Circumnavigating Britain - Advice Please!

[HorTs]

With the weight of standard touring you would ideally want a triple but you could do it with a double - it will just be harder.

I did quite a lot of research for my LEJOG ride and there are a lot of suitable tents from £50 to £500.

http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/vango-soul-100-tent-p261652 for £31
http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/vango-banshee-200-tent-p140006 for £99

I went for http://www.worldofcamping.co.uk/vau...=3bf29aefb5ba73900af3f18c4fadfc06&fo_s=gplauk from eBay for about £150.

In Scotland you can take advantage of the wild camping to save a few £.

 

[charlieboy528]

Bikepacking looks interesting - i've come across it before but was a bit worried about wind resistance, particularly as I'm going to be by the coast for the full tour! I'll read up on it anyway. At the moment I'm veering towards trying an axle mounted rack, two back panniers, tent and bag on top of the rack and a barbag. any thoughts? Great thread by the way.

Definitely aiming to wild camp, love the scottish laws on it. Thanks for the tent info HorTs, yours looks awesome...just need to shave off the price! And pleased to hear that it's doable on a compact as always. Things are taking shape...

Side question - if you're wild camping, how do you sort your insatiable desire for water after a full day riding? Fill up in nearby towns or camp by streams?

Thanks again for all the info. Keep it going.

 

[HorTs]

On the water front I mainly just stocked up before hand, once or twice I used a river.

Alternatively you can lick the condensation from the inside of your tent or ring your socks out.

 

[charlieboy528]

Ah, great. I love hearing insider tricks and tips - makes for a really "authentic" experience. Thanks!

Anyone have any recommendations for axle-mounted racks? Thanks.

 

[robgul]

There's also a book about a chap who rode round the whole coast - in the 70s IIRC - he's Nick Sanders, can't remember the book title - I do remember he started/finished at Blackpool and was sponsored by Vimto! He actually rode twice - first time as a recce and then as a timed challenge.

Rob

 

[pkeenan]

I reckon you'll be fine with a compact if you're sticking to the coast. Obviously it's not flat and there will be exceptional climbs, but on the whole it won't be like that most of the time. Wind is more likely to be the challenge.

This Tubus axle mount is probably best bet (open to discussion, though!). I used this Giant seat collar on my Specialized, which was very effective.
I realise I probably shouldn't have, but I whacked some pretty massive loads on my Specialized (road racer) bike. It was definitely not designed for that, but I had it like that for a good 4 months doing big miles with heavy loads. My point is, these bikes tend to be much stronger and sturdier than we give them credit for. I wanted to do cycle touring, but couldn't afford a tourer at the time. But that wasn't going to stop me!

In terms of the actual rack, Tubus are a good place to start. There are a few models to choose from, read the reviews and see what suits your budget.

When I wild camped, I just bought a 2L bottle of water and made sure I kept refilling it (along with my 2/3 water bottles on the bike).

 

[HorTs]

A few links and books:-

http://petermaddern.weebly.com/

http://www.slowcoast.co.uk/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slow-Coast-Home-around-England/dp/0751531642

 

[charlieboy528]

Thanks Rob, I'll see if I can track it down. He sounds like a speed nutcase!

 

[charlieboy528]

pkeenan - really helpful. I was looking at those Tubus mounts earlier. Really pleased to hear that it's doable on a compact and that the frame should take the weight! obviously trying to keep weight as low as possible but if it gets too much I'm pleased it'll cope.

HorTs - I'll check them out. I need the tips!

Thanks everyone as always. Keep it up - still want to hear rack advice if anyone's got it!

 

[toekneep]

Hi Chalieboy, my wife and I are doing the same trip this year. We are leaving in April but have six months so we will be taking diversions and hanging around in places. As for your questions, it sounds as if you have most things covered now but I would definitely go the triple low gear route with lots of weight on the bike. Here's a blog by a bloke that did it last year: www.bikearoundbritain.com. Insider tip? Take a small yellow artificial chamois (they come in packs of three from Morrisons. Other artificial chamoix are available). You can use it to mop up spills, wipe condensation from the inner tent and take about 90% of the rainwater off the tent before you pack it. Makes quite a difference to the weight. Enjoy your trip and hopefully we may bump into you.

 

[charlieboy528]

Hi Toekneep,

Great to hear about some others doing the same thing! Looking forward to reading both that blog and yours. I'm going to be heading clockwise too - starting on 1 June probably but with the shorter timeframe to do it in I'm hoping I'll catch you up on the way somewhere, would be great to share a leg if I can! Thanks for the gearing advice, would love to splash out on a touring bike for the weight and the granny ring but I just don't think I can afford (or store) another bike. I think I'm just going to be making do with what I've got! If I end up pushing more...so be it. Chamois sounds like a great tip by the way, thanks a lot.

