CallAnAmbulance said:..I currently have a hybrid bike ..which I use to get to lectures and things ..I have decided to ..see how far I can get on a bike in my massive university holiday (3.5 months)
To do this I was going to replace my bike with something a little more... trustworthy as things seem to come loose and squeak an alarming amount on my cheaper bike.
How much you have to spend on a bike before it becomes trustworthy is a matter of some debate. Of course you can't have something that breaks down every few miles, but squeaks and rattles are more of maintenance/assembly thing than actual quality. There are hard-core tourers who prefer the lower end of the scale for several reasons:
-ease of mind. It's not about the bike, it's about the ride. With less money invested in it, and no "standard" to maintain finding spares becomes easier both on the mind and on the wallet. It also opens the door for one-way travel. I met a couple in Barcelona once, they'd flewn there, gone out to a big department store and picked up two cheap bikes. They planned on touring the pyrenees and then simply discard the bikes before flying home.
-adjust your expectations. Money can't buy you everything, and even a mid-priced bike is very likely to require some maintenance and upkeep during 3 months of loaded touring. If you want to improve the odds of not getting stranded, some tools and spare parts, or maybe a few scheduled maintenance stops is likely to be better than sinking all that money into a better bike to start with.
-city-to-city, or off the beaten track? With civilization within reach, equipment failure is usually more of a nuisance than an absolute show stopper. Hitch a ride, call a cab, flag down a bus - there are ways to get to someone/somewhere who can fix your bike, or sell you the parts you need to get back on the way.
CallAnAmbulance said:..I've got about £800 to spend on the bike
Is that bike only, or is it for the whole touring kit? There's more to touring than the bike.
CallAnAmbulance said:.... I was looking at taking a trailer instead of panniers,
Trailers, specially the one-wheeled kind do have their fans, but mostly among those who are lugging serious amounts of gear.
Basically it's a sliding scale, the more gear you bring, the more it starts being about going places rather than being about riding the bike. With a small rucksack it's still possible to do some sort of technical trail riding, with panniers that quickly becomes only marginally enjoyable. Haven't tried it with trailers, but I'd imagine it'd be even more limiting.
CallAnAmbulance said:..First things first should I be looking at a road bike or a touring one?
If you plan on carrying significant amounts of gear I'd go with a touring bike, no doubt about it. It can take wider tires, fenders and the fork is probably already prepped for lowriders. A longer wheelbase and a more relaxed steering geometry is probably nice as well.
CallAnAmbulance said:..I'd be looking to do ...about 160 miles) to give you an idea of the distances I'm looking at.
That's 250 km, give or take. At a really relaxed pace, on roads, that's 5 days of riding. At a modest pace, on roads, it's 3 days. With minimum gear and hard riding it's a one-day stage.
CallAnAmbulance said:...The reason I want one is i've done a lot of walking and feel very confident using a rucksack to live out of, and I could just strap that down to the trailer and be away with it.
If it's a framed rucksack I don't know offhand which trailers it'd fit in. Besides, if you'd go for a Bob yak anything you put in it unprotected would get splattered with a liberal amount of road grime. So unless you want to carry your rucksack(with the extra weight and bulk it brings) to be able to do some hiking inbetween you'd basically need another sack to store your rucksack in.
What you haven't said is what kind of touring you're thinking of, there's entirely self-supported at one end of the scale and credit card touring at the other. Unless you're planning on camping out I don't see the need for a trailer to carry your stuff. Going between B&Bs, youth hostels and similar (maybe some coach surfing) and you should be able to get away with far less.
One big drawback of trailers is logistics. Even with loaded panniers one person can wrestle one bike on board a train for instance. And finding a car with a bike carrier usually isn't much of a challenge. But add a trailer to the mix and it suddenly becomes a lot more awkward.
