Le vélo
An ultralight travel bike
In May 2015 an idea started flourishing in the back of my head: touring on a bike across Europe. The combination of traveling and cycling seemed like a good plan to combine my passion for cycling, seeing places, meeting people and experiencing different cultures.
Former road-trips taught me how to backpack, but carrying baggage on a bike is a very different story. This series of posts will focus on and outline the research I did before my trip, and especially the aspects of minimalism, cycling, and ultralight touring. In this first post, I will focus on the bike I used, or in French, “le vélo”.
Le vélo
A pure race bike isn’t comfortable and doesn’t inspire confidence on gravel roads, rocky trails or broken road surfaces. On the other hand, a mountain-bike isn’t suited to cover long distances on good asphalt in a timely manner. Luckily, there are many other categories of bikes: hybrid bikes, touring bikes, fitness bikes, gravel bikes, etc… but especially: cyclo-cross bikes.
Cyclo-cross bikes are a peculiar Franco-Belgian invention, used for training and racing during the months of Autumn and Winter by road racers.
These bikes combine road race facets with off-road abilities. Some of the great attributes are a higher position, wider and grippier tyres, and lower gear ratios compared to race bikes. For traveling this means more comfort, as-well as a more upright and stable position. Compared to most mountain-bikes they are also lighter, and faster.
After a lot of research and considering the Genesis CdA 10, I went on buying the Ridley X-Bow 20 Disc Allroad (it was on sale at Wiggles) that’s a very long name but it had a few key features I liked.
It comes with a carbon fork and an alloy frame which improves comfort, disc brakes for better breaking performance, cheap components I can get dirty or replace cheaply, and as the name suggests it is “Allroad”, which means the gear ratio is very wide and allows to climb steep rocky hills, as-well as keeping good momentum on long flat stretches, or bombing down twisty 14% descents.
To further improve comfort and confidence, I replaced the original bar-tape with the more grippy and comfy S-Wrap Roubaix Tape I already had experience with on my race bike, and I also replaced the saddle with my race bike’s Specialized Romin Evo saddle.
For the pedals I used the black Shimano PD-A530, these pedals aren’t the lightest, but they improve comfort and reliance, one side of the pedal is flat and can be used with any pair of shoes, or even barefoot, the other side provides a Shimano SPD clipless mechanism, which you can use with most compatible MTB or touring shoes. Eventually, I found myself using both sides depending on the terrain, so this was a good decision.
The bike also comes with mudguards, but to keep things simple and lightweight, I left them off… you can’t really do much about getting wet when it rains… except seeking shelter.
The original cross 35mm Conti Speed tyres, despite being very comfortable, had an unsatisfying rolling resistance, I swapped them for a pair of 32mm touring tyres from Vittoria, the awesomely named Voyager Hyper, apart from being comfy they also come with a little reflective line on the tyre, improving visibility in early or late traffic.
Les suppléments
In addition to this purchase and the changes to the original bike, a few extra accessories were needed.
- A bell: for when you encounter hikers in the middle of the road.
- USB lights: cheap, and easy to snap on and recharge with a cable.
- A lock: but not the usual supposedly indestructible 2Kg locks, instead I used a very light 99gr. lock from Eagle Creek. Why? Every lock is going to break with the right tools, the point here is to prevent the common mortal from just carrying my bike away while I am having a snack.
When I stopped at a hostel or so, I always asked to secure my bike in a luggage room or a bike storage.
- A GPS device: I use a Garmin 800, its buggy software drives me mad, but it includes maps and navigation software that notifies me when I need to turn.
It also includes functions like pairing with a hearth-rate monitor, indicating speed, distance, time of the day, temperature, elevation, sunset, etc… and again you can charge it with a USB cable.
- A pump: many manufacturers sell lightweight pumps with holders you can attach to your bike, I use the Topeak RaceRocket HP pump, and it’s one less thing to pack in my dry bag.
- Bottle cages: I use pretty standard Minoura aluminium bottle cages, in which I placed normal 1L water bottles. The advantage of normal water bottles are multiple: you can easily swap them as you feel, they don’t break when they fall out, and according to this fella, commercial water bottles are lighter than bidons.
There is one drawback though, drinking becomes a bit more technical as you’ll need to unscrew the top while riding, or get a sport top, or stop a few seconds to enjoy a sip of H2O.
- Multi-tools and 2 spare tubes: I secured each of them in ziplock bags, and wrapped them with electrical tape to the frame, I only need these when I have a mechanical, there is no point to clutter my bags with these accessories.
- Baggage: I did a loooooot of research about this, eventually I decided to go for one 12L dry bag on the rear, and a 2L pouch in the front.
The pouch is the WildCat Lioness, it is not supposed to be mounted by itself, and is an accessory for the WildCat Mountain Lion, but after a bit of testing I decided against the Mountain Lion, I didn’t like having too much weight in the front, and I somehow got the Lioness to hold on the handlebars.
On the rear I used a WildCat Tiger saddle harness, according to the manufacturer I wasn’t supposed to fill it with more than a 10L dry bag, but I fitted a 12L dry bag in it, I could see how this wasn’t meant to be, but hey it worked.
These 2 accessories accounted for an additional 355gr., much lighter, versatile, and stronger than competitive systems, or alternative systems like bike racks or these ridiculous frame bags.
This is how the bike looked like in the end, and is really all I had:
Hopefully this gave you some ideas about what a traveling bike needs and can look like if you want to go far. This article will be updated with links to the future posts about the camping equipment I used, as-well as the clothing & hygiene accessories I needed.
Feel free to leave comments if you would like more information about some subjects, I’ll try my best to answer and update the article with more details.
Bon voyage 🚲
