Adventure

To overcome the monster…

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Hills – love them, or hate them, you cannot alter the reality that they exist. You can try and avoid them – move to the Somerset Levels, or the Cambridge Fens, or most of Lincolnshire, for that matter, but sooner or later you will have to cycle up some hills. Some refer to monster hills, but … Read more

Preparing for a cycle tour

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How do you prepare for a cycle tour? How do you prepare yourself, so your cycle tour is pleasure, not punishment? No, this post will not turn into a detailed, structured training plan (though it does contain a link to a simplified training plan). If you were preparing to tackle the Hour record, I’d expect … Read more

Frazer’s Tour – Part 1

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This guest post is by Frazer Goodwin – he’s on Twitter as @FrazerGoodwin and you really should follow him. Frazer is English, but lives in Belgium. Enough from me, I’ll hand over to Frazer now.

Part One

“Aren’t you too old to travel that far on a bike?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked by both friends and family. But I have finally managed to complete a multiday bike ride I’ve been planning for years – a ride from my home in Brussels to my in-laws place in Sweden on an island north of Gothenburg. When I posted that I’d done it on Facebook, a good friend here in Brussels simply responded “Nuts”.

Well, I didn’t get to ride that far at 57years of age by just climbing on the bike and setting off. So this short series about my bikepacking will start with the planning and preparations I undertook before the next post details the trip itself and then a final one will review what I’ve learned and plan to do next…

I have been thinking of riding to the island off the Swedish west coast where my in-laws have a house for a couple of decades. It is after all where my wife and I married more than 20 years ago. I had planned the ride in detail for last year, but the pandemic kyboshed it then. I managed to turn it into a tour of the Netherlands to at least use some of the accommodation I’d already booked. And that trip provided me with a lot of insight about how both my bike-setup and I coped on a multi-day bikepacking trip.

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A Redlake Ride

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I’ve posted about Redlake before – it’s out on Dartmoor, and there’s a disused china clay mine, which left behind three things of note: a large spoil heap, a pit that’s long-since filled with water, forming a pond, and the remains on what used to be an old railway track. The name predates the mine, … Read more

Touring in a connected world

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Some cycle tourers I greatly admire, including Dervla Murphy and John Devoy, are very clear in their derision of taking tech along when cycle touring.That’s OK – what makes the world such a fantastic place is the fact that we’re all different, with different views and opinions. I’m just about a digital native, having been … Read more

Where the wild places are

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Your ancestors walked great distances. They hunted or foraged for food, and mainly slept on the ground. Unless under shelter, if it rained, they got wet. When it snowed, they continued with life. They faced great danger on a regular basis, ranging from marauders, to wild animals, to infection from a simple cut. And mostly, … Read more

As the light dawns

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You open your eyes, not quite sure what time it is, and not bothered by it, either. You know it’s still early, so you lie there for a bit, looking at the tent above you, and listening to the sounds outside. The light breeze whispering through the nearby trees, the verbal battles fought by songbirds. … Read more

Cycle camping with kids

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I got back into cycling because of my kids. When my eldest two were old enough, we got them bikes and I taught them to ride. They would ride up and down the pavement, and regularly I’d take them to the local park, a block or two away, but soon enough they were getting bored, … Read more

Burn, baby burn

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Hot weather can be lethal This is not a doom & gloom post. Instead, I’m looking at realistic options. Man-made climate change is real, with indisputable evidence backing it up. In real-world terms, we see the effects all around us, in unusual weather patterns, increased flash flooding, and yes, heat waves. As the planet warms, … Read more

When things go wrong

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Most of the time, you’ll go on a bicycle adventure with a smile on your face and the wind in your hair, and that smile will remain on your face all the way. Sometimes, though, the opposite happens, and things go wrong. Most of the time, being prepared for the possibility of things going wrong … Read more