Packing stuff on a bloody bike

[Gonzalez]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:10:46 +0100, Jon Senior
<jon@restlesslemon_DOT_co_DOT_uk.remove> wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] says...
>> "[Not Responding]" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>>
>> > How do you multi week tourers do it then?
>>
>> I've seen these cyclist loaded up to the nines with huge panniers but this looks
>> like masochism at its worst!
>>
>> I reckon the answer must be to get a group together and hire a van to take all the
>> luggage, food, beer (refrigerated van!), tents & spares, tools etc and each person
>> takes one day of the tour in turn as support driver and drives on ahead to each
>> agreed stopoff.
>
>The bare minimum for a camping tour must be:
>
>Tent,
>Sleeping bag,
>Ground mat,
>Clothes,
>Cooking stuff (If you're away from civilisation)
>Food.
>
>To tour for a week, the only thing you might need is more food and you
>can probably pick that up on a daily basis.
>
>I could easily imagine touring for weeks with the same stuff that I took
>to York for the weekend.

For a longer tour you need more clothing. A set to wear, a set to dry
and a set to change into. I usually take two sets of casual clothes
and two sets of cycling clothes. Also, it is worth taking a swimming
costume on a longer tour. There is little more relaxing than a swim
at the end of a long day's cycle.

 

[Mark]

> There is little more relaxing than a swim
> at the end of a long day's cycle.

Not if you can't swim, it isn't...

Mark

 

[JohnB]

Jon Senior wrote:.
>
> The bare minimum for a camping tour must be:
>
> Tent,
> Sleeping bag,
> Ground mat,

GROUND MAT????

Wimp ;-)

John B

 

[Nick Kew]

In article <[email protected]>,
"[Not Responding]" <[email protected]> writes:

> My toolkit and spares take up half a pannier,

Mine take up negligible pannier space.

> The
> sleeping bag takes up 90% of the other one.

Not even my winter sleeping bag takes that much. The summer one
gets to share a pannier with tent or bivvy bag and cooking gear,
or with a weeks worth of changes of clothes, for example.

OTOH the panniers do get well-stuffed and heavy when I go to Tescos.

Come to think of it, I've done the two days with just a tiny backpack.
No tent, no bag. Just a tracksuit to sleep in, and just enough to eat,
with water carried in bottles attached to the frame. But that was in
a different climate, and dictated by the fact I was able to hire a bike
but not panniers.

--
Nick Kew

 

[Jon Senior]

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] says...
> Jon Senior wrote:.
> >
> > The bare minimum for a camping tour must be:
> >
> > Tent,
> > Sleeping bag,
> > Ground mat,
>
> GROUND MAT????
>
> Wimp ;-)

WIMP???? Definately. York was the first time that I've camped in about
10 years and the last was a knackered old steel-pole tent in my parent's
garden 'cos we'd run out of room in the house.

I guess that "Wimp" could be extended to include those softies who
insist on taking a tent and sleeping bag. Real Men sleep under the
stars. ;-)

Jon

 

[Peter Clinch]

Jon Senior wrote:

> I guess that "Wimp" could be extended to include those softies who
> insist on taking a tent and sleeping bag. Real Men sleep under the
> stars. ;-)

Shurely "rainclouds" -ed.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email protected] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

 

[JohnB]

Jon Senior wrote:
>
> In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] says...
> > Jon Senior wrote:.
> > >
> > > The bare minimum for a camping tour must be:
> > >
> > > Tent,
> > > Sleeping bag,
> > > Ground mat,
> >
> > GROUND MAT????
> >
> > Wimp ;-)
>
> WIMP???? Definately. York was the first time that I've camped in about
> 10 years and the last was a knackered old steel-pole tent in my parent's
> garden 'cos we'd run out of room in the house.
>
> I guess that "Wimp" could be extended to include those softies who
> insist on taking a tent and sleeping bag. Real Men sleep under the
> stars. ;-)

Agreed. It can be a magical experience, even when unknown animals come
investigating in the middle of the night (as once on Col du Chat).

Most of my camping has been with just a sleeping bag and a large
polythene sheet.

I also have strong memories of camping out in Corsica in three days of
heavy thunderstorms with the 'plastic tent' held up with toestraps and
the pump as a pole :-(

.....And cold beans and andoulette out of a tin on a hard concrete bus
shelter floor in Normandy while drinking wine from a bastardised rear
light as a cup....

What other 'interesting' nights' out have others had?

John B

 

[Nick Kew]

In article <[email protected]>,
JohnB <[email protected]> writes:

> Agreed. It can be a magical experience, even when unknown animals come
> investigating in the middle of the night (as once on Col du Chat).

