What bike to take touring?
It's more important to go on tour than to have the perfect bike. Something adequate that fits and is comfortable is all you need.
The key word is "adequate". A supermarket bike is adequate for a few miles along the canal once a year, but for touring it's a disaster waiting to happen. A touring bike needs to be strong, stiff, and have pannier racks and mudguards. The tyres should be at least 28mm wide, and good quality like the Schwalbe Marathon. It needs a good range of gears, anything with a triple chainset will have this, though a single 40 tooth chainring paired with an 11-34, 7 or 8 speed cassette will be enough most of the time. Having very low gears is useful, but sooner or later you will have to push.
You need good brakes, and rim brakes are fine, indeed better than disk brakes for touring. Apart from being lighter and less hassle, there are only five types of pads and any bike shop will have them, whereas no shop carries every one of the hundreds of different disk brake pads.
The key word is "adequate". A supermarket bike is adequate for a few miles along the canal once a year, but for touring it's a disaster waiting to happen. A touring bike needs to be strong, stiff, and have pannier racks and mudguards. The tyres should be at least 28mm wide, and good quality like the Schwalbe Marathon. It needs a good range of gears, anything with a triple chainset will have this, though a single 40 tooth chainring paired with an 11-34, 7 or 8 speed cassette will be enough most of the time. Having very low gears is useful, but sooner or later you will have to push.
You need good brakes, and rim brakes are fine, indeed better than disk brakes for touring. Apart from being lighter and less hassle, there are only five types of pads and any bike shop will have them, whereas no shop carries every one of the hundreds of different disk brake pads.
This bike was made for commuting, but it would be fine for touring on roads. It has enough gears for most hills, 28mm tyres, mudguards and a rack. All that's missing are the handlebar grips.
Your commuting bike may be suitable, perhaps with some modification. If you are planning on using your commuting bike get it checked first. Commuting bikes wear out and get neglected. A worn tyre that fails in the city is just going to make you late, but will be a disaster in the middle of nowhere.
If you are buying a touring bike, go traditional. Rigid steel, drop bars (or multibars) and lots of spokes in the wheels are the way to go. If you can get one with dual pivot sidepull brakes these are as powerful as cantilevers and easier to replace pads in.
If your budget doesn't allow for a new bike, plenty of people have gone round the world on '90s mountainbikes. If you can find a good steel one made by Specialized, Giant, Trek, etc, fit road tyres, racks and bar ends then you'll be fine. If you find a steel hybrid then even better. Avoid suspension, you don't need it and it weighs a lot.
Don't take a brand new, just out of the shop, bike touring. Get a good few miles in locally to make sure it all works and nothing falls off. New or completely rebuilt bikes either fail straightaway or after thousands of miles.
If you are buying a touring bike, go traditional. Rigid steel, drop bars (or multibars) and lots of spokes in the wheels are the way to go. If you can get one with dual pivot sidepull brakes these are as powerful as cantilevers and easier to replace pads in.
If your budget doesn't allow for a new bike, plenty of people have gone round the world on '90s mountainbikes. If you can find a good steel one made by Specialized, Giant, Trek, etc, fit road tyres, racks and bar ends then you'll be fine. If you find a steel hybrid then even better. Avoid suspension, you don't need it and it weighs a lot.
Don't take a brand new, just out of the shop, bike touring. Get a good few miles in locally to make sure it all works and nothing falls off. New or completely rebuilt bikes either fail straightaway or after thousands of miles.
To the untrained eye this looks like something you would find at the dump, but look closer.
It's a Giant, which means it's well made. It's steel, so it's comfortable and won't break. It has horizontal dropouts so could have a hub gear. The wheels are the standard mountainbike at present but could be 700c with different brakes. As a final bonus there are braze on fittings for a front rack on the fork.
All in all, one of these in the right size will take you round the world.
A '90s mountainbike made into a tourer. Bikes like this are called "Expedition Tourers". The 26 inch wheels are a bit slower than 700c, with good tyres this isn't that much of a disadvantage.
These bikes, especially the Specialized, handle very well. They go round corners beautifully.
