Hello everyone! I just completed my first solo trip: 350 km in 5 days from Figueres (Catalonia) to Toulouse (France).
I have experience in hiking, camping and road cycling in Barcelona.
This was a test to see if I would really enjoy bikepacking, and the truth is that I loved the experience of combining two activities that I like.
The fun is that I did everything on an urban bike that I rode myself, just to annoy a friend who has a fleet of very expensive gravel and bikepacking bikes with excellent equipment, but who only uses them to go for special coffee. I wanted to show you, as a joke, that at the pace it goes, you will end up buying an electric Brompton, haha!
All my equipment was second-hand, like the tent and saddlebags; the box bag was from Decathlon, or they gave it to me, like the rear rack. In addition, something that would undoubtedly have helped me a lot is having automatic pedals, but since all my cycling shoes are for road bikes, they were not an option, so I made the trip the old-fashioned way.
After that, it was wonderful; yes, I went the first week of August with a suffocating heat, but it wasn’t bad at all. On the contrary, I really enjoyed getting up at 5:00 AM to leave early and arrive at my destination before 10:00 AM.
Bike specifications for the curious:
Frame: Giant cross series x1000 (Aluminum)
Transmission: 1×9 (38-tooth plate / 11-42-tooth cassette)
Shifter: Vintage Dura-Ace shifter with friction mounted on a Paul Component controller
Tires: Panaracer GravelKing SS 35c
Tent: McKinley compact 2
by ImpressDry4789
1 Comment
Really nice setup and route. I also bikepack with an old steel trekking bike from the 90s, especially when loaded the extra weight from the steel is barely noticeable and I like the fact that I can fix most things on the go myself.
Planned to do a trip to lake Balaton this week but the heat is really turning me off and as a night person getting up that early as well. But perhaps it would be exactly the right thing to do