Five reasons to ride your bikes even when it all goes a bit wrong

I wish I'd screen grabbed the weather forecast I read, late on Friday night, as we were going to bed and hatching a plan for the weekend - so that I could have juxtaposed the natty new BBC weather graphics with what actually arrived. 'Sunshine and 7 degrees all afternoon', it proclaimed. After what turned up, I want a refund.

Or do I?

We spent Saturday morning at the gym. Just for once, Katie and I managed to get Wattbikes next to one another, both with working headsets, seat post clamps, pedals - even bluetooth! The final piece of the jigsaw, being able to see one another on Zwift, remained elusive, but we did an hour or so up the mountain towards our Le Col challenge hours, interspersed with some adult conversation and trips to the water cooler to combat the intense heat (none of which later). It hurled it down with rain so we went and got Rhoda some new trainers to ride in, and nipped to Cafe Ventoux for a bit of an outing and something to eat. Katie took the opportunity to see what she might spend her £50 Le Col voucher on - assuming we got some more time on the bike before the weekend was out.

Sunday came, and the sun shone as we sat in church. A bit better than the forecast, we thought. Excellent! We drove home, choosing to ignore the car's temperature warning beep, and threw ourselves into the task of getting everyone's touring kit out at the same time for the first time since last May.

The touring bikes came up from the basement - a feat in itself. Katie's had air in the rear hydraulic brake line. Again.

Ruth's winter cycling jacket was missing. The girls had been sharing one for weeks, which was fine until we wanted them to ride together.

EVERYTHING needed oiling.

Ruth's jacket was still not in evidence.

Rhoda's bottle cage had been robbed from her trailerbike when Thomas Ivor put his foot through one during cyclocross training. Thomas Ivor hadn't tightened the bolts back into the frame, and one was missing on the basement stairs.

Ruth's jacket wasn't in the car. It wasn't anywhere in the pile of coats by the front door. It wasn't in the washing basket, or the cupboard. It wasn't in the girls' bedroom, or their chest of drawers. Running out of places to look.

We had a shortage of serviceable rear lights. About four of them have had the switches fail in wet weather recently. It was looking decidedly dull outside.

Ruth's jacket was not in our bedroom, either. It was not under the settee, nor in the bag we took to her last cyclocross race. It was not in the front garden, or the flippin' fridge. The hunt was becoming desperate and tempers were fraying.

In the end, since all the jacket-searching had cost us so much time we were all 'hangry', we jumped in the car, all each one of us (except Ruth's top half) in full lycra, and went to a well known burger joint which euphemistically calls itself a 'restaurant' but is careful to enhance the eating experience by never bringing to your table everything you ordered. As we arrived there, we were treated to a hailstorm. Words were possibly had with the Almighty, who had apparently hogged the promised nice weather, for the part of the day we had spent indoors, worshipping Him.

I think the children thought that was it, and we were going to go home, take off our cycling kit, put a fire in the grate and spend the rest of the day looking for Ruth's jacket, but somehow, (perhaps that £50 Le Col voucher had something to do with it) Katie and I steeled ourselves to the prospect of cutting back our ambitions for the day's riding, but restoring some honour by being able to say we had ridden, after all. Here's what I think we learned, as we set out under grey skies, which proceeded to dump on us from a great height...

1. There will be 'can't be bothered' days on the road, too. They may of themselves have no particular reward at all - but they facilitate the 'other days' - and you have to do them to reach your goal.

When you reach the end of a tour, you will remember the really tough bits. The stinking great hills. The equipment failures. You'll remember the amazing bits - the natural wonders, a tasty meal, road angels you met. What you're unlikely to remember so readily is the miles and miles you spent just plodding on. The days when getting on the road again was a drag. A nagging headwind. Rain that stops as soon as you've put your wet weather gear on. Even in lovely places, there are boring bits.

