Hi! I’m Tom, originally from England, but the island was too small.
For 20 years I’ve been exploring the world by bike at every chance I get.
Why? Simply put: because it’s the closest thing you’ll find to pure freedom!
Here at TomsBikeTrip.com I share hard-earned lessons about cycle touring and bikepacking, tell original stories, and road-test new ideas.
A love of adventure has powered my 100% AI-free blog since 2006, when I first decided to travel the world by bicycle and write about it.
Welcome!
The blog: over half a million words of hard-earned, hand-written cycle touring & bikepacking advice.
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Tom’s Guide To Cycle Touring In… England
This is #2 in an occasional series about cycle touring in each of the 50+ countries I’ve had the pleasure to ride through. I’m working my way through the list chronologically (and wishing I’d started earlier!). Read about the background to the series here. The first country I went on a big bike trip in was Scotland. But I went with friends. The first time I tried it alone was in my home country: England. I forget the precise date. I have neither photos nor diaries to reference. But it was some time in late 2006. My destination was Abergavenny,… Continue reading →
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Brutal Indonesia: Cycle Touring Sulawesi On Folding Bikes
This is a guest post by Marco Ferrarese. I met Marco on the road last year in Armenia and knew a fellow free spirit when I saw one. Turns out his back catalogue of adventures is fascinating, and he’s a damn fine writer too. So when I heard he was off on his first unplanned bike trip – on a folding bike across Sulawesi – and since we’ve been on the subject of cycle touring in southeast Asia recently, I invited him to tell us about it here. * * * “I… can… do… it!!!” Even my thoughts were exhausted. I was… Continue reading →
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Tom’s Guide To Cycle Touring In… Scotland
Scotland was where it all started. Little did I know my first week-long cycle tour – an ill-advised crosscountry jaunt through the West Highlands – was going to have such a profound effect. It seemed unlikely at the time. For that week in May, Scotland did not hesitate to deliver its traditional punishments of mountains, midges and rain, and my companions and I were, to put it mildly, ill-prepared for any of it. We suffered. We were tested. We were found sorely lacking in almost every department: the arrogance of youth piling headlong into a chasm of inexperience. Fun it… Continue reading →
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About The Time I Tried To Go Bicycle Touring In Myanmar (Burma)
You know those occasional experiences you have as a traveller which are so unpredictable, so spectacularly and relentlessly off-the-charts random, that you wake up the next morning having difficulty believing what happened, that the story you remember playing out wasn’t just the hallucinogenic outgrowing of a drug someone slipped into your drink, or a particularly feverish dream – you know the kind of thing I mean? My first 24 hours on a bicycle in Myanmar was one such experience. Partly it was Thailand’s fault. Thailand had made us soft, complacent. Thailand had been like having a nice long massage, perhaps a… Continue reading →
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Coming Soon: The Cycle Touring Country Guide Series
A new blog series combining personal stories and curated links, resulting in a light-hearted inside look at what a cycle tour in each featured country might feel like, with some carefully-selected starting points for follow-up research. Continue reading →
Books, eBooks & Guides
I’ve written a range of guidebooks and travelogues to read at your leisure, whether you’re preparing for a bike trip, living life on the road, or home and dreaming of the next big ride.
How To Hit The Road: A Beginner’s Guide To Cycle Touring & Bikepacking
First published in 2017 and updated in 2021, this book is my comprehensive newcomers’ introduction to the art of the bicycle-mounted adventure.
Every aspect of a cycle tour or bikepacking trip is covered in 34 chapters, split over three parts: pre-trip planning, initial execution, and adapting to the long haul.
As well as broad, practical advice, I’ve woven inspiring and reassuring anecdotes throughout the book – because getting away from the starting line isn’t about knowing everything, but having the confidence to begin.
Drawing on my personal experience of almost two decades of adventure cycling, more than 50 veteran riders from diverse backgrounds have also contributed to this guide, making it one of the most well-rounded introductions you’ll find to this radically liberating form of independent travel.
Whatever you’re planning and wherever you’re going, if it involves a bicycle and the spirit of adventure, How To Hit The Road has got you covered.
Janapar: Love, on a Bike
My first travelogue, originally published in 2013 and the subject of a successful crowdfunding campaign, telling the true story of my first 3½ years on the road.
This was far from your typical long-distance bike tour, however. From the cover blurb:
When twenty-three-year-old Tom Allen and his friends set off from their English village to cycle around the world, they were expecting physical hardship, extreme conditions and a serious case of culture shock. But the hours spent poring over maps could never have prepared them for the experience of life on the road: the petty squabbles, the extreme hospitality, the unexpected joys and dangers.
And then Tom meets Tenny, a feisty Iranian-Armenian girl with dreams of her own, and hits a crossroad. Should he give up his grand plan for the girl he loves, or cycle off and risk missing out on the greatest adventure of them all?
Temporarily out of print (except in the USA), Janapar is still available as a Kindle ebook from all Amazon portals worldwide.