Gear and useful information for planning a cycle tour of your own. From the planning stage to what equipment may be of use and some tips if you plan on flying with your bike.
Garry’s choice of front light is the Busch & Müller IQ2 Lumotec Luxos u which arguably has one of the brightest lights, with the widest beams on the market. Although Garry doesn’t ride very much at night, it does come in handy when he gets caught out!
Handlebar switch
Separate switch
The Lumotec headlight has a convenient handlebar switch, used to switch the light on and off. It is also used to switch between the different light modes of daytime running light, panorama light and floodlight.
There is also a cable coming out of the remote switch. This gives you the ability to charge a phone or almost any other electrical device that has a USB port. That comes in particularly handy when you’re mainly camping and don’t have easy access to electricity.
After three years of trouble-free use, Garry’s Lumotec developed a problem and was unable to charge his phone! Which as we all know is a major problem these days! Considering we all seem to run our lives by them! So Garry got in contact with Busch & Müller who asked him to return it to them.
Unfortunately, Busch & Müller were unable to fix the light. But as a goodwill gesture, they sent Garry a brand new Lumotec light in its place! Thus was despite the old one being over three years old and totally out of any warranty or guarantee! What excellent customer service! It was nice to deal with a decent company.
Busch & Müller IQ2 Lumotec Luxos u front view
The new Lumotec is now on Garry’s bike ready for use on his next tour where I think there will have to be a spot of night riding just to give it a try! Although the one thing I know that Garry will be doing! Long before any night riding! That is charging his phone!
After nearly 50,000 miles, and eight years of use, Garry’s Brooks B17 standard leather saddle, needed to be replaced. The rivets on the front had started to pull through the leather. Which apparently was due to Garry being a bit heavy-handed and over-tightening the saddle!
Unfortunately, the saddle was still really comfortable, and Garry was reluctant to replace it! But there was always the worry that the rivets would pull through entirely, and the seat would collapse! Garry was also getting through a pair of shorts on every tour! After tearing them on the rivets! There was also the remote chance he could cut himself, and not on his bum!
Garry’s Brooks saddle after nearly 50,000 miles
Because the saddle was so comfortable, and Garry hadn’t had any problems with it, up until now! There really wasn’t any choice of which saddle to replace it with! It had to be another Brooks B17.
Garry could have ordered a new seat online, but that would have been too simple! So he was going to ride to Birmingham and get one from the Brooks Factory instead. Any excuse to go away! Unfortunately, that would have been a four-day trip, at best, and Garry just didn’t have the time! Instead, Garry decided to cycle to London, which was only a days ride. Brooks had opened a shop, named B1866 after the year Brooks was established. So one cold November morning in 2015, Garry set off for London to buy his new seat!
The new Brooks B17
After cycling to London and buying his new saddle, Garry fitted it to his bicycle. Garry now has to break it in, which should take around 500 miles. Now if that’s not an excuse to go away touring I don’t know what is!
Here’s to many more years of cycle-touring in a comfortable saddle!
Garry’s original tent used for cycle touring was the MSR Velo. But after sitting on the back of Garry’s bike for more than five years, being packed away wet and sometimes left for a few days, it finally wore out!
At the time of replacing it, Garry was umming and ahhing as to what to replace his old tent with as they no longer made that model! In the end, Garry went for the Hilleberg Nammatj 2 GT, a two-person tunnel tent.
After several tours with the Hilleberg, Garry started to miss his old MSR Velo. He missed its free-standing ability. The fact that it took a relatively small area to pitch in, and it could also be pitched on rocky surfaces as there is very little need for pegging down a free-standing tent!
After returning home from his tour of Spain, where most of the campsites were gravel. Garry decided that he needed a free-standing tent once more! So, he started to look around at various brands to see what new tents were on the market.
The New Tent
Garry started to look at the MSR Hubba Hubba. This tent was around when he brought the Hilleberge but dismissed it as he thought it was quite a lot of phaffing around! Having to put four parts together, the footprint, the inner tent, the vestibule, and the flysheet! However, he was now willing to give it a go.