The fact is, going the distance is very much about being able to keep on going when the motivation is low and excuse factor is high. If you hadn't done a few hours at 10mph feeling uninspired, here and there, you might be hundreds of miles short of your objective. Sticking with a plan to throw your leg over the bike, even when at the time, it would be much easier not to, is good discipline for days where caving in could kill off your big aspirations.

2. If you don't find the kit you need today, you won't have it for next time, and you'll lose another ride. If one plan goes for a Burton, try and respond in a way that prevents recurrence.

We covered less than half the distance we had hoped, in the end, but if we had used 'we can't find everything in a hurry' as an excuse, we'd not have gone out at all - and we'd have left ourselves the same excuse for next time, too. In the end, we figured that if we only rode up our street and back, to have done that before the day was out would be a sign that we were able to get moving more quickly, and fully equipped, next time. Today's ride became a facilitator for the next one! (See point 5, below)

Repurpose a ride that isn't going to hit all the original targets. Roll with the blows and do something purposeful with it - even if that's short of, or different to, what you'd hoped. It might mean next time goes more smoothly.

3. What doesn't kill them makes them stronger - children get used to what they've experienced safely, and will be calmer next time. Use incentives.

What is training for, if not a bit of conditioning?! A small dose of hail in the faces, endured by choice and survived, makes for better endurance next time it comes and can't be avoided. Use mitigations (being able to turn round and put the wind at your backs, and doing that before things get ugly) and rewards (hot chocolate and a warm bath at home afterwards) while you have them. If we encounter a full-on hailstorm again, in the middle of nowhere, the children know what to do, and that it will be ok. They won't die. It will still be a good adventure. We were well impressed with the girls' willingness to endure a burst of rough weather and keep going; Thomas Ivor was able to get used to the 'new' sensory input of cold stuff hitting his face whilst riding a road he knows well, and could process his response at his own pace.

Children today are often shielded more than is helpful to them, from the weather. Properly equipped, with careful management (both important caveats!), they can endure more than they think - and if you are willing to do it close to home, out of season, that unexpected storm on your next tour will be far less of a curved ball. Which brings us to the next point...

4. Train hard, fight easy - test your contingencies and ability to deal with problems when you can choose to, rather than when you have no choice! 

Last year, we were privileged to go to visit Islabikes in Shropshire. In preparation for a staff outing, a weekend's off-road touring through Wales, founder Isla Rowntree presided over (and participated in, and won) a competition in which every participant had to change their rear inner tube against the clock, unaided, using only their own equipment for the trip, fully packed up as it would be on the day.  I won't say who found they'd packed a 26" tube on their 29er, but several of the participants encountered trouble they'd not foreseen, and a few doubtless tweaked their preparations subsequently! As Isla pointed out, they'd be glad of the frustration now, if they had a puncture out on open moorland in a freezing cold deluge the following week.

Solving problems you hope you will never have, with a safety net, might lead to packing new or different things (or knowledge!) that improve your chances on tour, when things go wrong. If the things you fear most on tour, you've already tried and found a response for, you have rather less to fear. In our case this time, it wasn't so much equipment based but a test of 'can we ride on in these conditions', in a situation where we could bail out at any time -  and the answer was "yes - and Rhoda needs the peak of her hat adjusting for her when it happens". If that's the worst of it, we won't be so worried next time the BBC forecast turns out to be so lamentably inaccurate!

There is a general level of satisfaction to be had from having 'done it anyway', and if children bank positive experiences of dealing with situations you'd prefer not to deal with, but might have to, everyone stresses less. Even if unbeknown to them, you dialled things back a bit having satisfied yourself it was ok, everyone gets a feeling that nothing can stop you next time. Some days, when you're digging deep, that's what you need upon which to draw.

5. Evaluation is the mother of preparedness - a.k.a. 'Always look in the toy box'.

We got home, got warm, got the girls some hot chocolate and a bath, and Katie set to, continuing the hunt for the lost jersey, finding a number of other things we didn't know we'd lost, along the way, and filling two bags for the charity shop, largely of toys that the girls didn't need any more. At the bottom of one of the toy boxes, patiently waiting all along to be discovered, was a Size 1 HUP cycling jacket.

