Since I got back from my cross-European cycle last summer I've faced endless questions from friends, family, co-workers, and anyone who happens to overhear me in the pub, about how you plan for a trip like that. I often answer, quite facetiously, that I didn't plan it; I just booked a ferry and went.
In my defence, this is half true. It's easy to get so bogged down in the details and potential failures of a trip that you never take the first step of just setting off. But of course there are some things you need to take into consideration beforehand if you're going to be able to "just set off" with any kind of confidence.
I get asked about navigation, route planning, what to pack, where to stay, what equipment you need, etc. etc. I knew very little myself about any of these things before I went. I figured out a lot of it on the way, and the rest I gleaned from a quick scan through various blogs. (This blog was probably the most useful, and inspirational, that I found - https://tomsbiketrip.com/how-to-cycle-around-the-world-in-3-easy-steps/)
While I certainly am still no expert, I have done it, so I feel duty bound to share what I learned from my cycle. This post will go through the things I did right, the many things I did wrong, and what I would change if I did it again. It will be a short overview, a tldr for those who don't want to read the longer, more in depth articles on each topic which I'll hopefully soon write. I hope you find it helpful. And the next time someone asks me all these questions I can direct them here. Now I'll have to find something else to talk about in the pub...
How did you Plan Your route?
My planning was very minimal, which gave me a lot of freedom. However freedom comes with a lot of uncertainty, and more than a few wrong turnings, missed opportunities and dead ends.
My original plan was to cycle to Patras in Greece, in the north of the Peloponnese peninsular. Step one was to type my destination into google maps and click on bicycle. This does not work. There is no option, as a general rule, for cycle routes outside of northwestern Europe. Google will give you a cycle route from the UK to Trieste in Italy, but not to Rijeka in Croatia, which is only 75km further away. Therefore I turned to EuroVelo.
EuroVelo is a series of long distance cycle routes across Europe, stretching from Lisbon to Moscow, and from the Northern cape of Europe to Athens... kind of. Some of the routes are well developed, signposted, separate cycle-paths, quiet roads and bridleways. Some are just imaginary dotted lines drawn over mountains and through fields. For my purpose I selected EuroVelo 8 - one of the six routes (out of nineteen) which is available on the EuroVelo mobile app. I intend to review this app, and this route, in its own article soon!
EuroVelo 8 runs from Gibraltar in Spain (well, the UK, but you get what I mean), all the way along the southern coast of Europe, through northern Italy, down the Balkan coast, to Athens. For my purpose I selected the second half of the route. I'd set my google maps for Northern Italy, follow roughly the route it gave me, deciding on the way what turns to take and what cities to make for, then once I'd crossed the alps I'd join up with EuroVelo 8 and follow it through the pesky cycle-routing-free Balkans to Patras. This was my rough plan before I set out, and it met with mixed success, which brings us on to...
How did you Navigate day to day?
Beeline Velo is the short answer. This was one of the few new bits of kit I bought for my cycle, and one of the most expensive (though compared to many other cycling computers it's actually quite affordable, at only £99). Beeline was a mixed bag to say the least. I was very glad to have invested in it. It's interface is intuitive, it saves you tonnes of battery life, and in parts of Europe its routing is great... but only in parts. Like EuroVelo I intend to write a whole article on Beeline, but for now I'll keep it simple.
Beeline is a small cycle computer you can attach to your bike. It consists of a small circular screen which twists on and off easily and with a satisfying click. The device links via bluetooth to the Beeline app on your phone, which has its own built in routing software which (in places), offers you three options of quiet, fast, or mixed routes to whatever destination you give it. It also records your cycle, allowing you to upload it to Strava later, if you're into that sort of thing (which I am).
Day to day I would select a city, or hostel, or campsite anywhere between 70km to 170km away, let the Beeline generate a route, and follow its small arrow as though I were navigating via minimap in a video game. This allowed me to avoid the distraction of audio cues, or a huge battery draining phone screen, in favour of quiet beeps and a screen so minimal, that you're forced to look away from it and take in the majestic nature or scummy back streets you are cycling through.
This worked great in western Europe for the most part, though a couple of times in the alps I was led on long detours along hiking trails and impassable upwards mountain bike routes. However once again the Balkan problem, like some kind of logistical Cerberus, reared its ugly head. Beeline uses google maps data to generate its routes, so once the google maps cycle routes disappeared, so did the reliability. Very soon I resorted to downloading GPX routes of EuroVelo 8 which mostly solved the problem, but did come with its own glitches. And once EuroVelo had disappeared after Patras, the Beeline was mostly ditched in favour of Maps.me.
Overall Beeline solved far more problems than it caused, and if a reliable route was put into it via download, it excelled, but I'm sure there are better options out there - Garmin maybe. I don't know. Ask a proper cyclist.
What bike/equipment did you take?
I took a hybrid Carrera which I'd bought from Halfords in 2017/18. I can't remember exactly how much I paid, but you can get a similar one today for £310. Things were cheaper back then, and I got mine with a discount, so I doubt I paid much over £200 for it. You can do a cycle like this on a relatively cheap bike. But should you?
