Many of you will remember Keith: the cyclist who dumped

Now we have another story from a bike tourist who’s been lightening his load.

Steve, a 41-year-old on an 18 month tour of Australia, has discarded a massive 20kg of weight from his bags!

In this interview, Steve tells us about what he dropped, and some of the reasons he overpacked in the first place.

1. You’ve removed a phenomenal amount of stuff from your panniers. What did you decide to stop carrying?

So many little things! It all adds up amazingly. First to go were things like a 2nd spare tube, t-shirts, spare shorts, socks, a big Colorado winter Jacket.

I revised my clothes, for one thing, as well as some of my camp cooking gear, bike spares, and food I carried. It was a complete rationalisation and reduction, and being smarter with the clothes combinations I wear.

I bought a new and lighter sleeping bag and tent, saving another 2kg. I gave away my spare oil burner for the stove, and a stove pot too. I dropped an inflatable pillow (my clothes stuffed into a pillow cover now suffices), a small day-backpack, a fold-up camp chair….

2. What made you realise that you needed to lighten your bags, and how did you decide what to weed out?

I only made it 100km down the road and began to get pains in my left ankle, a trip to the Doctor revealed a kind of bursitis around the Achilles tendon. The other ankle soon went the same way. The cause seemed obvious enough, my whole bike weighed about 60kg, and I weigh 100kg, being a 6′3″ tall fellow.

3. Did you ship those things home, or just leave them behind somewhere?

Some of it went home, but a lot I have given away or traded to other campers and caravaners along the way.

4. Why do you think you ended up with so much extra weight in the first place?

I knew I had to be (at times) totally self-sufficient, which is true, but not that often. The small country towns you pass through are usually well equipped for travellers. Not only that, you get wiser and more resourceful as you go.

For instance, I always seem to end up with a plastic chair or something decent enough to sit on at the campsites and van parks. This saves 800g right there. I guess its natural for us to pack too much at the start of any new trip.

5. How have you benefited from a lighter load, and is there anything you’d like to have back again?

Speed! Reduced effort! And a much better handling machine, plus a more managable system of setting up or striking camp.

Something I miss? I can’t say there is! I hope that doesn’t sound unemotional, but in retrospect the things I dropped were all superfluous to my riding and camping overall. The things that matter, like my tool kit, world band radio, compact camera, and a thumb drive packed full of my last computer’s contents are the most important materially.

I had to be ruthless with all my material possesions before departing anyway. I sold three quarters of my stuff in a weekend garage sale to help fund the journey.

6. What advice would you give to other bike tourists, to help them avoid overpacking?

Gee that’s tough! I still feel like a beginner myself 6 weeks down the track.

Get smart with your clothing. The top of the line alpine camping clothing and gear is expensive for a reason; it works and is light, enabling you to reduce some of your regular clothing needs for the cold season.

Cookware: it’s not hard to keep it light these days. Metho stoves work well. One 20cm pan and a large enamel mug that doubles as a stove pot is enough.

Only carry one spare tube if you must; you will have a puncture repair kit no doubt and good touring tyres rarely puncture. Carry the minimum in spares and tools. I love to turn a spanner so my toolkit and spares comes to 1.6kg. It’s the price to pay for mechanical independence.

Lastly, try and keep your handle bar-bag a smallish one with external pockets, with a side mesh, so you can carry it around as a large bum-bag (or over the shoulder as a man-bag, if you are a bloke). A smaller bar-bag helps keep your riding center of gravity lower too.

The problem with luggage space is that you will tend to fill it. I find a set of Ortlieb rollers for the rear and a set of 15L Carradice Super-C panniers to be ample storage space for fully self-sufficient touring. I want to meet other tourers, to compare notes and our setups so I might learn some more about this fascinating and wonderful way to live and travel.

***

Many thanks to Steve, for taking the time out of his tour to do this interview, and for supplying the photos.

We have so many tips, stories and reviews to share with you from our 1,000km circuit of Jutland, but it will take us a few days to get everything together. In the meantime, maybe you’ll enjoy these photos from our tour.

The two slideshows below are of our favourite pictures, and then the whole set of nearly 250 photos. Enjoy! (And yes, we’ve joined Flickr, so you can keep track of all our future photos there).

The full set of photos from Denmark.

Yves is very handy, and carved the wooden spindle himself (130mm long, 85mm wide and weighing just 26g). The 14m long polymide string comes from a sailing shop, and is 2mm thick. We’ll let Ingrid tell the rest of the story.

“The clothes line is very important to us,” she says. “We air our worn clothes every evening. When we wash them, they need to dry as quickly as possible. A line helps. Yves created something to wrap the line. It is wooden and very lightweight.”

“He attaches the loose end to a tree or something similar. For that he uses a bowline knot.”

“Now it is important to tighten the rope as much as possible.”

“With these loops and windings the line is very tight and can support many clothes.”

Thanks Ingrid & Yves, for sharing your bike touring tip, and the wonderful photos.

We’ve packed our panniers and headed off to Denmark for a summer bike tour.

As we cruise the Danish bike paths by day, and pitch up in remote campsites at night, we’ve left the technology at home – much like the bike tourists of the late 1800s, who certainly didn’t have anything like laptops and mobile phones.

While we’re disconnecting and getting away from it all, why not read about some of these early bike tourists?

There are so many free eBooks that give a fascinating glimpse of what bike touring was like in the late 1800s. At that time, there was an explosion of adventurous bicycle tourists (many of them American), setting out to explore the world on two wheels.

Here are just a few to get you started:

A Canterbury Pilgrimage and Over The Alps On A Bicycle – Joseph Pennell and Elizabeth Robins

The adventures of this American couple would be impressive today, but they were all the more so in 1884, when Joseph & Elizabeth left the U.S. by steamship bound for England and Continental Europe. They had been commissioned by a magazine to sketch and write about life in Europe, and planned to research their articles from the seat of a tandem tricycle, to be purchased in England.

A Canterbury Pilgrimage records the test trip with their new tricycle, from London to Canterbury (download PDF). Over The Alps On A Bicycle records the journey that began in Italy, and made Elizabeth the first woman to cycle over many alpine passes (download book – some initial pages missing).

Around the world on wheels for the Inter ocean: the travels and adventures in foreign lands – Mr. and Mrs. H. Darwin McIlrath

This husband-and-wife pair pedalled 28,000 miles on a world bike trip, making Hattie the first woman to go around the world by bicycle. The 3-year voyage took them from their starting point in Chicago to San Francisco, then to Japan by ship, through Asia and Europe. The journey ended in 1898 and the resulting book details their packing list, including 3 guns!

“All of our luggage was carried in a leather case which neatly fitted the inside angles of the bicycle frames. Our personal apparel consisted merely of a change of underwear, as we depended upon the stores in towns along our route for new clothes whenever we should need them. The remainder of our luggage cases contained photograph films, medicines, repair outfits, etc. My “artillery,” for which there was great use as it afterward happened, consisted of two 3S-caliber and one 44-caliber revolvers.” (Download text version)

A Bicycle Tour in England and Wales: Made in 1879 – Alfred D. Chandler

Following a business trip to Europe, and with a month to spare before his trip back to America, Alfred set off on a bike tour around England and Wales with his friend. He describes the experiences of bicycle touring in wonderful detail, and some of them haven’t changed at all over the years:

“We developed enormous appetites, and I recall the immense relief we had oh coming up to the little Swing-Gate Inn, three miles or more out from Dover, where we ordered bread, cheese, and beer, about all the inn afforded, and which was served to us on a little balcony over the inn door, where we enjoyed the view over the fields, and were entertained by the arrival of a coach-load of passengers, many of whom got off to drink…” (Download text version)

Through the Adirondacks Awheel - Allan Eric

While this tour in the late 1890s through New York state, up to the Canadian border and back south was slightly narrower in scope than some other trips, the experiences of Allan and his friends are still interesting. Their book begins with their philosophy towards route planning:

“We had little difficulty in approximately laying out the route; but, concerning the roads that we might expect to encounter, we were unable to obtain any information. However, as tourists, we did not hesitate to set out, and we did so with a grim determination to adhere to the route, let come what might, and take things as they came, resolving to find pleasure in every incident which might be in store for us.” (Download text version)

Around The World On A Bicycle – Thomas Stevens

Thomas Stevens is one of the best known early bike tourists, and was the first person to go around the world by bicycle. His trip began in 1884, when he set off on a penny farthing built by the Pope Manufacturing Company of Chicago. He carried a handlebar bag with essentials like socks, a spare shirt and a rain jacket that was also his tent. His journey took him across Europe, through Iran and into Afghanistan, across India, China and Japan, before he returned by steamer to San Francisco. (download book)

Stephane and Sheri Marchiori, a French-American couple, recently finished a 5-year journey around the world by bicycle by biking the well known Southern Tier route, across the United States.