We made a list, from which the missing jersey was cheerfully removed, of other things that had come to light during the afternoon. Ruth's trailerbike seat needs to go up. Rhoda's gloves are getting tight and she is probably ready for the larger crankset her sister uses. We have a new 11-34t cassette that needs fitting to Katie's tourer, along with bleeding those pesky brakes again. I ended up recording Ruth's heart rate, not my own (although that was instructive, during the ride!). I've got a loose front lamp bracket. We need to sort out some more rear lights, or fix the ones we have. These are all things we can try to fix before our next full team ride, rather than consigning ourselves to repeating them - and whilst it's been decided that the girls are to have special bags to put their cycling clothes and accoutrements in, we will be sure to check the toy box, next time something's gone astray...

Going with the flow - Bikepacking for pre-schoolers

"Daddy, look!"

More than a little alarmed by the accompanying ripping sound, I darted out of the kitchen wondering what on earth was going on, only to find Ruth in the hall trying to velcro her big brother's bikepacking bags to her 16" Islabike. Too much 'Mountain Bikes and Bothy Nights' on YouTube...

In trying to help her complete the 'play' task she'd started, it became tantalisingly apparent that yes, Thomas Ivor's top tube bag did fit nicely in the Cnoc 16's frame, and yes, you could strap a drybag to the handlebars without impeding the function of the brakes... and good grief! The seat pack fits under her saddle, too!

Before any of us knew it, we had stuffed some down jackets in the bags and were out at the bandstand, little Ruth lapping with tremendous fervour. A little boy on a kick scooter tried to race her, and that was it - she was off like a miniature, female, cycle touring Jeremy Clarkson.

I've written before about giving little children opportunities that others might think beyond them, but a bit like the cadence sensor when I taught Thomas Ivor to change gear, this one came as if from nowhere. It's only last June when Ruth was helping to hold her big brother's bike when 'King Louis' was being measured for a frame bag, and here we were witnessing another seminal moment. I mean, why shouldn't a little girl of just turned four have a set of bikepacking bags?

The next day we found ourselves in Newthorpe once more, and this time it was 'Merida's turn (it would seem so to have been named!) for 'the treatment' (see below for spec list).

Self evidently, it would be pointless spending a significant amount of money on a lightweight bike only to hand a child a load of weight to slow them down, or to impede their recently-learned steering, pedalling or braking, but the three bags come to a total of less than 450 grammes, and so far they've largely been filled with feathers, in the form of the down jacket she would otherwise be wearing, and her sleeping bag. At that, along with her spare inner tube, Ruth's bike still only weighs about 7kg - that's still only half the weight of a 16"-wheeled bike-shaped-behemoth from Halfords, before you add the tinsel tassels on the handlebars and the 'Tiny Tears' threatening to fall out of the basket. That's before you consider that many children of four years old are still using the 'S-word'...

Children love carrying something on their bike, especially when everyone else is. Family life is a team sport, and they feed off feeling like they are an integral part of the mission. In this case, Ruth has decided that now she has the bags, she wants to go 'bothying' even more than she did before (which was a LOT), so we've had the maps out and have a plan in development. When we tour longer distances, we'll still use her trailerbike to make sure we cover the ground and stay safe on the road, at which she will have a pair of panniers on her rear rack, once more feeling like she's part of the team. She can probably use her 'frame bag' off her Cnoc as a top tube bag on her trailer bike.

A ride out today, five miles or so, with Daddy on foot and Rhoda on her balance bike, has proved that the Cnoc remains stable, handles fine, and most of all that the little girl at the helm of what looks every inch a touring machine is exceptionally proud of herself, to the point of stopping to tell everyone coming the other way that she was carrying her sleeping bag!

