York to Edinburgh next month, 1st day to newcastle and night in the city, day 2 over the border up to Melrose for the night, few beers in the local pubs, Day 3 up to Edinburgh for royal p*ss-up.
Day 4 .... train back (work int morning )
Should be a great ride out, fancy something overseas next year.........Ibiza maybe
I'm planning on riding to Amsterdam with two, possibly three friends this summer. We'll be going along the north coast of France and maybe having a look around Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam and the Hague along the way.
I have a ride planned.... I first had to get a suitable bike. A 2004 Kona Dr. Dew came up for sale locally and nice and cheap so I started with that and did the following;
Drop-bar conversion: 80mm stem, Giant Contact Bars, Giant Gel bar tape
Genesis Croix-de-Fer fork
105 3 x 9 brifters
Geared it down from 52/42/30 :shock: to 28/38/48 with an XT chainset
Braking changed to Avid BB5 road from the original Hayes hydraulics
Panaracer Pasela
SKS Bluemels
Topeak Supertourist DX rack
Ortlieb panniers
Blackburn stainless bottle cages
Friday: Woking > Welwyn: ~50 miles
Saturday: Welwyn > Northampton ~55 miles
Sunday: Northampton > Woking ~90 miles
Average speed was about 11-12 mph I though I'd be a lot quicker than that . It was a good learning experience though, I expanded my kit list and discounted some! A headwind all the way on Saturday was bloody unpleasant. Here's a shot on the home leg in a village called Mursley:
No camping, I want plenty of browsing/mooching/sight-seeing time when I go so B&B or YHA I think and then I won't have lug so much stuff and be slow (er). I fully loaded the panniers up as an experiment for the real thing - I do need a bar bag, I spent ages fishing around for stuff whilst on the road.
The Ortliebs are ancient and have holes in (sewn up several times already) so I think I might go for the smaller Front City Rollers which are 25 litre and slimmer. If I'm in a B&B then hopefully I won't need too much stuff.
Took the Trek out for a training / test ride today to see how many miles were feasible / sensible in a day; possible 60, sensible 45.
I only put the front panniers on for today, but they had enough gubbins in there to make it all feel real.
The bike rides really well but I do need to change the saddle and the brake blocks. The saddle because it gets uncomfortable after 3 hours and the brake blocks because although they work-ish, they sound like blocks of wood rubbing on the rims.