It took them through some of the most beautiful landscapes of their trip, including the stunning Grand Canyon and the Mojave Desert.

Despite the gorgeous views, the conditions were sometimes trying. They included scorching temperatures, the risk of tornadoes and tons of mosquitoes.

Read Stephane and Sheri’s tips and experiences of cycling the classic Southern Tier route across America.

Road to Hanstholm, By ebygomm, Flickr

We’ll have plenty of tips for cycling in Denmark when we return. In the meantime, here are some links that helped us plan this trip:

• Danish Tourist Board – All kinds of information, including maps, ideas for sightseeing. UK residents can order brochures, and a free map!
• CycleTourer – Jon & Frank have put together a very informative page on the practical side of cycling in Denmark, including tips on cycling routes, campsites and which maps to take
• Ud I Naturen – A map of all the primitive or official wild camping sites in Denmark. Like the paal camping sites in the Netherlands, there’s nothing fancy here (expect a clearing for your tent, water and a pit toilet) but they are very low cost and tranquil.
• Overnating I Det Fri – In a similar vein, the book published by this organisation includes nature campsites and free camping spots across Denmark. You can buy it in bookshops, tourist bureaus or online.
• CycleSeven – This site, run by a group of bike tourists, has two great articles on touring in Denmark: A Spring Tour and Fine Cycle Touring Around Denmark. The author of these articles, also answered 10 Questions for TravellingTwo on bike touring in Denmark.
• Woolly Pigs – These bike tourists have Danish roots, and they have several posts dedicated to cycling in Denmark.

Getting There

In terms of how to get there and where to start, that was mostly decided by where the train would take us. We live in Holland, and wanted to travel overland to Denmark.

As a train goes direct to Flensburg on the German / Danish border (and it’s a night train, meaning we don’t have a spend an expensive night in a hotel or lose a day of touring), that seemed like a good starting point. We certainly preferred it over the more expensive option of flying to Copenhagen. We paid €150 each for a return ticket, including the fee to carry our bikes.

If we’d been starting from the UK, we’d probably have taken the ferry to Esbjerg.

Where To Go

Deciding where to go was tough. In the end, although we’d heard many wonderful things about Copenhagen, we decided to stick to western Denmark and the Jutland region. Why?

• We didn’t want to spend too much time on ferries between islands. After all, we only have 2 weeks and we want to cycle, not wait around in parking lots for the boat to arrive.
• We aren’t big city people when we’re cycling. We want to get out in nature, and pitch our tent in secluded spots.
• We’d heard beautiful things about the Danish coastline, particularly the eastern coast of Jutland.

Could This Plan Backfire?

Weather is a risk for us. We’re taking rain gear and warm clothes. If the weather turns wet, we’ll be pretty miserable out in the middle of nowhere in the Danish countryside. We’re unlikely to be near big towns most of the time, so we’re hoping for lots of sun, and not too much wind going up the coastline.

Sonya & Aaldrik are an Australian-Dutch couple who set off to tour the world in 2006.

Some 50,000km later, they’re still on the road and going strong. We caught up with them during their brief stay in Holland, in July 2010. In a cafe in The Hague, they told us about their journey, and shared some of the tips and experiences they’ve had along the way.

You can also check out their website, Tour.tk with journals, tips and practical information from the countries they have visited.

In this podcast, we also talk briefly about our upcoming tour to Denmark – two weeks of cycling up to the northernmost tip of Denmark, and back down to the German border.

Show Notes:

• Tour.tk – Sonya & Aaldrik’s website
• Theme music by Josh Woodward

In the grand scheme of things, you can certainly live without a tarp on a bike tour. But if we had to pick just one thing that improves our lives more than anything else on a long bike tour, it would be the tarp.

It’s hard to think of any other item we carry that is quite so versatile. We pull out our Hilleberg XP 10 tarp to:

• Cook in the rain – No more fighting about who has to leave the tent in bad weather to cook. The tarp provides a sheltered area, with plenty of ventilation, where we can make our dinner.
• Double our living space – During prolonged rainy periods, we have a space to read, play cards or do bike maintenance. We don’t have to be cramped in a tent together for hours on end.
• Create shade – In deserts, the tarp gets strung from
  telephone poles, power pylons or anything else we can find to create instant shade for our lunch break. The same happens in campgrounds, especially those terrible “parking lot” style campgrounds you sometimes find in North America.
• Collect water – When it’s raining, nothing collects water faster than a tarp. All of a sudden, we have enough water for extra cups of tea and cooking supper. Because the water comes directly from the sky, it’s clean and doesn’t need to be purified.
• Protect our tent from damage – We’d rather expose our tarp to the sun’s UV rays than the much more expensive tent. A tarp also catches things like tree sap and bird droppings before they hit the tent.
• Sleep in hot weather - When it’s blistering hot, and if there are no mosquitos, nothing is nicer than just camping out under the tarp, with a fresh breeze constantly blowing past. It makes packing up very quick as well!
• Warm up in cold weather – If we have a meal outside in chilly weather, a tarp can be used as a blanket over our legs while we eat. Similarly, on really cold nights in the tent, the tarp can be laid over sleeping bags to keep extra warm.

You could argue that almost all of these needs and situations could be covered with other pieces of kit, or with a bit of pre-planning. But for us, having so much versatility in one item is fantastic. We love our tarp, and couldn’t imagine doing a long tour without it.

If you decide to get a tarp, here are a few pointers:

• Get one that doesn’t require poles to put up. Ours has long strings that we can tie to trees, picnic tables or any reasonably solid thing – even our bikes! Sometimes a pole would be nice to get extra height, but most of the time it’s not necessary.
• If you’re on a budget, consider making your own from Tyvek or buying silnylon fabric and sewing a tarp yourself.
• Go slightly larger than you think you’ll need. You’ll never regret having the extra space, to shelter under during a rainstorm. And a tarp is a great way to make friends with other tarp-less cyclists in terrible weather. Host a party underneath it!

Summer is both the nicest time of year to go on tour, and also one of the more challenging.

High temperatures mean you have to be well prepared to deal with the heat. There’s sunburn to worry about, dehydration and, worst of all, sunstroke.

We’ve experienced all of these, and we wouldn’t like to repeat any of them!

Read our tips for keeping cool while cycling in the summer, including staying hydrated and what kind of clothing to wear.

A great cup of coffee is something we really look forward to in the morning, whether we’re at home or bike touring.

Sadly, most of our attempts at making great coffee while camping haven’t been that successful.

But now, we think we’ve found a great method, and it’s much simpler than we ever expected!

Read on to find out how we’re currently making the Perfect Camping Coffee with just a pot, some coffee and a stove.

Making The Perfect Camp Coffee is the latest article to be added to our Bike Touring Resources section.

In the summer of 2009, friends Richard & Kevin set out on a 40-day bike tour around France.