We had a little play with our new Alpkit Krakau stove as well today, and had a hot snack next to the river, on the edge of the woodland where Mummy and Daddy went canoe camping last summer.


A very productive couple of days, which we never saw coming! Above all, a lesson in 'going with the flow'; of letting the children lead when it comes to their adventures and their kit - because if they, like you, don't enjoy it, you probably should be doing something else.

Ruth's Islabikes Cnoc 16 luggage:

Bar bag: Alpkit Airlok Extra Dry Bag (£12) with Dual Straps (£5) - contains Alpkit 'Cloud Cover' down-filled blanket for sleeping in.
'Frame bag': An upturned Alpkit Small Fuel Pod (now discontinued and replaced with a slightly different shape. Luckily found one in their bargain bin for £12 which fits perfectly!) - contains spare inner tube, and possibly a favourite pebble.
Seat pack: Alpkit Small Koala (was called the 'Wombat' originally - review here) - £70 (some in the bargain bin with minor imperfections for £40 if you don't mind grey or yellow at the time of writing!) - contains Spotty Otter Drift Down II combo jacket.

Total Cost of luggage: £99

That's less than the cost of two nights in a Premier Inn - excitement aside, by your third night in the bothy, you're quids in!

Inspiration for the infants

We had a super night out in London last week, to hear the mighty Anna McNuff speak at Dave Cornthwaite's 'YesStories' event. Taking the little two into town on the train is a #Microadventure in its own right!

Ruth and Rhoda are by far the youngest ever attendees to this event - and it's always something of a lottery when you take children to something they might not necessarily be expected at! Luckily, they received a wonderful welcome and acquitted themselves pretty well, despite an inopportune event with the reappearance of a half-chewed dried apricot during the main event. We really enjoyed Anna's new talk, 'Let me tell you about a time when...', and she coped wonderfully with both the live regurgitation and periodic heckling from her young fans. We are very grateful to her for her kindness and interest, and for blazing a trail for little girls like ours to follow.

In Mr Cornthwaite's 'Just say yes' spirit, and with the car's bike carrier finally fixed, I didn't have much choice, then, but to take the girls for a bike ride (Thomas Ivor is away this week) the following day, so we went to finish off the Brampton Valley Way, which I will write a separate review about shortly. We've been gradually crossing off different parts of it for a little while now.

Over two days, Ruth has done 20 miles on the trailerbike, Rhoda a lap of a car park, and the 'Bike+Trailerbike+Trailer' combination has been well and truly tested pending Katie's annual leave. By taking the double Croozer we can use it as a 'broom van' to sweep Ruth up if her little legs decide enough is enough; we can't speak highly enough of the Islabikes trailerbike (very sadly no longer made and still commanding decent money second hand). It confers a significant weight saving over the Trek Mountain Train we used in the Hebrides in 2014 and much improved stability thanks to the rack mount system, and whilst a little on the long side (a couple of feet longer overall than the double WeeHoo, we reckon) it is a remarkably nimble and manoeuvrable outfit.

As ever, assuming we get that far this summer, we're developing another touring setup, with Thomas Ivor on his Islabikes Luath 24, now morphing into a 'bikepacking' setup thanks to our friends at Alpkit, who have made him a beautiful bespoke frame bag. Our replacement bikes seem to be doing the business, although I am reserving judgement on the strength of the wheels.

All things being equal, Ruth is off to cycling club tonight for a first ride in her own right, so for now, here's a video of our outing in the Brampton Valley, which we will talk about a little more, soon...

Family ByCycle @LondonBikeShow '16

We were delighted to win tickets, courtesy of Islabikes, for this year's London Bike Show at ExCeL, in London's Docklands.

Thomas Ivor is between schools at the moment and the only chance we had for all three children to go was the Thursday, which was a shame in that we missed Mark Beaumont, Matt Stephens, Chris Boardman and Chris Hoy, amongst others, but was a blessing in that the show was relatively quiet, it being a school day.

