Couple days ago I made a thread discussing anti-theft measures and had several people commenting on my packing volume because I'm planning to run with 2x 20L pannier bags plus a 60L dry-pack strapped on top. To be fair, I'm not making full use of the 60L dry-pack and am using rope to reduce size to a minimum, but to be honest I do pack a huge volume despite my best efforts to stick to essentials and so I figured it'd be worth discussing this in a separate post to gather advice.
EDIT: Sorry, forgot to mention. This is for a 2-3 week trip through France that could extend indefinitely into other countries depending on how I like bike touring.
So I'm just going to go ahead and post pictures of my full packing list and see what you guys have to say. Appreciate your advice as always!
Tried to keep clothing to 3 per item plus towel, raincoat, rain pants, bike shorts. I'm considering going with only 1 jumper and the shoes will of course not be packed up. Other than that I don't see much I could drop from this lot. As seen it fills up one of the 20L pannier bags exactly,
This is my tools & spares pile which goes into the second 20L pannier bag. Together with my toiletry bag and laptop (I need to bring my laptop to be available for clients when needed) this leaves my 20L bag roughly half full, which I'm happy with because I can take this bag into shops with me to keep my valuables on me at all times and I can chuck my food for the day right into it as well. Only thing I'm worried about is that, packed as is, both pannier bags weigh about 5kg each, meaning that I'll be off balance once I top one of the bags up with food.
This is all my camping gear which is quite bulky so it goes into the 70L dry-pack. Then using the rope to tie it on top of my rear-rack as tightly as possible. I'm not using the full 70L volume but I still need the dimensions because my tent in particularly doesn't pack very compact. Only thing I could go without is the tarp, but that weighs nothing and is so easy to pack. Once I'm touring I'll only keep 1 spare gas bottle, but starting with 3 because I had them lying around.
Total volume: 2x 20L pannier bag + 70L dry-pack strapped on top.
Total weight: 2x 5kg pannier bags + 7kg dry-pack (plus 1-2kg food/water)
What do you think? How can I reduce it? This seems like a lot of volume/weight but I can't see many options to reduce this unless I splurge on a fancy tent.