BootsnAll Travel Community

hey, just saw this thread and wanted to encourage anyone here at BnA thinking about doing a bicycle tour for their next adventure. we finished our (first ever) bike tour a couple of months ago. Took us 4 months on the road and almost covered 4000kms in the end. It was definitely the best thing I've ever done!
I would highly recommend the Carretera Austral (Chile) bit in particular for anyone looking for a one month to 6 weeks adventure through stunning scenery.
Here's our Blog anyway if you want to check out our trip.

xpatgeo, thanks for that. Very, very cool. Great pictures! Great tour! Love the pics!

December is approaching (slow, slow, oh so slow) and the trip in Tasmania is drawing closer. Yay!

Nice rack, xpatgeo!

I'm heading off on the ol' bike for another month through the hills of North Thailand soon

Colinm, would like to hear a detailed and extensive report on it! Planning to ride SEA in about a years time...

So, now that I have some specific news, I thought "let's bump the cycling thread".

We just booked our flights to Tasmania. Will head out on 16th December and come back on 13th January. A good four weeks cycling lies ahead of us. We haven't come up with a route yet. Both, me and my girlfriend, like riding/touring off-road, so we would like to ride (part of) The Tasmanian Trail. However, the guide book is out of stock and out of print. Bummer. Well, we'll see if we can pick one up somewhere around Tassie.
A bit of researched showed that Tasmanian accommodation gets pretty scares around the holiday season. Which means, we will spend many nights in our tent. That's cool. I just hope it won't rain every day. Or even snow. (Yes, I was surprised too that it can still be snowing in December on Tasmania.)
What remains now are 15 days of frantic organization. I need to service my bike, including bleeding the break. There are a few modifications to be made as we. I'm also eBaying like crazy to get a few things that will be good to have on this (and especially the big Asian) trip. Water filter, new and light cooking utensils, etc, etc. Hopefully I'll snatch up those cheap Oertlieb panniers as well.

Anyhow, enough of the rambling. You can always follow us around on my website.

Any other cycling tours planned for any of the Booties?

I would love to do a long trip on a bicycle but would want to do it with an expert who can teach me things before the trip and then on the trip take care of things I cannot manage.

Maybe I will join ElAdi :-)

A big tour does not appeal me right now but maybe someday.

There's not that much expertise needed.

a) When it hurts, try to enjoy it.
b) Learn to love your tent (mentally, not physically, please!)
c) Fixing a flat might help. And taking a chain apart - but it's not rocket science.

and most importantly

d) Learn to love the moments when your ass doesn't hurt.

Madhu, we plan to go on a long trip in 2009. You could join us for a week or two over there in Asia.

quote:

Originally posted by elAdi:

Madhu, we plan to go on a long trip in 2009. You could join us for a week or two over there in Asia.

You never know I might :-)

Just came back from a month cycling around Tasmania.

First of all: there are no (NO!) flat bits in Tasmania. There is always a hill around the next bend. Often we would find ourselves in situations where 270 degrees of the panorama was filled with several mountain ranges and we knew we had to climb at least one of them.

But all in all, it was a great trip. Part of the trip, we cycled on the Tasmanian Trail. This is only recommended if you have a mountain bike and at least some mountain biking experience. But it's a good adventure and you end up camping in very remote places, having the bush (and the wildlife) to yourself.
This is one great thing about traveling on a bicycle anyway: because you are slow and fairly silent (except if you are huffing and puffing up yet another steep hill), so you come across a lot of unsuspecting wildlife. We have seen them all in Tasmania: the obvious Wallabies, the shy Enchidnas, the curious Devils, Wombats and even some Tiger Snakes (which is a bit scary really).

Here a few pics:

Ahm....where exactly are we?


Downhiiiiiiiill!


Ouch, cold.


Hiking up to Marion's Lookout, with Cradle Mountain in the background


Now what?


And just an encouragement for all of those out there considering a bike tour but worrying about fitness: if you are half-way fit (i.e. not 20 kilos overweight), you will get to the necessary fitness level with about two weeks. The first few days might be tough and you will be hurtin'. But your body adjusts pretty quickly.

So, pick up your bike and ride like the wind.

a.