One of the main reasons for wanting to go was actually to visit the Islabikes stand, our Northamptonshire home being nearer to the show than their base in Shropshire. This year we have two possible purchases in our sights - a 24" wheeled bike for Thomas Ivor, and a first set of pedals for Ruth.

Waiting for the train, Croozer packed flat, ready to go!

Three children, two of whom are ambulatory but not reliable and still require a considerable amount of paraphernalia, with just the one of me, represents something of a challenge on public transport, and so bearing in mind the success of our trip to the NEC last year, I decided to get brave and take the trailer to London on the train.

I knew that it was physically possible to get the trailer, I mean, pushchair (nomenclature is important!) dropped flat, onto the East Midlands Trains 'Meridian' on to St Pancras - it just takes time and practice to get it all ready, and ideally a hand from the platform staff to stop the little ones hurling themselves down the gap, which at Wellingborough, where we boarded, is considerable. Unfortunately, the double Croozer is about five inches too wide to get it in assembled.

The best news came when we got to London - and it was a little closer for comfort than I'd have liked, but it all worked!

Happily, we can report that we successfully got through the gates at St Pancras, into the lifts and through the ticket gates onto the sub-surface platforms and changed onto the Docklands Light Railway at West Ham and Canning Town. Both the new 'S' stock on the Underground, and the DLR trains, had ample capacity to admit us without causing anyone any bother. It would seem that the standard door opening of a lift on the Underground is about an inch or so wider than the trailer, so with care, we were able to roll straight in, arriving at ExCeL just in time for lunch.

Upon entering the show, mindful that the girls were likely to tire, we headed for the Islabikes stand on the far side of the hall. A lovely young lady by the name of Suzanne greeted us and took time with each of the children individually to give them a go on a bike. By the time Thomas Ivor and Ruth had had their turn, Rhoda just had to be let out for a spin on a Rothan!

The verdict? Well, Ruth is ready for the Cnoc 14 as soon as we are (£250 to find!).  She was almost managing to pedal but it's going to take some work, of course. Thomas Ivor's just had another inch and a half into the seat post on his Beinn 20s, but as yet isn't ready to make the move to the Luath 24, which nevertheless looks like the bike of choice, so that purchase can probably wait until the Autumn.

What with looking at bikes, Thomas Ivor riding a motorcycle, visiting various tourist boards' stands, watching people do ridiculous things on the climbing wall, street velodrome and BMX ramps, we had an action-packed afternoon. We traded Alan Partridge quotes with the man representing the Norfolk Broads, had some good-natured banter with some people trying to make cycling acceptable in the New Forest, and a bizarre encounter with a jobsworth who accused me of trying to kill Ruth by test driving a Babboe City cargo bike (which I loved, by the way) on the short test track - without a helmet! Horrors! The poor Dutch chap who demonstrated it to me must have wondered what all the fuss was about.

Ruth wasn't so much disappointed to be going home, as utterly raging. In fact, she made herself a bit sick, such was the magnitude of her displeasure at leaving the show. As always with little children we didn't get to do and see everything, but we had a wonderful time - and the knowledge that the Croozer Kid for 2 can get around London is a welcome piece of 'gen'...

We want to say a warm 'thank you' to the folk at Islabikes for their superb customer service, which as always lives up to the product's high standards, for the competition prize of the show tickets and for replacing Thomas Ivor's leg warmers, torn when he came off in the park the other week, which was a very kind gesture indeed.

W(h)at(t) Bike?

One of the big differences between Katie and me is our historical approach to exercise. I have ridden my bike, historically, for utility, and for the joy of travelling, more than as a form of disciplined physical training. Katie, on the other hand, was not so long ago a competitive rower, in the gym six days a week, on the river at least two days, cycling a fair mileage to do so. She had a trainer emailing her to dictate our diet; a fit ball long before she was pregnant. Weights. Eating and drinking strange concoctions in tins.

