topheavycyclist
New Member
Hello. I've been cycling for quite a while, but I've only ever done weekend cycling locally and the most I've ever really cycled is probably about 20 or so miles. I'm slowly building up my cycling at the moment (intending to cycle 28 miles next Wednesday) and having recently watched the Channel 4 show where Hugh Dennis and David Baddiel cycled along the Canal des Deux Mers, it's massively appealing as a francophile gourmand who doesn't love hills but would like an adventure, and so I'm starting to plan for doing it in June of 2026.
The preparation for it (i.e. learning to cycle a couple of rides a day totally 40-50 miles) is something I can pretty easily train myself, but I'm really unsure about the logistics of this stuff. How do I get my bike down there? Train seems complicated (St Pancras -> Bordeaux + Montpellier -> St Pancras) especially with an eBike and the plane is even worse. I could just hire a bike but as I'm currently heading through middle-age and carrying too much weight I know I'll appreciate having a good quality ebike for the journey but ideally with all of my own kit on it and set up perfectly (i.e. my own one, with the phone mount with charger tied into the bike battery, camera mounts, radar mount, etc).
I'd love to get some thoughts from people please who have done this sort of stuff before on what is me worrying too much about things I don't have experience of and what I'm missing that would be obvious to others?
The preparation for it (i.e. learning to cycle a couple of rides a day totally 40-50 miles) is something I can pretty easily train myself, but I'm really unsure about the logistics of this stuff. How do I get my bike down there? Train seems complicated (St Pancras -> Bordeaux + Montpellier -> St Pancras) especially with an eBike and the plane is even worse. I could just hire a bike but as I'm currently heading through middle-age and carrying too much weight I know I'll appreciate having a good quality ebike for the journey but ideally with all of my own kit on it and set up perfectly (i.e. my own one, with the phone mount with charger tied into the bike battery, camera mounts, radar mount, etc).
I'd love to get some thoughts from people please who have done this sort of stuff before on what is me worrying too much about things I don't have experience of and what I'm missing that would be obvious to others?
