Without getting into disputed genre/format territory – just wanted to share a link I found from last year – quite an impressive list of what’s available out there.

Over the years I’ve tended to retrofit old 26er MTBs to do what I want them to do – which means making sure they are comfortable day-long on most surfaces, biased toward back lanes and fire roads – with full guards and a fair load-carrying capacity.

The big loss there for me was being limited to rim brakes when I really wanted disc. This is more about rim-life than brake function as have had years of perfectly functional success with well set up rim brakes and suitable pads.

So unwittingly, via necessity vs experimentation I’ve discovered that I quite like the mid-budget 26er adventure touring setup, so much so that have been seeking the discontinued steel Dawes Sardar (Reynolds tubed 26er with disc tabs).

Just discovered that they do a more recent ‘Coast 2 Coast’ model which seems to the same bill as the old Sardar.

Wasn’t aware that there were so many off-the peg and custom adventure touring options tbh

Here’s that list:

http://www.cyclingabout.com/complete-list-offroad-expedition-adventure-touring-bikes/

Any more for any more?

Thought some of you may find it inspiring, please share other rough/gnarly touring ‘bike pics below. What do you cobble together/favour for going the distance?

I think the point is that you can have an adventure/ go on an expedition on any bike. It’s hardly surprising there’s a long list.

But, er…

ah, f….it 😉

😆

This thread was worth it for that gif!

I see what you mean, I don’t think I’ve heard of about 3/4 of those brands! Glad to see mine in there though (Surly Troll)

@ Shermer75, hows the Troll ? Heavy ? … quite fancy one for my bike packing bike as i have plenty of 26 wheels etc and im a short arse 🙂

any bike can be used ..most stuff is marketing bulls###
use your imagination rather than relying on others to tell you .
many people have travellled the world on simple inexpensive bikes.

Many have travelled the world on inexpensive bikes and no doubts someone’s been down the fort william World Cup downhill on a grifter…

It’s not what this place is about though is it…. Fair play… Get posting…

From the link;

Here’s the criteria I’ve used for selecting these off-road expedition touring bikes:
…
– 2x bidon mounts

Oooooh! A “bidon”? Get ‘er with ‘er fancy ways!

It’s a bottle you ponce.

Ah’m oot.

Plenty of bikes missing from the list probably because it is an ever changing field. How about a Chumba URSA for example or Niner ROS…….

any bike can be used ..most stuff is marketing bulls###

You can turn up to a XC race on a Dawes Galaxy if you like and probably still have fun.

Frame? check!
Wheels? check!
Handlebar? check!
saddle? check!

Off you go.

Edit: I didn’t realise that my bike wasn’t up the job – it only has one bidon mount. Does this make it more adventurous or less?

No recumbents? What kind of pathetic touring bike list is that? It’s like having a list of campervans and missing out everything made by VW.

use your imagination rather than relying on others to tell you .
many people have travellled the world on simple inexpensive bikes.

I agree. Which convinces me that my OP seems to have been an exercise in utter failure of communication skills. Apologies.

Maybe the focus was lost because I mentioned a list, but I’ll quote most pertinent in bold.

(You being stout fellows, I warrant you’ll give the man another chance?)

Disregarding the list (I found it inspiring, even though I can’t afford any of them, would quite like a Coast 2 Coast or an AWOL one day) let me restate:

Over the years I’ve tended to retrofit old 26er MTBs to do what I want them to do

So, unwittingly (via necessity vs experimentation) I’ve discovered that I quite like the mid-budget 26er adventure touring setup

I currently use a 1994 M-Trax shod XT, bar-ends, racks, guards, Marathon Racers or Land Cruisers (depending on route). Lightish, sprightly but reassuringly built.

Before that it was a £25 (used but in good nic) Raleigh Apex (Reynolds K2 tubing) which served me very well albeit with a Blackburn rear rack that was seemingly made from a cheese/metal alloy. It had a Brooks B-17 Saddle.

The Raleigh Apex as stock was a little too old skool in that although it was of an era when MTBs had stable geometry/long wheelbase (ideal for distance IMO) yet also had the undesired effect of planting my head down and my rear end up. I resorted to a quill extender stem which was monstrously heavy yet brought the (swept) bars up to near chest height!

