The bike
For this trip I am riding a Thorn Raven Tour built in about 2006. I bought it unseen in the summer of 2025 from my favourite on line market place for the sum of £750 which included delivery from the other side of the country. A bit of a gamble, but thankfully when it arrived it looked much better than in the advert with nearly new tyres and shiny black paintwork hiding under dust. It came with a heavy duty Tubus rear rack and front pannier racks so it looked like it had been toured on. I later emailed with the seller (who runs a bike shop) and it was his father’s bike. He had ridden it on one short trip in Europe but for little else.
It is always difficult to know how many miles a bike has done. The Avid brake blocks were part worn and were probably the originals and the wheel rim braking surfaces were still good. So my guess would be under 5,000 miles from new?
To make the bike fit me better the handlebars, pedals and saddle were moved across from the Sherpa that I had ridden in India earlier in 2025, along with my ancient alloy rack, bottle cages and other bits and pieces. With new brake blocks and cable inners we were ready to roll. At least locally.
After a few rides what became obvious was that the bottom bracket on the Raven was higher off the ground than the one on the Sherpa. That meant that I was balancing on tip toe when sat on the saddle and stationary, and it made getting on and off more difficult. I was not expecting it to be such a tall bike. Touring luggage and an unlevel road would only make things worse. The obvious adjustment of lowering the saddle put me too close to the pedals so was not a solution. Luckily St John’s Street Cycles (SJS) who are the manufacturer of Thorn bikes are nearby and equally as lucky they had some NOS forks for sale which lowered the front end by 40mm and the bottom bracket height by 15mm. Later versions of the Raven used this shorter fork so perhaps others have had the same problem? The only minor snag was that the new forks were red.
The reason that I changed from Sherpa to Raven was because I wanted a bike with 14 speed Rohloff Internal Hub Gears (IHG). An IHG transmission system has the gears inside the wheel hub in an oil bath. Sealed away from dirt and dust. It is also possible to change gear when stationary which can be very useful if you suddenly stop and need a lower gear to restart.
The Sherpa had a conventional exposed derailleur 3 x 9 gear system which to be fair worked well enough. It was comparatively simple and if it had got damaged I could have at least bodged it up and made the bike single speed. The problem was that inevitably it picked up gritty dust. This was difficult to clean off and built up between the 3 chainwheels and between the 9 rear sprockets. And around the jockey wheels of the derailleur mechanism….. and of course on the chain itself. The dust mixed with any oil I put on the chain to make a grinding paste and with the sideways flexing of the chain in different gears this all resulted in fast chain wear. The chain I used in India in 2025 was worn out by 1000 miles. In Sri Lanka I may be riding on wet tracks and with no mudguards mud will throw up and make things even worse.
With the Rohloff IHG on the Raven there is just one chainwheel and one rear sprocket. With a chain that always runs straight. So it should last longer than a chain used with derailleur gears - and to extend it’s life even more I have fitted a Hebie Chainglider. This encloses the chain, chainwheel and rear sprocket in a plastic guard. It came off my other bike and has already done just under 8000 miles so is nicely run in!
The negative side of a Rohloff IHG is that I will not be able to repair it in Sri Lanka if it goes wrong. They have a reputation for being able to last for 100,000 miles but are really only factory serviceable and the factory is in Austria. This hub seems to work nicely but it is 20 years old and I very much doubt it has had the recommended yearly oil changes. l flushed and renewed the hub’s oil when I bought the bike and with help from Nick at SJS the control cable that rotates the gear selector in the hub has been replaced (the original was fine). I have left the cables that run to the handlebars alone as they operate smoothly.
By mid November 2025, before winter set in, I had ridden a few hundred miles on the Raven and had the bike nicely set up. After playing around with tyres I ended up with a tough but heavy 26 x 1.75 Marathon Plus on the back and a softer 26 x 2.0 Dureme on the front. New innertubes of course, with a change from presta to schwarbe (car type) valves.
Nick at SJS replaced the 16T rear sprocket with a 17T one (the hub takes the earlier screw on Rohloff sprockets and I do not have the tool needed) which meant I could now ride up my local steep hill without getting out of the saddle. Luckily the Eccentric Bottom Bracket (EBB) could be rotated just enough to slacken the chain for the larger sprocket so the KMC X1 chain that came with the bike was not changed. X1 chains have not been made for a few years now but this one had little measurable wear. It also had no split link (all links are riveted) - I hope it will remain unbroken.
I added a mirror on the end of the RH handlebar and painted it’s forward face bright yellow. Maybe it will be visible to on coming traffic. I have never ridden with a mirror on a cycle before and it takes a bit of getting used to - too easy to wobble when looking down at it!
For navigation I am using a Beeline handlebar display. It fits into a little holder on the LH handlebar and gives simple navigation commands via bluetooth from my phone which I can carry remotely. I can plan routes in Strava or Kamoot and then use Beeline to show me where to go as I ride. The Beeline display is easier to see than a phone and seems a great way to navigate, and with the phone nearby I can get more detailed map information if needed (but I will have to stop to do that).
The final glory is the steel bell that I brought back from India. It makes that classic dring-dring noise that a bell should.
Bike weight with empty rack top bag: 15.6kg. My cardboard bike box is 3.4kg so that makes 19kg. Max allowable is 25kg on the way out so just 6kg for tools and some clothes to double up as padding.
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