Bicycle Equipment

In this blog, we will talk about the equipment we took and where you may be able to purchase it.

This is not a complete list and you may decide that what we took is not what you would take yourselves, but it is a starting point.

To carry your things you will need some form of transport. Some people use bike trainers to tow their gear along behind them.

We however prefer to use panniers. Having now completed several bike tours throughout Europe we have found that * Ortlieb panniers are worth the extra expense.

From our earlier tours, we were lucky to have accumulated a good selection of bike spares that we carried these included :

Spare chain links

Spare inner tubes

Spare cables (both gear and brake)

Spare brake pads (complete sets for both bikes)

We also carried a multi-tool, puncture repair kit, tyre levers, and a chain breaker tool.

We only ended up using the brake pads, but we know if we hadn’t carried the other spares they would have been required.

Camping Equipment

As our cycle tour was a camping tour our second consideration was what tent would we buy. For the extra space, we went for an ultra-light three-man tent from Decathlon.

This gave us extra space for moving around in the tent and also provided ample awning space to store our panniers overnight.

On this tent, the outer is put up first, enabling the inner to remain dry if raining. This was a little awkward and as an alternative, we left the inner attached when packing up, having first made sure both the inner and outer of the flysheet were dry.

We used sleeping bags on an inflatable mattress again from Decathlon.

You may end up noticing a pattern regarding our purchases. We are lucky to have understanding family in the UK so while preparing for our tour we were able to make the purchases online from New Zealand and have them delivered to our family in the UK ready for us. Saving us time and worry when we arrived. (Just to clarify we are NOT being sponsored by Decathlon, we just love the selection of goods that we can buy from them.)

Continuing on with our decathlon purchase list is an item I thought was unnecessary, but soon realized that this would become an absolute must on all future tours and they were camping chairs.

They were surprisingly light, easy to assemble, and used every day.

For cooking, we used a small gas stove.

this model came complete with piezo ignition so there was no need for matches or a separate lighter. To help alleviate heat loss we also purchased a windshield.

You might be asking ‘why are you purchasing so much if you’ve already done several cycle trips?’

The answer to that is most of our items we had brought back to New Zealand and we wanted to fly to the UK with only hand luggage. This ended up being a God send as if we had waited for bags in LA we would have missed our connecting flight. Also having all our bags with us meant nothing could be lost or misplaced along the way.

Clothing

Starting in May and going through to August / September we had to plan for all types of weather. To start with in France the evenings and nights felt quite cold so we took thermals and had layers of clothes.

The layers included as I said thermals, t-shirts, jumpers, and puffer jackets.

Besides our underwear, we also took a change of smarter clothes to wear when we went out in the evenings or we stayed in town for a couple of days.

We took 3 sets of underwear and cycling gear. one being worn, one waiting to be washed/dried, and a spare dry set, for just in case we got soaked through.

Also included in our clothing were raincoats, we hoped we didn’t require them but for the time spent away were certain that they would come in useful.

Navigation

I downloaded the gpx files for the EV6 & EV15 onto my Garmin Edge 1000. This is a GPS bike unit that we used for navigation and also tracking our route. At times I also used my Garmin watch to track us.

We also used Google maps on our phones to navigate at times.

The problem with both these devices is they tended to send us down dirt or sand paths or else along main roads, even when there were perfectly good cycle paths.

Good old fashioned maps and guide books never seemed to fail us.

Another good phone app we were informed of during our travels was Komoot. This was useful when navigating from point to point during the day and on any selected route gives the breakdown on the road surfaces likely to be encountered.

• Cicerone guidebooks are also a good option to look into.

We have also made a youtube video with more about these items.

The links preceded with an * are affiliate links on Amazon. Please feel free to use them and then do your Amazon shopping, not just the items displayed.