Road bike for cycle camping

[peelywally]

Thanks for the tip. There's a kitchen available where I'm going this weekend, but I'll remember the advice for the next tour which I'll be doing on the Pashley - for that one I have the option of towing the trailer so I can take the kitchen sink if I don't mind dragging it up the hills.

theres nothing in rule book about getting off and pushing sometimes

 

[corshamjim]

I gave up on using the road bike and loaded up the trailer instead.

 

[westcoaster]

So guys, I thought I'd update this topic now that I've completed the wee tour. 150 miles over three days. I carried two rear panniers plus a tent on the back rack and a bar bag up front. The total weight was about 15kg (incl. the panniers and bar bag) and there were no problems except for one flat front tyre which I foolishly did not change to Schwalbe Marathon as I did to the rear tyre. No handling problems at all, the bike was stable downhill at speed.
Conclusion - If you're thinking about it, go for it. Granted there were weight savings I could have made and with a bit more expense I could get down to 13-14 kg but I don't feel it's such a big deal now.
If anyone is interested we did:-
Inellan to Tayinloan via Portavadie-Tarbert ferry.
Ferry to Gigha - camped overnight.
Tayinloan south to Campbeltown - north to Carradale Bay - camped ovenight.
Carradale Bay to Claonaig - ferry to Lochranza
Lochranza then down west coast of Arran to near Blacwaterfoot.
Over the String Road to Brodick
Ferry to Ardrossan - biked to Largs where wife picked us up for the easy way home.
Average speed 10 mph.

 

[bigjim]

Where are the pics?

 

[Arch]

Ermmm. Nobody told this guy.
My link

"Cooking. No cooking utensils. I can survive on cold, dry food for a couple of days until I get to the restorant or some other form of eatery. If the restorant is expensive, I extend cold food treatment for another couple of days. I can't emphasize enough the importance of this: there's no cooker, no mugs, no pots, no plates, no cutlery, no fuel, no fuel container, no cleaning utensils, no bags for storing all this junk, no additional cooking water and no bags of raw, useless food. In addition, you don't waste your time in cooking, cleaning and searching for fuel and can concentrate on cycling instead. And there's a thing less to be broken. There are only two things I need from all these: a plastic tea spoon and a plastic toothpick (see the picture) - taken from the meal served on the plane. Both weigh about the resolution of my scale (2 g). I cary both in the back pocket of the cycling jersey - you never know when an opportunity for a good meal will come, so you better be prepared. "

What a miserable sounding existance! The fact that he regards cooking as a 'waste of time' immediately makes me think we wouldn't get on....

 

[bigjim]

What a miserable sounding existance! The fact that he regards cooking as a 'waste of time' immediately makes me think we wouldn't get on....

Everybody to their own of course. I can't see how it is a miserable existance. Less is more sometimes. We have just been conditioned to desire hot food. His happiness stems from riding the bike and eating out. maybe he has more fun meeting people in a restaraunt than sitting alone stirring a bowl of gruel in a tent. Plus much of his travel is in Asia where it is not worth carrying all the cooking gear as eating out is so cheap.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

So guys, I thought I'd update this topic now that I've completed the wee tour. 150 miles over three days. I carried two rear panniers plus a tent on the back rack and a bar bag up front. The total weight was about 15kg (incl. the panniers and bar bag) and there were no problems except for one flat front tyre which I foolishly did not change to Schwalbe Marathon as I did to the rear tyre. No handling problems at all, the bike was stable downhill at speed.
Conclusion - If you're thinking about it, go for it. Granted there were weight savings I could have made and with a bit more expense I could get down to 13-14 kg but I don't feel it's such a big deal now.
If anyone is interested we did:-
Inellan to Tayinloan via Portavadie-Tarbert ferry.
Ferry to Gigha - camped overnight.
Tayinloan south to Campbeltown - north to Carradale Bay - camped ovenight.
Carradale Bay to Claonaig - ferry to Lochranza
Lochranza then down west coast of Arran to near Blacwaterfoot.
Over the String Road to Brodick
Ferry to Ardrossan - biked to Largs where wife picked us up for the easy way home.
Average speed 10 mph.

This has been a very interesting thread. I am awaiting delivery of my 1st road bike and have been thinking about fitting panniers using p-clips or a seat-post clamp. Sounds like a similar bike in terms of wheels and gears so I found this post most pleasing to read

 

[Arch]

Everybody to their own of course. I can't see how it is a miserable existance. Less is more sometimes. We have just been conditioned to desire hot food. His happiness stems from riding the bike and eating out. maybe he has more fun meeting people in a restaraunt than sitting alone stirring a bowl of gruel in a tent. Plus much of his travel is in Asia where it is not worth carrying all the cooking gear as eating out is so cheap.

Well, of course, we're all different. I just can't ever regard cooking as a waste of time. I expect he can go more than 10 miles without a cafe stop too....

 

[TheDoctor]

I have to say, if I was solo touring I wouldn't do much cooking. I'd be a dab hand at finding cheap places to get good food though
I'm also firmly of the 'load it up, ride it and see what happens' school of thought.
If my carbon race bike will cope with a 105 kg rider, it'll cope with 80 kg of rider and a saddlebag full of stuff.

 

[007fair]

I had a thread on this type of subject a while back
GIANT SCR2 Tourer?
After advice from that thread I decided to keep the SCR2 (which is similar to the OP's Bike) for light tours. Haven't got round to LEJOG yet though

 

[tbtb]

I'm just back from 1200 miles in France on a road bike. I'm 11 stones, the bike is 10kg (Genesis Aether), with 7 or 8kg of kit (incl shoes on feet). All went fine, no wobbles, creaks, spoke issues.

Of course the weight would leap when I'd carry water but I was at minimum weight when pedalling over the top of the Aubisque and when carrying the bike+kit at shoulder height through a London train carriage to get past a broken exit door!

I thought I might miss cooking but it was very hot so I tried to get up and out by 7 in the morning and I would pedal on until 9pm in the cooler evening, so there wasn't much sitting around time other than in the boiling hot middle part of the day.

 

[blockend]

Good food is one of the delights of camping. The smells, the taste, selecting it at a street market are a main part of the whole experience for us. We take a few key herbs and spices in film cassettes and buy some plonk to cook in.

Cyclists usually fall into the ascetic or voluptuary camp and I'm definitely the latter.

 

[willem]

For very short trips I sometimes forego cooked meals. France, moreover, offers many possibilities for nice cold food. A quiche, some slices of ham, a French bread and a salad, plus some cheese will see me through the evening, with a bottle of wine. On the other hand, for a longer trip I really like the delights of cooked meals, and a few cups of nice Italian coffee in the morning. A stove like the Caldera Cone could be an ultralight compromise. Replying to the wider theme of fast bikes for touring, yes it can be done, provided the wheels are not too fragile. However, in this vein I think an audax bike would be far preferable: mudguards, 32 mm tyres, and a slightly more relaxed geometry. I fact, I often wonder why many people ever buy full out modern roadbikes rather than audax bikes. Most of them do not ever compete at the levels where the slight difference in speed matters.

Willem

 

[John the Monkey]

A touring wheel really wants to be a combination of a decent number of spokes (36H) and a strongish rim - weight penalty but well worth it

36 will give you more limp-ability if one spoke goes (there are still 35 to hold the wheel true, not 31 )

I'm not sure that there's a vast difference in strength though (assuming the wheels are built equally well, and that the 32h rim isn't some ridiculous race weight confection - it almost certainly isn't).