Help a tour newbie!

tommywmb

Having been into MTB for a while I'm thinking of getting into cycle touring, and would like to do a reasonably big tour in a year or so, most probably round Europe.

Thing is I'm an absolute beginner, and am not really sure about bikes or kit or routes or anything!

So, a few starting questions...

What sort of bike should I be looking at? Is a converted MTB ok? Or am I better looking at a road bike?

Camping or hostels? Is it safe to camp rough? Are Hostels in Europe reasonable?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Moose11

Any time I have toured I have done it on a converted mountainbike. The mountainbike is good because of the gearing on it I find. Just make sure you can get paniers fitted on it and your sorted.

Not sure about camping rough but most places will have camp sites. Hostels are good also and save you from the hassel of a tent. Hostels in Europe tend to be good. Best to join up to Hostelling International as well. The International Hostels are always good.

Eurostar

Camping rough is the best - I hate camp sites. Sometimes it's damn hard to find a nice spot that isn't fenced off. A lot of people just waltz up to a farm house and ask if they can stay on the farmer's land. Apparently refusals are rare, but I haven't had the nerve to do that yet. Head for the Pyrenees, cycle up a mountain and pitch your tent on the highest flat spot you can find - it's heaven on earth!

MTBs work well as tourers. It's good to have the option of going up dirt tracks, and you might have some really rough terrain to get over to reach that perfect camping spot. On the road you will be overtaken by people on road bikes. This is a bit of a generalisation, but people on MTBs tend to do 50-60 miles a day, and people on road bikes often do 70-90. To people like me, this matters, so I always tour on road bikes with skinny tyres and try to keep my average speed high. Some argue that this isn't in the spirit of touring, but I like to cover big distances. If I don't do 90 miles in a day I feel as if I'm not seeing enough of the country.

Whichever bike you do it on, you'll get damn fit!

TorugartTim

Try www.adventure-cycling-guide.co.uk it should answer most of your questions.

Wild (stealth) camping is fine if you can get away with it - it's a little more difficult in western europe than else where. However, european hostels are good,

tommywmb

Thanks for the advice peeps, it is very encouraging!
I have a Gary Fisher hybrid that I have been MTBing on, which is equiped to take a rear rack, are front panniers reccomended too? If so, how do they fit? I would imagine that as the frame is designed to take a rack the frame would be able take the strain of a little luggage?

How do people tend to plan their tours? I read the blog of a chap who did England to Thailand on a £40 bike with no planning! Do people tend to schedule stops and pre-book hostels in advance or simply wing it!?

It is all very scary thinking about everything!

jibi

I have a rough plan

ie A to B

everything in between is a mystery.

stealth camping takes a bit of getting used to but once mastered you can do it anywhere.

all through Spain, France England, Ireland etc I have done it.

Start with weekend tours and ..........

george

AndrewClark

A decent MTB is OK for touring, nice low gears for the mountain passes and comfy to ride, put some road tyres on though.

A trailer is a good alternative to panniers for carrying luggage and needn't cost more (2nd hand) The Extrawheel has been getting some good write ups recently http://www.extrawheel.com/index_en.php alternatively you can get luggage racks for bikes without the fittings, check out www.carradice.co.uk for these and very good panniers.

How much luggage you carry depends on where you are going and how spartan you want to be. I've just done Geneva-NIce with 2 panniers and the tent & mat strapped on top. For a tour in Norway I'd take front panniers as well for extra clothing and a few days food.

In France I was in campsites every night, mostly they are OK and it's nice to have a shower!

Wildcamping is good as well, Hebridean & Irish beaches, Scottish lochsides, Norwegian lay-byes, anywhere no one can see you!

A YHA card is useful, and hotels in most of Europe are far cheaper than the UK.

I don't plan too much, start point, end point and work out the middle bit on the way.

There are some very experienced tourers on this forum so it's a good place to ask questions. The recent redesign isn't to everyones taste though!

andymiller

MTBs also offer you the alternative of doing off-road touring.

I enjoy the planning and research so I do a lot of it, though it's worth building in the flexibility so you can depart from the plan if you need or have to. The amount of planning you need to do depends on when you are going and where. If you're going somewhere off-season that has lots of hotels/hostels/campsites then you can generally afford to wing it, but if you're somewhere remote and there is only one hostel/campsite for miles and its full then it's a problem. You can probably never do to much research - though you can over-schedule.

If you are new to camping I'd start with proper campsites and see how you get on before even thinking about wild camping.

My top tips would be travelwash and merino.

Tourist Tony

Lots of advice I could give, but the first is simple: load the bike and have a weekend away as a shake down. You'll find no better way of realising what you do and don't need.

xilios

I totaly agree with doing a couple shakedown tours to check out all you need to bring along. My wife and I always go to campsites, a nice warm shower is great after a long day on the road. We try and keep the kms per day down a bit (80 to 120kms) with many stops to check out the area and enjoy the views.
We both ride hybrids with small(ish) front and rear panniers we feel the balance is much beter (on our bikes). We do mini weekend rides with only the rear panniers and there is a difference in the handling.
As for planning, we feel half the tour is in the planning, checking out maps for places to visit. We use the Auto Route Express Europe for a rough idea of where we would like to go, the kms per day, stops and make plans B and C in case of problems.

vernonlevy

tommywmb wrote:

Having been into MTB for a while I'm thinking of getting into cycle touring, and would like to do a reasonably big tour in a year or so, most probably round Europe.

Thing is I'm an absolute beginner, and am not really sure about bikes or kit or routes or anything!

So, a few starting questions...

What sort of bike should I be looking at? Is a converted MTB ok? Or am I better looking at a road bike?

Camping or hostels? Is it safe to camp rough? Are Hostels in Europe reasonable?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Before a big tour in Europe, it would be useful to have a few tours in the UK where any problems can be resolved while on familiar territory. There's many tours that you can do based on some of the Sustrans routes:

Coast to Coast
Walny to Wear
Hadrian's Cycle Route
Reivers Route
Trans Pennine Trail

are all coast to coast crossings.

Hadrians's Cycle route is the flattest coast to coast crossing and the ideal three - four day tour.

If you are camping then a tent, rack and prear panniers are a must.

There's plenty of campsites around and you could join the camping and caravan club of great britain to get their handbook containing lots of campsites that are available to members only in some instances.

On big tours I generally know the start and end points and the road from the starting point and the road into the end point. The main route itself is a' corridor' containing a few alternative roads that get from A to B.

II still have yet to select a definitive rout for my Channel to the Med tour that starts in three weeks time. I'll be using campsites most of the way but I'm not afraid to wild camp. I'll aim to do 80+ miles per day through Northern France to give me more time in the South where I anticipate doing fewer miles in the heat and hilss - Ventoux is a possibility.

In the UK an alternative starting point might be to get a large motoring atlas with campsites marked on it - I've used Phillips road atlases for my LEJOG and JOGLE rides with few probs.

AndrewClark

Current editon of C+ has an article on turning an MTB into a tourer.

For a first UK tour the Sustrans C2C from Whitehaven to Tynemouth and then the Reivers route back is a good one. Not worth taking a tent though (IMHO) , use hostels.

NW Scotland is the best part of the UK for scenery, see http://www.andrewclark.dsl.pipex.com/scotland_2000.htm for one of my tour reports (some of the pictures are wrecked, sorry)