As I canvassed in this blog, my wife Georgina and I have been thinking of going pedal touring. Carrying 3½-year-old son Alexander in a Burley child trailer, we originally were going to use recumbent trikes, machines that are stable and have a very wide range of gearing.

But getting the trikes to any distant location is an expensive exercise, so we reluctantly decided to instead ride Brompton folding bikes. (Disclaimer: Georgina’s business sells Burley trailers, Brompton bikes and Greenspeed recumbent trikes.)

The advantage of the Bromptons is that they can be folded into such a small package that on an airline flight they cost nothing at all to take with us. In fact, flying within Australia on Virgin Blue, we can take along two bike trailers, two bikes and all our camping gear – and pay not one cent extra over the three fares!

That’s a pretty persuasive argument for bike touring on these machines.

Our first thoughts were to fly everything to Cairns and then ride from that location, but – since we’ve never done anything like this before – I thought that maybe we should try some local touring first. ‘Local’ so that when something went wrong, we could take a taxi home!

We live on a very steep mountain so the first step was to find somewhere at the bottom of the hill where we could park our car. That way, we could put everything in the car, drive down the mountain, then tour from that point. (Another advantage of the gear: we can fit inside my Peugeot 405 sedan, two people, one child, the two bikes, full camping gear and two bike trailers!)

So we’d be leaving from Upper Coomera (inland from the Gold Coast) and then heading south. To where, then? We thought Byron Bay – taking a leisurely 7 days or so for the 220 kilometres return trip.

The gear comprised two Brompton bikes (both fitted with aftermarket wide, sprung seats), a Burley Solo child trailer, a Burley Nomad freight trailer – and about 40kg of gear. Plus of course the weight of Alexander – 18kg.

So you can see why the schedule was pretty conservative!

I was excited when we headed off, but it took only 15 minutes or so before we hit the first hills. And, as I’d feared would be the case, they were incredibly hard.

The Bromptons have 3-speed internal hubs, with my machine having a further two gears selectable by a mini derailleur. Georgina’s machine has just the internal hub 3-speed. We were standing on the cleated pedals to get sufficient torque to get up the hills, slight as they were…

However, we persevered and by that afternoon were pitching tents at the Tallebudgera caravan park. 

By the second night we were at Pottsville. However, even though the ground had been (mostly) flat on this second day, we were now pushing into a strong headwind. The 20 km/h headwind was the equivalent of climbing a long hill all day!

That night it rained heavily (no problems; the tents were dry inside) but the next day looked like it was going to be wet – very wet. In fact, as we had breakfast, the pouring rain was almost horizontal, so strong was the headwind.

As I sipped my coffee, I looked long and hard at that rain. The clothing, tents, sleeping mats, methylated spirits cooking stove, and the food and water we’d brought had all worked well. The bikes were proving more stable and surefooted than I expected, and the trailers towed superbly.

But clearly the Bromptons were geared way too high for what we were asking of them. Into this magnitude of headwind, and knowing that today we would have real hills to climb, I wondered if it was worthwhile going on.

Better to keep enthusiastic and happy about it all, rather than to struggle with a major equipment deficiency and grow despondent and frustrated.

So we turned around and went home. It took us just seven hours to get the 90 kilometres back to the car – and when we had two leisurely stops along the way, that’s pretty good going.

So what to do about the gearing? I thought of lots of different approaches, talked with some experts, then decided to do the simplest (and not inconsequentially, the cheapest) thing.

What I’ve done is to fit a triple 44-32-22 chain-ring with 152mm cranks, replacing the standard Brompton 50-tooth wheel and 170mm cranks. The different cogs are selected by the simple expedient of stopping the bike, and manually swapping the chain over – a 10 second job.

The change in gearing is massive – in fact, with the chain on the smallest front cog, and the lowest ratio on the derailleur, and the lowest ratio in the internal hub three-speed, moderately fast pedalling takes the bike along at a speed that’s only just stable in balance.

But oh boy, even when towing a trailer, can it ever climb hills!

I’d expect to change the front cog only two or three times in a day, in hilly territory (with or without headwinds!) staying on the smallest front cog up the hills and simply rolling down the other side. The middle cog would be used for normal grades and headwinds, and the top cog – well, I don’t think we’ll need it. (And if we don’t use it that would be good: the angularity of the chain is starting to become excessive on this cog.)

Shortly after you read this, Georgina and Alexander and I will again be on the road, this time trying to get to our destination and prove the equipment can do what we want it to do.

Then perhaps, to hop on an aircraft and head off to a distant location before starting to pedal…