Now they’re answering 10 Questions about the trip that took them in a U-shaped pattern around the edge of France, first past the surfing beaches and vineyards of Western France, then along the Pyrenees mountains, along the Mediterranean coastline and back north towards Grenoble and Strasbourg.

“The trip was life changing, we’ve vowed to cycle the world in the next few years, it’s the best thing we’ve ever done,” Richard wrote.

Read 10 Questions: Cycling In France to see what advice, tips and experiences Richard & Kevin have to share.

It’s always interesting to hear someone else’s experience – where the good campsites were, the scenery was beautiful or the roads were crowded. Thanks Michèle and Benoît for sharing your route!

Panniers are, after all, a bit of a black hole. Once something falls down to the bottom, you never find it again. And who really enjoys opening up a pannier, expecting that thing you need to be at the top and then finding it’s not?

And let’s not even talk about arriving in camp, only to discover you’ve forgotten the toilet paper or your toothbrush. I can’t be the only one who’s had this experience…

Happily, there are some tips that help keep disorganization disaster from happening too often. At least, these are some that work for me.

Read the full list of Tips For Staying Organized On A Bike Tour – the latest article to join our Bike Touring Resources section.

We also didn’t want to spend time salvaging parts from other bikes, or do anything complicated like welding.

For us, the solution to this dilemma was to look for a kids trailer that someone was throwing out and then modify it. The idea worked amazingly well.

Just a few days after starting our project, we had a new trailer for lugging things around town or even going touring.

Total cost? Just €12.

The details of how we did it are here: Making A Cargo Trailer From A Kid Carrier

So when we set out last weekend to bike tour along as much as we could of Stage 1 of the 2010 Tour de France, we should have known our tour would look nothing like this map of the Tour de France route.

We were barely out the door when our route changed. We could have cycled to the official start of the Tour de France, in Rotterdam, but those racing cyclists don’t always take the nicest routes. Far better to ride along the dunes just north of The Hague. The sandy beaches run all the way to Hook of Holland (where many ferries arrive from England), and so do the traffic-free bike paths. In the summer, it can also be very bright. Sunscreen is still required in the evening, as you can see from these photos.

So far, so good. We hopped on a ferry across the channel of water that leads from the North Sea to Rotterdam, and paid the princely sum of €1.15 for our cruise. Entertainment on deck was provided by taking close-up photos of our bike, against the stunningly aqua paint job of the ferry. Could this photo be in a modern art museum somewhere? It’s a little odd and out of focus, but we like it.

From here on in though, our plans quickly went sideways. Oh, we found the campground and squeezed ourselves in between the hordes of people out for a weekend. We even had a nice meal before toddling off to bed. But then, at 2am, Friedel felt sick. That get-me-out-of-the-tent now sort of urgent sickness. Happily Andrew was there (and awake!) to get the door open quickly. The next morning, the tummy bug had done enough work to put Friedel off coffee and most food. Now, the tour was going to look a little different.

Slower and shorter became the name of the game. We pedaled at a gentle 12km an hour and we stopped regularly for breaks. Lots of them. We took photos of this bike, covered in flowers, with a tulip-themed back basket.

And of this pub, decked out for the final between Holland and Spain in the World Cup. Can you fit another strip of flags in anywhere?

And we stopped to chat with the local horses. This one tried to eat Andrew’s handlebar bag.

Our slow pace wasn’t getting us far along the Tour de France route, but it did lead us into the path of these two Belgian guys, out on a 10-day bike tour. We chatted for a good 20 minutes, admiring their go-for-it attitude and the way they’d set out on a tour just using normal bikes (quite heavy ones at that!), saddlebags that are normally for commuting in town and a kid’s bike trailer, re-purposed to carry cargo. More proof that you can tour with just about any setup you can hack together in your backyard.

We liked this set-up so much, that we made a plan to find a kids trailer and do the same. We were inspired!

And that’s the nice thing about the not-quite-as-planned tour. Whether the plans go wrong because you got sick, lost or just wanted to do something different, the change of plans doesn’t stop the trip from being any less interesting. Sometimes, the tour might even be better because of the new plans.

We carried on slowly, stopping to admire the fields, the geese, the flowers and the abandoned bicycles in front of nearly every home.

And our way home, we discovered another great ferry that wasn’t on our original route. We couldn’t believe how many racing cyclists were on it! It might not have been the Tour de France, but it felt like we were in the middle of a peleton as the cyclists rushed off the boat.

Going the other way was a bit more lonely. We didn’t mind.

They say to save the best for last, and perhaps the best part of our unplanned weekend and our unplanned route came when we arrived in the small town of Schipluiden, and discovered a tea garden. Under the shade of some trees, in a narrow garden, we ate this: a wonderful plate of pancakes, ice cream and rose jelly!

Now just 20km from home, we toddled off towards the luxury of a bed and a shower. And we made plans to do the Tour de France route another weekend. Maybe next time it will go as planned…

We’ve been living in Holland for nearly 10 months now, and there’s no doubt this is a great place for bike touring.

Bike paths are everywhere, the flat landscape means the cycling is rarely strenuous, and there’s always something interesting around the corner to explore, including historic towns, national parks and some of the world’s best museums.

Now, here’s the good news: it can be even better! In addition to the staple activities like cycling along canals and snapping photos of windmills and tulip fields, there are some less obvious things you should know to make your trip even easier and more enjoyable.

1. Get A Map

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Apparently it isn’t. Many cyclists don’t because they assume the extensive bike path network in the Netherlands is be easy to follow.

The bike paths are certainly everywhere and they’re usually well marked, but there are so many options that a map is essential. Just as with roads, on bike paths you have to know if you want the ‘highway’ (a straight bike path that might run between 2 towns, literally tracing the highway for cars) or the scenic route through green areas.

For paper maps, you can either buy something from any bookstore when you get here, or order online. De Zwerver is one internet map store, with an excellent reputation for service. The site is in Dutch but you can either use Google Translate or call them, and they will talk you through it in English.

A good overview map is the Sterkste Fietskaart Van Nederland. It’s made of a laminated paper that holds up in the rain and 2 maps cover the entire country, one for the north of the Netherlands and one for the south of the Netherlands. Countless regional maps are also available, many produced by Falk.

GPS-users can download the OpenFietsMap – a free open-source map showing cycle paths across the country. For pre-trip planning, there are also a number of bike route planners. Type ‘fietsrouteplanner’ into Google and away you go.

2. Join The Clubs

For any trip longer than about a week, there are a few organisations you might want to join.

• Vrienden Op De Fiets – A network of over 3,700 B&Bs that are only open to cyclists and walkers. There’s a small €9 registration fee (€15 if you live outside of Europe). For that, they’ll send you a book all the addresses of the B&Bs. The cost is never more than €18.50 euros for the night (less than a youth hostel).
• Natuur Kampeer Terreinen - These are natural camping spots with small and tranquil tenting sites, often in the woods. Spots are reserved especially for cyclists. You will not be turned away if you arrive before 7pm. One membership costs €14.95 and can be used for up to 4 people.
• Wereldfietsers – There’s no cost to join this friendly group of bike tourists for a day trip or a weekend. They go all over the Netherlands. Come along and make some new bike touring friends. Summer trips can be very busy, with up to 100 people. Winter trips are much quieter.

3. Use The Bike Parking

by livewombat

Want to go see a museum in town or just stop somewhere to stretch your legs and do some shopping? Use the guarded bike parking! Every town of just about any size has bike parking or Fietsenstelling.

Sometimes it is underneath the train station. Other times, it is a fenced area, watched by a security guard in the middle of town. The cost is never very much. It could be as little as €0.50 or at most €2 for the day. Now you can leave your bike and not worry a bit about whether or not it will be there when you return.

4. Be Prepared At Campgrounds

For us, being prepared at Dutch campgrounds means 2 things.

