Category: Budgeting & Finance
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Cycle Touring & Bikepacking Insurance: All You Need To Know (& Popular Insurers)
This is a detailed introduction to understanding and choosing insurance for cycle touring and bikepacking trips, both short-term and long-term. I get a lot of questions on the topic of insurance for cycle tours, so this article is my attempt to answer all of them in one thoroughly researched, human-written, 100% AI-free post. The following advice is generally applicable to anyone looking to insure a cycle tour or bikepacking trip, whatever length, duration or destination you have in mind, and whether it’s your first ever bike trip or you’re just looking for up-to-date information about insurers who cover travelling by… Continue reading →
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How Far Can You Go On A Scrapyard Touring Bike? (Short Answer: A Very Long Way)
A few years ago I was invited to be a guest on the 2nd episode of The Cycle Show, which aired on July 15th 2014 at 8pm BST on ITV4. (ITV billed me as ‘comedian Tom Allen’, which is actually another Tom Allen entirely. I’d just like to take this opportunity to confirm that I possess absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever.) Anyway. One of the other guests on the show was James Cracknell, former Olympian rower turned cyclist and endurance-athlete-adventurer extraordinaire. When my segment came up, I talked about the beauty and freedom of bicycle travel; about how it’s one… Continue reading →
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Stop Bleeding Away Your Travel Money Via Overseas Card Transaction Fees (UK Only)
Fee-free UK current accounts for overseas spending are hard to come by. Enter Starling Bank, a mobile-only 'challenger' bank offering its customers zero-fee withdrawals and purchases in any currency anywhere in the world. Continue reading →
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Get Funding For Your Next Big Cycle Tour With The Next Challenge Expedition Grant
Set up by my good friend Tim Moss, The Next Challenge Expedition Grant has just opened for applications. Up to £1,300 of funding is available for a big adventure, whether by bicycle or otherwise. The deadline for applications is Wednesday 26th August 2015. I caught up with Tim to ask about the grant and why he set it up. 1. What is your main reason for setting up the grant? Six years ago I started a website to encourage and help other people have adventures. I’ve written lots of articles and responded to lots of emails but sometimes what people really need is… Continue reading →
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How To Travel Full Time While Working On The Road (Includes Q&A With A Veteran Of 9 Years)
Today’s article includes a Q&A with Nora Dunn, a Canadian who sold everything (including a busy financial planning practice) in 2006 to embrace her dreams of long-term immersive travel. She runs TheProfessionalHobo.com, a blog dedicated to the art of making travel financially self-sustaining, and has written several books on various aspects of the lifestyle – in short, she’s a real expert on combining work and travel. Her expertise is particularly relevant right now. I no longer rent a property. I possess only one bicycle (yeah, I know!). And everything I need to live fits into either a 75-litre backpack or a pair… Continue reading →
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How To Fly With A Bike For Free, In Business Class, For The Price Of An Economy Ticket
Yes, you read that correctly. It is possible to upgrade an economy flight ticket for free to business class, and get free bicycle carriage into the bargain. Pretty good, right? This lunacy is a classic example of travel hacking. I’ve been experimenting with its various techniques for the last year or so, and I’d like to share what I’ve learned — specifically, I’d like to share how best to put these techniques to use in the context of cycle touring. What Is Travel Hacking? Put simply, travel hacking is the art & science of getting for free (or cheap) what would normally be a significant travel expense… Continue reading →
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How To Budget & Save For A Cycle Tour: A Foolproof Financial Plan
This guest post has been put together by the very clever Ramona Marks, who is far more financially literate than I and thus far more qualified to write this, the ultimate guide to financial planning for big adventures. She’s living proof that it works, too. Take it away, Ramona… You want to go on a big adventure? Great! You’ve already done the hardest work. Making the decision to challenge yourself is a really big accomplishment, and you haven’t even gone out the door. My husband and I knew that we needed to get out of the city we were living in.… Continue reading →
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Save More Money & Have More Fun By WWOOFing Around The World By Bicycle
Today’s guest post is by 28-year-old Erwin Zantinga, a Dutch bicycle traveller who has spent the last six years Working Worldwide On Organic Farms (WWOOFing). Given its obvious relevance to the #freeLEJOG experiment, I asked him if he’d be interested in giving us an introduction to this now well-established world of casual outdoor work on the road. Take it away, Erwin… It was 2008 and I found myself almost crying because of her departure, a new friend I’d known for just two weeks. It’d been an intense fortnight of working, eating, talking, dancing and hanging out in lovely Sweden — Eekerö, to be precise — on a small piece of the… Continue reading →
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How To Travel For Free, Forever
A quick online search will find you endless blog posts entitled “how to travel for free”, “how to travel the world for free”, “how to travel forever”, and similar search-engine-optimised variations. Actually reading these articles, however, usually reveals that they are not really about free travel at all. Instead, they are – almost without exception – about how to earn money on the road, using tactics such as travel hacking, hospitality exchange networks and volunteering opportunities to avoid spending more than necessary. This, to me, is not travelling for free. At least, not in the sense that I wanted to explore when I… Continue reading →
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Don’t Bother With The Whole Sponsorship Thing
In 2014 I joined seasoned round-the-world cyclist Alastair Humphreys for a coffee in a secret location in central London (okay, it was the British Library canteen) in order to chat about bike trips — specifically, bike trips that could be made for under £1,000 and within the average annual holiday allowance. It was part of Al’s excellent #Adventure1000 project. What follows is an edited transcription of our discussion. Enjoy… Alastair: My Adventure1000 interview today is Tom Allen – cyclist and filmmaker – chosen solely because of his beer can stove, about which more later… Could you start by outlining the biggest expedition that you’ve been on? Tom: The biggest expeditions… Continue reading →