Charlie

 

[frank9755]

I'm afraid my advice would be 'don't!'

There are simply much better places to cycle, if you've got that amount of time. Much of Europe has better roads, better weather, less traffic, is cheaper and more interesting than doing a lap of Britain. You could ride to Istanbul and back, or Athens, Gibraltar, etc.

Coasts are not always great places to cycle along. They are generally windy, often hilly as in continual up-down-up-down rather than a decent hill to get your teeth into. They often have busy traffic. And the biggest rivers and bridges to cross. Having said that, I'd like to do the West and North coasts of Scotland, but there's not a lot of the English coast I'd hanker after.

Good luck if you do do it, but I think you could have a far better time elsewhere!

 

[charlieboy528]

Hi Frank9755,

Thanks as always for the comment - really happy to hear any opinions even if they aren't necessarily positive! I do take your point but I've thought through my options and am sure I want to stay in the UK. I can't really comment about road quality or traffic but I've travelled a huge amount outside Britain and reckon it's time to see a bit more of home. Anything I do I'll have to do on my own as no-one I know (understandably) has three months off; I'm ok with that but this way friends can come do random legs with me at weekends and I can stay at their houses. I've also lived overseas a lot and think it's going to be a lot more fun if I can communicate normally with everyone I meet if I'll be broadly on my own for a quarter of a year. Plus I've got the rest of my life to take week holidays cycling round the best bits of Europe.

Mainly though, I want to stay in the UK because (national cycling quality aside, which I know nothing about), I think it's an amazingly beautiful, varied and under appreciated place. And I like the people. Besides, what's not to like about the British summer!

 

[Fandango]

I have done most of this trip over the last few years in weekly sections when I can find the time. I highly recommend it. One thing I have found interesting is seeing different areas of the country and how they are rarely as I expected them to be, such as the coal mining towns in the north east. On the map they look rather odd laid out in a grid, and I expected them to be full of unemployed hoodies dealing drugs on every corner, I was actually a bit concerned about cycling through them. When I got there, they were beautiful places with no hoodie thugs in sight at all. On the other hand, Blackpool was the hellhole I thought it would be, so sometimes I am right. Nice and flat cycling there though!

A few tips..
1. Your distance cycled will vary greatly on the terrain. Cornwall sucks monkey balls, the hills are so steep I had to walk the downs as well as the ups sometimes. 25 miles is a long way there, but I could do 100 miles easily in Linconshire.

2. Never rely on ferries, I find they are more often not running than they are. The Burnham ferry runs when it fancies, the Felixtowe ferry blew up the day before I got there and the Fleetwood ferry decided to have a maintenance day when I turned up. When this happens it can add up to 50 miles to your day. Probably not so much of a problem if you are doing the whole trip at once and you are not booking accommodation.

3. Weight is a big issue for me, not so much for others. I initially camped but found the weight made the cycling hard work. Luckily I can afford to B&B now and that makes life a lot better - Cornwall still sucked! I suggest taking the bare minimum. Don't fill your bags up with tins of beans etc. think lightweight stuff such as dry noodles or packet soup.

4. Bike. I started with a bog standard aluminium bike and it was fine. The only problems I had were a couple of spokes broke, probably because the bike wasn't designed to carry so much weight.

5. Short cuts are almost always disastrous. I took one in wales that looked OK on Google Maps but ended up with me having to carry my fully laden bike over mountainous sand dunes then up a tiny bramble covered sandy path to a mountain peak. I have also had to carry my bike over rivers where I thought there was a path, up cliffs that were not obvious on Google etc, so beware.

I hope to finish the trip next year, not sure what I'll do then, but it will have given me many great memories. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.

 

[charlieboy528]

Hi Fandango,

Awesome post, glad to hear from someone who's done most of the trip already! I really get what you mean about seeing what the country actually looks like. The idea of having some kind of connection, however small, to somewhere you only hear about on the news (or the shipping forecast!) is a really powerful one. Really useful tips - heard so much about the Cornwall slopes of doom that I'm fully prepared to be winching myself up rock faces now. Slightly worrying that I'll be into them within my first couple of weeks! Not sure I'll have access to Google Maps but whenever I've tried their shortcuts I've generally regretted it, though not as much as you obviously have!

Cheers