[Closed] Technical riding with a tent?

ditch the pack and load teh bike ....

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Thats everything needed for spring bivvy....if i was camping id just stick my vaude taurus under the blue dry bag on the rack .....

Aye, load the bike up as much as you can without adding panniers.

You will get various views on this. My opinion is that it is not possible. Enough kit for camping ruins the single track. strip your kit back to make the riding good then the camping is uncomfortable.

I have been on quite a few camping / biking trips and this is my opinion. either stick with the ambient jeycore lite riding and enjoy the views and the camping or go for the gnarly stuff and forget carrying your camping kit.

Mine has all been on highland stuff tho where a bit of hike a bike is almost obligatory. What I found was even with the minimum camping kit which weighed about 10kgs the amount of hike a bike increased greatly. comfy camping kit of around 16 kgs just ruined it totally.

I'm doing the Sarn Helen next month on my own with a tent. I can't get my kit light enough to carry so I'm taking the EBC trailer again.

hmmmm, how well are the stanes served by SYHA hostels? Then again I guess theres probably easily a weeks worth of riding to be had at GT and inners without getting bored?

p.s. no 'real' mountainbiking will be involved. I'm opting fro trail centers as my knee tends to sieze up after a weeks riding, so cant get fit. Which means the combination of long slow fire road climbs and pedal free decents suits me down to the ground.

No way would I want to spend a week with that weight on my back

>Or is it better to split it 1 day on the road, one days riding in a loop?<

Yes, imo

A decent trailer is the way forward: arrive at camping destination ditch trailer and camping clobber in tent and go ride. Load up the next day, ride to the next location & repeat...

Minimalist gear / bivvy is fine until it starts pissing with rain and you get back sopping wet

the extrawheel voyager seems to be a good solution to this problem

If you're going to trail centres, surely the routes there are loops? So you can just dump all the camping gear in a bush near the start of the loop, ride the loop, then pick it up again. I've done that before.

Personally, I'd be happy with minimalist bivvy gear and a bit of discomfort in almost any place except Scotland in summer, where even tent camping is often a bit midge-tastic. I'd do hostels / bunkhouses etc. if possible, especially if I was only going to trail centres, which are usually near some place big enough to have a hostel.

Joe

I've done 3-day trips wearing a 40L rucksack and not had any problems. Of course, it's more the weight than the size that's the issue.

It depends on what you mean by technical

My feeling is that off road touring is possible with a tent. I cycled from Aviemore to Fort william on some great trails. We had one panier and a rucsac. We wore the rucsac fot hike a bike and narrow bits. We strapped the rucsac to the rack the rest of time. We had a tent fly sheet but no inner. With modern kit we could easily have had the whole tent

This was in about 1993. It was modern "technical" NO hucking or North shore. But plenty of the trails needed more tham pedalling

if you're likely to be able to find trees:
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you can get a tarp to rig up over the top if it rains. lighter and quicker than a tent. You can set it up on the ground if you're caught out in the open, too

On the ground of enjoying yourself I'd say no.

I've offroad motorbike camped and even on a 220lb bike the weight pissed me right off, so if it's a pain with 40bhp it'll be worse with 1 shanks pony.

Other points of interest
- when camping once you're wet you're wet, so be aware of other options so you can recover, dry everything etc.
- beware midges
- my experience is that instead of 7x1 night that 3x2 seems to make the journey more relaxed (ie you get some lazy mornings) - but thats IMHO.

I can see a trailer as you can hide it/chat up locals and leave with them etc before trail riding, in a loop. At worst you could probably pay a cabbie to drop it off somewhere convenient if that suits your route. You might even be able to persuade an STW local to do a drop off for you.

I rode from glen brittle on skye up into the black cuillin one eve and it was a laugh trying to climb the bike up the tracks with a tent (average weight),lightweight self inflating mat,and fairly light sleeping bag.it was mostly on my back in a rucksack but what a mare trying to keep the front end down and ride it like normal. its ok if you want to get into the hills but you need to deffo get the weight down low if you want to enjoy the ride as well.