Our Bike Touring Set Up And Specification

Building the Bikes We Wanted

If there's one thing you want to get right before you go cycle touring it's your bike. Your comfort in the saddle is a prerequisite to your happiness on tour. That's why we decided to build out our bikes.

We couldn't find a prebuilt bike that met the specifications we wanted so we decided to build our own. We built our bikes in partnership our amazing local bike store. For us it was Bicycles By Design. If you're in the area or fancy a holiday to the beautiful Shropshire area, we highly recommend them as they are bike builders (special in tandems) and the tour themselves. Make sure you ring ahead if you need some consultancy though!

If you're not in Shropshire, that is of course, fine! But, it will bode well for you to head down to your local bike shop, speak to some experts and try a few bikes for size! See what you like and what you don't.

For us, the main problem was that most prebuilt bikes do not sure the highest quality components (we wanted Shimano Deore or XT and most bikes were using Shimano 105)

Secondly most prebuilt bikes were geared too high. We wanted to have nice low "granny gears" so we could get up the hills. We went with 26 tooth sprocket at the front and 34 tooth sprocket at the back.

Frameset & Frame Components

We selected the Genesis Tour De Fer frameset for our custom built. It was a close choice between the Tour De Fur and Surley Long Haul Disc Trucker. We ultimately went with the Genesis frame purely from an aesthetic preference.

However after building the bikes I can tell you that there is one significant difference between the Tour De Fur and the Long Haul Trucker and this is the frame clearance around the wheels. The Tour De Fur is much more sleek and has much less clearance around the wheels. This means that the mudguards sit closer to the wheels and the frame has less drag.

However this means that the frame does not perform well off road. In muddy conditions the mudguards fill up quickly with mud and can get jammed. You can also get a lot of stones jammed between the mudguard and the tires on gravel surfaces.

If you planning to ride primarily on roads then the Tour De Fer is probably the best option, however if your planning to do a lot of off road riding then we'd recommend the Long Haul Trucker.

Drive Train Components

We chose to go with a triple 10 drive train setup. This is 10 gears at the back and 3 at the front. This gives us a big rank of gears to select from and allows us to spin up big hills and put out some good speed on the flat.

We highly recommend the triple front but you could definatly get away with a 9 speed or maybe even 8 on the back if you wanted to save a bit of weight. The important thing is to make sure your biggest ring at the back will allow for easy hill climbing. We use a 34 tooth on the back and highly recommend using 32, 34 or 36.

On the front we are using 48/36/26 tooth rings. Again we highly recommend using the 26 to help on the hills.

Braking & Shifting Components

Stewart using dropbars and Shimano 105 shifters. The mix of mountian bike and road bike components does work but the shifting accuary is not perfect.

Zoe initially started with dropbars too but didn't enjoy riding on them so later switched to a standard flat bar.

We opted for the TPR spyre brake calipers as they offer better adjustability on the brake pads than may other calipers.

Wheels & Wheel Components

We had our wheels hand build by the guys over at Bicycles by Desgin in Telford, Shropshire [linkhere].

The wheels have performance excellently and we've never had an issue with them despite having ridden over 20,000 miles at the time of writing this,

Accessories & Extras

Below is a short list of additional components that we used on our build.

We've had quite a bit of trouble with the Brook B17 mens saddle as the main adjuster bolt has broken 3 times, however we've never had any issues with the female saddle.