[Pictures at .] In September 2004, Robin Geddes and I (David Damerell) rode the End to End. Writing it up has proved much trickier than doing it - seven months after Robin mentioned the idea we'd bought a tandem and were rolling into Penzance, but I'm writing this rather later. We took two weeks to do it, staying in B&Bs - this is very definitely the right idea unless you cannot afford to do anything but camp. We originally planned the route using Simon Brown's Cicerone Guide, a slender green volume, but we worked out along the way that Mr. Brown is an extremely strong hill climber and likes scenery an awful lot; we were, obviously, booked into our B&Bs each night, but we started looking at the route each morning and gently trimming some of the more exciting excursions. There's a detailed description of the bike and equipment at the end, but briefly, we bought a second-hand '89 Dawes Super Galaxy tandem on eBay from a chap who, fortunately, lived about 2 miles from me. A tandem is an excellent choice for a pair of people who are not equally strong cyclists, and it means less work even for matched pairs. Robin had never ridden tandem before and I had only ridden stoker a few times, so the first few tries on it were very exciting, but we got used to it in half an hour or so, and we've actually never fallen off it (and I've only kicked Robin in the chest once dismounting as if from a solo. Sorry, Robin.) We rode the tandem on my commute for weeks, 11 miles each way, and we went out on Sunday rides with the Reading CTC (which are about the daily mileage we proposed for the E2E once we'd got to and from Reading), but what we didn't do was ride long distances successive days. I'd strongly advise anyone training for the E2E to ride at least Saturdays and Sundays, and if at all possible every day on Bank Holiday Weekends. One of the lessons you learn is that you have to keep the effort down much more when you have to do the same thing the next day and the day after that and so on... My friend Karen Martin, whose family live a few miles East of Penzance, very kindly volunteered to put us up for the Friday night (after riding from Land's End), which let us effectively start 17 miles down the road on the Saturday morning. I didn't know, however, that she wouldn't be there at the time, so really I think I should be thanking the rest of her family instead. :-) Day 0 ===== I could not get the Friday off work, so Robin and our friend Paul (who was a great deal of help) drove down with the bike on a roofrack, but I got the train from Reading after work (dull, but on time); they collected me in Penzance, and Paul dropped us at Land's End (but would join us at the Martins' house that night). Land's End is not a real place; there's a tourist centre there, which was shut, and nothing else. After some initial photographs (we brought 4 disposable cameras), we waved goodbye to Paul and set off down the A30, which is a winding hilly country road so pretty alarming in the dark. First lesson I learned; don't ever say "We'll hardly ever have to ride in the dark, battery lights will be OK". Fit a dynamo. I've now got a pair of dynamo headlights for the tandem - both Robin and I have wheels built up around Schmidt hub dynamos which can be fitted to the tandem - but we spent more time than we expected in the dark having to go slow because of battery lights' inadequate focussing. We had a strong tailwind on this leg, had left most of our luggage in Paul's car, and rode fast, so we quickly passed through Penzance, and were met by Karen's sister on the way over to their house, where they were very hospitable to us. Day 1 ===== 8am start - which I regard as fundamentally unnatural, but we got used to it those two weeks - to load the full luggage onto the bike, which only exacerbated the day's unpleasant discovery; Cornwall is the hilliest place in Britain. In Scotland, the roads have been built on the contours; in Cornwall, some joker with a ruler has laid them out, making for steep climbs - but because the hills are small, no descent gives you time to catch your breath properly, and of course at the start of the trip you're not as tough as you are at the end. Lesson two; you can't have too-low gearing for this kind of thing. This day saw the first of our persistent gearing problems; dropping the chain off the granny ring, which we were making more use of. I adjusted it at Helston - the day's route took us not to the North coast of Cornwall but up the A394 and the A39 nearer