First, pack your own stash of toilet paper for camping. As we found out to our peril, it often isn’t provided. Only the most expensive campgrounds supply toilet paper. You can also expect to pay extra for showers, on top of camping fees, but happily camping costs are fairly reasonable in the Netherlands. There’s usually a small charge for the tent (€3-4) and then an additional cost per person. Altogether, it should never be more than €10-15 for 2 people.

Second, remember to ask for a trekkers site. If you ask for a camping site, they may assume you want one with power, like a caravan would need, and that costs a lot more! Trekkers sites are much simpler, often just a field, but for a night they’re just fine.

Alternatively, there’s always free primitive campsites if formal campgrounds aren’t your thing.

Hordes of enthusiastic cyclists read our review of merino wool socks last week, and 100 of you entered the contest to win your very own wonderful wool socks from Icebreaker.

Now it’s time to announce the winners!

Picking 3 people to win 3 pairs of Icebreaker socks each wasn’t easy. At first, we weren’t even sure where to begin, but eventually we decided to do it like this: one comment was picked because we really enjoyed it, and two were drawn at random. So, without further delay, the lucky people are…..

#1 – Adam Kilpatrick

We asked for stories with a bit of humour, and Adam’s comment made us laugh, as well as reflecting one of the potential challenges of bike touring with a partner: adjusting to each other’s smells and habits! Adam wrote:

“I plead with you, I need to win some nice, smell-resistant Icebreaker socks, not for me, but for my mate Stephen. He only ever wears plain white cotton socks on tour, and the smell is horrendous! His feet look even worse, the skin is falling apart, and dare I mention there is some kind of mould going on down there (could be the terrible company he keeps)! It’s so bad, that for our upcoming big trip to Sweden, we are taking a tent each, but I fear it shall not be enough…he sometimes rides upwind of me! I have a sore nose from the peg.”

We know Adam and Stephen will put their Icebreaker socks to the test on their upcoming bike tour, from Australia to Sweden. We look forward to hearing whether Icebreaker socks help preserve their friendly relationship, all the way to their final destination.

#2 – Hope

Hope is our first random winner, chosen by this random number generator (it gave us a number and we counted down until we got to that number). She’s just getting into bike touring, and will be trying out a ride later this year:

“I’m a mature ‘newbie’ cyclist and I’m planning to do the Rail Trail shortly and would love some Icebreaker Merino socks to wear on the trail. I’ll have my ’socks’ to keep me warm.”

Let us know how the ride goes, Hope!

#3 – Bryan

Bryan is the other lucky winner, picked at random. He’s also just getting into bike touring, and hasn’t yet tried Icebreaker socks.

“Instead of purchasing another vehicle to see the world in, I decided to hop on my bicycle. The more I get in the saddle the more I appreciate what the world looks like on top of two wheels. My gear is slowly being updated and I just got a pair of socks made from recycled bottles thinking they would be good, but now these Icebreaker socks have me scratched my curiosity. Wouldn’t mind trying a pair to compare to my pair made from old plastic bottles.”

Well Bryan, here’s your opportunity!

We’ll be in touch with all of our winners shortly, to arrange delivery of your Icebreaker socks. For everyone who didn’t win, stay tuned to the blog. We’re already planning more chances for you to try out Icebreaker’s amazing clothing in the coming months.

She has no fixed plan or time frame and she is in no hurry to get anywhere in particular. Over the past year she has ridden from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Anna goes to some lengths to avoid riding on highways and major roads and if there is a choice between a paved road and an unpaved road she will definitely choose the dirt.

In the latest entry in our Cyclist’s Week series, Anna describes the 7-days around her somewhat misguided attempt to cross the border in a remote protected wilderness area between Guatemala and Mexico. It includes plenty of riding down muddy tracks, encounters with the locals and even a puma!

And despite the instincts of most bike tourists to never backtrack, Anna does just that when she discovers the path she’s been following wasn’t the right one for her.

Read on to learn about the week of bike touring that (eventually) takes Anna to the Guatemalan border.

If you’d like to contribute to our Cyclist’s Week series, you’d be more than welcome. Read the guidelines here and then get in touch.

Not long ago, an email arrived in our box from Jonathan, who is planning a bike trip through Western Africa.

He’d read our thoughts on water treatment options for remote bike touring and wondered if we’d ever tried a water bottle with a filter built into the cap? Options include the Clear2Go Filter Water Bottle ($14.93 at REI) and the Travel Tap (retails for about $50 U.S.).

The idea behind these water filters is that water is made safe to drink by pushing it through a filter in the top of the bottle. We’ve never tried these filters, but here are a few of our thoughts.

The upsides we see are:

• Lightweight: no need to buy and carry a separate water filter.
• Relatively inexpensive. TravelTap filters are advertised as good for 1,600 litres of water or about 3 cents per litre. To compare, the MSR Miniworks EX costs about 4.5 cents per litre.
• Doesn’t require batteries.

Our concerns are:

• The method: squeezing water through a bottle top could be a relatively difficult way to filter large quantities of water. The TravelTap, for example, advertises a filtration rate of about 300ml of water a minute, compared to up to 1 litre a minute for the MSR Miniworks EX. Sometimes, when filtering a lot of water, we even found the MSR filter a bit tedious. We can’t imagine something that goes a third of the speed! (See our MSR Miniworks EX review)
• Once you start using your bottle for water filtration, you can’t drink straight out of the mouth of the bottle, or you’ll risk being exposed to contaminated water.
• You won’t be able to put anything other than water in the bottle, like juice.
• Spare filters could be difficult to source on a long tour.
• If the bottle breaks, will you be able to find another water bottle the same size to attach the filter to?

Peter Gostelow initially carried a Travel Tap on his Big Africa Cycle, but found it difficult to squeeze the water through the bottle. He recently sent it back home.

“For the last 2 weeks i have been drinking water from pumps, at least in the countryside. In towns and cities it is easy to buy water in bags at very low cost, which is usually chilled. I have purifying tablets if I really need to use them,” he told us.

We can see these types of products potentially being useful for shorter bike tours, where you won’t need to filter water day after day, and probably not in great quantities.

On longer expeditions, however, we would favour something with a higher flow rate when filtering. We also like the flexibility of being able to put things like juice in our bottles occasionally, and drinking straight from the mouth of the bottle when we’re really thirsty.

What do you think? Have you used water bottles with built-in filters before? Tell us your experience by leaving a comment.

Thanks to Icebreaker, 3 winners will each get 3 pairs of fantastic socks to keep your feet happy on many bike rides to come.

It’s really easy to win.

Just go to this page, read our review of merino wool socks and leave a comment. You might tell us what socks you use when bike touring, or share a good story that tells us why you deserve to win.

You have a week to enter. We’ll announce the lucky winners on Monday, July 19th.

Good luck!

“Back in 2006, when I was preparing to start a new life on the road, I made vague plans to include the country in my route. I never expected it would be this long before I went there. But such dreams aren’t easily forgotten,” Tom wrote on his cycling blog.

Photo by Tom Allen, Ride Earth

That was in May. Since then, Tom has fulfilled his dream to bike in this relatively unknown corner of the earth, first by taking a train from his home in Armenia to the Mongolian capital Ulaan Bataar and then by spending a few weeks mountain-biking just over 1,000km off-road across the Mongolian wilderness.

He did the trip with his friend and long-time cycling partner Andy. Now back home, Tom has kindly shared some of his experiences and advice for cycling in Mongolia with us.

1. Cycling in Mongolia is a total unknown for most people. Can you paint a picture of your experience?

The Gobi desert, which is usually associated with Mongolia, didn’t come into my journey at all. Leaving Ulaan Baatar for the west, I found myself crossing huge expanses of pastured, hilly grassland (steppe), climbing long, flowing valleys with the fragrance of wild thyme in the air, and crossing tiny streams and fast-flowing rivers.

