Bri

Did the cold soak and the water went genuinely alarming colours. Hands stayed clean all week afterwards.

I think I'm in the second camp and had absorbed rules meant for the first camp.

Compromise that's worked well for me: three places, but weight them 6 nights, 5 nights, 3 nights instead of splitting evenly. The short one goes last so you're not carrying the tired-of-packing feeling through the whole trip.

Booked the airport hotel. Forty euros, and reading this back the maths of "save forty, arrive wrecked and lost" was never good.

Give yourself something to do in the evenings that isn't socialising. I write a page about the day in a cheap notebook. Takes twenty minutes, fills the gap, and re-reading it two years later is the best souvenir I own.

Dropped to 72 and the cycle path stopped rattling my teeth out. Should have done this years ago.

Rim tape had slipped enough to expose the edge of a spoke hole. Holes were on the rim side and I'd never thought to check which face they were on. Fixed for 300km now.

The supplement is annoying but it isn't a scam. The hotel charges for the room, not the head, so the operator genuinely eats the difference. Once I understood that I stopped being irritated and started shopping for operators who absorb it as a marketing choice.

The other thing that kills the sweaty back is leaving clothes at work. I keep five shirts and a pair of shoes in a drawer and cycle in what I'd wear anyway. Suddenly the bag is a laptop and a sandwich, and at that point the backpack is fine.