Equipment List

I have always packed light, almost pathologically so, and I saw no reason to change that habit just because the trip in question ran three months and three thousand miles. Everything I owned had to earn its place — two rear panniers and a handlebar bag, nothing more — and where I could make one item do the work of two, I did. Cables, clothes, tools, all of it doubling up wherever the maths allowed.

Left Bag — Off-Bike Clothes, On-Bike Clothes & Toiletries

The riding kit came first: two pairs of padded shorts, two jerseys, a baggy pair of shorts for modesty in towns, a long-sleeve base layer, four pairs of ankle socks, a Buff, mitts, and a hi-viz waterproof jacket for the days that turned ugly. Off the bike I allowed myself cargo shorts, a shirt, two t-shirts, two pairs of boxers, swim shorts and a pair of plimsolls — enough to pass as a normal person in the evenings. Toiletries were the travel-mini versions of everything, sun lotion and after-sun for the burns I already knew were coming, and a small first-aid kit tucked in against the day I’d need it.

Right Bag — Electronics, Accessories, Other

A netbook, an HTC Hero, a digital camera, a microfibre towel, a cyclometer, a small torch, bungee cords and the inevitable tangle of adapters and cables went in beside a pair of Specialized Sonoma shoes, two spare inner tubes, a multi-tool, a puncture kit, a small pump, chain lube, chain links and a chain tool — the whole of my mechanical competence packed into one bag, for better or worse.

Camping Equipment

An ultralight sleeping bag, which I’ll admit was not quite as ultralight as advertised, a sleeping mat, an inflatable pillow and a Coleman tent rounded out the load. The handlebar bag would carry whatever electronics didn’t fit elsewhere, along with my maps and whatever snacks survived the day. Laid out together, the whole of what I was taking across a continent looked like this:

The bike itself I owed to the good people at Edinburgh Cycles in Newcastle, who’d boxed it up ready for the flight — a custom-built Country Explorer 2010, steel frame, Shimano shifters and derailleur, disc brakes. I’d since swapped the saddle for a brown leather touring model, purely to score points on comfort and appearance in roughly equal measure, and traded the pedals for a pair of SPD clipless.

Things I’m Not Taking

You, for one. An Xbox. Any after-shave — sweaty cyclist or nothing, ladies. A sat-nav, since I already had the twelve-map TransAmerica set doing that job. And no spare tyre, purely because a folding one that fit my rims proved impossible to find — I’d replace mine as they wore through, and trust the stack of spare tubes to handle the rest.