It gave me something of a fright, then, when, after a happy summer's cycling but with an eye on our expanded waistlines (and my plantar fasciitis, and my dicky knee, and my total lack of core stability) and to get the girls swimming, Katie announced her intention to investigate joining a gym.

It's funny how you can get to your thirties and still have never done, even once, certain things which others do every day.

• I have never been inside a bookmaker's shop.
• I have never, even entered a high street travel agency, let alone sat down in one to have someone wearing too much makeup operate a computer for me, to show me misleading pictures of places they've never visited themselves.
• I have never eaten a KFC meal. Not even the chips.
• I have never paid someone to wax, pierce, doodle on or chop off any part of me.

I was going to say I haven't eaten horse, but I once ate a Tesco lasagne and I don't want to mislead; I have been to Nando's, once. Popular as it is with Alan Partridge and Glen Ponder, I'm glad I don't have to go again.

So when Katie chirped up that she was looking at a gym membership for us, the alarm bells went off. I have never entered a private gym. I've seen enough Facebook status updates and #epicfail videos to put me off. I've watched the 'Brittas Empire'. Why, I reasoned, would anyone drive to a building, to pay to ride their bike or run on the spot, before driving home? That's potty. Why would I do that? I could just ride my bike to the gym, save a fortune by not going in, and ride home again.

It was with some, trepidation, then, that I decided to 'stand on the wasp' and pay a visit to one of these hitherto bewildering institutions on Saturday evening.

An hour later, and with both girls having pooped in the nice man's office following the tour, I came out having ticked something off my list. I'd seen a swimming pool that looked more like a hotel's than a municipal leisure centre. I did see, as I feared mirror-walled rooms full of what looked like instruments of torture. I saw people of both genders and all ages in neon clothes, doing the oddest things whilst watching TV.

I was shown the 'spin room', which is nothing to do with the impending political party conferences, where fifty people can ride without anyone crashing, puncturing or even being overtaken. Not that I would be sure to be able to do so, because the seat doesn't go very high on the bikes. My enthusiasm was evaporating in the presence of all these people working hard to go nowhere.

I did, however, amongst the predictably intimidating surroundings, identify a glimmer of hope - something that might offer me a familiar(ish) way in to this strange world. It had a seat and bars that looked like a road bike's. I threw the seat as high as it would go, to try it for size, and discovered it had SPD pedals and actually felt strangely familiar. This was the 'bike that's not a bike' that could tempt me away from my reluctant and uncomfortable stints on the turbo trainer in the lounge. If it's good enough for Mark Beaumont and developed with British Cycling, then I shouldn't turn my nose up at it. It was a WattBike.

A WattBike could be mine for about £30 a week, but for a fraction of that, taking advantage of the facilities being quieter during the day, when I would be most likely to go, I can indeed drive ten minutes from the house and go for a structured training ride whatever the weather is doing - well, it will if I spend £99 on a longer seat post to take with me!

I still feel like I am never going to be one of the 'gym set', and I am unlikely to be seen lifting weights or drinking protein shakes any time soon, but ,aybe, just maybe, taking the girls for a swim and then dropping them off for just an hour will cause me to ride in a more structured way, to reclaim some sustainable long-term fitness in between touring outings, and not to blame the multitude of familiar excuses (some of them good ones) that can stop me getting out on the bike more often than I do.

Do you, and/or your family use a gym, or do you train at home and on the road? What do you think we should do? Leave us a comment below!

Lumbering Up

It's 'D-2', and there's a lot left to do. This next trip has had a very peculiar and stuttering gestation.

First of all, it wasn't the natural choice for where to go next. We had enjoyed Scotland immensely last year, as we rode up the Outer Hebrides, in weather we could probably not hope to ever see again up there, but whilst we had several ideas in this country, my language skills and interests led me to be looking at Germany, Scandinavia or the Benelux countries if we were to venture outside the UK.

