I recently completed a cycle camping tour in the Cevennes in France. The tour took 6 days and covered about 420km.
There were three of us in the group - one large wheeler, one Moulton TSR and my own Moulton APB.
We wild camped 4 nights, used a campsite 1 night, and stayed in a "Hutte" 1 night.
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Just wrap your Moulton in a plastic? Is that enough for air travel? I thought that you’d need to box it.
I have a folding bike (KHS T3) and a road bike. Soon I’ll take my road bike to New York for a year. Your trip in Cevennes is very inspiring. I hope someday I can visit there too.
I took my bike to Lhasa in a bike box which I got free from my local bike shop (they just throw them away). This worked fine. The box was a bit tatty on arrival after two flights (LHR-Kathmandu, KTM to Lhasa) but the bike was fine. I took a roll of ‘gaffer’ tape to repair the box for the return journey. I also used lengths of pipe lagging to protect tubes, chain wheel etc.
Interestingly, on arrival at Lhasa I saw another party whiose bikes were simply wrapped in heavy duty plastic. Superficially, at least, their bikes looked OK, but I know nothing of their flight plan etc.
Clearly, it’s up to you how you ship your bike, but I would recommend either a well padded bike bag or a box and pipe lagging as described.
I was lucky enough to be able to see my bike being loaded on and off the plane. My travel companion’s boxed bike was thrown about, and had lots of suitcases loaded on top of it. Mine was treated with a lot more care.
Clear plastic would have been better, as the baggage handlers would be able to see that it’s a bike. They seem to assume that boxes are indestructable, and pile lots of bags on top.
See http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=5184 for more.
I’m wondering which rack-top bag is on the back of the TSR. It doesn’t look like the Carradice one.
That bag was made by “Sew What” and sold by the Moulton Bicycle Company. It normally fits APB and AM models, but not the TSR. The TSR in the picture is fitted with a custom platform rack which is designed to be compatible with legacy Moulton luggage.
Many thanks for the info about the bag on the TSR. Such a good looking bag might fit on the ‘oval’ TSR rear rack available from the Japanese, although the rack looks a bit short.