Trying out the equipment

We have done various trips locally with an increasing load and then spent 4 days in Pembrokeshire with a full load of what we expect to take. My bike weighs in at 45kg and as such becomes a bit of an unwieldy monster if you lose concentration and let it start to tip over. If you are not careful you and the bike become an upended tortoise with a similar grave difficulty in getting upright again.

The very low gears that I somewhat sniffed at when we did a trial unloaded run when we bought the bikes came into their own. Pembrokeshire has got some stiff little hills, and the only way to conquer them is to spin in these ludicrously low gears and wobble/weave your way to the top. Oh, and don’t try and stop half way, as getting going again requires an art that we have yet to master fully.

Perhaps the main thing we have learnt from these mini trips is how easily you can get cold- so we have invested in some decent down jackets from Patagonia ( the company, not the place) that can pack down into a ridiculously small volume.

The only thing so far that we haven’t fully experienced is proper rain, which of course is something rather remarkable given most UK summers. Not much we can do about that.