You knew it was going to happen. It was always going to end up as a new bike. The lure of shiny aluminium and pristine sticky rubber was just too much to resist.
You may recall from my earlier posts on the subject that I was struggling to decide what bike to use for my forthcoming ride to Paris and, potentially, the End2End ride next year. When I last posted, I had paused the decision making process to consider a related issue (luggage) and see if that had any bearing on the bike choice.
I’ll be honest, as practical as they may be, I have never been a fan of panniers on bikes. I just don’t like the way they look and, let’s face it, image over practicality is key when it comes to serious cycle touring. I wanted to investigate other options. For the 3 day Paris ride, I had originally assumed I would just pack a rucksack and head off. After much discussion with others and some rethinking, I put myself off that idea.
Having done some online research, I took a fancy to the bike-packing idea. Whilst we won’t be doing any camping, the basic set up on the bike looked far more to my taste than panniers. Whilst there’s not as much room as a rucksack or panniers, I think there’ll be enough as long as I pack light and sensibly. The Paris trip won’t be a problem, all I need is a red and white stripey t-shirt, beret and a spare set pair of bib shorts and I’m sorted. I’ll wear the fluorescent yellow gilet so that’ll save some room – I hear it’s quite the fashionable thing to do in Paris these days.
My current front runner in the luggage stakes is the Restrap set up pictured below. Restrap are a British company based in Leeds and are a highly regarded manufacturer of bike luggage amongst other things. Their website is found at www.restrap.co.uk
So, assuming that the luggage issue is now resolved, what does that mean in terms of my choice of bike for the trips? The original conundrum was whether to use the hybrid or the old Trek road bike, having discounted my Synapse from the running (for Paris anyway). I then discounted the Trek over tyre sizes and was pretty much left with the hybrid.
Until…
I had been keeping my eye out for another alternative. I nearly pulled the trigger on a secondhand Secteur on Ebay but decided against it at the very last moment. I was browsing various bike websites and then checked out the clearance section on Planet X’s site and … there it was. A beauty in fluoro green. Exactly the type of bike I’d had in mind and in the perfect colour scheme! What’s the price? £499?! Done! Trigger pulled, case closed! Now all I have to do is sneak it into the garage without anyone seeing.
In all seriousness, this seems like a good conclusion. I now have a drop bar bike for touring, with disc brakes (I upgraded the discs to a higher spec in the options) which I wanted, robust wheels, capacity for 40mm tyres, mudguard + pannier mounts (just in case) and, being aluminium, I’m less concerned about it being knocked around on Eurostar. The Apex 1 groupset will be interesting though. I haven’t tried one before but I’m quite content with the fact I’ll lose some intermediate gearing and some top end compared to my Synapse’s Ultegra compact set up. I’ll still have a good overall range and the increased simplicity means that there’s one less thing to go wrong on the road.
I’m looking forward to giving it a tryout once it’s delivered. Oh and does anyone want to buy a Trek 2.3 Alpha or a Specialized Sirrus Elite?!!!
Fatsiclist 