Mountain Biking on Tour: Self-Supported Riding Across Two Weeks of Mixed Terrain

This April I cycled a self-supported mountain bike tour through the French Pyrenees. A 2 week mixed terrain tour from Pau to the Mediterranean coast on rough paved roads and dirt singletrack trails totaling roughly 700 kilometers and 12,000 meters of climbing over 14 days including 2 rest days. These are the lessons I learned on this tour. I’m writing this up for those who may be planning a similar type of tour. If you’re looking for a road tour or pure mountain biking then this won’t have much relevance to you. However if you’re planning a mixed-discipline tour then I suspect that many of the lessons I learned would apply to similar tours around the world.

This piece outlines the lessons I learned whilst planning and completing a self-supported mountain bike tour of the French Pyrenees. If you are contemplating a similar trip, this could save you from repeating the mistakes that I did not want to make when planning my 2 week Pau to Mediterranean coast trip. If you’re not interested then skip to the bottom of the page and start reading about my French Pyrenees adventure.

The bike setup question

For long distance touring, pure mountain bikes are too heavy for long stretches of smooth fire road, while pure gravel bikes are not up to steep technical descents. The compromise is to use a hardtail mountain bike with a rigid carbon fork for stability on smooth terrain, and large (2.2 to 2.4 inch) tires with light file tread in the center and large edge knobs for traction on steep, rocky terrain.

My setup that worked: Book early.

A steel hardtail frame with mounts for racks and bottles. A rigid carbon fork with additional mounts for extra bottle cages. I use Tubeless 2.3 inch tires with light file tread in the center and edge knobs on my touring hardtail. A 1×12 drivetrain with a 32-tooth chainring and an 11-52-tooth cassette. The 52-tooth provided the crucial gear for steep uphills in order to avoid having to get off and walk. I opted for mechanical over hydraulic because although hydraulic is easier to set up it is much harder to bleed in the field than opening up the housing and adjusting the cables. So after much deliberation I opted for flat pedals with super grippy soles, as the risk of screwing up a clipless release on very rough ground would have been a real problem.

The gear distribution

Mountain bike touring typically employs a number of different bag systems that differ from those used for road touring. Panniers on mountain bikes tend to swing around excessively when traveling on rough terrain, and often end up tipping and pulling the bike down in the process. The following setup worked for me:

A handlebar harness for a 13-liter dry bag (filled with sleeping gear etc). A 6-liter frame bag (lunch, tools, electronics). Small top tube bag with snacks and phone. A 12-liter seat pack for clothes and toiletries. When cycling, an 8-liter rucksack is worn over the back for the water, for extra amounts of food for immediate consumption, and for a rain shell.

The total amount of luggage space on this set up is 39L. Plus the dry bag that I wear on my back – an 8L dry bag that is used for water, snacks, and my rain shell for a day. This set up allows for two weeks of touring and daily resupply.

The fitness curve

First day of a mountain bike tour is much harder than expected. A combination of body fatigue, dehydration, fatigue of the mind and hours spent on a bike make for a very long and exhausting day. Even more so than on long road touring days.

As a rough guide I’m generally sticking to a touring budget of around $60 a day. (Yes that includes all accommodations.) Follow the advice of long-distance bicycle touring’s grandest figures for absolutely nothing!

My actual day-by-day fatigue, in retrospect:

Day 1: hard. Legs reasonable, brain tired. Day 2: harder. I feel like my legs are recovering from Day 1, but they still tired. My brain is slowly becoming more accustomed to our daily travels, but the weight of planning and executing our days is taking a greater toll on me. Day 3 was the hardest, it is like your body has finally loaded all the information up and it is protesting strongly. Day 4 (rest day): essential. Slept, ate, did laundry, drank coffee. Days 5-8: strong. All three components are solid. The trip becomes the focus rather than any of the individual components. Day 9: second rest day. Less needed than the first, but the schedule was right. Days 10-14 are more or less normal. Your tour has stopped being difficult. You now focus on riding as you do back home.

I treat my rest days with the same value as the riding days – they are non-negotiable and if I skip one, the following week will be lost to excessive fatigue.

The terrain mix

The Pyrenees tour ranged across:

35% Pavement: Connecting roads on dirt mountain bike touring holidays, such as the Pyrenees. These connecting road sections are normally flat to very gently rolling and also provide access to rural services and shops. Fire road and gravel: 40 percent. The bread and butter of mountain bike touring. Singletrack trails comprised 20 % of the total distance. As a rule the singletrack was intermediate and required some effort to negotiate on occasions we had to drop and remount but this was not to often. Hike-a-bike: 5 percent. Steep sections where pushing the loaded bike was faster than riding.

A common mistake of novice tourers is to forget to count in hike-a-bike distance. It may look like nothing but in reality, a loaded 22kg bike up 12% grade is a heavy load and takes a lot of energy and time. I put it in the daily distance.

Food and water on the route

Bakeries and markets that sell fresh produce, cheese, and meats in rural villages are quite common along the Pyrenees tour route. In most cases, shops and stalls to resupply on food and water can be found every 40 km or so along the route. Two exceptions for me were the days long sections without shops, such as 50-60 km between places to buy food and water, when I started to feel quite exhausted due to lack of energy because I had not packed enough.

Food strategy: For emergencies on the road I usually take with me enough energy for two days (energy bars, dried meat and fruits). On the tour days I try to eat fresh enough for the day and then I top it up with food I get on the shops along the way. Also, I always try to get enough to drink at the shops and not just when I have a meal.

For water it turned out to be a very dry period. I carried 2 liters of water with me, and also brought 1 liter in my daypack. I filled up with water every time I could buy or pick up water at a fountain. There were parts of the route of 25 km where there was no water at all. In these cases I started with 4 liters.

As with all of my trips, I have done a few versions of this trip. This was the middle price version of the trip.

The mechanical failures

Across 14 days, I had:

Two flat tires: However both were tubeless so the sealant fixed them instantly within seconds of the blowouts. Later during the long descent to Aspet the back brake cable had been stretched. I pulled it back up and did the required adjustment. One chain quick-link replacement after a stuck link. One bolt re-tightening on a rack mount.

In retrospect, I had obviously packed far too many tools for any repairs to ever be needed. However, they all came in very useful as the list above shows and in total weighed around 800 grams, or around 1.8 pounds. That’s worth carrying on its own.

What I would do differently

Add one more rest day to the itinerant plan. The 2-rest-day plan worked well for me, but three would have sent me off on the last stage of the trip in much better nick.

Adding a 4th water bottle cage on the down tube would have been welcome in the dry weeks. Two water bottle cages on a bike are already a very tight squeeze as it is.

Book your overnight stays 3-4 days ahead of time, not 1-2 days ahead of time. The small villages and hamlets along this section of the Pyrenees have a very limited number of beds for rent, and I was forced to make a long detour to find a place to sleep one night.

The summary

Mountain bike touring is a real sport which requires specific preparation. Preparation of the bike and of the load (or luggage) that you will be carrying on your tour and also preparation for the fatigue that you will suffer during your tour. The key to a successful tour is the rest days. Done well the rhythm of a tour becomes one of the most absorbing experiences of adventure travel. For 14 days you are doing one thing and the landscape is changing under your wheels.