to the South coast - where we stopped to look at someone's collection of brightly painted tanks and pant gently; the weather was blazing hot and remained so until Kirkby Lonsdale midway through the trip. 26 miles from the start brought us to Truro and lunch with an old friend of Robin's in the Old Ale House - corny name, but decent cheap food and decent beer - (Shinner Kiddlywink, good). Irritatingly, the one of us who could drink at lunch without getting sleepy was also the one in charge of the steering, so it had to be kept to a minimum. We said goodbye to Paul, and set off towards St. Austell; here we became gradually weaker and had to walk a hill - not the last of the trip. We stopped and rested at a garage and ground on to the night's stop near Lostwithiel (The Old Chapel), which was very nice albeit one of the pricier stops of the trip. One of the owners kindly drove us into the village for dinner at the Earl of Chatham. I should explain that I had CAMRA's Good Beer Guide with me as my one book; it was worth its weight in weight. Almost every lunch and dinner stop here was picked from the GBG. The food was also good and cheap - a common thing in the Southwest - and the St. Austell beers excellent, particularly Tribute. We'd done 54 miles that day for a total of 71 - this seems short, but actually the Cornwall days on an E2E want to be shorter than the long flat expanses in the middle of the trip. Day 2 ===== I was up early to change the 11-29 rear cassette to a 13-34. Irritatingly, the little spacer between the lockring and the cassette was bent, making it impossible to tighten the lockring fully and hold the sprockets in place; eventually I put a cable tie between the 13 and the 15, tightening everything up at the cost of those two sprockets. This was not a problem this day - we barely got into the middle ring. Here was where we learned to conserve our strength - we were like bags of wet spaghetti this day because of riding hard the day before. We started with a huge English breakfast - or I started with one and Robin started with about half of one (often one of us would be mysteriously not-hungry). This was a mistake, delicious as it was; all that meat sits like a huge lump in your stomach and slows you down in the morning. On later mornings we'd have porridge, eggs, and toast for breakfast, with black pudding for me where they had it. We churned slowly, slowly up the A390 to Tavistock, stopping to talk to another E2E group near Callington. Later we saw the aftermath of a motorcycle accident - petrol everywhere, but the rider fortunately appeared unhurt. We had lunch at the Trout and Tipple (Otter bitter, satisfactory) just NE of Tavistock - they tolerated our arriving late and lingering after their nominal finish time. After that we made the first real change to the route; instead of crossing Dartmoor, we took a longer but less ambitious route up the Western side, past Okehampton, then East to Copplestone. Our stop for the night, Jellicoe's, was out in the winding country roads to the NorthEast. Here I managed our one really serious navigational screwup - in gathering dark. It didn't help that the Bartholomew map extract in Jellicoe's directions was to a slightly larger scale but also wrong, unlike the Ordnance Survey road maps we'd brought, but Robin quite rightly wanted us to go a slightly nominally longer route but approach as far as possible on the main roads. Instead we described a sort of spiral about the destination, walking up and down the terribly steep hills (down because of the lack of decent lights), being met by a member of the CTC who set us a little straighter, tiring, scaring the hell out of cows with the brake squeal, and eventually walking a mile across some fields on a nominal public footpath - which wouldn't have been so bad, except the middle field was freshly ploughed and the tandem sank in it so had to be carried - naturally it got a flat at that point. Luckily we met a local there who pointed us the remaining 200 yards to Jellicoe's, which we walked, exhausted. Jellicoe did have excellent food even for people turning up 3 hours late, and I happened to run into an ex-colleague from the Chemistry department in Cambridge who was staying there on a walking holiday - a small world. We got an early night; we'd made 70 miles (10 of which were pointless) for a total of 141. I believe Robin may have forgiven me by now for that night's little adventure, but I'm trying not to do it again. Day 3 ===== After clearing