By Pedal and Foot

Custom Touring Bike My Temple Cycles Adventure Disc Review For my big summer tour after uni I decided that my 1998 Marin Pinemountain simply wouldn’t cut it, mostly because it was about 2 sizes too small for me! This meant that I was left with the slightly daunting prospect of having to buy a bike I would be happy to live on for 4 months over the coming summer, it had to be fast enough on the tarmac, able to handle some off road, able to carry a lot of weight, reliable and most importantly it had to be comfy to ride. I looked at all the obvious choices from big companies like Surly, Salsa, Kona and Genesis however I couldn’t find any one bike that was perfect, they’d all need some modifications before I would be happy touring long distances on them. This led me to think about a custom bike however I couldn’t afford a custom frame and anyway didn’t need one as I’m a fairly average size. When looking at custom touring bikes I came across Temple Cycles in Bristol and from the first t...

Freedom after University 4 months living on a bike This summer Julia and I both graduated from uni, to celebrate we loaded our Temple bikes with luggage and set off on a cycle tour of Northern Europe, Scandinavia and the Baltics. What followed was 4 months of brilliant cycling, gorgeous scenery and a few near misses around 12 fascinating countries. The bikes handled everything we threw at them from steep rocky off-road climbs to fast tarmac descents and certainly made the trip less stressful and a lot more fun. One particular experience that stands out from the trip was cycling the Rallarvegen in Norway. The Rallarvegen is an 82km long off-road cycle route across central Norway from Haugastøl in the mountains to Flåm on the coast , it starts at 1000m above sea level climbs to 1350m and then finishes at 0m, so it’s not exactly flat. As with most of our trip we didn’t quite plan all the details of the Rallarvegen, indeed we only decided to cycle North West from Os...

Encounters with Cows Cycling from Fishguard to Cardiff   Buoyed up by the memories of our successful length of Wales trip at the beginning of the summer Julia and I decided that we should end the summer the same way, with an epic cycle tour adventure. We only had a week available so crazy ideas of cross European adventures would have to wait till a later date and the search was restricted to closer to home. Then we realised that the natural sequel to a length of Wales ride was a ride the width of Wales at its widest point, happily Sustrans have a challenge route called the Celtic Trail which goes from Fishguard in the West to Chepstow in the East. We didn't want the faff of public transport both ways so we decided to leave the route at Pontypridd and head to Cardiff. Thus the route was set for our 200-mile jaunt from Fishguard to Cardiff and masses of planning and preparation ensued. (We booked the train and bought a map). This 200-mile route is brilliant for seei...