What I had was a supremely comfortable and seemingly bombproof adventuring bike for about £80 including the used rack and new Brooks saddle. I strapped a daypack on the rack and a single oversized water bottle in the cage. Rest went in a rucksack (not recommended as it squashes gentle-regions) I since use Freeload front and rear racks on any bike.

The (Araya rim) rear wheel buckled alarmingly under the load somewhere near Morwenstow following a rattling descent down some rocky combe. Walked a good number of miles back to the tent and semi-trued it with all I had (pliers) and it saw me out the week but was knacked. Always carried a spoke key since then!

Apex lived in the shed following the back wheel death. I robbed parts from it for MTB and then bought the M-Trax to convert for touring. I missed the sit-up and see carefree comfort of the old Apex* with heightened quill stem.

*It finally died in the recyling skip during the last move.

Sit-up (high stem, swept bars) vs heads-down (drop bars) is a funny one re backroads touring. Which do you prefer, have you tried both? (I find both have pluses and minuses ie sit-up is great for back and neck but not so much for seating, and necessitates wide heavy saddles, while drops make me go faster, more grip options, yet do not enjoy the view or leisurely ‘zen’ so much)

I haven’t ridden drop bars for decades, yet would certainly like to retry so am about to trial an old Raleigh Sirocco I was recently given. Just needs bar tape and wheels trued. If that works out I’ll be looking at either converting the M-Trax to drops or maybe even savingfor a purpose-built drop-bar tourer with discs and clearance for 2.0″.

please share (your) rough/gnarly touring bike pics below. What do you cobble together/favour for going the distance?

No recumbents? What kind of pathetic touring bike list is that? It’s like having a list of campervans and missing out everything made by VW.

🙂

Good point. Must be an Englishman – where recumbents are ‘like bicycles only more embarrassing’. How good are they for backroads/rough touring though?

I did own a Pashley PDQ, hated it with a vengeance, so recumbent cycling on a budget has so far failed me. Wifes KMX is a lot of fun but weighty. Have long said if I had the funds would buy his n hers Kettweisels and disappear into the sunset with camping gear. But how much????

Nice list. I’m now on an old alu Trek frame, so I’m already looking at what comes next – a do-it-all steel bike of some description. Longitude would be nice (without the aluminium fork), as would an EBB-less Swift. something like that.

My bikes just kind of came around by chance and evolution. The front end came up as I got older (and wiser), and bar ends slipped away once I discovered Mary bars. The full pannier set-up is no more, travelling lighter via first just two rear panniers, and now a bikepacking setup. It’s generally been a case of adapting my existing MTB frame with rack (Raleigh Monsoon, Clockwork, P7) or buying a cheap steel frame (old Marin Muirwoods, Inbred) to do the job. But equally I’ve taken expensive aluminium frames (Klein Attitude, Trek 8500) out too – and they did fine, just what I had at the time.

Clockwork on the Chinese/Pakistan border:
[/url]Khunjerab Pass, 1995 by tracksterman, on Flickr[/img]

Marin Muirwoods in NW China and Tibet:
[/url]Karakul and Muztagh Ata, 2000 by tracksterman, on Flickr[/img]
[/url]Tibetan army convoy, 2000 by tracksterman, on Flickr[/img]

P7 in Cambodia:
[/url]Crossing the Mekong, 2002 by tracksterman, on Flickr[/img]

Klein Attitude in NW China and India:
[/url]Shengli Daban 4080m by tracksterman, on Flickr[/img]
[/url]Penzi La summit by tracksterman, on Flickr[/img]

Inbred in NW China:
[/url]Summer in the Chinese Tian Shan by tracksterman, on Flickr[/img]

These days it’s gone back full circle to where I started, and I’m more interested in ragging a bike round the upland UK on multi-day trips, so a rigid 29er with minimal kit just makes sense.

How good are they for backroads/rough touring though?

Very good – Low CoG when fully loaded and no panniers on the forks, so they’re well behaved on the rough stuff. You can’t hop the front wheel, but you can’t do that on a loaded upright tourer either. Plus many of them are full suspension, and the suspension is much plusher than on upright bikes.

But how much????

