Posts in category Tips
Going long on Low Carb
Almost a year since letting the cat out the bag about my fancy pants Low Carb Healthy Fat diet (>Maybe read this first<) and with gradually more readers, friends and family asking questions I thought it time to do an update with more info and tips. Once again if low carb doesn’t fit your belief system (nutrition is very close to r [...]
How a #LCHF lifestyle changed my life...
The merits of a Low Carb Healthy Fat diet for cycle touring.
Note 1 : If you’re totally convinced that you need carbs for sport and blindly follow government guide lines on diet and ” Science” and have no intentions of entertaining a different theory, you may want to quickly leave and save yourself some time. If you have Ly [...]
Winter cycle touring basic tips
“Don’t eat yellow snow.” Is the winter tip we all know. I posted lots of info, tips and trip winter trip reports >HERE<, but here is a summary of my tips on winter cycle touring. These tips are aimed as an introduction for people planning to cycle and camp in the extreme cold. I learned most of my lessons the hard way [...]
Long term bicycle travel insurance
The long term bicycle trip insurance mine field!
In preparation for my trip through Africa I spent a lot of time looking into travel insurance. I thought I’d be done in no time but all that small print proved to be a problem. The info below is aimed at my own trip, but just maybe its of some help to others. I will try to add to this inf [...]
Bike modifications for winter cycle t...
Mr Hyde has been transformed in Winter Hyde.
Before:
For details of the original bike speccs scroll down.
After:
Work done :
Handlebars : Against all my principles I’ve replaced my drop bars for flat mountain bike type handle bars, including LX brakes and Ergon grips and bar ends for a little more comfort. I have no problems with drops bars [...]
Winter camping : cooking, food and hy...
During January and February 2013 I cycled for three weeks in Lapland in the middle of winter with Helen Lloyd ( her thoughts on winter cycling can be found HERE) We cycled and camped at temperatures between -10 and -30 degrees C.
Here I’ll discuss the things learned in the cooking, food and hydration department.
Cooking:
At the start [...]
Winter camping sleeping system
A beginners guide to choosing a sleeping system for arctic use (assuming camping down to -30/-40 degrees C).
There are several schools of thought for a sleeping system for use in the extreme cold here are the main ones that I know of:
A synthetic sleeping bag rated at around the planned usage temperature.
A down sleeping bag rated well abo [...]
Carrying luggage on a Brompton foldin...
I’m sure many people like myself have wondered how to get enough luggage on a Brompton for a couple of weeks touring.
Last weekend I went away for a few days with friends and was able to try out various options.
Here Andrew of Travellingtwo has a bar bag, Radical design Brompton “Rack sack” and a Cougar 1 trailer to transpo [...]
What does a sabbatical cost?
How can you take so much time off work?
How do you finance a big cycle touring trip?
Is cycle touring expensive?
Questions I get asked a lot. This morning I got another one of those “How do you do it?” emails from a blog reader. Now almost 18 months since I had my last day at work and more than €15,000 poorer, with a hint of work [...]
Random tips
Things that I just dont leave home without, and some tips (more random tips coming soon…:
Earplugs: For noisy campsites, windy days or shove them in your nose if there’ s lots of roadkills rotting away.
Home made camera holder: I mount this home made camera mount onto my bike frame, and then I can make nice films hands free.
Dry [...]
Packing a bicycle for air travel
Here is a short video I made a long time ago about packing a box for air travel.
Remember baggage handlers are paid to load things quickly not carefully (believe me I see it everyday). So the trick is to try and make your bike as bombproof as possible without it getting too heavy.
I hope this rather boring film is of use to somebody. Enjoy [...]
Improvised Rohloff cog removal tool
Rather than take a heavy Chain wip and spanner on tour for that once in 5-8000km that you actually reverse the Rohloff cog, I either borrow stuff from other cyclists or use my old chain (which also usually needs replacing around 5000km) to make my own chain wip and borrow a spanner from a local garage. Saving dragging heavy tools around :). T [...]