the last of the hills, the terrain eased enormously; even into the stiff north-easterly wind, the going was vastly easier than the previous 2 days down to Tiverton and around to Taunton, which raised our spirits. Lunch was at the Mason's Arms in Taunton - my notes say "food OK but cheapish, RCH Pitchfork grew on me rapidly", but more unusually the Gents had a selection of rather tasteful 30s black and white photographs of naked ladies on the wall. We didn't go in the Ladies, so I have no idea what the decor there was like. After lunch, we looked for a bike shop in Taunton; Colmans were happy to help us with the mangled lockring spacer and some more cardboard- flavoured energy bars. Good timing, since it looked like in flatter terrain we might actually need the smaller sprockets. We made decent speed up the A38 through Brigwater towards Cheddar; apart from the very last bit, the terrain was still very flat. We found the B&B (The Bay Rose in Cheddar) without difficulty, which made a nice change, and had dinner at a Chinese in Cheddar - good, but also expensive - and looked over the next day's route, aiming to cut the corner and avoid Shepton Mallet, which seemed a pointless diversion, but not to go the very direct but unpleasant route through Bristol. We'd made 68 that day for a 209 total, but for the first time it seemed like we might be mostly in for pleasant runs through the country and not a complicated exercise in masochism. Day 4 ===== Robin's turn to be not-hungry at breakfast - he was more prone to this than me - which was a shame, because the spread was huge. The north- easterly wind kept us busy today, but it was still easier than Cornwall - an easy run down to Wells where we looked at the Cathedral, then over the Mendips (saving ourselves a few miles by taking the A39 out of Wells rather than going to Shepton Mallet), down through Radstock, and to Bath; we passed National Cycle Route #24 on the way but decided we preferred the direct route. We had lunch at a very strange (but GBG-listed) place in Bath, Lambrettas; there's a mod-style scooter in the window, and all the decor is mod-era Lambretta styled. The Abbey Bellringer was refreshing and the food was good - and it did make a change from the usual run of pubs. Robin was pretty tired after lunch, and we had a steep climb out of Bath on the A46 and then stiff crosswinds in high rolling terrain - crosswinds are a nuisance on a tandem because the captain must do twice as much work with the handlebars to keep the bike going forwards - but we still made decent progress to Stroud; at the junction with the M4 we stopped for a pee and met a chap who was very interested in the bike. At Stroud we stopped at a supermarket for milk, water, money, and baby cream for my chafed right thigh - the only real saddle soreness problem we had. There's a considerable climb out of Stroud, but since Mr Brown's book stopped at Stroud on day 4, we consoled ourselves with the idea that this was really coming out of tomorrow's run. We got a little lost at the end, but found Pound Cottage OK (in Cranham); dinner at the Black Horse, an old haunt of Robin's from consulting in the area. The food was good and copious; pick of the beer would be Sharp's Doom Bar. Straight to bed after dinner, as usual; we'd clocked 69 for a total 278 miles. Day 5 ===== Tightened the drum and front brakes after breakfast - things had loosened up a bit. Easy going after climbing up to the main road, but unfortunately the chain stuck between the middle and large chainrings, bending the middle one badly and the large one to a degree. Fortunately the terrain was very flat and we could limp into Cheltenham on the 52, where a local cyclist recommended Williams (a bike shop) to us as a possible source of 86mm BCD Stronglight chainrings, and it was the work of a few minutes to fit a new 42 and 48 in place of the bent rings (and, I'm afraid, a few more minutes further down the road to fiddle the limit screw so I could reach the granny ring again). After that we headed to Worcester for lunch at the Salmon's Leap; the food was good but too small, the beer OK but uninspiring, and this was the one place on the whole trip that wanted to charge us for tap water when we were paying for food and beer. That's no way to get cyclists' custom in the summer; one to avoid. NNW out of Worcester through heavy terrain, but the wind had eased up; however, the book's promised "descent" into Brignorth after Kidderminster was full of hills, which we felt was a bit