Touring - European Tour (Oslo - Paris) Bike Recommendations

Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.



PDA
zrblue
02-13-09, 09:22 AM
Hey all,

Im planning European tour for this summer. It'll be me and a good friend flying from Edinburgh to Oslo, cycling down into Sweden, then Denmark, Germany, Amsterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg and finally cutting straight west into Paris.

Rough mileage were looking at around 1200 miles, and from what i can tell the terrain will be flat asphalt roads for the most part.

Does anyone have a good bike recommendation for undertaking this? Should i stick with a hybrid bike (Thinking about the Dawes Discovery 301 2008 model) or could i get away with a purely road going bike (Thinking of something from Saracen)?

cliffy
02-13-09, 09:35 AM
It all depends what type of riding you will be doing, and how much you are carrying. So will you be self contained carrying all of you gear and camping each night, or do you plan to stay at hotels?
If there are two of you, are you both buying bikes specifically for the trip?
Other things you want to look into are racks for carrying equipment on the bike, panniers, and possibly different handlebars on the Dawes if you are planning on riding long days so that you can get more hand positions.
zrblue
02-13-09, 09:52 AM
It all depends what type of riding you will be doing, and how much you are carrying. So will you be self contained carrying all of you gear and camping each night, or do you plan to stay at hotels?
If there are two of you, are you both buying bikes specifically for the trip?
Other things you want to look into are racks for carrying equipment on the bike, panniers, and possibly different handlebars on the Dawes if you are planning on riding long days so that you can get more hand positions.

We'll be carrying all our gear and camping each night. Were both looking to buy bikes specifically for this trip as we were both more into mountain biking before so don't really have anything great for road use.

The discovery 301 really appeals as its the same exact lightweight frame as used on their road bike, plus its got 24 gears on the shimano rapidfire system, which seems to offer alot more options gear wise than a lot of the hybrids ive seen.