That was a great share Matt, many thanks. I’m running Marathon Mondials 26 x 2.00 and whilst excellent over rough surfaces for the majority of my riding they’re perhaps a bit overkill. In the back of my mind I’m sure I’m reminiscing about my old MK1 Nomad that I had Supremes on. Complete joy to ride on tarmac or similar surfaces.

Bet you’ll be heading back to Try Thai 3 later this year!

Which tyres have you been using for these exotic escapades, Matt?

Oooo. I must avoid this minefield!
But Schwalbe Marathon 1.75"
Used on all tours apart from the Pamir Highway when I used 2.25" I still have them in the loft. Just used for that tour. Excellent and no punctures but I always felt I had the brakes on permanently. Lots of drag.

So, that's what suits me. 1.75" If it ain't broke, don't change....

After my last tour ( second time to Thailand ) I thought I'd treat myself to a new set and in error ordered 1.50".
I think I'll be happy with these since I don't plan any expedition tours again.

My tours have always been, fly in and fly out. None from the front door apart form my Scottish end 2 end.

Bike boxes from my local shop. I get 2 since once I had to cobble them together for the Raven to fit. didn't look pretty but it worked.

My first few days in the new country are spent at a hotel near the airport. I've never been refused storage there since I know when my return flight is and book another couple of nights. Pays to tip the porter a few $ before setting off to ensure the box is there on my return. I take a picture of the box with the porter!
Keep all the bubble wrap inside the box. I also fly out with a fresh reel of gorilla tape.
Only issue I ever had was in Sri Lanka where is was so humid, the tape didn't stick to the cardboard box. As fast as I put it on, it peeled off! But on that occasion I hadn't taken gorilla tape, just a cheapie. So I had to run around town for a quality tape.

Airlines; Turkish and KLM since they both fly out of Aberdeen. I can get to Amsterdam with KLM and then onwards; rather than start from London.
With Turkish, their hub is Istanbul so onwards to Ethiopia or Sri Lanka.
I avoid cheap flights with different airlines . To me that's a lost luggage recipe.

Best airports; Bangkok so smooth. I always fly economy but it was first class service.
Worst; Marrakesh. Maybe I hit a holiday but it was total mayhem.

Excess baggage fees; I've been lucky and never stung for over-weight charges.
Best experience was coming home from Ethiopia - the lady took a look at the scales, said Oh Dear! And then waved me through with a wink!!
Worst experience; flying out of Bishkek where a jobs-worth took a great interest in my bike, almost unpacking it, and sent it through to the airplane with the top of the box wide open despite my protests.
I had visions of everything falling out/apart but as I took my seat I saw a baggage handler sealing it all up with a roll of tape. Phew!

Hope this helps. I'm no expert. More an enthusiastic amateur.
I think I've got it down to a fine art, flying with my bike. Plenty of bubble wrap. Photograph everything in case things go missing or damaged. Same for passport, wallet etc.

No firm plans for another tour. At 71+ insurance gets pretty £££! But fingers crossed

Best
Matt

That is not my bike Mick, the one I have bought looks a little older and dirtier!  I will post photos when it arrives.
It also has the rohloff sticker for the serial number, and no flange rings…..which means I need to check the hub for cracks.

Reading through earlier posts here and on the Rohloff web site it sounds like the rings are advised when carrying heavy loads.  Of course I don’t know the history of the bike but my useage will be quite light (71kg rider, 10 - 15kg luggage max) so hopefully if no cracks yet it will be OK.

I imagine the sprocket is threaded, another detail to check!

My luggage on the aircraft is just one box with the bike in it and 7k carry on.  Hopefully I can keep the bike box under 25kg.

I have a chainglider on my other more modern rohloff bike and value the protection it gives.  I expect there will be rain and wet roads at times in Sri Lanka and keeping the chain grit free would be good.

I have never flown with a bike and only one checked bag.  I met two people in Iceland, both had Ritchey Break Away bikes (the frame could be split, similar to S&S Couplers) that managed one carry on bag, one personal item, and only one checked bag.  They were traveling together so I suspect that for some things they could bring a single item to share, such as a spare tire to reduce the load further.  The checked one bag was the Ritchey case with bike and some of their gear, but they were light weight bikes.  I can't imagine being on a bike tour that light, but I suppose if you are always sleeping indoors, do not need tent or sleeping gear, that it is much easier to do.  And warm climate makes that easier too.

Photo of one of their bikes attached.  He had lost his water bottle, was in a hurry to replace it.

Flange rings, Dave W, formerly with SJS said that you should not rebuild a wheel solely to add the flange rings.  By odd coincidence, he said that one day after I added my flange rings.  But I have loaded up my bike quite heavily and likely will in the future too.  I do my own work, so in my case the only cost was my time and the cost of the rings.
https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=11802.0

If you do not plan to carry a lot of gear, you may be best off not messing with the wheel.

I have not flown on the airline you will be on, so I can't comment on fees, how stringent they are on carry on size and weight, etc.  But I can say that more than once I have gotten onto a plane wearing a jacket that I could not fit inside my luggage.  I wear my helmet onto the plane and put it in the overhead bin, I do not want any luggage handlers to have a chance to break it.