unfair. We headed straight up the A442 towards Telford to avoid another hilly patch on the original route; however, Ironbridge (where we were staying) was tricky to find without going around the South half of Telford's one-way system. Eventually we got there; I managed to take us too far downhill to the new bridge while Robin was on the phone figuring out exactly where we were staying, but we got back to the quite luxurious B&B (The Old Library, Ironbridge) in the end. We arrived too late, alas, to really look at the old bridge or the Victorian engineering museums in Ironbridge. Dinner at the Malthouse (Shropshire Lad good, Hanby Kelly's Gold very good) was pretty expensive; we'd made 81 miles for a total of 359. Day 6 ===== Very early start with a 1 in 5 to climb up out of Ironbridge, but by this point we'd toughened up a bit and ground up it without too much trouble. After that we made extremely fast time through and past Telford with a slight downhill and a following wind. On balance, when you're zipping at 25mph past a sliproad on a dual carriageway with huge lorries thundering past, you don't want the captain to be stung on the knee by a wasp. Robin was a bit disturbed by the sudden wobble and stream of profanity, but we kept it under control, stopped on the verge, and I hopped around for five minutes before we set off again. Fortunately the sting didn't remain painful for any length of time, and twenty minutes later we were back up to full speed. An easy climb past Hodnet brought us up and over towards Whitchurch where we had lunch at the White Bear on the recommendation of the local bike shop - plenty of food, which was lucky as I was phenomenally hungry (and John Smith's Cask, which is always a nice change). On the way over we stopped in a layby behind a caravan; the couple in it came out to talk to us and turned out to be ex-tandemistes themselves - a surprising number of people do. After lunch we met another E2E pair whose planned campsite was full - I do hope they sorted that out - and more caravanners, who offered us cups of tea. Then through Warrington, with some excitement in the traffic, and a couple of miles out the other side to the Pied Bull for a very early arrival (in Newton-le-Willows); unlike every other stop this was a hotel, but it was perfectly satisfactory if nothing special. We ate there (Posthlewaites beer OK); we'd made 71 that day for a total of 431 miles. Day 7 ===== There isn't a very good way to clear the big industrial cities in the North, but Warrington positions you for a run between Manchester and Liverpool, and we started up to Wigan. After Wigan the proposed route takes you up towards Clitheroe, but after looking over the route profile we decided that was a stupid idea, and we'd run up the A6 (which is quite pleasant, with most traffic on the M6) to Preston and Lancaster then cut East to Kirkby Lonsdale. Of course, if we'd known in advance, we'd have got a night stop on the A6, since the next day was to take us West again, rejoining the A6 North of Kendal. This made for easy going up to lunch at the Royal Oak at Garstang, where we ate with 2 other cyclists, one of whom was out for the very first time after a knee operation. Regrettably, this was when the weather changed; hereafter, we never had any very terrible days, but we had intermittent rain every subsequent day. Going the length of the country at this time of year really means you see everything - when we left we were panting in blazing sunshine and shorts, and in North Scotland I was in bibtights, winter jersey, winter gloves, and cursing the rain... The rain came and went from drizzle to strong up to Lancaster, where negotiating the city centre proved tricky; then rolling country and flagging riders meant we stopped for a rest on the final leg at Hornby, which delayed us just for the fifteen minutes or so we needed to be hit by torrential rain just outside Kirkby Lonsdale. However, we found the B&B, the Copper Kettle (in Kirkby Lonsdale) almost immediately, dried out, and had dinner at the Snooty Fox (Landlord and Black Sheep); it was good, but at those prices it should have been. We'd made 65 that day for a total of 495; with a long day ahead we got a reasonably early night, but the earliest breakfast was 0830. Day 8 ===== We'd started later than we'd hoped, and we were to lose time as the day went on; first by sheltering from a bad patch of rain in a church at Firbank, then battling crosswinds, and then by the chain (which had mangled the