What we took on our tour (and what we wished we had)

Bikes

Ian's is a decent MTB, mine an ancient steel road bike. All I really need to say is that a fortnight after our return, I've bought a new bike because mine proved to be on its last legs.

A spoke snapped, which rendered the rear brake useless. The front brake struggled on its own, especially in the wet - and it was wet most of the time. The gears stopped working too, so I had only six for most of the tour, and they weren't great for hills.

We didn't see many other cycle tourists, but those we met were on very different sturdy-looking bikes. They'd all come up form Germany, though, so hadn't tried to fly with them.

My new bike's a road/cyclocross, which is strong and light and I reckon it would be perfect.

I've covered flying with bikes on a separate page.

Tent

We treated ourselves to a new tent as we knew from experience that you need room both to sleep and to keep your gear, and it's not fun sharing your sleeping compartment with a load of wet panniers.

We chose the Vango Pulsar 300 (2014), which was brilliant. It's a three-man tent so we had room to wriggle. It has a porch with an entrance on each side. in which you can store all your gear and sit - essential in vile weather such as we had. It's quick to pitch and take down. And it's not too heavy either.

Vango Pulsar 300

Other stuff

Ian slept on a horrible thin mat, I upgraded to a Helium 3.8 from Mountain Equipment. Guess who slept better. And warmer. No contest.

Chargers - just get a European usb plug. They're small and light and all you need to charge phones.

We love the cheap as chips travel towels from Mountain Warehouse - for £7.99 you gets towel that works and feels like a normal towel, but folds up really small and dries way quicker.

Panniers and waterproofing

Our panniers are ancient and not in the least bit waterproof. And mine were too small. We looked longingly at the Ortlieb bags the German tourers had.

Still, we had lots of thick black bin liners. And some really neat little totally waterproof bags for phones, my Kindle, maps and passports. Essential, and really cheap, all over the internet.

As for waterproof clothing, we had good quality jackets which kept our top halves dry. Nothing on earth would have kept our feet and bums dry because west Sweden was hit by enormous storms for most of our tour. The only thing to do was make sure we had dry kit to change into at the end of the day.