While the bike was fine for the most part, there were some downsides. It is heavy, which meant I had to pack lighter than almost any other long distance cyclists I saw on the trip. I took only two 40L Ortilieb panniers affixed to a rack on the back of my bike (which I would highly recommend). This uneven weight distribution did however serve to exacerbate the other main problem with the bike I took. This problem, ironically for a bike called the Carrera Axle, was a weak back axle.
I have two of these bikes, and the back axle has broken at least once on each of them. During this cycle I took the same bike I had taken on my eight day cycle from Newcastle to Bristol in 2022, when the back axle had snapped in the middle of the mountains of Snowdonia, and I had been forced to take a wobbly free-wheel ride back down a hill to a very conveniently located bike shop. I was therefore very aware of this issue, and it was on the back of my mind the whole time I was cycling, jolting to the forefront every time I strained up an especially steep hill, or bumped over a jagged path.
On this trip the fear never came to full fruition. I replaced the axle with a stronger one just before I left, and the man in the bike shop assured me it would get me to Greece. It did. Just. I cycled the last five or so days to Patras with a back wheel which wobbled as much as a brit after a night in Benidorm. A helpful and inspirational bike shop owner fixed it up, and his repair held all the way to Istanbul, and gets me to work today.
On the whole the bike I took was up to the job, but only just. If you want to cycle across a continent without a constant gnawing fear in the back of your mind, take a better bike.
Where did you stay? And what did you eat?
I took a flimsy tent with me which broke on the first day, but only a little bit. A few bodged repairs got it through the trip. Because of this tent I would say my accommodation was about 55% campsites, 35% hostels, 5% wild camping, and 5% hotels. Most campsites in Europe, especially in Germany, Italy and Croatia, had a restaurant attached. That's where I did most of my eating. When hosteling I sought out decent local cuisine in the city. I did very little cooking. Eating a great local meal was half my motivation for cycling, and the highpoint of my day. On the few days I could find nothing in the evening, such as when I was wild camping, I would go hungry, and dream of breakfast in the morning.
For breakfast and lunch I'm ashamed to say that Lidl pastries along with bananas, apples, haribo, ice cream, nuts, and dried fruit from local shops and markets made up the majority. Occasionally I would take a midday cafe stop if I needed to charge my phone, and then a coke and a croissant would be the most I got. No gels were consumed on this trip. If I write a longer article on the food I ate, it will mostly be a guide on what not to do. Stuffed croissants feature heavily.
What did you Pack?
Not much, and I didn't make an exhaustive list, but here's what I can rememeber:
Clothes (including what I was wearing): Two t-shirts (later 3), one long sleeved collared shirt to keep off the sun, two pairs of shorts, one micro-fleece, cycling gloves, cycling coat, helmet, flip-flops, one pair of vans, 5 pairs of underwear and socks.
Electronics: Phone, portable charger, solar portable charger (never used), variety of cables to charge phone, Beeline and bike lights.
Camping: Small tent and poles, inflatable sleep mat (now punctured), inflatable pillow (slow puncture), sleeping bag, washing line, head torch.
Wash stuff: toothbrush, toothpaste, bar of soap (later replaced from hotels), deodorant, couple of washing machine tablets (used twice), hand sanitiser, bug spray, copious amounts of factor 50 suncream (I am ginger).
Bike stuff/tools: gel seat (a must have), camelbak (leaky), multitool, puncture repair kit, spare brake pads (4), Opinel knife, cord.
Other: book ("No Country for Old Men", then "Feet of Clay"), journal, pen (lost and replaced many times), medical kit (plasters, steri-strips etc.), mini-sowing kit.
What would you change?
A few things.
If I could afford it, I would take a better bike. Half the fun of the cycle was showing the other cyclists the crappy bike I was doing it on, but it would also have been fun to have a bike which was lighter and less susceptible to breaking (if more susceptible to getting stolen).
I might take a cooking kit. This would have added extra weight, and maybe would have required more panniers, but it would also give me freedom and keep my costs down. Many times I decided against wild camping in a suitable, free spot, because I was hungry. This meant any time I did stop it had to be near food, near civilisation, which made wild camping much harder and much less picturesque. And despite the endless incredible meals I had at restaurants, there were times when some home-boiled pasta or crispy mushrooms would have done just as well, and cost a tenth of the price. I don't know. This is not necessary in Europe, but not having it, and the cost of restaurants, were two of the reasons I didn't continue my cycle into Asia.
Better planning. My "take it as it comes" attitude to planning the route resulted in some great travel stories, as recounted in my main blog, but also meant I missed a few interesting things I could have seen, and just as often resulted in me cycling through ugly industrial estates as it did me getting lost in rural Swiss mountains.
I wouldn't go alone. Solo travel is fun. I got to missing it after a few days in company. But cycle touring alone can, surprisingly enough, be a lonely way to travel. There are so many memories, so many stories, that I wish I'd shared with someone else. That was a big reason I started this blog, and started making videos. I want to feel like other people had these experiences with me. If a man cycles over a mountain, and no-one saw him do it, did he really do it at all?
I think I would miss the hours of being lost in my own world, listening to audiobooks and music as nature drifted by, completely alone and completely free... but I also think I would have gotten less sad. Maybe I wouldn't want a constant companion all the time, but if someone wanted to join me for a stretch or two, I'd like that. Next time.
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