My side trip through the Balkans has sadly ended and unfortunately ended sadly. A little more on that a bit later…
First though, I begun this trip with the question ‘what is the attraction to tour cycling?’ From this relatively short trip, here are my thoughts on some related questions I was asking myself before I began.
Will I enjoy this?
Yes, I absolutely loved it! I found that being on a bike gave me more of what I love about travel; freedom & adventure. There is no bus or train schedules to worry about, in fact, there is no need even to know where the stations are. When you’re ready, you just head out the door and start pedaling. Also, some of the best days were the ‘free’ days where I wasn’t traveling from A to B, but just got on my bike to have a look around and followed whatever road looked interesting. I ended up in a load of interesting places I could never feasibly have gone by foot, car or any other way.
The pace was also absorbing – fast enough to keep the scenery changing and interesting, but slow and quiet enough to take photographs and notice the sites, sounds, and smells that wouldn’t be possible from a car, train or bus.
It also didn’t take away from any other aspects of travel. I still stayed in hostels, met a lot of people, and did the kinds of things I’d normally do when traveling.
Won’t I get lonely?
This turned out to be quite the opposite. It was always easy to meet people on the road – people often had an interest in my story whenever my bike was loaded with my gear. Also, it was easy to meet others in the normal ways that you do when you travel – in hostels, at cafes, tours, etc. Of course, it is the people that make a trip special and on these travels, I was lucky enough to share some great experiences with very cool people and begun some new friendships that hopefully won’t end with this trip.
There were also times where it was people overload. On some days I was repeating my story a dozen times or more and this could be quite tiring. After a couple of days at the particularly social hostels, I felt the need to just get away and start pedaling and be by myself.
I was fully expecting to get a little lonely while on the bike sometimes and had prepared for it. I’d bought a set of speakers that fit on my handle bars that could plug into my iPhone and had downloaded a load of Spotify playlists and audio books. Right from the start though, I just found the music and books annoying and found it surprisingly easy to be immersed in the scenery and my thoughts (http://youtu.be/MtObrnaovrI). So the times when I was alone, I was anything but lonely.
Will it be too hard work and will I get tired of it quickly?
No, not at all. In the route I did, it was very easy to control the distance of each ride. Interesting towns were rarely more than 50 to 80km apart, which is about the typical distance I’d do. The hills were a bit of a strain to begin with, but after a few weeks my conditioning got pretty good and by just chugging away in a low gear, I didn’t mind them too much by the end – Particularly as hills normally mean good scenery and of course some nice downhill to follow.
It would probably be a different story if my aims were different. My intention was never to cover great distances or reach an end destination within a certain time. It was just to travel slowly and see the parts of the country that I want to well and spend a few days in the places that I liked.
I met a few other cyclists whose aims were to cycle all of Europe – or even the world (see later on in this blog) and they would typically cover 80 to 150 kms in a day with fewer rest days. My enjoyment of the journey generally declined after around 70kms, so I’m not sure that that kind of journey would be for me.
My journey ended up being about 1,300 km plus another 20 km vertical climb!
Will it be difficult to navigate?
I never used any maps other than GPS on my phone. I had a local SIM in each of the countries that I went to with good data packages, so most of the time it was quite straight forward to find good routes with little traffic using Google maps, Map My Ride and TomTom as a last resort.
Most of the other cyclists that I met were using maps, but for this part of the world, I didn’t find them necessary.
Have I packed the right equipment?
Being a greenhorn at this, what to pack was a bit of guesswork, but I went with my normal approach of ‘less is more’ and that anything I needed could be purchased along the way.
The one thing I would do differently for this part of the world is to take this even further and leave all the camping equipment behind. This made up about two thirds of the bulk and weight of my panniers, but in the part of Europe that I went to, and in the shoulder season, accommodation was cheap, good quality and plentiful. There were times when having the equipment added a bit of security when darkness is closing in with no town in site, but having less weight would have been better on some of the rougher trails.
Next time I probably wouldn’t bother with panniers and take only a small backpack strapped to the carrier which contained a few layers of merino wool tops, shell jacket, some shorts, a few days of underwear and socks, a small traveller’s towel, jandals, toiletries, iPad mini and keyboard cover, and battery charge pack and cables for the iPhone and iPad. This is exactly the same as I would pack for a normal multi month summer trip actually.
Would I do it again after this trip?
Absolutely! I found this to be a fantastic way to experience travel and this world of ours. I already have some ideas of destinations in the future. Top of the list is my own country!
This is how the last week or so of my trip ended:
