Month: March 2017

Here’s another wonderful thing about travelling by bike: you are no longer restricted to anyone else’s idea of a place worth going to. You have an enviable degree of freedom from the usual structures of tourism.

And you get to decide on your own focus for travel, rather than feigning interest in what guidebooks assume everyone should be interested in.

Pedalling requires no refuelling facilities other than a grocery store every few days. Unlike motorists, you can easily carry enough ‘fuel’ for weeks on end while you follow your nose.

Carrying a tent means that, rather than worrying about finding a hotel or hostel each day, you can sleep anywhere for free – the further away from hotels and hostels, the better.

And bus routes become things to be actively avoided, rather than impositions on where your explorations take you.

Sure, you’ll spend most of your time riding a road or trail of some description, because roads and trails were built to connect people. But the range goes from smooth asphalt all the way to winding singletrack. Your options are almost limitless. Choose a good all-rounder of a bicycle and there’s almost nowhere you couldn’t go.

Alternatively, choose a specialised off-road touring bike – such as a fatbike or bikepacking rig – and reap the rewards in that particular niche. Common touring wisdom holds that the smaller the road, the more rewarding the experience, and the further from the tourist trail, the more authentic the local welcome.

Amaya Williams spent years on the road before fully embracing this. “We’ve been sticking to a lot of back roads in the past couple of years and our level of satisfaction has increased immensely,” she says. “Sure, it takes longer and it’s rough going at times, but the rewards are well worth the effort.”

Then there’s the act of cycling itself, which encourages you to take pleasure in your surroundings. The details of the landscape and the slow evolution of nature and culture become your personal sightseeing attractions, missed by those who pass overhead at 30,000 feet or overtake you at 60mph.

Whether you’re riding through the green and pleasant lands of England, the towering peaks of the Himalayas, the rainforests of South East Asia, or the deserts of Saharan Africa, bicycle travel invites you to hunt down intrigue on the roadside the world over.

So the question of ‘where to go’ bicycle touring is a whimsical one to which the only real answer is ‘anywhere you like’.

There are very few nations on Earth in which it is impossible to travel by bicycle. Read enough blogs and trip journals and you’ll realise that cycle travellers have explored pretty much everywhere.

Visas and bureaucracy may complicate things a little bit, but this will rarely prevent you from going altogether, and there are fewer excuses than ever for not making a trip to that place you’ve always wanted to visit, or simply sticking a pin in a map. If you’re reading this, chances are you have a useful passport to travel on, and it’s worth remembering that this makes you far more mobile and unrestrained a traveller than the majority of Earth’s population, and that any additional paperwork is a relative doddle by comparison.

Amaya is a good example of what’s possible – she is midway through a mission to cycle every country in the world. “Sounds daunting,” she says, “but little by little, I’m confident we’ll realise this dream.”

Inspiration can also be found in the story of Jumber Ledzhava, a man who, aged 52, set off to cycle every nation on Earth, and visit every capital city. He spent 12 years achieving this dream, mostly alone, ticking off all but five of the more than 200 countries in existence at the time and setting a new record for the world’s longest continuous bicycle journey, with over a quarter of a million kilometres of pedalling beneath his wheels.

What’s remarkable was that he did this as a citizen of the tiny former Soviet republic of Georgia. Without the luxury of a Western passport, he pulled off this feat by persuading diplomats the world over into granting him visas and permits through sheer determination, persistence and charisma.

Something to remember, perhaps, next time we in the West are tempted to complain about having to apply in advance for a tourist visa!

(Photo courtesy of Eric Fiala.)

The ‘when’ of setting off on a bike trip is an easy one: as soon as you would like.

That might be next summer, when you’ve got the the equipment sorted, the route planned out, and the weather is optimal.

It might be in a couple of years’ time, when you’ve saved a huge chunk of cash, quit your job, sold your house and are ready to begin your brand new life on the road.

Or it might be tomorrow, because you’ve got a bike, you need to get away, and you can think of no genuine reason not to do so right now.

How soon you can go on a bicycle adventure depends only on how complicated you want to make it.

Many assume that bike trips are restricted by season, climate and weather. But there’s almost nowhere on Earth in which it’d be impossible to do a bike trip at any time of year.

Alastair Humphreys and Rob Lilwall found themselves in Siberia in midwinter, camping at temperatures down to ‑40ºC and passing through Yakutsk – the coldest inhabited place on Earth – on the way.

Helen Lloyd more recently repeated the feat, except in colder temperatures, on her own, and with just a bivvy bag.

A few summers back I rode across the Danakil Depression in East Africa – the hottest inhabited place on Earth – encountering 56ºC temperatures, AK47-wielding tribal warriors, a fierce headwind, and no roads whatsoever; one of the most memorable, treasured, and brutal experiences of my life.

People have ridden the Canning Stock Route across the Australian outback carrying a month’s food and several gallons of water, pinning their hopes on old colonial-era wells for survival.

Janne Corax crossed the roadless Chang Tang plateau of Tibet on bicycles, seeing no other humans for weeks, and almost dying of starvation in the process, but nevertheless making it to his destination (only to be arrested by the Chinese authorities for doing so without the proper permits).

It takes a certain level of experience to feel confident taking on such challenges, of course.

But each and every one of those riders, at some point in their lives, was a novice too, taking their first tentative pedal strokes.

The point is that you are pretty much free to ride whenever the fancy takes you, up to and beyond the edges of your comfort zone – and one day you might look back and be surprised to see how far that’s taken you.

Remember always that the perfect circumstances for your dream tour will never exist. “You will never simultaneously have infinite time, money, freedom and mojo,” says Alastair Humphreys. “So the best time is now.”

Approaching the question from a different angle, when would you actually want to go cycle touring?

Most short trips, particularly first short trips, generally seem to take place when the weather is nice. Not too hot, not too cold, not too wet or windy, and with sufficient daylight hours to get the requisite miles done before dark.

On short trips there’s more emphasis on having fun during the limited time available. Riding through a fortnight of cold rain doesn’t feature on many bucket lists.

Most long trips, particularly first long trips, generally seem to begin in the exact same manner: leave when the weather gets nice. These days, the number of long-haul riders setting off from Europe towards Asia between May and August each year probably ranks in the thousands.

For these riders, it makes sense to hit the road in time for the reliably warm European summer, where some sub-standard weather here and there doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, and they’re heading for warmer climes anyway.

Some set off in more challenging seasons, either because they just can’t wait to get going, or because they’ve learned the basics on previous trips and don’t mind a little extra hardship.

But the general rule is that the best time to go cycling somewhere is likely to match the best time to go there on holiday.

And in colder climates where cycling in shorts and a T‑shirt won’t be comfortable, your range can be greatly extended through careful choice of clothing and equipment, plus a few simple tips for cycling and camping in winter.

(Photo courtesy of Peter Gostelow.)

It is sometimes assumed that cycle touring is the exclusive domain of the lean and lycra-clad. Since when did a ‘normal’ person get on a bike and routinely crank out between fifty and a hundred miles a day without breaking a sweat?

That requires fitness, and therefore training, and therefore a passion for sport and competition, and determination and pain. Which seemingly only describes a talented and slightly masochistic elite of cyclists.

Except those baseline assumptions are false.

Study the demographics of those actually out there wandering the world’s back roads on bicycles and you’ll find that very few are in it for the physicality or the challenge, or even for the cycling.

Athleticism is a beneficial byproduct of a mode of travel that creates fitness as it goes. The only requirement is the ability to ride a bike without falling off – something we all learn at an early age, and for most of us our first real taste of freedom. It’s that same freedom that attracts fully-grown adults back to their bicycles later on.

Sure, if you’ve spent the last few years indulging a little too heavily in sofa- or office-based activities, you’re not going to hit the ground running, so to speak.

But you don’t need to hit the ground running.

Nobody’s waiting for you at a finish line with a stopwatch. You can take all the time you need to get where you’re going. Who’s going to know how long it took (except you), and does it matter if it takes a little longer? You’ll only see more of the world as you go.

You see, it won’t be long before you shift your attention away from your lacklustre mileage and towards the ever-changing landscape, the opportunities to explore, and the people and oddities you’ll stumble upon. You’ll find that slowness actually amplifies the intrigue of exploring new roads. Pedalling along, beholden to no-one and nothing, you’ll start to wonder:

Why would anyone take the freedom afforded by the humble bicycle and squander it on a mad dash to the finish line?