The views were vast and spectacular, but there was always a ger (yurt) or two in sight; herds and their owners were permanently draped across the hillsides, and a small town popped up every day or two at which I could stock up on noodles and snacks and eat a big plate of dumplings.

Each day I would speak to a few herders on motorbike or horseback as they passed by, checking my directions and explaining how my ’Extrawheel’ trailer worked! On a couple of occasions I approached a ger for directions or water, and I was always invited in for a cup of ”tea” – actually more like hot, watery milk with a pinch of salt and some tea stalks floating in it. It tastes a lot better than it sounds.

As I progressed north-west the landscape gradually became more alpine and forested, until the end of the trip in the northernmost part of Mongolia, on the fringe of Siberia, where I was surrounded by valleys of pine and larch and 3,000+ metre peaks, and the tea came without salt. The variety of landscape was far greater than I’d expected, and overall the country is safer, more inhabited, and more practical for the biker than I think many people believe.

Out of 30 or so countries in which I’ve cycled, it’s been the cream of the crop for a challenging, varied and accessible adventure.

Photo by Tom Allen, Ride Earth

2. You sometimes went 10 days between settlements. A couple times you got completely lost. This sounds dangerous, rather than fun! How do you ensure that you don’t run out of food and water as you’re crossing vast tracts of wilderness, far from anywhere to buy supplies?

Our trip was relatively short, at only 5 or 6 weeks, but we had no grand idea to cross the entire country – we kept our plans extremely flexible. After a couple of weeks Andy and I decided that there must be more to Mongolia than riding bumpy jeep-tracks across endless plains and hills, so we very deliberately set out into the Khovsgol protected area on the most insignificant-looking track on the map.

This turned out to be a rather rough hiking single-track, so we did a fair amount of pushing!

We took enough food for a couple of weeks – noodles and biscuits don’t take up much space – and for several days we were travelling alongside the second-biggest freshwater reserve in Asia, Lake Khovsgol, whose water is famously ready-to-drink.

It was still almost completely frozen over from the winter and acted as a giant refrigerator for the local climate, but it was a stunning backdrop to several days of care-free journeying through the beautiful alpine landscape, and provided a few very refreshing swims in the ice-free pools by the shore! We savoured our surroundings when we could, and dug our heels in when the conditions got tough.

The track eventually disappeared and we followed a valley through the mountains to a town whose location we had saved on a small GPS receiver. Basic navigational concepts were all we needed – following a river downstream is a pretty safe bet for exiting a mountain range.

Our previous experience in the country suggested that people would never be far away. Despite the lack of settlements in the protected area, I don’t think a day passed when we didn’t spot a horseman, four-by-four or Russian Kamaz truck bouncing across the landscape somewhere nearby. Water from mountain streams was plentiful and we had quite a few packets of noodles left at the end of it all!

Photo by Tom Allen, Ride Earth

3. In addition to the sparse population, the terrain itself looks difficult. How would you describe the roads, or lack of them? Were there better roads that you deliberately avoided, in search of a more remote experience?

If you go any distance from the capital, bad roads and river crossings seem to be a daily experience, although the short road-building season is now being used to pave the main cross-country and touristic routes, so eventually there looks like being an asphalt cross-country route. To cycle that though would be to miss out on what makes Mongolia a unique experience for the biker.

Some dirt roads are more travelled than others, and we tried to avoid them, although it was sometime difficult as alternative routes from one town to the next seem to come in and out of favour over the years and seasons. On the steppe, little or nothing was unrideable, although sometimes the track conditions and the long climbs made the going slow and tiring. Up in the mountains it was a different story, and we once pushed solidly for two days.

As with anything like this, your body adapts pretty quickly. When we were able to pedal, we were managing 40 or 50km per day, riding fairly consistently throughout the day. We could walk and push 20 or 25km in the same time.

I didn’t realise how much fitter it had made me until I rode from Turkey to Georgia on my way home to Armenia and managed 200km in 24 hours (on asphalt!) – by far the furthest I’ve cycled in a day.

I used the Gizi 1:2,000,000 geographical map of Mongolia. Settlements were accurate, roads less so – any ‘road’ or track on this map generally signifies that you could probably go that kind-of way if you wanted to! You are by no means limited to the ‘main’ routes. There are seemingly no fewer herders or towns in the more remote areas, but they might be a bit more surprised to see you!

What that all means in practice is that navigation has to be approached differently – forget trying to find an ‘exact route’ from A to B. An educated guess is the best you can hope for, safe in the knowledge that if you find yourself heading in the wrong direction, you can most likely just turn off the track and follow the compass/GPS/sun/landmarks in the right direction, and sooner or later you will come across a track and hopefully a family of 4 on a motorbike to ask for directions.

Photo by Tom Allen, Ride Earth

4. Such a remote and extreme trip requires special gear consideration. What essentials do you recommend?

I approached the gear question from a mountain-biking perspective. Four things I’m glad I had were front suspension forks, disc-brakes, a single-wheel trailer rather than front panniers, and wide tyres (Marathon XR 2.25’s). You’ll thank the suspension forks not just for the wrist cushioning but also for the extra control they afford on the rough stuff, and the same goes for ditching the front panniers – you need to be able to see and avoid rocks, roots and holes at a moment’s notice, all day, every day.

I used the XRs for their durability and surprisingly good off-road characteristics, and as hoped I didn’t get a single puncture.

I found the disc-brakes invaluable for the level of control they afford while negotiating technical sections of terrain, as well as for their great performance in wet and muddy conditions and on long bumpy downhills.

Aside from that I carried little of note – just a lightweight, whittled-down selection of the usual bicycle-touring cooking/camping favourites, leaving plenty of space for food.

Photo by Tom Allen, Ride Earth

5. What’s one stand-out moment from the trip that you’ll carry with you for years to come?

After 5 weeks with fairly little cultural interaction I stumbled upon a family gathering in a maze of trackless plains and lakes. We were invited to join in and stay the night and were treated as part of the family. I was so far away from my own loved ones.

Maybe it was the combination of this, the overwhelming hospitality, and the spontaneous, haunting, passionate singing that sprung up as the day drew to a close that caused me, unnoticed in my little corner of the room, to burst into tears of joy – joy, after weeks of living in my own head, at this intense expression of human spirit in the lost depths of the steppe.

I am aware that this probably sounds incredibly corny.

At first glance, you might wonder what’s so exciting about that. Business cards are hardly new. But these ones are great for many reasons. In addition to being stylish and personal, they are also very small. They measure less than half the size of a normal business card, which means you can easily put 100 in your handlebar bag and hardly notice them.

Here’s what else we love about our Moo cards:

• They’re personal. We put our own photos on one side of the cards.
• There’s lots of variety, with up to 50 different photos in each pack.
• The online order system is intuitive.
• Delivery is speedy. Our cards came within a week, faster than promised.

Picking out which photos to use is especially easy. If you have photos on flickr, Moo can connect to your albums and let you select and crop the photos you want to use. You can also upload your own photos from your computer. We chose the second option and were pleasantly surprised at how quickly the photos were uploaded.

Cards come in packs of 100 and depending on how many photos you upload, you’ll get several of each design in each pack.

Once you’ve picked your pictures to go on the front of the cards, it’s time to choose the text for the back of the card. You can have up to 6 lines of text, less if you decide to also put a small graphic on this side as well.

When you’ve finished your order, you have a couple hours to make changes before the printing process begins. I got an immediate confirmation of my order and was promised delivery to the Netherlands within 10 days. Moo delivered a few days earlier than we expected. The cards were well packed and even came with a small, sturdy box that would be fine for protecting about 150 cards inside a pannier.

