Brock said:
I certainly can't lift my fully loaded bike up stairs, why would you need to?
The 'flight of stairs' rule came about when a number of years ago we were touring in the far south of France and on the last day we dropped in on a vinyard and bought 1 case of wine for each of the 6 bikes
We then found that it was impossible to lift the bikes up and down the flights of stairs between the train platforms for our train home, so this required 6 bikes to be unloaded, all the kit carried to the bottom of the stairs, everything then carried along the passageway, and the carried up the flight to the platform where the 6 bikes were then loaded up again
As we still had to cycle across Paris and also across half of Kent a solution was required.
We found that with experimentation that a fully loaded touring bike (stove/tent/food/sleeping bag/2 weeks clothes) can carry 7 bottles of wine and still just about be ridden and carried up a short flight of steps.
This left the problem of what do you do with 5 bottles of wine per person and a very long train and boat trip............. but that is another story.