Monday 20 April 2009

ANOTHER EMAIL REPLY (maybe useful)

What kind of tent did you take? Also any essentials you recommend taking with you?

for camping, we took a North Face Tadpole 23. Very light and pretty quick to pitch, as well as being solid in strong winds, it also has the option of just pitching the inner, which is nice on warm clear nights so you can look up at the stars before you sleep. Light one season sleeping bags were warm enough for the coldest nights, and we also brought sleeping bag liners which were good when it was too hot for the sleeping bags. Essentials... hmmm...
- big water bottle holders (taking standard supermarket 1.5 litre plastic bottles) attached to your bikes. We found these pretty handy.
- a Trangia camping stove running on meths/alcohol - sometimes you'll want to eat something warm.
- Sporks! they're made by Light My Fire, and they are pretty much indestructible plastic fork/spoon/knifes all in one. Really quick to clean as well. Useful for eating yogurt in the middle of the day from those big pots, or spreading jam on delicious french bakery bread. Keep them to hand in the top of your panniers.
- Waterproof map holder which attaches to the handlebars of one of your bikes. Really really useful, and for me, an essential. Means you don't have to stop and dig in the bags whenever you need to look at the map, which will be very often!
- Light raincoats. It rains in France in summer sometimes, especially in the North.
- Some long trousers. Good to protect against mosquitos in the evenings. Also to fit in more when you get to Morocco. Moroccans almost never wear shorts, except on the beach. Unfortunately if a woman you will probably get a lot of unwanted attention from Moroccan men if you don't have a top with a high neck and long sleeves to wear in the streets. A scarf to cover your neck is also useful (you shouldn't feel forced to wear it as a headscarf, though). Apologies if you've already been to a muslim country and know all this already!