Knepp Estate - Equipment Test

 

Day 1 - Outbound

In a few weeks, I (M1) will be flying to a distant land with my trusty touring bike The Mule, safely tucked into a comfy box in the hold. This will mark the start of what promises to be a major bikepacking adventure. Details will be shared right here in this very blog quite soon.

M2 is not coming on this next trip. She has her reasons and they're all very sane and sensible ones. 

But M1 shall not be alone. Joining M1 will be his brother-in-law who shall henceforth be referred to as K1. K1 has not bikepacked before so he's taking quite a plunge starting with the ambitious trip we have planned. 

For the summer trip, new equipment is needed. A multi-fuel stove. A bulky four season sleeping bag. Water purification systems. And more. More things to pack. More weight to propel using leg power.

Today, we set off on a short trip to the Knepp Estate in Sussex. The plan is to camp one night and return the same way the next day.

It's only a 55 km ride to Knepp. But the goal is primarily to test equipment, bike set-up and so on. To find and resolve teething problems. All before heading off to strange and distant lands.

We loaded up the bikes and set off at about 11:00. 

Within about five minutes and without having left the road we started on, we were back! Our first teething problems made themselves known very, very quickly!

On applying the front brake, M1 was nearly thrown by The Mule as the front wheel jerked abruptly to one side! What the?!

Meanwhile, K1’s nameless steed was making blood curdling screechy noises every time he braked. What the?!

We returned home to assess the situation. Bike Mechanic Mode was engaged!

M1 was bemused. Flummoxed. Some would say befuddled. New brake pads were fitted. It seemed unlikely dodgy brake pads would cause such symptoms but what with all the bemusement, flummoxation and befuddlement, what else could M1 do?

It wasn't the brake pads! 

Finally, M1 noticed the state of his fuel bottle, carried on the underside of the frame in a new bottle cage. The penny dropped. With the bike heavily loaded, The Mule's suspension was compressing more than usual on braking and this was causing the rotating front tyre to hit the fuel bottle. Mystery solved. M1 is still and perhaps always will be a little befuddled. That's just the way he is though.

K1 meanwhile was cleansing his disk rotors. This did the trick.

We set off again. This time we actually got beyond the end of the road!

The weather was perfect. Spring. Sunshine. Blue skies. Wonderful.

We stopped for drinks and snacks at a farm shop. Lovely.

The remainder of the journey through the English countryside was a delight and we arrived at about 15:30, chose a pitch, got the tents up, collected firewood and then went for a walk in the famous Knepp rewilding zone. We saw White Storks of course. Knepp is famous for having reintroduced them to Britain. We saw deer, cows, loads of bunny rabbits and a few horses. We could hear Nightingales.

Back at the campsite, having hastily checked the instructions, we managed to light our petrol stoves without killing ourselves and cook a more than passable meal. K1 cooked himself some pasta. M1 had oatmeal with tuna with some packet soup added as a kind of sauce. It was delicious, I'll have you know!

The evening was spent by the fire, eating snacks and chatting, all with a background soundtrack provided by the many, many birds here at Knepp. Bliss.

Both of us have invested in a Helinox camping chair. They're amazing. Very light and packable yet strong and very comfortable. You have no idea, dear reader, what luxury it is to have a chair to sit on outside the tent!

By nightfall a splendid collection of stars had revealed themselves along with bright moving objects we tried to identify as either aircraft, satellites, meteors or perhaps, you never know…. UFOs! And there was a bright half moon providing gentle illumination.

It was getting chilly and M1’s Thermodrop said it was now 3 degrees Celsius. One of the new items of gear that M1 had brought was a new down jacket. It did the job nicely.

We hit the hay sometime after 10 pm, each retreating to our respective MSR tents.

I slept well enough. It was apparent that the temperature was fairly low in the tent but the new Sea to Summit down sleeping bag did a good job and I was never cold.

Day 2 - Return 

I got up at about 5:50. The birds insisted it was time to get up as only they can. Before emerging into the outside world though, I noticed ice on the inside of the tent! Curious!

When I did exit the tent, it all became clear. There had been a very heavy frost. The bikes were iced up. Our water bottles were full of big chunks of ice. The Thermodrop insisted the temperature was -5 degrees Celsius! Brrrrrr. Chilly.

I was grateful for the new down jacket once again. Coupled with a thermal hat, I felt warm enough although hands immediately demanded to be thrust deep into the down jacket's pockets.

After a nice hot breakfast (oatmeal with honey and two cups of coffee for me), we packed everything away and cycled out of Knepp. The sun was climbing now and its warm rays were welcome.

About 20 km later, things got “interesting”. M1 heard K1 call to him from some way behind and cycled back to find K1 walking back down the road, his bike left on its stand. The reason? K1’s chain had broken! Quelle domage!

