I am glad you have found these snapshots of our journey useful, we really enjoyed this route including the hills. Regarding the panniers, I have the bike packer bags on the front and a set of back roller pro plus on the back, which are huge. My wife has the bike packer plus models, I’m sure she will leave her own comment about them. The bags are bombproof and watertight, they mount well on the rails and are secure, unlike the Thule bags I had before which jumped of the bike several times. The only maintenance they need is to check the assorted mounting point screws which can work loose over time. We regularly use these bags to collect our groceries constantly filling them up to capacity and they just keep going.