Hmmm. Magical morning in Norway: looked out of the front of the tent,
and there in front of me a herd of reindeer enjoying the morning sun ...
They were fast, and buggered off before I'd got up and breakfasted.

Or in Italy, I never saw the animal in question, but got up to see bear
prints in the snow, passing very close. Shame they were old, and the
reason I hadn't seen them the night before was that I'd camped in the dark.

> Most of my camping has been with just a sleeping bag and a large
> polythene sheet.

Ugh. I prefer the goretex bivvy bag - which was a definite upgrade
from the tent I used to use.

> I also have strong memories of camping out in Corsica in three days of
> heavy thunderstorms with the 'plastic tent' held up with toestraps and
> the pump as a pole :-(

hehe

> What other 'interesting' nights' out have others had?

My favourite spots are where I can sleep to the sound of running water.

--
Nick Kew

 

[Gonzalez]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:49:40 GMT, JohnB <[email protected]> wrote:
--


>What other 'interesting' nights' out have others had?

Pyrenees' storms make interesting camping experiences - especially
when roused by other alarmed campers because the river's flooded!

Had a friend who camped on a beach. He was woken by water in his tent
on a cloudless night! The tide had come in...

 

[Richard Bates]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:49:40 GMT, in <[email protected]>,
JohnB <[email protected]> wrote:

>Agreed. It can be a magical experience, even when unknown animals come
>investigating in the middle of the night (as once on Col du Chat).

Presumably aptly pronounced "Col du Shat"?

--
I remember when the internet was only in black & white.
It only had a few pages but at least they all worked.

 

[Nick Kew]

In article <[email protected]>,
Richard Bates <[email protected]> writes:

> I remember when the internet was only in black & white.
> It only had a few pages but at least they all worked.

When was that? Looked colourful enough in 1987 (albeit nothing more
flashy than ASCII with escape sequences) when I first got a modem
and a subscription. And by 1990 the piccies were coming in.

--
Nick Kew

Nick's manifesto: http://www.htmlhelp.com/~nick/

 

[LaoFuZhi]

> Looked colourful enough in 1987 (albeit nothing more
>flashy than ASCII with escape sequences) when I first got a modem
>and a subscription. And by 1990 the piccies were coming in.

cue grams; new world symphony......................

ayeeee lad ah remembu' whun' ah drove all t' waeyyy t' that ''''loondoon""
wi'owt sa mooch as a GPS and in a mo'urr wi NO autopilot!!!! AND I 'ad
tu get up three howerzz b'fore ah wint t't bed t' dooooow it!


Ye tell that to yoong folks t'day and they don' believe ye!

 

[Richard Corfield]

vernon levy wrote:

> I use the top of the rack for tent sleepingmat and sleeping bag leaving
> oodles of space for beer in the panniers ;-)

Sleeping bags take a lot of space - almost a full pannier for my (very old
one).

The Ortlieb dry bags look good though, and are quite cheap on Wiggle. I'd
think even a quite small one like a 22 litre could take a sleeping bag, and
is a nice size for attaching to a rack. I've not tried mine in the pouring
rain yet, but it looks like it will last a lot better than a black bin bag.
These tend to get torn quite easily.

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot com
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

 

[Richard Corfield]

JohnB wrote:
> What other 'interesting' nights' out have others had?

Two very memorable ones:

Bivvying on top of Peny-Ghent we could see the stars, including one really
big shooting star that came very low into the atmosphere before burning
out. It was quite a spectacular firework.

Getting lost (I wasn't the one with the map - honest!) on a scout
expedition on Kielder Water, failing to find a waypoint where the tents
were hidden. We thought that the scout leader had planned it that way to
test our emergency survival skills (he'd do that kind of thing), and slept
quite comfortably in a makeshift shelter in the woods just back from the
lake side whilest lots of scout leaders, helpers and wardens went looking
for us.

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot com
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

 

[JohnB]

Richard Corfield wrote:
>
> JohnB wrote:
> > What other 'interesting' nights' out have others had?
>
> Two very memorable ones:
>
> Bivvying on top of Peny-Ghent we could see the stars, including one really
> big shooting star that came very low into the atmosphere before burning
> out. It was quite a spectacular firework.

Great. That's something I'd like to see.
I've laid awake watching many shooting starts higher up but they have
always been very high and quite tame.
A lightning bolt that hit an electric substation I was once near in the
Alps made me jump once though :-(

> Getting lost (I wasn't the one with the map - honest!) on a scout
> expedition on Kielder Water, failing to find a waypoint where the tents
> were hidden. We thought that the scout leader had planned it that way to
> test our emergency survival skills (he'd do that kind of thing), and slept
> quite comfortably in a makeshift shelter in the woods just back from the
> lake side whilest lots of scout leaders, helpers and wardens went looking
> for us.

