Tuesday, 17 May 2016

A note on the bikes and the kit

The bikes. In view of the great distance, the anticipated mixed terrain  and the necessary rear panniers, hybrids were a better bet than road or mountain bikes. Mine is a fairly light 6-year-old German bike, a Focus Arriba and Cath's Californian Marin Kentfield is about 18 months newer. It was rather higher geared than her previous Marin and a couple of years ago I replaced the chain ring to help with hill climbing. Both bikes have 3x8-speed Shimano drive trains and V-brakes. They are better than entry level hybrids but not very expensive and they held up very well. The chains needed oiling every four days or so and the dusty conditions led to a build-up of oil cake in the rear derailleurs by the end of the trip. The plastic or composite pulley wheels in the rear derailleurs are now quite badly worn but still performing. The left hand gear shift for the front derailleur on my bike became very loose about a third of the way into the trip, as a result of failure of the lock nut. I tightened it up but it would not hold and eventually it dropped off on our way across Brittany. By that stage it was clear that the remainder of the journey would not have too many steep gradients and I manually set it on the middle chain ring and made do with 7 gears for the rest of the trip, the highest gear failing to engage. I ordered replacement Shimano gear shifts the day after we arrived and I have now fitted them. Apart from that my back wheel is slightly buckled but not much and after so many roots and ruts with heavy panniers and a crash 4 years ago on an old railway line in County Durham, this is not too surprising. We are leaving the bikes here in France and going back by train.

The panniers. Cath has a pair of first rate and completely waterproof Ortlieb Panniers, which have an excellent anchor mechanism and carrying handles that make them easy to take on and off. There are also optional shoulder straps. My Altura ripstop nylon panniers are cheaper, still pretty good but not really resistant to sustained heavy rain, so I pack the contents in a series of plastic bags and this seems to work OK. We only got thoroughly soaked once and one of mine shipped a little water but nothing much. My panniers clamp on but the mechanism is not completely reliable and really extreme bumps can cause the left hand one to jump off. Perhaps I need to make some adjustments. The carrying handles are rudimentary but I lock them together with the Kryptonite D-lock and that provides a handle and prevents them from falling off, if they do jump free. We also use a metre long sheathed steel cable to fasten the bikes to lamp posts and bike stands, as necessary.

Clothing. We both had polyester fleece base layers and fluorescent yellow waterproof cycling jackets that we have been using for some time. These were very effectively waterproof and windproof, the latter being a particular requirement on this trip. We both wore Lycra leggings with gel cushion seats and we both have gel saddles. Zinc ointment cream was needed for a few days, while our calluses developed but saddle soreness was not really an issue for most of the journey. I wore Altura cycling shorts with gel-cushioned Lycra shorts once we crossed the Loire but I did revert to leggings after getting very cold in the violent winds on the approach to Toulouse. We both have Sealskinz gloves but mine are not insulated enough for colder weather and I used Berghaus mitts most of the time, often with a thin pair of cotton gloves inside, having poor circulation in my hands, made worse by gripping handlebars. Cath has Specialized cycle shoes without cleats and I wore 10-year-old Salomon waterproof and breathable sports shoes with a toggle lace that folds away in a pouch. Both performed outstandingly, although Cath had colder feet. Socks were mainly the excellent Endura cycling socks. Underwear was nylon and after some reservations, it turned out to be fine. We also took t-shirts but the weather was too cold to wear them until the last day when I wore one under a long-sleeved shirt. We took a couple of items and one other pair of shoes for wearing to eat out in the evening. We only did this after we had washed any clothes and hung them up to dry in the hotel room. We managed to dry everything overnight, which was a relief.

Other kit. Simple picnic items proved very useful - plastic cups, a knife, forks and spoons, a tea towel and a waiter's friend. A cool bag would have been useful but the weather was on the cold side and we managed with a couple of plastic containers with snap-on lids for butter and cheese. Basic bike tools were fine supplemented by the Leatherman multi-tool that I bought 12 years ago. This has been invaluable, especially the narrow nosed pliers, screwdrivers, nail scissors and file. A short bungee cord has had a variety of uses. Cath marked up and cut down the Michelin maps of our intended route, kindly provided by Annie Mitchell with a map case and a challenge to do the trip in the first place. I also used a Garmin Etrek 30 GPS to check against the map. For this I downloaded a French cycle map based on Open Street Map provided by a German guy who runs velomap.org and this was very helpful. We also used Google maps and Open Cycle Map on Cath's iPhone. I used the excellent ViewRanger app on my iPhone to calculate daily distances travelled using GPS but not mobile data. Nor did I download the many map tiles that would have been needed for the trip because of the data cost and the space that they would have taken up. It is always useful to have multiple channels to check directions and progress. The other source of information that proved essential was Trip Advisor, which we used to select hotels, B&B's and restaurants, very reliably. Airbnb proved much less useful because in France we were only booking at most a couple of days ahead and the delays and uncertainty in hearing from the host didn't really work.

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