Category: Country Guides
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Tom’s Guide To Cycle Touring In… The Netherlands
As a student at the University of Exeter I once joined an annual fundraising event known as the Amsterdam Hitch. Travelling in pairs or groups, participants would have 24 hours to hitchhike from southwest England to the Dutch capital, spend a couple of nights ‘recovering’, then take a prearranged bus ride home. This, one of my first overseas adventures, did not gave me a particularly broad or revealing insight into modern Dutch culture. For one thing, I and my hitching partner Natalia only got as far as a truck-stop on the outskirts of Ghent, Belgium, before giving up and jumping on… Continue reading →
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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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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 →
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Is Thailand Actually The Best Cycle Touring Destination In The World?
As I write, I’m just over a month into a wonderfully unstructured bike trip in ‘the land of a thousand smiles’, a country idolised by generations of travellers as a paradise on Earth; a destination to where 35 million people journeyed last year, a million from the UK alone. I’m talking, of course, about Thailand. And while many arrive in search of tropical beaches, golden temples and full-moon parties, I’ve been looking at a very different picture. For one does not generally check in at the airport for a beach holiday with a touring bike and panniers. No, I did not… Continue reading →
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Five Reasons To Go Cycle Touring In Armenia
Cycle touring in Armenia isn’t on many people’s to-do lists. All the better, then, for those who do turn up on their touring bikes in this tiny Caucasian nation. And since low-cost carriers such as WizzAir have launched flights to Armenia, travel costs from Europe have plummeted. Dreaming of returning and carrying out a proper adventure in Armenia, I thought the time was ripe to publish a few reasons to make it your next cycling destination. Of course there are more than five good reasons to cycle in Armenia, but here are those I’ve focused on: 1. Mountains If you love slogging… Continue reading →