any advice on a tour of south france to spain

elinfoot

Hi there !!

A friend of mine and myself are planning a tour starting in the south of france and going through to spain (south as well I think).So I was wondering, to take my bike on a plane do I need any special gear.Also as I'm inexperienced with these types of shenanigans,what do I need to bring.I think we're going to camp so a tent would be a start
Many thanks in advance
Eric

mmuk

re flights - depends on who you fly with, some are happy if you just wheel the bike up, turn the bars, remove the pedals, and off they go. Some, like Easyjet, insist on the bike being fully wrapped. Make sure you know before you go! For everything else, it will depend on what you are goung to do, if camping, yes a tent, sleeping bag etc. Maybe cooking things, maybe not. You have to know what you're doing before you go!!!!!!!

Mike

elinfoot

Thanks mmuk

Probably not going to be carrying stoves and pans so it'll be things like bread with ...
I don't want to be carrying lots of things that i can do without.It needs to be light weight.
My friend says we'll be doing 50-70 miles a day.Is this doable ? we'll be away for 3 weeks so i'm just thinking if its sustainable

waltho bum gravy

50 - 70 miles a day is defintely doable, even carrying a lot of stuff with you. there are numerous threads on here with advice for first time tourers so have a look through the forum to see what has already been said. some posters might get fed up of posting the same thing over and again.

one of the best pieces of advice i got was to take a bit of time to think about whether something was vital to the success of the tour. if the answer is no, don't take it. i ignored that particular piece of advice on my first tour. on every subsequent tour i review luggage about five times and cast aside about two thirds of what i originally had. remember you are going to have to carry it around for 3 weeks so make sure it's worth taking. i took a crib board for crying out loud.

also, do a bit of training before you go, stop and have a nose around if something looks interesting, speak to the locals in their native tongue or your best approximation and enjoy yourself.

Fnaar

waltho bum gravy...what a name! had me chuckling...[:D]

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<b><font color="blue"><font face="Comic Sans MS">kinckers kanckers konckers</font id="Comic Sans MS"></font id="blue"></b> [:D]

whoof

A couple of things. Firstly camping, in France there seem to be campsites everywhere that you look. As soon as you cross the border into Spain they become a lot more sparse, being resticted mainly to the coastal tourist areas. This is not a problem if you ride down the Med Coast but if you are riding in Northern Spain you may wish to stay inland to avoid the heavy traffic. I rode from Bilbao to the France inland and found no campsites.There were however some cheap hotels/apartments in the small town along the way but there were at times a little hard to find as they didn't go out of their way to advertise they there were hotels.

Regarding 50-70 miles a day. This is indeed do-able but if you are in northern Spain there are a lot of steep climbs and this distance may mean a long hard day in the saddle.

in a hole with a dog!