I bet they unfairly blew their tops when they found you tho'

John B

 

[JohnB]

Nick Kew wrote:
>
> In article <[email protected]>,
> JohnB <[email protected]> writes:
>
> > Most of my camping has been with just a sleeping bag and a large
> > polythene sheet.
>
> Ugh. I prefer the goretex bivvy bag - which was a definite upgrade
> from the tent I used to use.

That's always been something on my shopping list after once waking up
covered in a thick frost, but I've never been convinced on the problems
of condensation.

John B

 

[soup]

MSeries popped their head over the parapet saw what was going on and
said
> Adrian Boliston Wrote:
> > "[Not Responding]" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> >
> > > How do you multi week tourers do it then?
> >
> > I've seen these cyclist loaded up to the nines with huge panniers
> > but this looks
> > like masochism at its worst!
> >
> > I reckon the answer must be to get a group together and hire a van
> > to take all the
> > luggage, food, beer (refrigerated van!), tents & spares, tools etc
> > and each person
> > takes one day of the tour in turn as support driver and drives on
> > ahead to each
> > agreed stopoff.
>
> I hope you are not serious.

Seemed eminently sensible, if you were doing a known route to a
known itinery. Going as the fancy takes you on the other hand ... .

--
yours S

Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione

 

[Nick Kew]

In article <[email protected]>,
JohnB <[email protected]> writes:

> That's always been something on my shopping list after once waking up
> covered in a thick frost, but I've never been convinced on the problems
> of condensation.

I've bivvied in cold conditions (colder than we ever get here in southern
England, if not necessarily in the scottish highlands). The bivvy bag
freezes solid, and there's a steep temperature gradient in the sleeping
bag.

I've also discussed this with someone with experience of real cold,
having spent three years on British Antarctic Survey plus time working
in Kiruna in the far north of Sweden. He described how in extreme
conditions you'd get a tangible "frost line" somewhere in the
sleeping bag.

--
Nick Kew

 

[David Martin]

On 24/7/04 2:07 pm, in article [email protected], "Nick Kew"
<[email protected]> wrote:

> In article <[email protected]>,
> JohnB <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> That's always been something on my shopping list after once waking up
>> covered in a thick frost, but I've never been convinced on the problems
>> of condensation.
>
> I've bivvied in cold conditions (colder than we ever get here in southern
> England, if not necessarily in the scottish highlands). The bivvy bag
> freezes solid, and there's a steep temperature gradient in the sleeping
> bag.

I slept on a lake in Norway once. We'd had a fire the night before, on the
lake. That night it hit about -17C. The scouts didn't believe me when I told
them to put their water bottles inside the sleeping bags with them.. guess
who didn't have to thaw snow for breakfast!

And for the ultimate in silly things.. We'd gone to the Dolomites as an end
of degree road trip. After the first few nights where we'd just bivvied
under the stars (in stupid places like the escape lane on an alpine road,
and right next to lake como so we got eaten alive by the mossies) we finally
decided to put the tents up, only to discover the poles were in London. The
whole month was spent bivvying in orange plastic survival bags. Or should I
say on them except when it rained. We had four major thunderstorms when we
were in those bags (instead of just urban bivvying in the entrance to the
Canazei cable car, or underneath the top station for one of the other ski
lifts..)

One was spent outside the hut at the base of Torre Vajolet (the pinacles in
the opening sequence to Clifhanger) and the hut keeper couldn't believe we'd
do such a thing. Problem was we couldn't afford to stay inside as we'd spent
our money on beer instead. He even got the guy from the next hut to come
down and look at these 'crazy english' (one welsh, one australian, I think
the rest were english)

Another was spent in the valley in the heart of the sassolungo group. We
could hear the thunder and lightening moving up the valley. it then struch
right overhead and in the deafening silence that ensued, all we could hear
were falling rocks. Bear in mind we were in the base of the valley at the
time ;-(

...d

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, Richard Bates
('[email protected]') wrote:

> I remember when the internet was only in black & white.
> It only had a few pages but at least they all worked.

It may come as a surprise to you to know that the Internet has no pages,
and is not in any colours or shades at all, not even black and white.
The World Wide Web has pages, but it is not the Internet, being both
much younger and also living in a different layer on the stack.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; not so much a refugee from reality, more a bogus
;; asylum seeker