Now, with the cards in our hands, we’re impressed with the quality. The paper is thick and sturdy. The colours are stunning. Everyone we show the cards to has a positive response. Their instinct is to grab more than one – making these cards a great way to promote your bike touring blog, as well as simply swapping emails with friends you meet along the way.

I think what we like most about the Moo cards is just how fun they are. There’s something really satisfying about flipping through the different photos from past bike tours and other travel adventures. It’s a little like picking out candy when there’s a whole shelf full of sweet-filled jars to choose from.

For the price – about $0.12 each for our order of 400 mini cards – we think they’re perfect and highly recommend them.

Moo also do stickers, greeting cards and other fun products. Check it all out on the Moo website.

That’s just what Patrick and Sandra – a husband and wife team from Britain – have done twice and they’re planning to return for a third Danish bike tour.

There are just too many nice landscapes to explore, although the wind can be a little challenging, as we learn in this week’s 10 Questions.

Read more in 10 Questions: Bike Touring In Denmark.

So when QStarz asked us to review their new SR-Q2100 GPS sports recorder – essentially a sophisticated bike computer with some GPS functions – we weren’t sure if we would like it. Would this be something useful, or just another thing to carry around and worry about recharging? We agreed to accept a demo model and try it out.

Read our review of the QStarz SR-Q2100 and see what we thought of it.

We try to pack lightly, but nearly every bike tour involves attaching something to the back of our bikes.

Camping gear like sleeping mats and our tent tends to get carried over the top of the back panniers, as does extra water and food that we pick up for long, desolate stretches of road.

How do we attach it all to our bikes? In this article for our Bike Touring Resources section, we compare Compression Straps, Cargo Nets and Bungee Cords.

Read more in Straps, Nets and Cords: Attaching Stuff To Your Bike.

Photo by Tom Allen, Ride Earth

Raising the subject of panniers versus trailers for bike touring is a bit like talking politics and religion at the dinner table.

Every cyclist seems to have an opinion. Stories will be told about superiority on both sides. And that’s even without getting into the discussion of trailers with one wheel or two and waterproof or non-waterproof panniers.

We’ll stick our necks on the line and declare our bias for old-fashioned panniers. Waterproof Ortlieb panniers, since you asked. You may feel differently and you’re welcome to share your thoughts, but here’s the reasoning behind our love of panniers.

A trailer can certainly be convenient at times (see more on the advantages of trailers and different types) but for us personally, on a long tour a trailer seems like too much potential hassle. Every time we consider it, we end up thinking like this…

• The wheels on the trailer are just another place where we might get a flat tire or a broken spoke.
• The trailer as a whole is a bulky package that’s difficult to lug up steep sets of stairs when we take a hotel room.
• We don’t even want to imagine how to get it on a plane, although we acknowledge that some trailers pack down flatter than others.
• With panniers, it’s easy to lighten your load for shorter trips. You can take just 1 bag to the supermarket, but you can’t take half a trailer.

Perhaps most importantly, we already tend to carry too much. A trailer gives the potential to pack A LOT of gear. Probably more than we need to be tempted into carrying on most rides.

We’re not the only ones to favour panniers. Recently, while writing our Bike Touring Basics ebook, we asked several cyclists to tell us about their experiences with trailers. We thought we’d get lots of replies from trailer lovers, eager to share their passion. Instead, we found people who tried trailers but still preferred panniers for future tours.

HARD TO MANOEUVRE

“The inconveniences were mainly concerned with manoeuvrability,” said Jon Tringham, who attempted a world bike tour on a Brompton folding bike.

“A trailer adds about a metre to the overall length of the vehicle. This made parking in a town more difficult. The length also became a problem when having to push the bike, for example up a hill or through a field to a good free-camping spot, as the trailer was usually in the way of one leg or the other.”

Jon also found the two wheels of his trailer a challenge, because he then had to seek out a wider smooth path on the road, without potholes, for the trailer to follow.

“Since my tour with a trailer, I have done a shorter tour down the Rhine cycle path with panniers. I experienced none of the problems I had with the trailer, and did not discover any additional problems. For me, I would not choose to tour with a trailer again if I can avoid it.”

Doug Nienhuis is another bike tourist who echoed Jon’s thoughts on trailers.

“The combined length of the bicycle and trailer was an inconvenience, even in Canada with all its open space. It can be a challenge finding a parking spot for a loaded touring bike outside a convenience store or coffee shop. Add to that another five or six feet of length for the trailer, and it can be an impossible challenge!”

Doug also points out that the way a trailer takes weight off the back wheel, while generally good for minimising strain on the bike, can be bad in certain extreme terrains.

“In Ethiopia, with its very steep mountain roads and loose gravel and rock, it was a disadvantage. With no weight on the rear wheel, I had no traction, and my rear wheel just spun around and couldn’t get a grip. I found I needed the weight of the pannier bags over the rear wheel to give me traction. The children also grabbed the trailer a lot to hold me back, and because the trailer was so long, I couldn’t do anything about it. That wasn’t as big a problem with just pannier bags.”

“There are advantages to a trailer, but they are outweighed by all the disadvantages. Where my trailer really shined was when I used it in Canada in my day-to-day life to make trips to the grocery store and things like that. You probably wouldn’t put four pannier bags on the bike to go to the grocery store and get a weeks’ worth of groceries. But the trailer is ideal for that. For a bike tour, though, I’d say that pannier bags have the upper hand.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We don’t want to sound too negative about trailers. We know there are people out there who  love them. And we also know that when we see a set-up like the one in the picture, of a trailer being used as a table, we think that’s pretty neat (thanks Sue for sending the photo). But overall, we won’t be giving up our panniers any time soon.

What about you? Vote in our poll for your favourite way of carrying things on a bike tour. And leave a comment to tell us why you love your trailer so much, or why you agree with us and will be sticking to panniers for your next tour.

Tara & Tyler set off from their home in America in 2009 to ride their bikes at a gentle pace around the world.

Their journals and photos – appropriately titled Going Slowly – make up what must be the best account of a bike trip we’ve seen yet: honest, beautiful and inspiring.

In this week’s 10 Questions, Tara & Tyler tell us about the part of the trip that took them to Tunisia, in northern Africa. It was a mixed experience, with some incredible landscapes and sights, but also a few challenges they didn’t expect.

Read 10 Questions: Cycling In Tunisia to discover their bike touring tips for Tunisia, including good destinations, how much you might spend and some of the difficulties they encountered.

We try to avoid cycling in the dark but sometimes it can’t be helped.

Unexpectedly long days, bad weather and tunnels all create situations where you’ll need a light on your bike.

Which one to get? Our favourite is the Planet Superflash bike light ($25 from REI or $24.99 from CycloCamping).

It is stunningly bright, clips as easily onto your bags as it does a seatpost and is reasonably priced.

Read the full review of the Planet Superflash Bike Light in our resources section.

Think having kids means you have to give up bike touring, at least until the kids are older? Think again.

We’ve rounded up 3 families who’ve gone bike touring with babies, to give you an idea of what’s possible and what to expect when you decide to hit the road as a family.

Together they give a good insight into bicycle travel with young kids, including what to pack and how to plan your routine so everyone is happy.

Read more in Bike Touring With A Baby.

The campground is silent. Everyone is still asleep. But more to the point, there’s no wind! After fighting stiff breezes yesterday, we’re hopeful that today will be a little calmer. We’ve already been warned by the campground owner that the wind picks up in the afternoon so we don’t waste any time getting the coffee on. Less than an hour later, we’ve eaten a hearty breakfast of muesli and fruit and we’re on our way along the canals.

We don’t get very far before we have to stop. It’s not a flat tire that slows us down but rather a sign advertising jam for sale. Even better, the jam is being sold from a bicycle basket by the towpath. Friedel investigates and soon we’re on our way again, with some blackberry syrup in our panniers. As long as it doesn’t spill all over the inside of our bags before we get home, it’ll be fantastic on ice cream.

