubs. will advertise on the forum when confirmed