But Will, you never cycled around the world!

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Rural bliss while cycle touring the Grand Union Canal
But  REAL  adventurers… There is this enduring image that people have that to be a real cycle tourer, you should at least have cycled around the world. Barefoot. On a unicycle. That is, of course, utter rubbish. Simply put, a cycle tourer is someone who went touring on their bicycle, regardless how long, or short their ... Read more

Kit Review – Podsac Fork-mounted drybags

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A Podsac fork dry-bag
Good reputation Podsac has built a well-deserved reputation for great kit. Indeed, while cycling the Grand Union Canal, my mate Dom found that Podsacks are so waterproof that they made his bicycle float! As a result, I didn’t have any reservations when I ordered these from Planet-X. For clarity, I bought these at full price, ... Read more

Wild camping & cycle camping in the UK

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Cycle camping (mainly wild-camping) and cycle touring tips and advice
What is wild-camping? Wild-camping is camping away from formal camp sites. In the UK, wild-camping is legal in almost all of Scotland, but against the law in England and Wales (with the exception of parts of Dartmoor), unless you have explicit permission from the landowner. Here’s where things get a bit complicated: yes, wild-camping is ... Read more

The Impact We All Can Have

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We are all free. We are free to make up our own minds. We are free to make our own decisions. We are not free from the consequences of those decisions. For example, I’m free to try and rob a bank, even though that’s against the law. When I get caught afterwards (bank robbers always get caught) ... Read more

The art of gentle adventure

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Cycling around the world We all would love to go cycling around the world, but life has a way of putting obstacles in the way. Most of us will never go cycle touring around the world. You can choose to see that as a terrible thing, or you can accept the reality of the situation, ... Read more

Coleman Performance Gas review – best avoided!

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Avoid Coleman gas cartridges!
Camping gas explained Gas cartridges for camping stoves mostly use butane gas, which is cheap, and in mild to warm temperatures offers good performance. The trouble with butane is that it really performs poorly in the cold, and your gas stove may completely fizzle out just when you’re most reliant on it. Manufacturers of such ... Read more

March 2022 Giveaway

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We all like a freebie, don’t we? Well, during 2022, I’m doing 12 freebies! That’s right – I’m doing ONE T-shirt giveaway per month. How to enter Entering is simple, but requires a Twitter account. Just follow WillCycle on Twitter, then browse through the T-shirt designs available and pick your favourite. Next, click the link ... Read more

Earth, wind, fire and ice

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Cycle camping at Redlake, as part of a mini cycle tour
Cold-weather camping I’ve been forced to delay a planned winter camping trip on Dartmoor by a combination of having to do out-of-hours work over several weekends, and the severe weather we’ve been having for a while. Seriously, going camping in such a remote spot as I was planning to, while there were 80+mph gales blowing, ... Read more

The Truth

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“I learned the truth at seventeen That love was meant for beauty queens And high school girls with clear skinned smiles Who married young and then retired” These are the lyrics to a beautiful, if rather sad, song called At Seventeen, by an artist called Janis Ian. I included the YouTube video at the bottom. ... Read more

Book Review: Travels With Rosinante, by Bernard Magnouloux

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If you cannot go on an amazing adventure, such as spending five years cycling around the world, then at least you can share in the adventure others have had, by reading a book they wrote about their adventure. This is what makes cycle touring books so brilliant to read: we get to share vicariously in ... Read more

WillCycle Adventure Fund

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I’m setting up the WillCycle Adventure Fund, which will be a crowdfunded annual award of (hopefully) £250. Applicants to the fund will need to submit their request as a comment to this post, detailing why they should receive the money. I will publish all the applications in a future post, and ask you to vote on your ... Read more

Tyre-Glider

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Tyre Glider tyre level kit test
The good people at Tyre-Glider gave me two Tyre-Gliders, so I can do a review. I only need one, and will happily post the other to one of you, provided you will also do a review on it (to be published on here, along with my own). Incidentally, the pic of a Tyre-Glider is straight ... Read more

Are YOU ethical in your adventures?

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Adventure,  or  conquest? Once upon a time, explorers set off from Europe with a view to “conquer”, and that Eurocentric view persists in some form or another to this day. If I was to ask you who discovered the Victoria Falls in Africa, you’d probably answer that David Livingston did. If you answered that, you’d ... Read more

Spring in the air

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Different people measure the start of spring in different ways, so I expect there will be a fair few who dispute that spring is here. Sure, storms Dudley and Eunice hammered the UK this past week, but that doesn’t alter the fact that spring has arrived early. Look around you: the obvious signs, like daffodils ... Read more

C2C to see what there is to see

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Hadrian's Wall
Crossing England from sea to sea The island of Great Britain is longer than it is wide, meaning there are lots of opportunities to cycle a “coast to coast” of some sort, crossing the island (mostly) from east to west, or vice versa.  There are many well-known cycle touring routes that cross northern England, with ... Read more