New set-up from Newcastle

After exploring Norway and passing back through Germany and the Netherlands, we’re back in the UK for a little bit. This is in part because of our 90 day limit (out of every 180 days) in Schengen because we need to keep some days for travelling through France and Spain this autumn. It’s also because we need to sort out some things before we leave the UK later this year and plan to travel for longer in foreign lands.

The first task has been to reduce the weight and bulk of some of the luggage we’ve been carrying. In relation to my own body weight, with the current set-up, my bike and luggage is too heavy and I’m finding it a bit tricky to handle the bike.

When we had the Tern GSD, Sam could quite easily ride with me on the back but I found it difficult to control the front wheel when Sam was on the back and never successfully rode with him as the passenger. Looking into this further, Tern suggests that most riders will comfortably be able to carry 80% of their weight so this might be why I struggled (Tern - safe and happy riding) and I think this is a little bit the case here.

So, we’ve taken the last week to sort through what we’ve been carrying, remove the stuff that we’ve not touched or don’t need and repack it again.

Gone are some books - replaced with an e-reader, some toiletries - nice-to-haves that we didn’t need, clothes - too many packed that we can easily purchase on the road as needed, and some spares/tools - sent back to family to store and send if needed in the future. The latter has come about because we’ve relaxed into changing plans and possibly staying in one place for longer than anticipated to give us time to solve problems.

More fundamentally, we’ve also been assessing our pannier/bag and tent** set-up. The bigger the bags you have, the more tempting it is to fill them and take things you may not necessarily need. At this moment in time (we reserve the right to continue adjusting our set-up) we have removed my large (20l) rear panniers and replaced them with my 12.5l front panniers.

New 10l Tailfin front bags were ordered and delivered (for us to pick up from the kindly people at the local Post Office) and are now fixed to the front rack. The advantage of these is that they are smaller, narrower and can be attached further back, closer to the forks. Fingers crossed this will help with some of the minor issues I had with controlling the front when on trickier terrain, starting on hills, or trying to go round tight bends (some of this is learning, experience and confidence as we go along, Sam says).

Another thing that’s gone is the bag on my back rack (a 27l Ortlieb Rack-Pack). Although it was durable, very waterproof and handy space to have, it was in itself pretty heavy. Plus it led to the temptation to overload. The bedding is now in a sturdy dry bag and strapped to my rack. The dry bag we’ve found allows the bedding to be compressed (not a problem if we’re lofting it every night to sleep in) but is blue and yellow so a far cry from our carefully curated green/grey/black colour scheme. Sam is livid! :)

The swapping/removing of panniers and the loss of items from our kit has reduced my luggage weight by 4-5kg (about a 25% reduction). Plus we’ve moved heavier items to the back, where possible. Sam has managed to reduce his luggage weight by over 3kg.

We’re going to try this set-up for the next couple of months whilst we’re in the UK so we can easily change things around if we need to.

Finally, I’ve also decided to swap my pedals to flats rather than clips. Perhaps it was the weight of the bike, but I’ve had The Fear about not being able to unclip. I’ve now got some very good flat pedals which are in-keeping with the colour scheme, as well as being grippy and wide. Sam is delighted :)

Next steps are to get the train up to Inverness today, via Edinburgh, before starting northwards and westwards. We’re not particularly looking forward to getting the bikes on what we think will be ‘hooks in a cupboard’ but we’ll update you on how that goes later. We are however, very much looking forward to being back on the road as this has been a rather chore-filled week!

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**We hope try another tent (a Slingfin Portal 3) when we can get hold of one. Slingfin and Ultralight Outdoors are kindly coordinating to try and get us one as a special order. We love our Allak 3 but we at least want to try out a tent that takes up less space and will reduce our load by a further 2kg. Although, it’ll take some serious consideration to change, as a wise man (Marcus!) once told us that there are two types of people on long distance cycle tours, those will Hillebergs and those with broken tents!