What's your opinion of the Sustran Route

[LittleGreyCat]

<snip>

Thanks v much for this detailed response.

I never make rules about not drinking on tour and when I did my cross US trip a few years ago I really enjoyed a couple of cold beers after the day's ride, nothing too heavy, just a generic American larger which was cold and refreshing.

Mow much data do you get for that 7 quid from Tesco. I can get 2Gb on a UK SIM for $20 from an online store which I like as it's just one less thing to do when I get to the UK.

Just looking at my Tesco Mobile account and it seems that I get 2.5Gb a month, 250 free minutes and 5000 free texts.

I understand the attraction of buying something before you arrive, but I get the impression that the "International" sites are taking advantage of the much more expensive mobile phone market in the USA to offer you expensive deals which look cheap.

Looking online here you can get a Tesco PAYG SIM for £10 and that gives you 4GB, 500 minutes and 5,000 texts. That is $13 USD at the moment.
The link that you posted seemed to be charging you per minute; these SIM only deals in the UK come with a lot of free minutes, texts and data.
You don't pay to receive calls or text either (under normal circumstances).

On our various perambulations around the world we tend to just buy a SIM in a local phone shop once we arrive.
Unless you are in a desperate rush this looks like the easiest way to go.
IIRC the USA was the only place where we bought a phone. We were there for 6 weeks and I can't recall at the moment if the decision to buy a phone package was because of phone incompatibility or the lack of decent SIM only deals.

[nun]

<snip>

Thanks v much for this detailed response.

I never make rules about not drinking on tour and when I did my cross US trip a few years ago I really enjoyed a couple of cold beers after the day's ride, nothing too heavy, just a generic American larger which was cold and refreshing.

Mow much data do you get for that 7 quid from Tesco. I can get 2Gb on a UK SIM for $20 from an online store which I like as it's just one less thing to do when I get to the UK.

Just looking at my Tesco Mobile account and it seems that I get 2.5Gb a month, 250 free minutes and 5000 free texts.

I understand the attraction of buying something before you arrive, but I get the impression that the "International" sites are taking advantage of the much more expensive mobile phone market in the USA to offer you expensive deals which look cheap.

Looking online here you can get a Tesco PAYG SIM for £10 and that gives you 4GB, 500 minutes and 5,000 texts. That is $13 USD at the moment.
The link that you posted seemed to be charging you per minute; these SIM only deals in the UK come with a lot of free minutes, texts and data.
You don't pay to receive calls or text either (under normal circumstances).

On our various perambulations around the world we tend to just buy a SIM in a local phone shop once we arrive.
Unless you are in a desperate rush this looks like the easiest way to go.
IIRC the USA was the only place where we bought a phone. We were there for 6 weeks and I can't recall at the moment if the decision to buy a phone package was because of phone incompatibility or the lack of decent SIM only deals.

The UK SIM card from WorldSIM would give me 5Gb for $35....so about double the costs you are giving from the likes of Tesco. My iPhone is unlocked, but I've never swapped out the SIM card and I'd like to make sure everything works before I get to the UK, so I'm looking at getting a UK SIM set to me before I leave and getting everything set up, giffgaff looks to be convenient and 40Gb is £20.

FYI I've installed Maps.me and downloaded the maps for the UK and also bought the Cicerone LeJog Guide and converted the GPX route to KML so that I can show it on Maps.me

[hamster]

You should be able to get at least 5-10GB of data for £10 with free texts...plenty of choice.