Welcome to this weblog by Roy Jones. Here you'll find the diary of a backpacking trip through Latin America, musings on life, living as an expat in the Caribbean, as well as plans for a bicycle tour through Europe and beyond.


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Tag: Equipment

Sleeping Bags Purchased…

To keep up with the lists of equipment purchased, I have a couple of items to add to the list. First are the sleeping bags. These were bought from Alpkit, and are the Skyehigh 800 for me, and the Skyehigh 1000 for Yami. Here’s a couple of photos of Yami testing her bag out…

Bicycle Tour

Planning Route Equipment Sponsorship Charity Planning Being a complete novice at bicycle touring, the planning can sometimes get a little overwhelming. There are a multitude of things to think about, including; route visas budget equipment time work For someone like me, who changes plans and makes alterations along the way, finalising anything can get a [...]

More Equipment Purchased…

Although there hasn’t been much activity here for a while, I haven’t neglected planning for the tour. Following on from the previous entries regarding purchasing equipment here’s another entry about the latest purchases, namely a tent, a camera and some handlebar bags for the bikes.

Link Love – Touring Blogs

Travel blogs are not only an interesting read, they are useful to research places & equipment for anyone planning a trip. I regularly read a number of blogs, and as there is not much going on with my own tour at the moment, I thought it might be a good idea to post some links [...]

Eating Tacos in Mexico

My first experience of the real Mexican taco came at about 9pm on 1st October 2005 in Guerrero Negro, a dusty town in the middle of Baja California, famous for salt production and whale spotting. Having spent the previous 12 hours on a bus from Tijuana, I badly needed sustenance. My day had been spent [...]

Content for Successful Travel Blogs

What constitutes a good travel blog? How much information should be included? Which topics do people like to read? Do you read for information, enjoyment, curiosity or something else? I have recently started thinking about developing a structure for blog entries, trying to formulate an outline of what posts will be like, partly to work [...]

Yet More Equipment…

Another week, another item of equipment. This time its the comfort factor taken care of with some sleeping mats. I’ve opted for the Slim Airic self-inflating camp mat. You can check out the product page here.

Buying Equipment

Its official. I have started buying things for the tour. On Thursday I ordered two sets of Panniers, the Altura Fusion 40 in red. Evans Cycles had a good deal on at £50 for the pair, so I decided to take advantage and order them there and then. They arrived at my parents house on [...]

Six Small Essentials To Carry Whilst Travelling

I recently wrote a review of my packing list for Latin America, here are six of the less obvious items that turned out to be indispensable: Earplugs – Noisy hotels/hostels, long bus journeys with crying babies, Bolivian folk music. All enough to cause loss of sleep, and subsequently bad moods. All preventable with a decent [...]

Wishlist

I have been looking at things I would like to take with me, for both practical and comfort reasons, and I have come up with a wishlist for the trip.