We’re barely on the road an hour when the wind starts to pick up again, but at least this time we’re changing direction. Maybe the wind won’t follow us. A sharp left takes us up a bike ramp and on to the Afsluitdijk, a 32km long causeway that runs across the North Sea and forms the top barrier of the IJsselmeer Lake. It is, like most causeways, a long, straight road with little other than the bike path and the highway to look at. From where we are, we don’t even get a good view of the water most of the time and we don’t take any pictures.

After a couple hours of pedalling, we come to the other side, and then things start to look like Holland again. We see green fields and windmills and spend a while trying to get just the right picture of Andrew cycling by a windmill.

It’s somewhere around this point that we get lost. We have a good map but somehow we get disoriented. There are too many canals and not enough town names to help us figure out exactly where we are in the canals. Maybe the hot sun is having an effect too. We didn’t expect such strong sun, we’re starting to burn (despite putting on factor 50 SPF sunscreen) and we’d really like a cafe to cool down in. Unfortunately, there aren’t any, so instead we find a bench on a sidewalk and drink some water in the shade.

A bottle of water later and after several handfuls of trail mix, we’re feeling revived so we carry on and eventually come to a campsite, where we get the last patch of grass to put our tent on. It’s a holiday weekend and perhaps we’re lucky to have found some grass at all. Our tent creates just enough of a shadow that we can sit in front of it without feeling like we’re being fried to a crisp by the sun.

In all our getting lost around the canals and our efforts to find a campsite, it seems we’ve cycled quite a long way. Later, we find out we’ve done well over 100km (compared to our more normal 80km). The result is that we’re both dead tired. Andrew cooks supper and then we both collapse into the tent. We don’t remember much more than that.

The next day is the home stretch. We’re not far from our house but we’re not in a hurry to get there either, so we decide to treat ourselves to Dutch pancakes. They’re great! Huge things – the size of a pizza – with the choice of hundreds of toppings. I get ham, pineapple and cheese. Andrew gets tomatoes, herbs and cheese. They go down perfectly with 2 milky coffees.

Just as we’re almost home, we spot this bike, waiting for its owner to come and retrieve it. Who knows how long it’s been there. It looks a bit rusty. But abandoned bikes are all over Holland. Every few months, the police come and clear out all the bikes that no one wants any more.

And then, before we know it, we’re rolling up to our front door. Our trip around the IJsselmeer went quickly, a little too quickly in fact. In 4-1/2 days, we’d just started to get into our rythym and build up our cycling appetites. Now, it’s back to work, but we’re already planning the next trip, hopefully for later this summer.

The Day Before: Day 3 Of Our Trip Around The IJsselmeer

There’s a reason they build so many wind turbines here on the flat and open landscapes of Flevoland and, unfortunately for us, today the wind is not going in our direction.

“Don’t worry,” says Andrew confidently. “Once we turn around and start heading back home, we’ll have a great tailwind.”

That’s a nice thought to hold on to as we eat our muesli and ponder the long, straight road ahead. We’ve always said that bike touring is 90% about where you’re at mentally and just 10% a physical effort, so we try to put ourselves in the right frame of mind to tackle a headwind.

For us, that means not really concentrating on the distance. Instead, we look for the details in the landscape, to distract our attention away from the difficult effort of propelling our bikes in the right direction. These dandelions, giving up their seeds, grab our attention as we stare at the ground going by.

On the other end of the scale, it’s impossible to ignore the huge but also beautiful wind turbines. We strain our necks and turn the camera upwards to capture this.

It’s still hard work and we’re not exactly inspired by Flevoland either. “There’s never a dull moment in Flevoland,” according to the tourist brochures but we would have to disagree. The landscapes are mostly very dull indeed and the modern towns have none of the charm of the rest of the Netherlands.

It takes us until just past lunchtime to finally leave Flevoland and enter Friesland and we are thrilled. As we roll through the town of Lemmer, there is a character to it that we really missed in Flevloland. A beautiful harbour. Cobbled streets. Old houses. Gorgeous.

The wind is still blowing though, and even the sheep look like they’ve had enough of it.

So, we continue to take it slowly, admiring more wind turbines (look at the size difference between the turbine and Andrew!)…

And taking some pictures of us on the move…

Late in the afternoon, we reckon we’ve burned enough calories to justify this slice of apple cake, kindly bought for us by Paul, who wanted to treat us to something nice. Thanks, Paul! If you ever come to Holland the next slice of apple cake is on us.

By the time 4pm rolls around, we’re completely wiped from fighting the wind all day. We settle down in a campground and cook our supper, the usual mix of sauteed vegetables with pasta.

As the evening sets in, two German families roll up in their huge motorhomes and surround our tent. Within a few minutes they’ve got their tables and chairs out and are drinking beer and talking loudly. This goes on for the rest of the night and normally we’d be annoyed but we’re so tired that their little party just becomes a drone in the background as we fall asleep.

The Day Before: Day 2 of our tour around the IJsselmeer
Coming soon: Days 4 & 5 of our tour around the IJsselmeer

The new edition of the Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook landed on our doorstep last week and we’ve spent most of the last few days devouring it – even taking it along on a weekend bike ride so we could flip through it in a café.

With over 300 pages of bike touring advice, inspiration and stories, there’s a lot to absorb and it’s no surprise that this book has become the ‘must have’ reference guide for cycle tourists, since it was first published in 2006.

On the surface, the 2010 version seems fairly similar to its predecessor, at least in terms of structure. Just as last time, it starts with practical considerations like which bike to buy and what camping gear to get. Part 2 focuses on route outlines around the world and the last section inspires with entertaining stories from well known bike tourists, including Tom Kevill-Davis, Peter Gostelow and Edward Genochio.

Dig a little deeper though, and you soon discover just how much author Stephen Lord and his merry band of nearly 50 contributors (ourselves included) have added to this new edition.

MORE GEAR AND ROUTES
The gear section is noticeably bigger, with over 10 up-to-date recommendations for suitable and widely available touring bikes. Surly’s Long Haul Trucker, Thorn’s Raven Tour and the recumbent Street Machine from HP Velotechnik all get a mention. There’s also advice on adapting a used mountain bike for the job, for tourers on a budget. Other essentials like tents, racks and tires get similar in-depth attention, as do practicalities like vaccinations for international touring and how much to budget (the book’s contributors spent €10 a day on average).

We especially like the bit on how much stuff to bring, with profiles of an ultralight bike tourist, a middle-of-the-road cyclist and a heavyweight traveller. The differences between them are fascinating. Cameron Smith did a 6 month trip across China, including grueling Tibet, with a minimalistic 8kg of gear (his toiletry kit was just a toothbrush and paste, toilet paper and a hand towel). Alvaro Neil prefers to pack 3 stoves, 8 Ortlieb bags, an extra tire and food for 1-2 days onto his heavily loaded rig for a 10 year cycling odyssey.

Next up is the heart of the book – 144 pages of updated and expanded route descriptions. There’s barely a part of the world left unmentioned. Nothing is covered in the kind of extreme detail you’d get with a specific guide to a single region (don’t expect hotel recommendations or turn-by-turn directions) but there’s enough information to whet your appetite for the road ahead, including hints on the landscapes, cultures and foods you’ll encounter, all written from a cyclist’s perspective.

Specific tips are scattered throughout. You’ll learn to watch out for ticks in Russia, what to expect in the bathhouses of the Middle East (the cheapest and most interesting way for a scruffy cyclist to scrub up) and about the free camping possibilities in Japan.

Predictably, for a book with the word ‘adventure’ in its name, the focus is on touring in less developed countries. A large map clearly lays out the main trans-continental routes from Europe to Asia – invaluable if you’re still trying to figure out how roads like the Karakorum Highway through Pakistan might connect with more northerly trips through Russia and Central Asia.