We parked the bikes on the pavement out of harm's way. K1 looked for a quick link with which to mend the chain only to discover that the ones he had were the wrong size! He has a 9 speed road bike at home which is what they were probably for. His touring bike has a 7 speed cassette and therefore, chain. Luckily K1 found a pin that can be used to join two links using a chain breaker tool. M1’s bike multi tool includes this so he found it and handed it to K1. 

K1 did a heroic job, repairing the chain with the spare pin but was concerned it might not get us all the way home. We located a local bike shop and cycled about 2 km to it. They sold K1 a suitable quick link and a spare chain (just in case).

After that happily we had no more mechanical problems. 

Our return route included Box Hill. We both made it up but it took quite some effort on our super heavy bikes! We did it, that's the main thing.

What did we learn?

The objective of this short trip was to test the bikes and how everything is set up as well as some of the new gear. What did we learn?

1. M1 knows to make sure his fuel bottle is positioned a little lower than the water bottle holder above it and to check that with the front suspension compressed, the front wheels will not touch the bottle.

2. M1 will definitely bring a spare chain despite knowing most brakes can be repaired easily with quick links. It's worth the small amount of additional weight.

3. K1 will make sure he has the right size quick links in his spares bag.

4. The Helinox chairs are great but if you're not sitting in them, a slight breeze can blow them over. We could imagine them being blown down a mountain with us in hot pursuit! So, each of us will be fashioning an anchor system probably involving tent pegs and cord to stop this from happening.

5. M1’s legs felt the cold when sat outside in the chilly evening. Maybe a down quilt or similar is called for.

6. We used more petrol than expected, cooking and making drinks. M1 probably used about half of what his fuel bottle contained. We'll be investigating how to use the MSR stoves as efficiently as possible. M1 will almost certainly bring a second fuel bottle to lash somewhere to The Mule.

7. We both need to keep training for endurance and climbing albeit both M1 and K1 did pretty well. Those bikes are super heavy though!

All in all, a successful and enjoyable trip :-)

Photos from Day 1 

White Stork

K1

M1

Common Buzzard

Bunny

Chef K1

M1's first dinner ever made with the new MSR stove - Yummy!

K1 went for pasta

The Helinox chair is awesome!

Time to light the campfire

Toasty and warm

Photos from Day 2

Heavy frost!

There's already ice in that coke!

-5? Really?!

A winter wonderland. In late April!

Ready to leave

Oh sh17!

K1 in mechanic mode

The bike shop

Fitting the new chainlink instead of the pin

Partway up the Box Hill zig zag, The Mule posing with motorcycles!

At the top of the Box Hill zig zag

The Mule gets a Makeover

"The Mule", AKA the Specialized Rockhopper Expert MTB that M1 uses for bikepacking and general transport (M1 doesn't have a car) has had a good life. Don't worry. The Mule is not dead.

The Mule has seen nine European countries, and rolled through farmland, along coastlines, through wetlands teeming with wildlife and over several significant mountain ranges including the Swiss Alps and the Pyrenees. Not bad for an entry level bike that cost £700 eight years ago.

And The Mule has proved to be a very reliable machine for bikepacking, too. Over the four European bikepacking trips that The Mule has undertaken, nearly 7500 miles have been cycled, heavily laden. And that's not including the trips The Mule has done in the UK, either for bikepacking or more generally. And in all that time, the only mechanical failure has been a single broken spoke in Spain in 2022. The Mule hasn't even had a puncture in those European trips (although an inner tube did fail once; not technically a puncture).

It's a pretty good record. This excellent reliability record is to be explained in part by the fact that M1 services the bikes once a year and replaces components whenever necessary (and sometimes "just in case"). And of course, using good quality components is a factor too. That said, relatively cheap KMC chains are usually selected and close to bottom of the range SRAM cassettes. Key to the absence of punctures are the Continental Contact Plus tyres that we use on both The Mule and Bikey McBike Face, M2's bike. They're brilliant.

But, The Mule is not immune to wear and tear. On returning from this year's trip, The Mule was limping a bit. More specifically, the rear wheel was exhibiting some lateral movement or to be more technical, wobble. This was emanating from the hub. Furthermore, the derailleur, after a thorough clean, was also found to be somewhat wobbly at the top pivot. In both of these cases, replacement was called for. Repair wasn't really an option.

The chain was quite worn from all those miles and the cassette, too.

So, it was decided to buy The Mule some nice new wheels, and replace the cassette, chain and derailleur.

There's a plan to go somewhere quite remote and tough for next year's trip and this has been mysteriously alluded to in this blog a few times. Slightly less mysteriously, the plan is to go to Central Asia. The chosen route will be paved in part and unpaved and very rough in others. A risk assessment has been carried out for this trip and amongst the bike-related risks identified, a failure of either wheel was highlighted as "probably a showstopper"! There's no repairing a damaged rim. A spoke? Yes. But if the rim goes you've had it. Ditto hubs unless you carry the spares and tools required. And obtaining spares would be nigh on impossible in the more remote parts of this route. The kindness of strangers and hitchhiking would probably be the only way out of such problems.