The thing is, Thomas Ivor has been learning French this year, much earlier than Katie and I did modern foreign languages at school, and it just seemed like the thing to do to take him to France and give him some cultural exposure. Since he is schooled in Devon, setting off from Plymouth seemed the most efficient use of his fortnight with us.

I spent a lot of the time working on our trip to Brittany in the abstract, testing the feasibility of our ideas, and was bundled into booking ferries when it became apparent that availability was going to run out; as it is, we missed out on the Friday night sailing. It is frustrating that whilst changes in the way schools approach attendance and holidays led to us being told that the previous allowance of two weeks out of school for an annual holiday being scrapped, it turns out that other children have indeed secured at least the Friday off, to get a head start on their travelling.

I ended up initially with a ferry booked from Plymouth to Roscoff, and nothing more; in the end, I did a rough and ready calculation on mileages and decided that Cherbourg was possibly a stretch (frustratingly, I think we could have done it without much bother, knowing what I know now), so booked a hopscotch route back from St Malo via Guernsey to Poole. The withdrawal of the Weymouth ferry earlier in the year with the arrival of a bigger vessel to serve the Channel Islands put paid to any hope that we could cycle back to Devon afterwards.

The trip, then, became a case of making a route up to fit between two fixed points and times, in a place I had scarcely visited, a language I do not speak, in the peak holiday season, with three children, one of whom, in Thomas Ivor's case, would be riding their own bike for the first time, on the other side of the road. Not much to go wrong there! Meantime, Thomas Ivor has talked non-stop about the expedition at school, including making an appearance in his class assembly as a French-speaking cyclist visiting a boulevard café in his Tour de France Maillot Jaune!

Our trip across the Humber in May was carefully devised to make good use of Thomas Ivor's half term visit to test his capabilities. A trip along the North Wales coast had ascertained that 25 miles in a day was quite possible, and thanks to rigging him up to a heart rate monitor and cadence sensor I was able to teach him to ration his effort. He does it better than me, now! It became apparent that he was well within himself to cover serious ground, but not whether he could do it day after day. The Lincolnshire to Yorkshire trip was therefore devised to give him some longer days, back to back, with a safety net, the car nearby, and no pressure to reach anywhere in particular. He performed splendidly, surpassing our expectations. 40 miles a day is well within his capabilities, though we have planned shorter days than that to give us some breathing space and time off the bikes.

Having only received his passport from Devon a week ago, suddenly we are into a more frenetic preparatory period than usual. The language barrier has slowed down the process of arranging overnight accommodation, but thanks to Warmshowers.org we have managed to find some French cycling families kind enough to put us up, and give Thomas Ivor especially some immersion in French language, culture and perhaps some food! On this side of the channel, we have been fortunate in recent days to have had some wonderful offers of hospitality and technical assistance.

Because we are heading for the apparently bucolic interior of Brittany, and staying away from major conurbations like Rennes, we are particularly concerned about the consequences of a 'mechanical' whilst in France, and making sure we manage to find food and supplies (milk and nappies!) en route. Whereas last year we had a daily option to 'bail out' and head back to the car by public transport if we needed to, this time, once we are on French soil, that's that - and we must cover off unfamiliar challenges related to language, currency and navigational.

Electricity is a concern. Finding it, and being able to plug into it without taking lots of extra kit, because we can't afford to increase our weights. I think I am going to source a solar charger, another big battery pack, or both, just to give us some more redundancy and to ensure that we aren't forced to curtail photography or entertainment for the girls just because of a lack of juice.

A sizeable delivery of bits and bobs yesterday (thank goodness for Amazon Prime!) will hopefully be followed by another one today from Islabikes, so I am off out into the front garden now, at just gone 0800, to service two bikes and make sure the postman doesn't leave the 'red card of doom'. Slowly but surely, this trip is coming together, but now the pace has to pick up pretty sharpish if we are to have wheels rolling from Exeter on Saturday morning.

