Any one experienced touring with a road triple 50/3930 and a 12/36 cassette is it doable or too hard?

thats about a 22.5 gear inchs

That’s a lot like what’s used on a lot of recumbents – road triple at the front, wide range block at the back. Works well.

Its pretty low, walking speed or slower, good emergency gear. You might never intend use the bottom 30-36 combo, being that low, but having a wide range cassette on the back will make the 39 more usable on a loaded bike.

Mrs S has that combo on her road bike.
Mostly fine unless it’s a hilly, heavily loaded day.

Prefer something lower at the front myself, but not the strongest of riders.

You’ll probably never use the highest gears on that combo. I generally am a bit of a slow cranker rather than a spinner and I don’t often use to gear on a 44/11 cassette when touring.
But one day you’ll wish you had lower gears, that’s for sure..!
I use 22/32/44 and 11-34.
Mrs PP uses the same up front and 12-36 at the back
(all 9 speed)

How are you getting on with the TdF, Peter?

19.4 inches for me loaded off-road. Anything lower and you may as well get off and push

22.5 sounds fine for road use.

I run a very similar lowest ratio with 28/40 mtb double and 11-34 rear. A lower gear or 2 would be nice but I haven’t had to get off and push yet.

I’d definitely change to a 24t granny if I was going on a long tour though.

I used to tour on 28*28 through to 50*13. (I think. Might have been slightly different…….)

Was ok on road and dirt tracks. Fully laden it was rideable down to almost walking pace. At least slow enough that balance was the main concern. Not ratios.
The big gear was nice for rolling down mountains or barrelling along on the flat when slightly less loaded. (Audaxy stuff)

Thats pretty much what I run 53/39/30 on an 11-34 block

One key difference the 30 is in a draw and a 24 is on the bike… you can never go too low, I’ll be putting on an MTB chainset in the future, with a full set of panniers you’ll not get up to much more than 20mph anyway with the drag..

How are you getting on with the TdF, Peter?

Yep, fantastic, I love it.
Did 200 miles round Jersey and Guernsey (yes really) recently. It tows the trailer well and carries a load well, and it’s got a nice lively feeling to the ride whilst being nice and stable whilst loaded and at speed. Done about 500 miles on it in total so far, it’s become my main knock-around bike too.

Are there any close ration cassettes in the range of 14/36 or something similar?

I’d be tempted to just run an MTB triple 22/32/44, particularly if you’ll be taking much luggage/going up many really steep hills. You won’t spin out often, and I’ve certainly used bottom gear touring on an MTB with 11-28 and 11-32 cassettes on with that chainset (acknowledging the 30-36 will be close to 22-28).

That said, if you’ve already got the bike with that setup, I’d just ride it. It is quite low.

Yes its what I’ve got robing the parts bin which is economically attractive 😉