Questions about a European 4-week tour

[loply]

Hi folks,

I was meant to be going to Sandhurst in January to start army training, but I've been unexpectedly delayed till May.

Que 'What the fuck to do with 4 months?'.

I have 1500 quid spare and a Mille sitting outside, and I'm hankering to ride down to Spain and slowly potter around for as long as I can, wind my way back up to Germany or suchlike and come back in about 4 weeks. I just plan to take it easy and mostly hang around the warmish southern parts.

I've never been touring before and have a few questions, I've googled a bit but wonder if anybody can advise.

Costs - I just plan to take a bivvy bag or 2-man tent and camp every night. I figure 5,000 miles will cost me 500-600 quid in fuel, and I reckoned 500 quid would cover me for food and basic living costs, with a few hundred spare for tolls etc? This sound about right?

Camping - I guess its a hard one to answer, but what do people think about roughing it every night? Is it harder than it sounds to find somewhere suitable? Stressfull/wasteful?

Chain - How the frick do you adjust your chain without taking a paddock stand? I know the pivot-on-the-sidestand trick but I suspect it will bend the Milles sidestand as it did on my R6 once.

Cheers for any advice!
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Yamaha SZR660 Caution to the wind, the throttle pinned!

[G]

Costs - if you've got the time, probably better to avoid the toll roads. Fuel is cheaper in Spain, but more expensive in a lot of other places.

Camping - if you search through what I've written up so far on the report of my recent trip, I talk about some of the trials and tribulations of wild camping.
Generally I prefer it, camp where you want and get plenty of solitude. It might help me having a trail bike to actually ride into a forest though! (I did drop it once though, while trying to ride up what turned out to be a rather steeper hill than I first thought!) Eating isn’t going to be much more expensive than in the UK, but of course you may want to eat out a bit more, but if you look around can generally find cheapish places.
I was generally quite picky about where I camped and often would spend an hour or two looking, though usually riding along the route I was going to be taking anyway.

Chain – erm, so why exactly do you need a paddock stand to adjust the chain . Don’t see any reason you do really. I stuck a loobman on my bike, so didn’t suffer from chain stretch too much.
I swapped tyres by balancing each end of the bike on my (DIY) luggage rack fine, I was in a campsite in a town at the time to be fair, just in case something went wrong – however I’d happily do it again in the middle of nowhere as it all went smoothly. I did take loads of tools ‘just in case’, but hardly used any of them.

[loply]

Cheers for the answers G.

I've always adjusted the chain with the back wheel off the ground, I didn't think it would work with the weight on the wheel.

To be honest I never thought about it though. Heh. Funny that, I've been adjusting chains for 5-6 years and it never crossed my mind to just do it with the bike on the sidestand.
____________________
Yamaha SZR660 Caution to the wind, the throttle pinned!

[G]

Yea, no reason to do it on a paddock stand - the wheel will easily move back when not on a stand, especially if you're using the screw adjusters to turn it back .