Allow days and weeks to pass by, and you’ll find that something even stranger happens.

The aches and pains subside. The saddle actually starts to feel rather comfortable, as though you’re ‘becoming one with the bike’. You’re no longer thinking about the cycling itself or how hard or strange it is, because it’s getting easier and more natural by the day as your experience grows, and you’ve got more interesting things to think about anyway. And the moment will come when you realise you’ve got on a bike that morning and cranked out a hundred leisurely miles without even noticing.

Because you, as a human, by applying yourself to something new, will have done what millions of years of evolution have optimised you for.

You will have adapted.

And so cycle touring – far from demanding a level of skill and strength available only to the chosen few – is in fact one of the most egalitarian types of adventure there is.

Try it. Take this simple man-powered machine, combine with your naturally curious spirit, and see where you end up.

(Photo courtesy of the Sathre-Vogel family.)

Climbing aboard a bicycle is perhaps the most accessible way to have an adventure.

It doesn’t have to involve quitting your job, spending years planning, or embarking upon a long-winded odyssey of self discovery. It doesn’t have to be heroic. It need not involve ‘epic’ days in the saddle, or energy gels, or lycra. Nor does such a journey necessitate physical hardship, heavy traffic, mountain ranges and continental crossings on £5 a day and with nothing but pasta and stock-cubes for sustenance.

It can involve all of these things, of course. But sometimes it can simply mean going somewhere new, nosing around for long enough to unwind from daily life, and coming home refreshed. That could describe a weekend as well as a year on the road.

Cycle touring is whatever you want it to be. And you can call it whatever you like – cycle touring, adventure cycling, bikepacking, even simply travelling by bicycle; these are all nuanced terms for the act of getting on a bike and going on a journey with it.

While a short trip is enough for many, some choose to take things further. The number of people who have cycled round the world could be easily estimated to be in the thousands. Still more have made unique adaptations to the basic formula. Joff Summerfield has so far made three attempts to encircle the planet on a penny farthing. Tom Kevill-Davies based a transcontinental trip entirely on sampling and recording local recipes. Emily Chappell got her adventuring rocks off by cycling across Alaska in the depths of winter on a ‘fatbike’.

Even these are conservative examples. Delve deeper into the stories out there and you’ll find dudes building custom surfboard carriers for their tourers and riding sandy coastlines in search of the perfect break. You’ll find people taking ultralight bikepacking rigs and charting the unmapped dirt trails of South America, riding tall bikes the length of Africa, and forming bands and roaming Europe on busking bike trips. You’ll find families cycling across continents with children of all ages, homeschooling in their tents by night and taking them on the best field trips imaginable by day.

You’ll find people recreating traditional rite-of-passage journeys in full costume, people earning a living on the road by selling hand-made jewellery on exotic beaches, people riding from farm to farm as they work their way around the world. You’ll find cyclist photographers who spend months exploring on the proceeds of roadside postcard sales. You’ll hear of people dishing out bicycle-powered smoothies, not for money but just because they could. You’ll find people who travel money-free and barter, dumpster-dive and volunteer their way across countries and continents. Whatever kind of eccentricity you might imagine, be sure that someone is out there doing it on a bicycle.

Yes, you’re allowed to have fun with cycle touring. Not the type of fun you later convince yourself you had. Actual, real fun. Sit by the riverside and read your favourite book. Wallow in a state of post-lunch, post-beer tranquility for hours every afternoon. Cook elaborate meals. Eat ice cream. Brew coffee. Occasionally, do some cycling.

Sleep in wonderful, wild places that only you will ever know. Sleep in terrible, ill-advised places where no-one would dream of looking. Meet new people every day. Ride across deserts in a state of utter solitude. Ignore everything except what’s happening right here, right now. Daydream until you can’t remember where you are.

Leave your phone and laptop at home. I dare you. I double-dare you. Throw out your calendar. Spontaneously change your plans, your flights, your future.

Cycle touring can feel like the closest thing to freedom you’ll ever experience. Embrace it!

(Header photo courtesy of Jamie Bowlby-Whiting.)