Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
The more hills, the better. You'll want to get comfortable on your touring bike with a load of course and get comfortable paring that load down much below what you want to take, as opposed to what you need to take. But IME training with the load is unimportant as long as you are riding a lot of hills. Whatever increases your enjoyment of hill riding is the thing to do.
+1. I went to southern Spain for 7 weeks one March. While I rode my bike around town a lot during the winter and frequented the gym, I did not ride hills and didn't do intervals on the bike at the gym. The first riding day in Spain was 62 miles. Maybe 8 of them were flat. I was completely spent at the end of the day and took the next day off. It took me a while to find my legs on the hills that followed day after day.