Cycle Tour - Choosing Gear - Bicycle, Saddle, Tyres, Pedals, Gearing - Part 1

Choosing Gear for a Cycle Tour (Part 1) – Bicycle, Saddle, Tyres, Pedals and Gearing.

Firstly, as a principal, everything we purchase must be durable with multiple trips in mind.   As to how much you purchase will depend on so many factors – your budget, length of time on tour, whether you hire bikes or take your own, camping or using accommodation, type of riding, country you are riding in?  Here we provide examples based on our 2024 ten-week journey through the West Balkans of how we went about choosing and hopefully you can use that process for your situation.

In broad terms the “gear” needed for a cycle tour: 

1. Bicycle and saddle (covered in this How To)
2. Tyres, Pedals and Gearing (covered in this How To)
3. Bags for luggage
4. Maintenance equipment
5. Luggage
6. Lighting
7. Helmet
8. Communications and maps

This is quite a daunting list to make decisions on.  Let’s make a start with the first two.

Bicycle and Saddle – depends on the style of riding for your adventure?  Mountain bike for trails and single track, gravel bike or hybrid for a mixture of trails and sealed roads, road bike for sealed roads … or you are on a self-guided or guided tour with a company that will hire bikes.

Norco “Search” XR S1 Gravel Bikes proved they were up to varied conditions.

Example: For our 2024 Balkans journey we chose to buy new bikes to replace our Merida 5000 carbon road bikes that we had used for tours over the previous 8 years. The road and track conditions were unknown but would be a mixture of sealed and gravel, the profile of the daily rides showed some steep gradients over kilometres, plus we had been lucky over the years that no structural damage had occurred previously to the carbon frames.

Ahead of us was a mixture of gravel, sealed roads/paths & the unknown. This led us to a decision between Gravel v Hybrid (touring) bicycles. 

Our research favoured the Gravel bike - known for their versatility, gravel bikes excel on gravel or dirt roads and are much more oriented to long-distance, off-road exploration, with a longer frame allowing the rider to activate more muscle groups in their legs, drop handlebars providing more positions for the hands over longer rides compared to straight bars. 

On the other hand, Hybrid are more practical everyday bikes. They provide comfort and efficiency over short to moderate distances on paved roads, bike paths and light gravel trails.

Question then – Aluminium v carbon v steel?   Aluminium fatigues more quickly than other materials but are light and good value for money. Carbon tends to break or crack in the event of an accident but are very light, have strength in that they are designed as a single piece and are fast. Steel – though slightly heavier, the positives outweighed this factor - great ride quality due to the superior vibration damping of steel, high ductility and less prone to cracking or breaking due to material fatigue compared to aluminium/carbon, are more affordable than carbon and easier to repair if broken.  So for ride quality, strength for travelling, repairability (and affordability) we chose steel.

It then became a search for those brands available in Australia, used either Reynolds 725 or Columbus Zono chromoly, fitted our budget and came with gearing and desired weight.  We chose Norco “Search” XR S1 for its mid-price, comparatively light at 11.4kg and good value specifications.

Others we researched were: Jamis Renegade, Kona Rove, Curve Kevin of Steel, Bombtrack Hooke and Salsa Fargo … all have different specifications and will suit different situations/people.

Our gearing enabled us to climb to these heights in Montenegro

Saddles: are a very personal choice. The bikes came with a Norco SL Race, Cromo rails.  This is referred to as a male saddle so I decided to try this.  Jen was looking for a female specific saddle and preferred either a Selle Italia product (which she has used on road and mountain bikes), possibly the SLR Boost Gravel TI316 Superflow, or Brooks England B17 Imperial that has good reviews for shaping over time to your body, and also has a central cut out for perineal relief.  Jen chose the Brooks, and given a little time to break it in prior to our departure,was very happy with it. Be mindful with a leather Brooks - you need to break it in (ie. spend increasing amounts of time riding in the saddle to allow the leather to mould to your own personal shape), prior to long and repetitive cycling and it needs to be protected from the rain when you are not sitting on it. Jen found a plastic shower cap performed that role well. However, from experience one is always chasing the perfect saddle, and they do wear out!

Before choosing it is advisable to take some of the mystery out and measure your sit bone width. 

Fizik also have a good questionnaire which arrives at recommendations of a saddle – this can then be used with other brands.

Tyres, Pedals and Gearing:

Tyres: The bikes came with WTB 42mm wide 700c tyres that are quite nobbly, not the smoothest or quietest tyre.  We opted to replace them with a Specialized Pathfinder Pro 770 x 42mm for their smooth ride (smooth centre strip for tarmac riding) and adequate nobbly on the sides to hold well on gravel. The WTB Resolute TCS 700x42c tyres that it came with would have been suitable for a high percentage of gravel track riding.

So, it is about taking a researched guess at the conditions you will be riding in and then choosing.

Pedals: We have chosen double sided pedals so we can clip in with our mountain bike style cleats (SPD) but also have the convenience of using everyday shoes should we need to.  Clip ins are not for everyone, however for the long and steep inclines the ability to pull up on the pedals as well as pushing down has been, for us, the most efficient way to get to the top.  Mountain bike shoes have been our preferred as the cleats are imbedded in the sole enabling comfortable walking as well.  The Shimano PD-EH500 pedals are ideal for cycle touring adventures and urban jaunts, offer the convenience and efficiency of two types of pedal in one. One side is an SPD pedal for use with SPD / 2-bolt cleat compatible cycling shoes. On the other side is a grippy flat platform for use with everyday shoes.  An alternative for this style of pedal is Crank Brothers “double shot”.

Gearing: The Norco bikes came with Shimano GRX-RD-RX810 gearing, which is the Gravel equivalent to what Ultegra is on a road bike, running 11-34t 11 speed cassette on the back and 46-30t Easton EA90 Crankset.  For our impending ride in The West Balkans, with some gradients of 17%, we researched a wider range cassette and found we could replace ours with a 11 speed 11-40t. It meant we could continue to spin at very slow speeds as we climbed.

I have covered the first 2 points here and that is probably enough for this How To.  I will cover the other topics in “Gear” over the next few weeks.

The answers to this question of “gear” are so wide ranging and somewhat reflect the riders own personality.  I saw a beautiful photo on Instagram today from a Warm Showers host - the travelling cyclist was heading off with plastic buckets strapped to either side of the bike and a piece of dowel roped onto the bike to use as a bike stand. His bike was old.

Often it is about risk and reward. Some gear just makes the journey more enjoyable and can make life easier on the road … and there is always new innovative gear!

Look after your bike and it will serve you well. Our chains, chainrings and cassettes were totally glued up with 'peanut butter' mud on one of our offroad adventures in Albania. Carry some rags to help with the clean up at the end of the day. On the road we resorted to scraping this off with sticks. 

Peanut butter mud to the point of no more turning of the crank.

Happy cycling
Jen & Greg October 2024