Much of a muchness with equivalent upright touring bikes – Years ago I was a Koga Miyata dealer, and the recumbent tourers were actually a bit cheaper for the equivalent spec, and they came with suspension. Recumbents used to be handmade in sheds, so they were expensive – now they’re made in Taiwan like everything else, so they’re not intrinsically more expensive any more.

sorry malvern ..i was in grumpy mode when i wrote the post …..seems like i’m getting more and more like that as the years go by. good luck with the search for a comfy do it all bike . I recently built up a surly ogre to add to my collection and hoping once i’ve stripped my 26 inch speedhub wheel and rebuilt to 29 the never ending search will be over …but i doubt it! ..all the best
Bill

Surly long haul trucker (disc) . Steel bike, took everything I asked it to do. Designed for carrying gear, I think it behaved better fully loaded.

They don’t seem to be that sought after anymore as there is so much competition and you can pick them up relatively cheap. It’s fff (fit for fatties) so you can run big tyres if you need to.

They do 26 and 700 versions depending on the size of the frame.

My favourite feature was the spoke holder on the rear chain stay.

Years ago they used to say you needed steel as not everyone can weld alliminium but the world is much smaller these days and I’m not sure that’s as relevant today. They used to say run 26 inch wheels as you won’t get replacement 700s but again I bet that’s no longer as much an issue.

If the bike is working for you and your happy with it, stick with it.

Ps great pictures trackerstarman

I’d agree that frame/wheel failure wouldn’t be a trip ender now – just order a new one on the internet, sit back in the nearest town drinking beer for a day or two waiting on the Fedex shipment. Kind of takes the fun out of it.

I wonder whether today’s mid-range MTBs will be of much interest to future adventure cyclists though – e.g. quite a lot (new Marin Pine Mountain) which would be useful are missing all the fixings for a front mech.

Zip tie a front mech cable to the rear and run a side-swing front mech on a direct mount adapter.

Good thread! And those pictures up there are awesome, properly inspirational

Its funny but despite having owned some nice bikes in my time, I always seem to pick the old knacker when I do longer distance type stuff. My last multi-dayer was performed on an old airborne disc road frame with horrid P2 forks and an utterly knackered rear hub. Still to this day one of the best rides i’ve had, and it wasn’t even that interesting a route – the Fens!

Seems to be the same with folk who ACTUALLY do the long distance stuff, in that they don’t seem to have the latest and greatest gear yet get to the cool places. Maybe there’s something in that…

*googles* Hmm, cable running all the way into the front mech – yep, that’d work. My front mech is ancient, didn’t even realise those existed. I wonder how tolerant of mix’n’match gear set-ups they’d be.

A couple of friends and I once bought a £20 chinese market ‘Mountain’ bike each and cycled the Friendship Highway from Shigatse over to Kathmandu. That’s mine in it’s rather fetching power rangers livery above. In the three weeks it took us we went through two cranks, three chains, two left-hand pedals and eight right (one ten minutes after it had been put on, causing me to have a minor meltdown), two brake levers, one brake cable, 24 brake blocks (one set went down to the metal over 1km on the descent to Nepal) and one rear wheel. Anything that hadn’t been replaced was either welded, bent or thrown away. The first mechanical intervention occurred in the shop we bought them from (chain snapped), the second in the hotel (brakes bent and shot off the ends of the cantilever studs) and the third 8km after setting off (chain again). Whilst it was one hell of an adventure I certainly prefer my ‘modern’ touring bike which is a steel framed hardtail mountain bike with 26” wheels and very robust mid-range components (below). It’s nothing special, but I can rely on it and get spares pretty much anywhere without much hassle. It’s not always possible to wait around for parts to arrive if you’re on a short trip in annual leave with a flight to catch home.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/oWdXWh]DSCF1190[/url] by crogthomas, on Flickr

Gotta admit, I don’t buy into the 26″ wheels for touring bike thing, the usual argument is if you break something you can’t get it replaced. Rode 700c wheels through a number of the stans and snapped a spoke in Kyrgyzstan, went to the local market in Osh and picked one up in no time.

I just think it’s a bit out of date.

I’m sure it makes absolutely no difference to most of us, unless we’re off to Central or South America.

Or Orkney, for some reason.
I’ve read recently that you can’t get a 700c tyre there.
🙂

My current road bike is year 1999 Orange Gringo with slick tyres and Mary bars.

Its fine on and offroad

I’m thinking of buying a road bike with discs and space for bigger tyres. (adventure bike, gravel bike, cx bike, drop bar hybrid). These seem faster on the road.

Just because I can do it on an old bike doesn’t mean that once a decade we can’t have a new one?

Here is my 1990 MTB being used on an adventure in the 1990s