chainrings at Cheltenham, of course) deciding it had had enough abuse. We had a spare chain, but fortunately only a few links were bent and having moved from a 52 to a 48 big ring there was enough slack to punch out the damaged links and fit my spare master link. The next delay was nicer; a very good tearoom at Orton. We should have started having morning tea stops earlier in the trip, but after this day we made it a regular thing. Inside we met three other touring cyclists, two of whom we'd see regularly thereafter, and a walker on the coast-to-coast; eventually we dragged ourselves away and skirted (ie, climbed up and over, alas) the edge of Crosby Ravensworth Fell before rejoining the A6. After that we made phenomenal speed to Penrith thanks to a slight net downhill, good weather, and an invigorated tandem team - we were regularly making 30mph without too much effort; when we arrived we had lunch at the Agricultural Hotel where superb Jennings Sneck Lifter let me sacrifice some of the time we'd made up. However, the rain almost lifted completely and the SW wind seemed intent on blowing us to Carlisle, letting us make more time to use up when we had our second puncture of the trip there. Joy. Here I made a mistake; I didn't, even though I had the tyre off, replace the nasty plastic rim tape with the Velox cloth tape I had in my spares bag. This would punish us later. However, by sheer luck it chucked it down with rain just after finishing the repair, rather than during it - however, since I can't see my speedo under my rain cape, I didn't know I'd put the front wheel on the wrong way round, and had to adjust it the following day to catch up with Robin's cyclecomputer. At Robin's advice we skipped the A74 direct to Gretna, a motorway in all but name, and went the extra 4 miles via Longtown; there we turned West into the teeth of the wind that had helped us thus far. This last leg through Gretna, into Scotland, and onto Annan was very heavy going with Robin fading, but we struggled on to arrive at the Nancy Pagan B&B just before 8 pm. Dinner was a simple (but huge) takeaway Chinese; we'd made 79 miles for a total of 574. Day 9 ===== Breakfast at 0730, but then I delayed somewhat to raise my saddle slightly, relieving some left knee pain. We got slightly misdirected on NCN #7 to Newbie (no, really) before making good time to Dumfries in spite of a stiff South-Westerly wind with a tea stop 18 miles in. However, after that we had a rear tyre failure with the bead separating from the cords, which also destroyed an inner tube; we had one spare tyre, but were running out of tubes. Fortunately Mike Quin had agreed to bring spare tubes when meeting us the following day. We eventually made it to lunch at a hotel in Thornhill (Caledonian 80/-, lunch not bad for a moderate price) 15 minutes before they stopped serving, then pressed on quickly to Sanguhar then through rolling hills to New Cumnock, where we had a rest break. From there the A76 took us past Cumnock - very straight and smooth, and the climbing nicely evened out. We found the B&B (Ardwell in Mauchline) easily enough, but there was no food at the local pub after 1930, so another takeout Chinese beckoned, and an early night. 71 miles this day; 645 total. Day 10 ====== The weather this day was mostly clear - the showers were violent but so short that I didn't wear waterproofs all day, setting myself up for a fall later. We were awake early to push up to meet Mike - we had a fast run to Kilmarnock where we stopped in a Halfords and bought their widest road tyre (still much too narrow) only to discover a perfectly good real bike shop in Kilmaurs. We cut the intended route short with the A735, A736 to Barrhead then up North through Paisley (over a very bad road surface) to meet Mike at The Bridgewater Tavern (with no beer, bah, but very cheap food) just South of the Erskine Bridge. We talked to Mike about cows for a bit, then headed up and over the bridge - Mike was very feisty and much faster than our heavily laden selves. We left him North of the bridge then headed up the A814 through Dumbarton, Renton, and Alexandria then up Loch Lomond - the scenery was now very impressive but the rain was definitely increasing. Everything is very huge up there so it was easy to get slowed down by "stealth hills", inclines that look flat - nevertheless we had good progress to the Old Toll House in Tarbet, or more accurately past it to the railway station and then back again, but still arriving at 1715. Dinner