Prevention is better than cure though, so the plan had always been to treat The Mule to some bomb proof wheels, designed specifically for touring and capable of handling a heavy load. To that end, after some research, M1 decided to order some custom built wheels from a small, custom wheel builder based in Wales. The company is called Ryan Builds Wheels. Hard to believe but the company is owned by a bloke called Ryan and... he builds wheels. My kind of brand. There can be no confusion as to what Ryan Builds Wheels does, right? Correct.

The website makes ordering custom wheels very easy and there are "ready to roll" wheel sets available, too. M1 ordered the following custom wheels:

Hubs:

Bitex BX207 Six Bolt Disk Touring Hubs - Black

Axle Front:

100mm QR

Axle Rear:

135mm QR

Freehub:

Shimano HG 11 Speed (Steel)

Rims:

Ryde Andra 40 25mm internal, super tough

Rim Size:

700c / 29"

Spoke Count:

36/36 (Stronger wheels for bike packing and more powerful riders)

Spokes:

Sapim Strong Silver (bikepacking / more powerful riders)

Nipples:

Silver Brass

There are a few compatibility issues to be wary of when speccing custom wheels. The freehub must be of a type that is compatible with your cassette and support the number of gears/cogs that it has. The Mule has a 10-speed cassette but with a spacer ring, the Shimano HG 11-speed freehub would be OK. Rims must be of the right diameter and they must be of a width that supports the width of tyre that you intend to use. It must be possible to mount the wheels to your forks using whatever mechanism they support, be it quick release (QR) skewers or through bolts.

M1 thought he knew what to order but equally, knew that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. So, to be safe, a call was placed to Ryan Builds Wheels. And that call was answered by none other than The Man Called Ryan. You'll never guess what he does for a living by the way.

Ryan turned out to be a thoroughly nice guy and he was happy to discuss M1's wheel needs and help ensure that there would be no nasty surprises through ordering the wrong thing.

The hand-built wheels arrived surprisingly quickly, and M1 got on with fitting them as soon as the other parts had arrived. 

In the process, as is his forte, M1 came up with a number of "dumb questions". This is something M1 excels at. But rather than guess or risk it, an email (or two or....) were sent to Ryan to check points of detail with him. Ryan was incredibly patient and clear in his answers. It was nice to be so well supported.

Ryan built these wheels for The Mule

It's worth pointing out that the Bitex hubs use sealed bearings rather than the "cup and cone" type that The Mule's old (and cheap) wheels had. M1 is very pleased with this as there have been many occasions in the past when he's had to disassemble those hubs so as to be able to scrape grass and other crap out from them! The rubber seals those things have are not that effective when it comes to the varied and sometimes challenging terrains and weather conditions that come with bikepacking.

The Ryde Andra rims have a reputation for being the strongest rims out there, capable of supporting very heavy bikepacking loads.

Today, The Mule's Makeover was completed. The utterly lovely new wheels are on. Tyres, tubes and disk rotors have been transferred to the new wheels and they've been locked onto The Mule's forks using new QR skewers:

Rear: Shimano Deore FH-T610 Quick Release Skewer - 135mm

Front: Shimano Deore HB-T610 Quick Release Skewer - 100mm

Other new parts for The Mule that were fitted today are:

• SRAM PG1050 10 Speed MTB Cassette 11-36
• KMC X10 10 Speed Chain Silver 10 Speed 114 Links (but two links removed making it 112)
• Shimano Deore RD-T6000 Trekking SGS 10 Speed SGS

A new front mudguard to replace the one that was abandoned somewhere in France is still to be fitted.

Obtaining Parts

Selecting and obtaining The Mule's new wheels was a joy. It's a shame this was not the case for other parts! It's getting tricky to find 10-speed drivetrain parts and the usual SRAM PG1030 was not to be had for love nor money, necessitating selection of the more expensive PG1050. Worst of all was the derailleur. The Mule uses the Shimano Deore groupset which no longer seems to be available. The Mule's original Shimano SLX Shadow Plus derailleur couldn't be located anywhere and it took some help from M1's local bike shop (LBS) to identify the Shimano Deore RD-T6000 as a suitable alternative. Shimano indicate that only their fancy Linkglide directional chains should be used with this derailleur, by the way. M1 was concerned it might be hard to find this specific chain when in the back of beyond, but the LBS were of the opinion the usual KMC chain should be OK. Time will tell whether or not this is true!

That's It

So, it's a big day for The Mule who will resume standard transportation duties again soon. Fingers crossed everything works as intended. The hex key for adjusting the derailleur limit screws is in The Mule's frame bag, just in case.

Those hand-built wheels from Ryan Builds Wheels look lovely and you can just feel the quality and strength. Again, the proof of the pudding will be in the riding, but right now, M1 is very happy to have bought from Ryan Builds Wheels. M2's bike will need new wheels next year and they'll be ordered from Ryan.