Category: Touring Advice
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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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A New Expedition Touring Bike From Oxford Bike Works (Designed By… Er… Tom Allen!)
Can’t afford expensive bikes? Do yourself an enormous favour by ignoring what follows and reading this instead. I never imagined I would one day be able to call myself a bike designer. (Or a writer, or a filmmaker, for that matter.) But now I can – as of today. And here’s how it happened: Last summer I was enjoying a nice few weeks of bicycle-mounted wandering in central Europe. Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria, to be precise. I was riding with Leon McCarron (with whom I also went adventuring last year in Iran and Patagonia), his wife Clare, and my wife Tenny.… Continue reading →
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280 Years, 196 Cyclists & 4,065,596 Kilometres — But What Does The Database Of Long-Distance Cycling Journeys Really Tell Us?
Tim & Laura’s quantitative study of the achievements of nearly two hundred long-distance touring cyclists makes for some fascinating browsing. Who’d have guessed, for example, that the highest average monthly distance (9,673km) would be 41 times greater than the slowest (234km)? Who’d have guessed that 38% of these cyclists would have chosen to use 700c road sized wheels on their bikes, compared with 62% using 26-inch mountain bike sized wheels? Who’d have guessed that exactly two thirds of those riders would have cycled solo, and for an average trip length of 28,482km? Who’d have guessed that it would be possible to get by on as… 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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15 Unorthodox Ways To Train For Cycle Touring & Bikepacking (Bicycle Optional)
So you’re dreaming of life on the open road on that epic long-distance cycle tour or bikepacking trip. Yet you’re doing nothing proactive about it, because (among other reasons) you think you’re not fit enough. The odd commute or day-ride isn’t enough; it’s waaaaay too big a leap from your current lifestyle to the kind of physical fitness required for that big bicycle-mounted adventure. Right? Well, no, actually. For most people in this scenario, the truth about training for long-distance cycle touring or bikepacking is actually this: Training yourself mentally will serve you far better than attempting to train yourself physically.… 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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6 Steps To Planning Your First Ever Overseas Cycle Tour
If the hustle of modern life is stopping you from getting out there on your first bicycle adventure, try following these six simple steps: Come to think of it, I should probably get around to doing this myself. Yes. I really should. I work too hard. I need a break – a break from writing all this stuff about adventure cycle touring. Right. That’s it. I’m going to go and ride my bike. I leave tomorrow. Bye! Think it’s more complicated than this? Click here and let me prove you wrong. 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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Kona Sutra 2015 Touring Bike: A Preview
[UPDATE: Kona’s updated 2016 Sutra has recently been announced. Check out my preview here.] The Kona Sutra has been my short-haul road tourer of choice for the last few years, ever since I rode a 2012 model of the Kona Sutra down the Pacific Coast of America in 2012. When I reviewed the 2014 Sutra, it seemed to me that Kona had moved it away from road touring towards more adventurous back-road and rough-road tours. This was probably a good move, as there are many well-established touring bikes to compete with, but not so many in the field of short-haul, mixed-terrain touring. It wasn’t perfect,… Continue reading →