The nitty gritty: what gear do we use and why?
Camping at Fredrikstad summer 2005
Halfords touring bikes and Macpac Citadel.
These pages contain information relating to the bikes tents and other gear we use. I hope to be able to put information up about all the tents we use regularly and more about other gear during 2009.
We started touring in earnest in 2005 with our Norwegian NSCR trip. We'd done some earlier tours of a few day long with groups in the Netherlands and with friends and on that basis in 2004/5 went looking for some better bikes. We ended up with some very cheap Halfords bikes with 21 gears and a rack and ended up replacing bits and pieces as we went along. This process taught us much about bikes and what makes one comfortable and reliable. After three years of long tours on these bikes we knew what we wanted for our new bikes. We ended up with the 2008 model of the VSF T400 Rohloff which have proven to be very low maintenance and comfortable touring bikes.
We did the same with tents, sleeping bags, cooking equipment and so on. Things like sleeping bags are a very individual choice, and the difference between men and women's needs come to the fore. The cheap sleeping bags we bought for the 2005 trip were fine for me but Damae spent most nights feeling rather cold (even though the temperatures were quite mild). We also learned that you get what you pay for is true although that is not to say that there are bargains to be had. Considering how we have abused our Halfords bikes they've survived quite well and are still comfortable to ride.
A re-organisation of the Equipment pages has been long overdue, so I've started moving things around. Instead of having equipment each year in the travelogues I'm creating this page as a central point. Thus the links 'Bikes and bags' will now go to another page with information ordered by year.
Haukeli summer 2008. It wasn't as warm as it looked.
VSF T400 Rohloff and Helsport Fjellheimen Camp 3.