In early August 2015, Garry purchased the MSR Hubba Hubba HP. His initial thoughts on it were how light it was. It weighed in at a mere 1.93kg as opposed to the Hilleberg which weighs in at 3.7kg. The setup was, as he thought, not as straightforward as the Hilleberg! The single-pole system was a bit annoying, and the longevity of the poles could be a problem! They just snap together on their own, which could lead to cracks and ultimately break.
Some Things Are Familiar
The set-up as before with Garry’s old MSR Velo was that you had to put the inner tent up first then attach the fly over the top. A nice new feature with this tent is that if the weather is bad and it’s raining, you can put the fly up first and then attach the inner tent afterwards. A big improvement on the old Velo. It was always a pain setting up in the rain! However, you can’t attach the vestibule with this setup. To attach the vestibule, you must put the inner tent up first, attach the vestibule, and then attach the fly.
The MSR Hubba Hubba HP set up in Garry’s garden
After setting the tent up several times in his garden so he could get a feel for it, Garry decided that the only real test was to try it out in the field (if you’ll pardon the pun!), so off he set on a small tour to Somerset.
Field Test
On Garry’s first night’s camp, he decided to try the tent out without using the vestibule, just to see how he got on with the smaller tent. It was a real struggle. He had to use both vestibules for his panniers, and even then, there wasn’t enough room. He had to have some of the panniers inside the tent! Which isn’t too much of a problem when it’s dry. However, when it’s wet, I’m not so sure you would want wet bags inside the inner tent!
Garry found the doors to be very annoying! They open from the centre and are always hanging down and getting in the way. You can’t just open them and throw them over the side of the tent. You have to tie them back each time! Which is fine if your inside and want to look out, but if you just want to get something out quickly, they are a real pain.
Cooking was also not that easy! Garry usually likes to sit inside the tent with the stove outside, or if the weather is a bit inclement, move it in slightly. This is not an option in the Hubba Hubba! Garry found the inner tent too low on the opening, so he was unable to sit inside and cook! He could have moved the cooker a bit nearer to the tent and sat further inside, but then there was the worry that the cooker was a little bit too close to the tent!
Anything Else Wrong
Packing the tent away in the morning was a bit of a phaff! The poles were a pain, and with cold hands unclipping the inner tent from the poles was awkward!
Garry’s second campsite
On the second night’s camp, Garry decided to put the tent up with the vestibule attached. Again he had the problem with the pole just snapping together on its own, which he finds rather disconcerting!
The correct setup is to lay the footprint out with the inner tent on top. Attach the poles and clip the inner tent to the poles. Then clip on the vestibule and cover it with the rain fly. But after trying the tent out at home, Garry found it more useful to have the footprint in the vestibule. You don’t have that damp grass on the inside of the tent then, and it also affords itself to somewhere else to sit out of the wind. However, despite there now being plenty of room for gear, there is very little headroom! Garry found it impossible to sit up in the vestibule, although the inner tent has loads of headroom!
There are also one or two doubts as to how weatherproof the whole thing would be! The point at which the vestibule attaches to the tent and is then covered by the fly seems to sag down a bit, and possibly if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, could blow up and under here!
On subsequent nights of the tour, Garry continued to put the full setup up but found out that he just couldn’t get on with it!
Getting ready to pack away in the morning
Summary
In summary, it’s not a bad tent. It’s just not very well suited to Garry’s needs! It would be more beneficial if Garry was able to go hiking again or if he was to go on a tour where he wasn’t expecting to camp very much. But wanted to carry a tent just in case he found himself unable to find any accommodation! For the tours when he intends to camp, most of the time, he’ll stick with the Hilleberg!
Subscribe to my blog and follow me as I travel around on my bike. Plus, as a subscriber, you’ll be among the first to receive news and updates on future tours. And, of course, you can always follow me on social media: Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. I’m also on Flickr, where photographs from all of my trips are published.
If you want to find out if Garry’s away touring at the moment and check his location, visit the Where’s Garry web page.
For those dark nights spent in the tent, Garry has a Petzl Tikka headlamp which is suitable for proximity lighting and movement over short distances.
It has two lighting modes, mode one is for proximity work. Garry generally uses this when in the tent. Perhaps when cooking supper. Or when he wants an early start before sunrise and needs to pack his gear away.
Mode two is for movement and comes in very handy when Garry gets caught short in the night and needs to pay a visit to the bushes!
