When the world with its highly developed modern technologies can offer you all the luxuries of the best cars, nice and cheap hotels with comfortable accommodations, and cozy restaurants with exotic food, why would you choose to go to a bicycle tour? Carrying a heavy load of necessary camping gear, fighting the insects, adjusting to weather forecasts, sleeping in the dark and scary woods – a doubtful pleasure, isn’t it?

Yet, thousands of bicycle tourers and bikepackers find bicycle touring one of the most wonderful ways to spend a weekend or even holidays.

Accommodations

What can be better than running away from the daily routine, from the polluted city to a long-distance bicycle camping trip? People suffering of insomnia in their luxurious beds and comfortable hotel accommodations immediately fall asleep after a long day of bicycle touring. They a lulled to sleep by the sounds of woods, streams and rivers. The doubtful comfort of a sleeping bag and a tent brings more relaxation and rest than any modern technologies in nice hotels could.

Of course if you find sleeping in wild little too extreme, this is always possible to find nice and cheap hotel somewhere on your way when it starts getting darker.

Bicycle camping gear

Some people are scared of carrying lots of camping gear with them on a bike. However, these fears are groundless. A tent, air mattress, and sleeping bag along with other necessary stuff do not really take too much space. Moreover, experienced bikepackers find that they barely notice this weight, because the loaded bike is more stable than an empty one. You can learn more about camping gear you will need on a bike tour in our article Tips on how to get ready for a bicycle tour

Meals on wheels

The other concern that people new to bicycle camping have is what to do with meals? If you go to a long distance trip this is very convenient to stop at small grocery stores and get yourself some sandwich ingredient, which you can use at the next stop on the blooming meadow, on the bank of the river, or near the majestic waterfall. In the evening you can enjoy making fire and cooking a real camping dinner on it: boil rice, bake potatoes and roast some beacon.

Again, if you get too tired of camping life, the number of cozy restaurants will welcome tired tourists for a dinner.

Multi-Purpose Bicycles

Hybrids

Unless you plan to exercise in some sort of bicycle parkour, travel a lot off-road and do all kinds of dangerous tricks using your two-wheeled friend, you will most likely go for a multipurpose bicycle. They suit perfectly to explore country landscapes and distant farms, go camping by bicycle and ride for your own pleasure in a gently manner, then a hybrid bike is an ideal choice for you.

Hybrid bicycles are capable of being ridden on off-road surfaces on a good speed and can manage quite rough surfaces if driven carefully. These bikes are a mixture of mountain bikes and road bikes. Thanks to a thinner tires, they are easier to ride on the road. They are also little lighter than mountain bikes, because they don’t have to be that strong and lighter materials are used in them. However, manufacturers usually do not economize on powerful brakes, and hill-climbing gears.

These bikes can be ridden in a relaxed upright riding position which makes them a choice #1 bikes for most bike travelers.

Comfort Bicycles

Not so long ago the new sort of bikes was presented on the market – comfort bikes. This is something in between a hybrid and mountain bike which means that it was adopted for a comfortable upright riding to its best. Manufacturers use slick and fat tires and extremely comfortable saddle. These bikes are used for bicycle tourism as well as hybrids, yet they may turn out to be little slower.

Urban Bicycles

Urban bike suits perfectly for usage in modern cities. This is reliable and safe bicycle which can easily cope with bouncing off kerbs and buses. Basically this is a variation of a mountain bike with slick tires and no suspension at all. Unlike hybrid and comfort bikes a low handlebar position is used in urban bikes. They can easily cope with unpredictably rough road surfaces without any limitations in speed.

However, urban bikes are not really suitable to cope with slippery surfaces, so its better to think of a real mountain bike for hard off-road riding.

Mountain Bicycles

The Price of Mountain Bikes

At first this is desirable to decide about the price you are willing to pay for you mountain bicycle.

Even though many bike stores will offer you extra cheap mountain bicycles for as little as 100 dollars, this is not desirable to consider this as an option unless you do not really care about how long his bike will live.

Let’s say the price of 350 is a minimal amount you’ll have to spend on a light, but reliable mountain bike.

Disc Brakes in Mountain Bikes

Disk breaks are becoming a popular but expensive feature of the modern mountain bikes. Such breaks are more powerful and less affected with bed weather. Unlike usual brakes, these are not affected if the wheel rim is damaged and basically require low maintenance. However, if such brakes get damaged, you’ll have to pay quite a big amount of money for repair. The other consideration – this is difficult to get them repaired on your own or even in a less modern bike shop.

The good news is that this is possible to lower the cost of disk brakes if you choose cable operated ones (more expensive models use hydraulic system). Such brakes are little less powerful, so you have to decide for yourself.

Suspension in Mountain Bikes

The basic concept is that you will not cheap and light mountain bike with full suspension. Full suspension bike will be either very heavy and of a poor design, or quite expensive (over $1000).

Suspension front forks can now be found on quite cheap bicycles (less $300), even though few years ago they were available on the top quality bikes only. They allow riding with extra comfort on very rough off-road grounds. The only problem is that they can make the bike pretty heavier. So mind the balance of quality and price when making a decision.

Road Bicycles

There are quite a lot of varieties of road bikes available on the modern market.

Dropped handlebar racing bicycles

The bicycles you might have seen in bicycle racing are road bikes: tarmac-only, extremely light and very fast. These bikes are used for speed racing on nice roads and are not suitable for carrying luggage. If you want enjoy wind in your face and high speed, this is your choice. For camping purposes you'd better consider a multipurpose bike.

Traditional dropped-bar touring bicycles

For tourists who prefer long distance journeys on considerable nice road surfaces traditional touring bike will be the best choice. These bikes do not use hydraulic brakes or other expensive and heavy technological know-hows, so it keeps the cost of the bike at the reasonable level. Lightweight straight-bar road bicycles

This is the choice for bike tourers who prefer traveling on the road and carry some luggage with them. They are comfortable for long-distance journeys and are very light.

Heavy-duty, straight-bar road bicycles

Heavier duty road bikes are still not very suitable for off-road surfaces, but if you plan a bicycle tour to a third world county or simply know that the road surfaces where you like to travel are not very good at times, this is necessary to consider this type of a bike.