Cycle touring

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 3

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This is the last instalment of Frazer Goodwin’s guest posts, in which he recounts his adventurous 1 400km ride from Belgium to Sweden, and his return to Belgium. If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you read Part first, then read Part 2. Part 3 This summer I managed to cycle from Brussels to … 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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The foreigner’s guide to cycle-touring in the UK

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Time for a tongue-in-cheek look at foreigners cycle touring in the UK. Now the UK is exquisitely beautiful and it’s no wonder it receives so many tourists. The main island itself is small, and is little over 800 miles from end to end, making it perfect for cycle touring. Indeed, one of the most iconic of British rides is the End To End. This ride either starts in the south (Land’s End) and finishes in the north (John O’Groats) when it’s abbreviated as LEJOG, or it starts in the north and finishes in the south, when it’s referred to as JOGLE.

Devon Coast To Coast – A Travelling Ouballies Ride

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Devon  Coast  To  Coast,  aka  NCN  27 This past weekend I cycled Devon Coast To Coast again, along with my friend Caspar (follow him on Twitter – he’s one of the good guys). I know the route very well – after all, I published what I genuinely believe to be the most detailed route guide … Read more

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

Book review – Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, by Dervla Murphy

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In 1963, Europe had one of the coldest winters, and 1963, during winter, was when Dervla Murphy set off to cycle from her native Ireland to faraway India. Along the way, she kept a diary, and this book is the result of that diary. The world was a totally different place in 1963, as you’d … Read more

And suddenly you’re free

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It’s the light that wakes you. Well, sometimes the birds, sometimes the weather and in my case, once a greenkeeper who started very early, but usually the light. Waking up under canvas is different to waking up at home. There’s no sense of urgency, no rush, no dread for what the day may hold. The … Read more

When the Puncture Fairy visits…

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A surprising number of cyclists are quite superstitious in at least one aspect: they’re so terrified of punctures that they won’t even say the word, and I find that extremely amusing. I’m not superstitious at all, and have no misgivings about using the word puncture, nor referring to the Puncture Fairy. For the uninitiated, a … 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

Slow

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Speed. It’s exhilarating. Addictive, even. Exciting. Dangerous, too, of course, but that only makes it more exciting. I know. I’ve been there. My personal speed record on a bicycle (with 700c x 25 skinny wheels, while dressed only in Lycra) is 53mph (85kph), during a descent off Peak Hill, when riding a sportive called the … Read more

Kennet & Avon Canal – Traveling Ouballies ride

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Old Man Ride This past weekend, I went on a leisurely adventure, with three others. Caspar I’ve met before, and I know him from cycling advocacy especially in Devon, but also nationally. Simon’s a journalist at Road.cc and cycled the first part of my last Grand Union Canal ride. Tommy’s someone I know from Twitter, … Read more

Footloose

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If you want some free entertainment, walk up to a group of cyclists and say one type of clip-in pedals are better than the others, then sit back and watch the debate get surprisingly heated. People often ask which clip-in system is the best, and the only correct answer is this: it depends. I freely … Read more