Our top 3 items of cycle touring equipment

After some 2’600km on the road on our recumbent bicycles through France, Spain and Portugal, we have already spotted what we cannot miss in future trips.  The list below shows items that were new to us, but we should not forget about other very good gear for which we have almost no complaints either.

So, here are the top 3:

1. 

   OsmAnd Android application for mapping (and navigation). We use it several times per day to make sure we follow the correct road, find supermarkets, hotels, water, etc. The nice thing is that it works offline, has the contour lines for the elevation and easily measures distances using the road we pre-defined. For navigation, we prefer to define the path on different websites (depending on the country) and download the GPX file to OsmAnd, which displays it very clearly. At the beginning of the trip, Miguel was using the Garmin GPS but it was an alkaline battery hog, it was slow, and the track was difficult to see with the sunlight.

2. 

   Rohloff hub. It is just a genius piece of engineering. We can change speeds easily while stopped, going uphill and all this while not damaging the chain. There are 14 gears well spaced of 14% increments, making the same range of a 27 gear bicycle. The hub is guaranteed for 100’000km with worldwide support. The maintenance is just an easy-to-do oil change every 5’000km or once a year.

3. 

   Pletscher Comp Zoom 40 bike kickstand on Miguel’s bicycle. Even if it is rated only for 18 kg, it seems to support much more. We all know how difficult it is to keep a heavily-charged bicycle from tipping over. This kickstand just keeps the bicycle put, and we can even add Eva’s bicycle to it, as we can see on this picture. The kickstand of Eva’s bicycle is centered and too short, working well only without any additional weight.

Having said the top 3, we should not forget out Ortlieb bags, Hilleberg tent, and Icebreaker clothes. So far we are very happy with most of our equipment.