Touring Equipment

Get a deore 9 speed derailleur.

30/30 should have been enough for the worst of hill though.

Planning multiple day hill reps on De Muur?

Anyone care to recommend me some water bottles for touring? Need to be at least 750ml.

I normally have 2x jet valve camelbacks and a 1.5 litre metal bottle in pannier. If your using purification tablets you will want a bottle that's a bit larger or you will be wasting a lot of tablets

Goddamn, I want to go touring.
Yesterday riding Pinkhouse around, it was unbelievably lovely, and such a nice break from training on the CAAD. I freaking love that bike, really need to sort out the spare back wheel.

Thanks, will check them out @mule
LEJOG starting in 2 weeks.

7ven recently did end to end and only took one bottle it was easy enough to fill it up at garages/chip shops/people in their garden/church grave yards!

I've done some light touring this summer on my road bike. It was a great experience so I'm looking to build up a more proper touring bike. Does 50/34 up front and 12-32 in the back sound good enough for medium loaded touring?

I reckon that's plenty, I'd take it on a trial ride fully loaded first to see how it felt, I would recommend a smaller chainring says 48t or even 46t since you're not going to go lighting fast to need the 50/12 combo.

48t or 46t up front would, as you say, probably better. Like many others I'm really liking the new Shimano 105 which would be the reason for the 50t up front. As I understand it it's rather difficult to find a 48t or 46t for that chainset? Would I be better of going with a 10 speed group instead?

Atleast if you're gonna build bike with disc brakes, you're basically gonna have to go 10-speed because there ain't much 11-speed disc hubs available. (Those few that are, are damn expensive).

You're right, and I am planning on disc brakes. However, I did find one from Novatec that isn't too expensive. Might not be great value though, I'm not sure.
http://www.bdopcycling.com/Hubs-D352SB-11.asp

It's a bit annoying that there ain't more to choose from. Especially now with the 105 coming out with such a great pricing.

Hope disc hubs can be converted to 11 speed as I later learnt, great news for those who run hope/ZTR wheelset.

Kinesis Crosslight disc wheels are 11sp compatible and a light wheelset for £270 seems pretty good:

http://www.kinesisbikes.co.uk/products/wheels/crosslight-cxdisc

Yeah hope 11sp freehub.

Yeah these seem good, not for me though since i need my hub dynamo action 8)

---but for those that don't, these could be the answer.

Sorry, not an equipment related question, but search isn't working for me. Anyways. Me and the missus have 5 days off later this month and want to go on a little mini tour. Am thinking of riding to newhaven, ferry to dieppe, then coastal route or otherwise over 3 days over to dunkirk, then 5th day from dover back into london. Good idea? Should we be doing it the other way round? It's our first tour so all I'm doing is essentially looking at google maps and figuring out what we can cover with 50-70 mile days.

5 days is short. Why not got train somewhere in uk and ride there for 5 days. Saves wasting time on ferry and uk is beautiful.

Pick somewhere you'd like to see.

Doesn't matter whee you go, it'll be fun and an experiance

Hovis, have you looked at the ferry times? They are a bit shit from Newhaven. IIRC, it is two sailings a day - late morning and late evening. Depending on your pace, it could be a bit of a dash for the morning or a waste of a day for the evening. I took the evening one last year and it's fine. If I did it again, I'd book a cabin - I attempted a couple of poor hours kip in a chair. We then just rode straight to Paris. If you wanted to save time, you could ride down sharpish after work, catch the late ferry then have a ridiculously early start in Dieppe for your first day. HTH. Joe.

I agrees, 5 days tour is much better spend in the UK, I and @kati took the train after work on a Friday and stay the night at our destination to go touring the next morning.

Agreed. Get the train up to The Lake District or Scotland.

Don't forget Wales!

I'm guessing hovis will be using the tandem so trains in the UK aren't that accomodating. If you can make it work dieppe or la havre to St malo is a really good ride.

Some trains were able to take a tandem, the Virgin Pendolino as long you got two bike ticket (for obvious reason), I saw a tandem in the bike storage spaces, the only problem is that the owner need to take all the panniers off in order to shoehorn the tandem into the train.

Call operator first beforehand.

Good shout on getting a train to save some time, never even considered it. I do want to leave the uk though, so am thinking of cutting out the ride back to london and replacing it with an evening train.

Will look into la havre to st malo. Have you done that route before @laner?