There’s a large section on Tibet, including tips on travel permits and one of the hardest cycling routes in the world. The trip from Lhasa to Kashgar has 31 passes and 9 of them are over 5,000 meters. Africa also gets a significant chapter, with a route map, profiles of the main countries you’re likely to cycle through and answers to some of the more common questions about cycling there, like the state of the roads, availability of food and how much corruption you’re likely to find.

Less attention is paid to more familiar and well trodden bike touring territory in North America, Europe and Australia but there’s still space for the best known rides, like the Great Divide mountain bike trail from Canada to Mexico and the North Sea Cycle Route that traces the coastline of 7 countries in Northern Europe. New Zealand gets a mention as well, although we’re not sure about the suggestion that the North Island makes for quieter, less touristy riding than the South Island. This was at odds with our experience there.

BEDTIME READING
The stories at the end make for some great bedtime reading and give a hint of the more colourful moments experienced while bike touring.

A dose of encouragement for new bike tourists comes from Tim Brewer, who tells about how he managed a ride from England to Australia, despite starting out overweight and with a habit of heavy drinking and smoking. He sheds over 50kg in weight before arriving at the other end.

The book finishes with footnotes on bicycle maintenance, staying in touch on the road and a glossary.

Overall, we think the Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook makes an appealing package for nearly any bike tourist. It’s too heavy and bulky to put in your panniers, so you’ll have to master the maintenance skills in it before you go, but people setting out on tours can learn a lot as they prepare for a trip.

Newbies have the most to gain from the tips and advice. Experienced tourers will know a lot of the general how-to-tour stuff already but should still pick up a thing or two from the wide variety of anecdotes and styles of touring portrayed in the book.

It’s published by Trailblazer and sells for $21.95 U.S. or £14.95 in Britain.

The beautiful island of Taiwan, just off the southeast coast of China, hasn’t yet become well known as a bike touring destination.

It’s not for lack of potential though. With plenty of mountains to test your thighs, visas on arrival and a vibrant culture, this could be your next great winter get away.

Canadian Paul McMurray, who lived in Taiwan for 11 years and did six bike tours around the island, tells us more about bike touring in Taiwan in this week’s 10 Questions.

Read more in 10 Questions: Cycling In Taiwan

Our camping spot is shared with a field of sheep, so it’s the rustle of a big, warm ball of wool brushing against our tent that wakes us up for the second day of our tour around the IJsselmeer.

A grey, misty morning greets us when we emerge from our tent but there’s no rain, so we’re happy for that. In our quest to do a relatively lightly loaded tour, we haven’t even packed our rain gear. Instead, we’ve put all our faith in the good weather report for the weekend. If it rains, we are going to get really wet.

After a quick breakfast of muesli with apples and a strong cup of coffee, we’re on our way. Our route takes us through a series of small but unremarkable villages. We get most of our amusement from trying to figure out what all the Dutch signs say, waving to little kids and keeping an eagle-eye out for anyone wearing klompen, traditional Dutch clogs.

This last quest isn’t so successful. We only count 4 pairs of wooden shoes on the feet of local Dutch folks and none of them are too interested in a picture. Next time, maybe. Our next bit of excitement comes from this cool bicycle drawbridge. Now that’s a first!

Things get even better when we spot a small field with two ponies. They are real characters, and spend several minutes posing for the camera. How can you not smile when you look at a face like this?

Once we’ve had our fill of ponies, we carry on through some typical Dutch countryside (canals, cows and fields), until we come to the pretty town of Weesp. By now, we’re hungry! Time for lunch, and what else would you have on a Dutch bike tour but a typical lunch of fresh herring?

If you’re not Dutch, you’ll probably find this lunch either absolutely amazing or totally disgusting. We fall into the first category and so we quickly locate the nearest fish shop and order 6 herring, with fresh onions and pickles, for our lunch. It’s May, the time of year when herring are in season, so these ones are particularly big and fresh. They’re simply beautiful.

We lift them up by their tails and lower them in, one by one…

Now it’s early afternoon and the sun is shining strongly as we cross a long bridge into the province of Flevoland. There’s a saying about this part of the country: “God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.”

The phrase refers to the fact that Flevoland didn’t exist until the 50s and 60s. In fact, it wasn’t even officially recognised as a province until 1986. The whole thing used to be underwater and it was only recently, after the Afsluitdijk was built in 1932, that the Dutch reclaimed the land and started to build there.

There’s not much to see… very few people live here and the roads are all totally straight. The province is mostly farmland and after a few kilometers we can almost imagine that we’re in the Canadian prairies. We almost expect to see a grain elevator on the horizon.

One thing reminds us that we’re in the Netherlands: the excellent bike network signs.

It’s about now that the headwinds kick in. We don’t take many more pictures because, frankly, there’s nothing to see! Just the long, long roads of Flevoland. The wind whips around our ears. There’s nothing to stop it here. By the time we get to the town of Lelystad, it’s all we can do to pedal the last few strokes to the campsite where we collapse. This bike touring thing can be hard work sometimes!

The Day Before: Day 1 of our tour around the IJsselmeer
The Day After: Day 3 of our tour around the IJsselmeer

Ask any experienced bike tourist and they’ll certainly have a story about over packing and the things that never should have come along in their panniers.

For us, the 2 plastic champagne flutes were the first to go. As newbie bike travellers, we put them in our panniers, while conjuring up dreams of romantic picnics in the flower-filled fields of Europe.

Reality soon hit. They took up too much space and our plastic camp mugs worked as well for wine as they did for morning coffee. A bit further down the road, we got rid of large, heavy wrench for taking off pedals (we could always get a bike shop to do this for us), a kite and one too many t-shirts.

So when Keith rolled up to our front door last week, on his way to India, and said he had to lighten his bags, we were curious to see what would ultimately go.

Three days later, after a lot of sorting and debating, he handed us a large bag with a good 2 kilograms worth of things in it. In volume, the bag would easily fill a front pannier – space that Keith can now use for food or water when he needs to carry extra supplies.

Here is what he left behind…

1. Base Layer – Keith already had an identical base layer. There was no point in carrying 2 of these shirts. They’re not something you’ll wear every day so just 1 is sufficient.

2. Sunglasses – Again, Keith had a pair of sunglasses. Three pairs of sunglasses is definitely excessive!

3. Strainer – The strainer insert that came with Keith’s dish set already performed this task, and the one he took along was more compact than the one he left behind.

4. Windscreen - This is partly a case of duplication (a windscreen came with Keith’s stove) and partly a case of bad design. The windscreen doesn’t go all the way around the stove, making it of limited usefulness in a strong breeze.

5. Extra Spokes – Keith had 3 times this many spokes with him. Generally, 3-4 spokes for the front and back wheels are enough.

6. Buff – Duplication, again!

7. Trainers – Keith was also carrying a pair of hiking boots, since he plans to explore the mountains of Slovakia. The hiking boots can be used in town too, making the sneakers redundant.

8. Ortlieb Backpack Adapter – He already had a small backpack, and this backpack adapter isn’t so comfortable.

9. Platypus Water Holder – More duplication. Keith already had several water containers, including an Ortlieb water carrier, with a shower attachment.

10. Camp Lantern – Who needs one of these when you have headtorches and bike lights?

11. Heavy Books - The small atlas was interesting but not detailed enough to be useful. A better option would be to save the Wikipedia entry for each country on a laptop or iPhone that you might be carrying. The Bicycle Touring Holland book had a series of smaller tours (hard to follow when you’re heading in a straight line across the country) and would soon be out of range.

12. Mosquito Headnet – This might be good for tours in some areas, like northern Canada or Russia, but for Keith’s route through Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary, it’s not really necessary. The mosquitos aren’t that bad.

13. Belt – More duplication.

This is just one bike tourist’s clean out. Have you had to lighten your panniers in the past? What did you discard, and why? Tell us by leaving a comment.