other useful bike websites
All about bikes and general bike touring tips
There’s plenty of these useful sites around. Some are hugely overloaded with advertising and lacking in information that is not straight up product endorsement or self promotion. The best from an information point of view are probably:
Sheldon Brown has a bundle of practical advice about some of the more technical aspects to do with bikes and their maintenance. If you need to know about various types of spokes, or how to adjust your derailleur, this is a good place to start.
Neil Gunton’s guide to bike touring is a systematic look at what you need for a successful bike tour, but from an on-the-highway perspective.
Andrew & Friedel Grant are two Canadians who set off in 2006 to travel around the world by bicycle. They might have become waylaid but over 60,000km and 33 countries later you feel they are giving it a good try. Their funky site Travelling Two has comprehensive information about bike touring with an emphasis on gear and advice for long term, more adventurous bike travellers and as an added bonus includes a huge bundle of useful info contributed by well known bike tourers, ie, people who have years of experience riding Tibetian goat tracks, down Africa, etc. If you are starting out their ebook Bike Touring Survival Guide is well worth downloading for $5, £5, €5 or 5 whatever.
Jamie Noble’s Bike touring 101 has another take on bike touring but with a North American perspective.
Bike touring blogs and stuff
There’s hundreds, probably thousands, of blogs of people’s individual trips to various remote places around the world. The one’s relating to Australia generally recount the experience of doing a year long circuit on Highway 1 or a section thereof.
crazyguyonabike.com is a specialised blogging site for more than 5000 journals of mainly across USA bike tours. There’s a great forum section which has a general American slant to the information. Do a search for the relevant blogs.
Go Bicycle Touring is gathering info for bike tourers from around the world, a “directory of the web’s best bicycle touring blogs and resources.” Amaya Williams and Eric Schambion have plenty of experience on their own epic off-main-road tours of Africa and South America.
Australian bike touring forum
There’s a few enthusiasts who congregate on this site to relate tales mainly about short trips in close proximity to the major Australian cities.
Bicycles.net is the most popular bike touring forum in Australia. There are quite a few dedicated members. A good place to ask for specific information about places or conditions in Australia.
Bicycling Australia is the website for Australia’s premiere cycling magazine and online bike classifieds.
Other Australian bike touring guides
Rob Taggert has a hugely informative guide for off-road trails in the hills of the Great Dividing Range in NSW and the Australian Alps in Victoria. Tours are mostly off the main roads, vary from one day to a week or more and have a high level of detail about what is in store.
Individual off road bike touring in Australia blogs
Need inspiration, try Mirjam’s blog recounting two years out on the remote dirt roads. Gals seem to have bucket loads of adventures and Mirjam will show you how it’s done.
Anthony Mann managed to get to all 7 extreme points of Australia, the most southern, eastern, northern, western and central points of Australia, as well as the highest and lowest points, on eighteen month 27,000km trip across Australia in 2006-07. He managed to traverse Cape York, Gibb River Road, Great Central Road and the Oodnadatta Track on his way.
Jakub Postrzygacz with the first recorded unsupported bike trip across the 2006km Canning Stock Route from Halls Creek to Wiluna in 2005.
Russell Worthington whizzed about 7500km in 3 months across 10 deserts in on a Surly Pugsley with 4” tyres during the winter of 2009. The tracks include the Canning Stock Route, Simpson Desert and other remote roads.
My westbound blog, Adelaide to Darwin (and beyond) offroad, is an account of my own 17,000km journey across Australia and is one of those that can be found at cgoab.
My return trip east plots my current tour from Cape Leeuwin to Cape York to Wilsons Prom via all manner of obscure outback roads.
Cycle touring in other countries
There’s plenty of guides to cycle touring in other countries.
Those who like to go off-road and indulge in plenty of hill, err, mountain climbing will find some inspiration from Neil and Harriet Pike’s website, andesbybike.com a route guide to more than enough high mountain passes and salt lake traverses on not much trafficked tracks in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru. Looks enticing.
If you are travelling to Northern Europe with your bike Jon & Frank Houseago’s site has plenty of information about the UK, Iceland, Norway and other countries around the North and Baltic Seas.
Web design website
OK, so it’s not a bike website but we need to mention ORBiT Australia website. That’s the web design base station.