Bikes
We will be on our bikes everyday for seven weeks, comfort is a major consideration and for that reason we are shipping our bikes to Paris. I'll be riding my Liv Thrive (Giant), and Larry his 40 year old Marinoni.
We both ride e-bikes around town, however the weight of these bikes, the challenge of charging everyday and the fact we cannot ship our batteries make them a poor choice for this type of trip.
Both bikes have had a few adjustments for the trip. Both bikes have new Gravel King tires, Larry's has new handlebars, and my bike has a new stem, rear sprocket and derailleur. And the bikes are equipped with lights, a cell-phone holder, and water bottle holders.
Larry is boxing the bikes up (thank you MEC for the free boxes) for the flight; Westjet charges an additional $50 for this baggage. Photos taken as we begin the packing process.
We will be on our bikes everyday for seven weeks, comfort is a major consideration and for that reason we are shipping our bikes to Paris. I'll be riding my Liv Thrive (Giant), and Larry his 40 year old Marinoni.
We both ride e-bikes around town, however the weight of these bikes, the challenge of charging everyday and the fact we cannot ship our batteries make them a poor choice for this type of trip.
Both bikes have had a few adjustments for the trip. Both bikes have new Gravel King tires, Larry's has new handlebars, and my bike has a new stem, rear sprocket and derailleur. And the bikes are equipped with lights, a cell-phone holder, and water bottle holders.
Larry is boxing the bikes up (thank you MEC for the free boxes) for the flight; Westjet charges an additional $50 for this baggage. Photos taken as we begin the packing process.
Finding our way
Cycling the Camino de Santiago (Cicerone Press) is an excellent guide. The Spanish part of the route is carefully detailed. For the trip, I bought the ebook version to use with my Kobo reader. I also have the Moon guide Camino de Santiago in ebook format, it's a great source of info on restaurants, sites to see etc.
The entire trip follows the EuroVelo3. This route is one of the 19 routes in the EuroVelo network. This route starts in Trondheim Norway; we are starting at about the half-way point in Paris. It follows the historical pilgrimage route to Spain. The Eurovelo website provides detailed maps which I have downloaded in the GPX format and have this data loaded into my Ride with GPS app on my phone.
What we are bringing
We are travelling very light and are able to get our gear into two panniers each. Our gear consists mainly of clothing (including rain gear), we are not bringing camping gear. In addition to clothing we both will have our phones and a Kobo reader, so have packed the various cords and small external battery-packs for the phones. Personal hygiene items, a small first-aid kit, a Swiss army knife, set of bike tools, extra inner tubes, and a pump fill up the space in the panniers. I'll take photos with my phone, Larry is bringing his Nikon SLR along.
Important details
As retirees we no longer have the gold-plated travel insurance we had with our work extended benefits. The best price I got for travel insurance was with Costco! Manulife is the provider.
eSIMs make getting a local cell plan much easier. We've already ordered our Orange eSIMs so we will have data, phone and text as soon as we arrive.
Since we are using eSIMs we won't have access to our Canadian cell numbers. Banking and other services now require multifaction authentication, usually based on the cell-number. VanCity allows you to add the Google authenticator to your account so we don't need to depend on access to our Canadian cell phones. Having access to our bank accounts will make paying our bills, including our credit card which I expect will we rely on heavily.
We will be away for more than two months, and are grateful to have a house-sitter while we are away. Part of our trip planning was getting our house and garden in order so our house-sitter has an easy time while we are away.
Getting ready to ride
When Larry first proposed we ride from Paris to Santiago, I was not confident I could do it. Now, I feel ready to ride everyday. I tried to ride as much as I could over the last few months (on both my ebike and the bike I'm taking). My Saturday morning fitness class at Cedar Hill Recreation was key in improving my fitness level and perhaps most importantly was starting a strength training and posture adjustment routine at the Camosun gym (thank you Danny!)