RonS, whoever planned those fantastic Korean bike paths in those videos you linked, or allowed them to happen, surely should be in some Cycling Hall of Fame. Cycle tracks on that scale, except perhaps next to canals where there is already a towpath, is never going to happen in the West, unfortunately. Too many zoning czars.

John, I'm impressed by your knowledge of Canadian history after all those years in foreign parts, and your hidden pun on French Lewis, stonemason of Versailles, the folly of follies. That's one ambitious tour.

I'm probably one of only a handful of Celts in Ireland. Among my ancestors Hengish and Horsa were the Jutes who c440 led what later became known as the Anglo-Saxon conquest; it's BS by the descendants of much larger tribes: the Jutes came first and sent for rest of the Angles and the Saxon tribes to come share the riches and incidentally help them defend the Jutish kingdom of Kent. Horsa and Hengist were the grand-several-times-nephews of Odin, after whom the city of Odense (modernized version of "see", like a bishop's seat -- it means his hall -- current official Danes seem a bit embarrassed by Odin and have an alternative "sanctuary" explanation for the name) on Funen island off the coast of Denmark is named; this is the same Odin (c200) the warrior-singer that Anglo-Saxon Britain would worship as their god until the coming of Christianity. I can ride my bike across the river below the hill from my house and up the looooong hill opposite to look down on the bay Erik Bloodsword ("Red Erik the family commie" to us boys) sailed up to sack the abbey at Timoleague. Bloodsword was a Kentish prince sent into exile because, presumably, he was too violent and short-tempered even for those berserkers; he fed an abbot, who didn't clear the road fast enough when Erik's hunting dogs approached, to the dogs.

I did go to Kent to look into what was to be found of this history, but in the years between the invasion of the Jutes c440 and the invasion of the Normans (more, loosely, Vikings -- the Duchy of Normandy was the result of a Viking invasion; the Normans weren't genetically French to start with) in 1066, you can tell from the lack of the later precision in the first circa date that not a lot of thought was given to history, or even what time it was. (I'm not condemning them, you understand; as a boy and a young man I was impatient with all this pointless history, the despair of a great-uncle who was Professor of History at Stellenbosch, to whom I wish now I'd listened much more carefully.) In fact, according to a cousin who was a don at King's in Cambridge who specialized in the early period of the Jutish-Anglo-Saxon takeover -- and to be fair who warned me that I wouldn't find much in the way of physical evidence -- Bede, writing several hundred years later, is still our best guide. Also according to my cousin, a lot of what we now believe are Celts are in fact Picts (same as those in Scotland and much of England before the arrival of the J-A-S tribes) who arrived perhaps eight thousand years ago from what's now the Middle East.

Warning: All of this is the state of knowledge before 1980, when I was in Cambridge helping polish a report to the government and researching my planned novel on Keynes and the Bloomsburies, and a novel on Odin, neither of which happened (my publishers bribed me instead to write thick pseudonymous thrillers attractive to paperback buyers -- in effect, my paperback publisher financed my literary hardcover publishers). The revelations following the Human Genome project happened later, after I'd lost interest in the novel about Odin because all I had was enough for a short monograph which nobody would pay for.

There was a coda to this search. On his deathbed, my cousin received a request to contribute a "a more modern entry" about the Jutes to a venerable encyclopedia. He returned a note recommending me instead, and at his graveside I received a message that what I didn't know I should make up and quote him as my authority. So I took the encyclopedia's money (enough to buy five 150mph capable tyres for each of my three Citroen SM -- they were wonderful fast touring cars, but so unreliable that you needed three in order to have one ready to drive) and in an hour with some notes my cousin left me for my book, knocked up a piece for the encyclopedia. The starry-eyed editor (I'd just been declared "wild but wonderful" by the NY Times and lauded by The Times in London for my "highly moral environmental outlook" -- or something even more embarrassingly wrongheaded) shot my piece straight through for publication, and the next thing she knew she and her boss were carpeted by his boss, who told them, "You can't let a thriller writer tell the readers of my encyclopedia that 'Celts are Vikings with a song in their soul!'" When they called me in, under the delusion that they would carpet me as well, I said, "Well, who TF is better qualified than me to tell you about Celts?"

Here in Ireland there are stone circles, some of ancient provenance, some modern fakes (the one on the parallel road to Kilmacsimon Quay from Innishannon is a modern garden ornament, definitely not built by Druid priests). You can see ancient small and large stone circles almost everywhere in Ireland; I once saw one down a lane between buildings, with a fence around it because it was a listed monument on a publican's land, which he wanted to "reclaim" to expand his parking lot. Another real one we, showing visitors around about forty years ago, found in farmer's field on a back road also had a flat stone large enough to take a human sacrifice. History is grisly. The photo is a reconstructive watercolor painting of it at the summer solstice.

Just watched that sell, even put in a cheeky bid, it jumped a bit at the end but not by as much as I expected.  Andy's point about collection is noted, but an easy place to get to for at least half the population, £50 would cover it. If that's the going rate, it's a good time to be buying and a very bad one for selling!  Is this bikes in general, or have these type of rim braked, 26" wheel tourers fallen so far from fashion few people want them?