- Do not cycle tour in France before the start of the summer season (1st June at many campsites) unless you are prepared to wild camp and be completely self-sufficient.
- National holidays in France, such as Easter, mean that everything closes. You will not find a shop, bar, restaurant, petrol station or anywhere else to even buy a bottle of water.
- Do not try to cycle tour in southern Spain during a heat wave!
- Get off your bike and walk it through the bigger town centres. Determine the direction of your exit road and go straight for it, ignoring any road signs as these are designed for cars and will send you along ring-roads, one-way systems and onto motorways. We found that pushing the bikes straight through the middle, along the pedestrianised bits and the wrong way along one-way streets, was much quicker and way-finding much easier.
- Always have a compass handy, although on sunny days you won’t need it so much.
- If you have a noise on your bike, try greasing your seat post.
- Take some waterproof socks. Even if it is not actually raining they are great if your shoes have got wet the day before for keeping your feet warm and dry.
- Do not use pedals with cleats on a fully loaded touring bike – your chances of falling off will be greatly increased if you do.
- Put Vaseline or lip salve on your lips several times each day, every time you stop for a break if possible. Your lips will crack anyway but at least it will not be quite as painful.
- If you suffer from sweat rash the best cure is to keep the area covered with talc. You will look like you fell into a tub of flour but who cares!
- Take a camping stove – the extra weight will be negligible compared to the benefit of greater flexibility to eat when you want as well as keeping the cost of the trip down.
- Do not go anywhere near a main road on a bike in France unless you have suicidal tendencies.
- Cycling in a country you know very well makes for a more relaxed feel to a tour. Knowing the country means you can guess pretty accurately, just by looking at the map, which towns are likely to have hotels or other types of accommodation. If you know the language, you are familiar with the food, you know when the shops and restaurants are open, the trip swings along without any nasty surprises. Having said that, although much more stressful, touring through countries you don’t know results in nice surprises as well as nasty ones.
- During our 2011 tour we found ourselves cycling through a heat wave. We avidly followed regular reports on television news bulletins to try to assess when it might cool down. On the 2013 tour we found ourselves following the television news bulletins during the coldest spring since records began trying to work out when it might warm up! It is best not to cycle in extremes of weather as it really does make things difficult, although I’m not sure how you avoid doing so when the whole world’s weather system has gone crazy.
- If you do find yourself riding in extremely cold and wet conditions (snow and hail in our case), wear a plastic bin bag with a neck hole and arm holes cut in it. Not only is it completely waterproof, but it keeps your body a lot warmer.
- Rub Vaseline or nappy cream onto areas prone to saddle sores every day – if you do get them it will stop you feeling them for the first few hours each day. Better still, find cycling shorts and a saddle that suit you before the trip to avoid getting saddle sores.
- Wearing a long sleeved top all day when the sun is out, although hot, is not as hot as having your arms exposed to the blistering sun.
- When cycling in Holland and Germany it would be worth trying to organise to take your rest days on a Sunday. The cycle tracks become very congested with week-enders making for very slow progress especially if you are near the cities.
- Camp-sites marked on the maps in Germany are sometimes private caravan parks for members only and are not available to passing tourists. This caught us out more than once.
- It is worth staying on the German bank of the Rhine for as long as possible, rather than crossing to the Swiss side, to keep the costs down. Everything in Switzerland costs a fortune.
- We were expecting German efficiency when it came to computer networks and were surprised to find WiFi unreliable.
- It is worthwhile ignoring ‘Road Closed’ signs as, generally, you can get through on a bike and we have found workmen to be very helpful in letting cyclists through.
- For us, cycling in Britain is no longer an enjoyable experience. The volume and speed of the traffic, potholes, ill-thought out cycle paths, frequent roadworks and the lack of respect towards cyclists by drivers – a dangerous combination.
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