A touring or sports bike fitted with a hub gear has become a speciality of Common Wheel.
 
 
 
This kind of bike combines the ease of pedalling and versatility of the lightweight with the low maintenance costs of the roadster. For those who care about such things, they also have the clean lines of a singlespeed.
 
The bike above is a Malvern Star, made in Austrailia. We sold it years ago, and it was back in to have a rack fitted, but we didn't clean it.
 
Bikes like this used to be very popular. Many Flying Scots and other makes had hub gears as original equipment in the 1950s. Now they are being rediscovered by a new generation.
 
We often fit them with drop bars, and the usual place to fit the gear lever is shown below. There will be new bar end gear levers soon for the SA 3 and 5.
 
 
To show that you don't really need lots of gears for touring, here it is in the Western Isles.
 

 
The only downside is that old men will come up to you in the street and talk to you about your bike. Seriously. We sold a Gely Sins with an AG (three speed with dynamo built in, for people who don't speak Sturmey Archer) to Joanna, and a few days later the legendary Alistair Gow of Wheelcraft admired her bike.