was at the "Ben Lomond", which is shockingly Scottish-twee but does a decent steak for all that. 69 miles that day, 715 total. Day 11 ====== After morning porridge we made our way up the winding A82 to Ardlui - dry conditions made a nice change - then a steady climb to Tyndrum for tea in the (nice but very touristy) Green Welly. All morning we kept seeing two women on the E2E we'd previously seen in a tearoom in Orton, but since they were due to finish a day after us we expected to pull ahead of them. We then had a long coast down before a stiff long climb up to Rannoch Moor. Midway up we talked to a Swiss couple in a layby one of whom had worked in a bike shop and immediately spotted the rear wheel as a hand-built one - Rob had been listening to me talk about Brandt on and off, and was very amused when I referred to _The Bicycle Wheel_, Brandt's book, only to have this chap exclaim "Ah, yes, the Bible." We came across Rannoch Moor, very desolate, to the Kings House Hotel (Caledonian 80/- again) for lunch. This was where things started to go slightly awry - their dining room was not well heated, and I was pretty wet when I sat down so when I stood up I was wet and cold, and then we started off into a bad stealth hill and headwind without me doing any of Robin's ninja stretches before a start, and the upshot was that I quickly developed sore knees which would bother me for the rest of the trip. We got some rest on the descent to Glen Coe and Ballachulish (this is a very long smooth descent, perhaps seven miles at 20-30mph without significant pedalling) but then we had a steady climb up to Fort William. Oddly, I found my knee pain was eased by crunching really big gears - Robin was not convinced this was a good idea, but it was what I could stand. This tired Robin out - it is very hard, oddly, for one member of a tandem team to take it easy when the other one is pushing hard - so we walked through Fort William and had a rest at the remaining ruins of the fort before taking it easy to Spean Bridge and the Coire Glas Guest House. I can't quite recommend it - a "drying room" at the ambient outside temperature in Scotland in September isn't a drying room (and if we'd known we could have hung stuff on radiators as we usually did), and it was generally not very friendly. Dinner at the Old Station restaurant - Isle of Skye Red Cuillin beer and good food. We'd clocked 80 miles taking the total to 795. Day 12 ====== The weather started good, but my right knee was still very painful. Fortunately we started with easy running over swing bridges (which were a constant feature this day) to a tea stop just SW of Fort Augustus - nice toasties, shame about the tourist crap - then into the town proper for a bucket of ibuprofen which I would munch contentedly on for the rest of the trip, then up to Drumnadrochit for lunch with the going still easy and pleasantly warm on the north side of the loch. Unfortunately the hotel listed in the Big Book of Beer had no food at lunchtime, so we ended up a pricey restaurant eating merely adequate food. We abandoned the direct route up the A833 which ends with a climb over 1 in 5, and instead added 10 miles running up to Inverness and over the impressive Kessock Bridge on the A9 where we saw the first road sign mentioning John O'Groats - after this we diverted from the very busy road up NCN1 to Tore. NCN1 was a mixed blessing, at best country roads, at worst wee-smelling underpasses full of broken glass. We had a short break in Tore then had a few miles of gentle climbing followed by a few miles of not-so-gentle descending at up to 37mph, which brought us up to Dingwall, the Moydene B&B, and a decent dinner at the Mallard - 74 miles down, total 868. Day 13 ====== I was suffering less, and we made rapid progress up the A9 with a tailwind to the tea stop at Tain, over Dornoch Firth, and up and down to Loch Fleet; the first real climb of the day took us to lunch at the Ben Bhraggie hotel, and then a short leg to Dunrobin Castle on the coast, which is an 1830 mockup but still very impressive. This day was short - the Dornoch Firth bridge postdates Mr Brown's book - so we took a look around outside (being too tight to pay admission) and chatted to another chap on the E2E whose friends we had seen at the bridge - one of them had broken three spokes that day, although we seemed to be finished with mechanicals ourselves for a bit; then pressed on to Helmsdale and the Broomhill House B&B over some short but stiff hills. 