Time to crack on!

Shakedown

The Family ByCycle have packed our gear and done a shakedown ride to visit Tom's Grandfather, ahead of setting off on our first adventure.

Things we have learned:

1. Ortlieb 'plus' panniers are sticky.  Shoving your stuff to the bottom is trickier than it looks!
2. Stuff sacks are not always helpful.  Trying to pack five sleeping bags and mats into two sets of panniers was always going to be a challenge:  it proved impossible for as long as the bags were all the same cylindrical shape.
3. Baby sleeping bags are made of cheap material and don't compress anywhere near as well as adult bags.  We have seen other people suggesting buying adult bags and re manufacturing them to baby size.  With a bigger budget, I think we would start again and crack out the sewing machine. We've elected to push them into the bottom of the panniers to take up the gaps in between the other items in their stuff sacks, as a compromise to make best use of space.
4. Buy loads of re-sealable food bags and use them to repack practically anything to stay organised without adding lots of weight.
5. The Ortlieb 'rucksack adaptor' looks like a very handy bit of kit (see picture).

We rode 20 miles fully laden, and got back to the car and packed up before it lashed with rain, so we're calling that a success.  Our daily mileages for our first trip won't be much more than 20 miles, given the ages of the children.

Getting some more miles under our belt

Yesterday, we nipped out for a ride before the tail end of tropical storm Bertha hit.  We set off down the cycle path along the disused railway line from Stanwick Lakes to Thrapston, turning off the path and taking to the road to ride through Denford and Ringstead.

Our new Ortlieb handlebar bags arrived last week, so having fitted them we took them out for a test run.

The path was busy with people walking, and the surface was very badly potholed as we got closer to Thrapston.  Bumpy track and potholes are more of a challenge with the trailer.  There were a LOT of big potholes on this path, and finding a route through so that both trailer and bike wheels avoided the worst of it left me zigzagging a very peculiar path, and absolutely killed our average speed (down below 6mph!).  The terrain didn't bother the girls - both dozed off mid- ride, but the grown ups were pretty happy to turn off the rutted path onto some Tarmac as we crossed the A14.

The biggest headache of the day was getting in and out of the gate at the end of the path (below), which proved impossible with the trailer.  We had to unhitch and lift it over, but we managed without too much fuss.

Our first adventures

We have just completed our first overnight cycling trip, a round trip of modest mileage from our home, and an overnight stay in the campsite at Grendon Lakes.

We packed up our tent, sleeping bags, mats and little cooker in our panniers and in the back of our bike trailer and set off yesterday afternoon, a little anxious about  whether we were fit enough to pull off cycling with all our gear and the trailer.

We made it!  That's the good news. The girls were comfy in the trailer- both went to sleep for most of the hour we spent cycling to get to the campsite.  The grown ups were rather more exhausted than we might have liked, but we gain some confidence from getting our first fully loaded ride under our belts.

Things we have learned from our first ride:

1. Our stuff is too heavy! Having completed what was only a short ride, we are both agreed that it is time to get a little more obsessive about weight saving.
2. We need to do some work on the weight distribution. With the trailer on the back, we need to move some of the weight from our rear panniers to the front of the bike.
3. We need to run the pressure on our rear tyres higher than we thought to cope with the extra load when the trailer is on the back.
4. Even with small children, you don't need much stuff at all to be totally self sufficient.
5. We are not as fit as we need to be to really enjoy this yet!

Grendon Lakes was a nice, no frills, overnight spot: we had a huge field all to ourselves (which turned out to be a very good thing, as Ruth was sick several times in the night, and we were therefore not the quietest of campers!) with a short walk to the toilet and shower block.  With Ruth poorly, we packed up quickly in the morning and headed home without spending much time investigating what else Grendon Lakes has to offer.  

Once we are all recovered from last night, we're looking forward to making some changes to what we pack, and getting out again for our next adventure.