Preparation - what preparation?

Kit-wise I've got everything I need, probably much more than I need. Living in rural Portugal most of the stuff is bought on-line so there's been a steady arrival of little parcels for some months now. It's a bit of a standing joke with our postman. "What! No parcel today!" But all this extravagance is coming to an end, just waiting for a handle bar mirror, thermal longs and a shortwave radio.

As far as training goes, during December and January we are holidaying in SE Asia (no cycling planned) and on the way home I pick up my new touring bike.  So, apart from being out of the saddle for 2 months, I'll have exactly a week to prepare the bike.........lots of  tinkering with racks, bottle holders and accessories.

I went back to the UK in September to be measured up for the bike, a Santos Travelmaster from MSG Bikes in Lancing . They have fitted out several globetrotters with this bike including James Bowthorpe who in 2009 pedaled himself into the Guinness Book of Records  with a record-breaking circumnavigation of 175 days. Should be OK for my trip then  : )

The shortwave radio arrived. It was purchased to keep me in touch with the BBC World Service. Only now I've found out they have stopped broadcasting to Europe in 2008 due to lack of demand!  Never mind, I'll use it in Asia.

The plan

It's a long haul this one. I've not measured it exactly but around 5,500km. I'm leaving Portugal at the beginning of February and planning to arrive in Beirut at the end of April. If I have a non-cycling day once a week then that's about 65km a day - sounds easy.


I think the challenges on this trip are down to the season. I'm geared up for survival in rain/snow and sub-zero temperatures (question mark over the tent) but how bad the weather is going to be is very hard to judge. Mentally it might be tough - cycling all day in grey cold drizzle is not very uplifting. Just had a look - Sofia has 8 snow days in March - oh dear!

I've roughly divided the route up into sections which end up in a major city every 5 days or so where I can get a shower, do laundry, get internet access and do some battery charging.  (Techie note: Each section is about 400km as this equates to my limit of 10,000 trackpoints on the Edge 705 GPS).    My GPS should end up leading me to the front door of a nice warm hostel.......I just have to hope they'll have a spare bed!

The pins are hostels in Leon/Pamplona/Toulouse/Avignon/Milan/Ljubljana/Zagreb/Belgrade/Sofia/Istanbul/Kyrenia

In between hostels I'll be wild/stealth camping, often in snow I guess, so my green tent should stand out well.  The tent is a bit of a concern - the inner is almost all mesh, like a mosquito net. This is great for preventing condensation but is a dead loss at keeping a howling sub-zero wind at bay - I'll let you know!  Out of interest I'm also taking a max/min thermometer.

I have gathered some little pearls of wisdom regarding winter touring. For instance: 
1.  When cooking your evening meal drain your pasta cooking water into a metal bottle and put it in your sleeping bag as a 'hottie'.
2.  Put your water bottle inside your sleeping bag so it doesn't freeze up overnight.
Great! So I'll be sleeping with one hot bottle and one cold bottle.


I found this useful formula on the Pedal Powered Family blog







If I plan a to ride 100km a day (ambitious!) for 6 days a week that gives me a tour duration of  64 days so if I start on 01 Feb  I would arrive in Beirut on 05 April. So there's a bit of time to rest up if I get frostbite!