59 miles made a short day with the total 927, but only 55 miles to go to JOG. Day 14 ====== We started slightly late and over some initially challenging hills; also we had a very slow puncture in the rear which we opted just to pump up every 20 miles and put up with. This would be a busy day for the puncture fairy; on a steep descent, the front tyre blew unexpectedly. Fortunately I was able to slap on the anchors (with help from Robin on the drum brake) and stop before it deflated enough to make steering difficult. It turned out to have been caused by the nasty plastic rim tape I failed to replace with a Velox cloth tape at Carlisle, so I did the sensible thing and changed it. We then pressed on through hard country to a tearoom just NE of Dunkeath. Thereafter the going was much easier - long easy descent to lunch in a Wetherspoons in Wick whose beer delivery had failed to arrive. Curses! We set off again and were passed by Simon and Donna about ten miles from JOG; we offloaded two huge bags into their huge vehicle and pressed on over the last hill. We remembered to apply the brakes and turn left to avoid falling into the sea; met S&D again and let Simon spray us with sparkling wine - then we spotted the "official" start-finish line and cruised over it. JOG is a real place, unlike Land's End, and so isn't quite either the most northerly or north-easterly point; we crammed the tandem into Simon's hired people-carrier (a point of some concern to those of lesser faith who hadn't measured it up) and let Simon drive us to Dunnet Head which is actually the most Northerly point before dinner at the Seaview Hotel and a sampling of the extensive whisky selection. We'd come 54 miles for a grand total of 981. Equipment and Spares ==================== The bike's a 1989 Super Galaxy tandem. The captain's saddle's a Brooks B17 Narrow; the stoker had a B-67, which is sprung. The stoker's hit up harder over bumps, so that made sense. The front bars are a Nitto Noodle 46cm with big foam handgrips and bar-end shifters. The stoker's cranks were Stronglight with a single bolt circle, which I can't recommend (see the problems with bent chainrings, etc - a large chainring on a small bolt circle is very floppy), with a 28t granny ring. I've since replaced this with a Sugino XD 110/74 crank, which goes down to a 24t granny. You cannot have too low a gear for an undertaking like this. The rear sprockets were 11-28 until after the first full day, when they were 13-34, where they have stayed. (Now we have sensible cranks, the large chainring is 53t, so we're not missing a high gear). The front hub was the 40-hole Suzue which came with the tandem - nothing wrong with it, but it's now got a 36-hole SON on a Sun Rhyno. The rear hub was a 48-hole Shimano - adjusting a cup and cone hub before screwing a drum brake onto it is a royal PITA, and now we have a White Industries tandem hub. The drum brake was the normal Arai model. We used a Tortec Expedition steel rear rack - one kind I can't break - Ortlieb rolltop rear panniers, and a small Brooks saddlebag. We didn't need front panniers, but we forgot to take the racks off anyway. We had Bontrager Select K tyres. Of course, since they were a fat road slick, they aren't made anymore. The bike has cantilevers - normal front, self-energising rear. We started with the following spares and tools. 2 inner tubes (bring more). Brake blocks (Kool Stop Salmons). We did wear out a set. Light bulbs and batteries (fit a dynamo!). Rim tape (used). Chainring bolts (unused, but they're tiny). Gear levers (unused). A cantilever straddle cable. A tyre (used). A chain and master link (used). A cassette (used, but I wouldn't have if I'd got the gearing right to begin with). Duct tape. Grease. Short chunks of cable housing. Four spokes of each length. A tyre boot. Brake and gear cables. Cable ties (on no account omit cable ties!). A boring multitool. Proper allen keys. Well worth it not to use the multitool for everything. A dumb-bell spanner. An adjustable spanner (also worth it). Cone wrenches (which also are an easy way to adjust the Suntour self-energising rear brakes, but I never used as cone wrenches). A pressure gauge. Zefal HPX3 pump. Tyre levers. A "hypercracker" field cassette remover (which I used). A swiss army knife (well worth it). A bottom bracket pin spanner (which also adjusts the eccentric for the synch chain tension, which I used). A cable cutter. Two proper screwdrivers. A spoke key. A chain tool (overkill, the one on the multitool is OK).