Hi all,

Under advice of another user, im just going to copy and paste my introduction into this forum, this is probably the forum im going to spend most time in:

Im wiles9 from Northern Ireland, currently i live in Spain, have done for about 8 months, im studying Mathematics out here. Im a big mountaineering fan of all types, but this challenge ive set up ahead is something new to me... long distance cycling.... and i need a lot of advice please from this community..

My girlfriend and myself have planned, what is to us a big big trip.. we plan to cycle : Barcelona -> Belfast

The route has not yet been planned, the training has not yet begun... and last but not least.. we aint even got ourselves bikes capable of the jobs.. so all advice is welcome.

We have april/may/june training time, and july/august/start september to do the trip, which i guess is gonna be about 1500 miles.. depending on the decided route.. ie. through spain, pyrenees, france, south ireland to north.

Maybe to some this is a small task, to us its huge, as we never have done anything like it, talk about going of on a tangent from rock climbing to this eh..???

People who throw some advice back.. anything is welcome and im grateful, brands, styles, price to spend etc etc... so far we have a budget, but havent been able to decide on an upper limit... as we our trying to work out how much we will spend a month on the road and during training... (living on pasta haha)

Cheers folks,
wiles9

-----------

That was my original post, since then we have trailed all over barcelona looking at all the bike shops, the three best so far have been "Pro Bike" and "Cycle House, Tomas Domingo", "Cicloturismo" if that helps anyone. Most shops dont stock the right gear, so far they have tried to sell us racers that they say they will drill holes in for us, others have even went as far as trying to sell us town bikes.. so were not taking anyones word. The three above were very helpful but still not 100% honest in my opinion. The fact that we are not fluent in Spanish does not help... we only know basics.

Few questions...

1. Spokes... will 32 do for heavy loaded?
2. Aluminion forks, much more vibrations??

and the bikes so far...

For my gf (user ang): Specialised Tricross Sport Triple

Me.. well im stumped, i also like the above bike, seems up to the job... but the other bike ive seen (hugely out of my price range, but hey.. we all splash out sometimes..) is a Canondale Touring, dont know the exact model..

It has 10speed with 3 front cogs, brook leather seat, Tubus front and back racks, shimano 105 gears etc etc.. im sure you pros know the model im on about, ill find out the exact year/model tomorrow.

Im not so sure what else to ask right now.. we have been reading some other threads but with uni work time on computers is hard to come by!!!

Em.. Cheers again :-)