Im off to South America in April to do 5 months touring around...

Peru to argentina, or most likely that reversed.

Never toured or gone international... Mad planning right now.

I wrote a blog entry about my very first bike trip. I'll copy and paste it here.... I actualy wrote this entry while we were cycling Baja as part of a one-year trip around the USA and Mexico with our kids.

It ain't fair. It just ain't fair. Every cyclist alive reports unbelievable tail winds on this section of the road. Flat, straighter than a yardstick, and awesome tailwinds. We should have flown. But just because we were passing through, the winds shifted. We fought a cross wind all day. We tried to look at the positive - at least it wasn't a headwind!

It was one of those days when you get lost in your thoughts: nothing to distract you at all. Yeah, there was still a lot of cactus - cardons, organ pipe, old man, cholla...but they were all dwarfed somehow. Rather than the huge sprawling bushes we are accustomed to, these were pitiful little things. Even the elephant trees would have been hard pressed to provide enough shade for a cat.

So I got lost in my thoughts...drifting back through the years...and I started thinking about how far I've come. That first tour I took... I hestitate to even call it a tour; it was really more of a comedy of errors than anything else. But it was start. And I was so proud!!

Way back, twenty some-odd years ago, I came up with the cockananny idea of traveling on my bike. I had no gear other than a bike and a sleeping bag, but that didn't stop me. A quick trip to my local K-Mart solved the problem of no rack to put things on. And an hour later I was beaming - my mechanical prowess have paid off!! I had somehow managed to mount that contraption on my bike! My gear found its way into a myriad of plastic bags which then became tied and bungeed onto the rack and I was off! Off on a grand adventure! I must have looked like the quintessential bag lady.

My destination was simple - a dam 100 miles from Boise. At least it sounded like a good idea at the time. The way I figured it, I would pedal 50 miles per day, making a 4-day trip. Perfect for the novice I was. I kissed my mom goodbye and promised to call home every day, and set off to find my rainbow.

Five miles from home I almost crashed. Something was throwing my bike terribly off. Maybe my mechanical prowess wasn't as good as I had imagined it to be... A screw had fallen out of my $5 rack. I found a stick to fit through the holes and continued on my way. Three miles later my stick broke and the rack wobbled dangerously. I replaced it with another. And then another. And another....

50 miles went by quickly - 50 miles of sugar beet fields. And cornfields. And onion fields. And broken screw-sticks. I started looking for a place to sleep. But sleeping in someone's field wasn't an option I considered at the time. 10 more miles went by - 10 miles of sugar beets. And another 10 miles of onions. I was getting tired. I wanted to stop. But the farms showed no signs of letting up.

98 miles from home (and countless broken sticks...) I finally found a spot. In retrospect, it was perfect - a flat grassy spot right next to a meandering creek. But young and naive I was. I know now that nobody knew I was there. And even if they had known, nobody would have cared. But at the time...all I could think about was "What if??"" What if someone saw me come back off the road? What if someone knew I was camped here? What if someone came back here in the middle of the night? I wasn't the least bit concerned about being attacked. Or robbed. Or raped. My greatest nightmare was that someone would come and tell me I couldn't camp here. And I would be forced to climb back on that god-forsaken bicycle again. So I laid there all night long...sure that every passing car was bringing that person who would kick me out. And I didn't sleep a wink.

I was up and about as the first rays of the sun graced the earth with their presence - eager to escape my torture chamber. I pedalled away...and found a wonderful little campground with a pool fed by a hot spring a mere two miles down the road. If only I had consulted my map I would have known that....

I still marvel at the fact that I made it back home in one piece and that I am still touring today. But I learned a lot from that trip. I learned that a good rack is essential. I learned that panniers are a better option than plastic bags. And I learned that it is helpful to consult a map every once in a while. But in many ways things haven't changed at all. I am still footloose and fancy free. I'm still out chasing rainbows. And the magic of bicycing hasn't diminished one bit.

I finally have a new bike, and now I get to plan a bike holiday for next year! I've been wanting to do this for ages but my old bike (which I love dearly) is really way too old - mid 80's model Puch.

So now comes the big decision: where to go? we'll probably have the usual month off and I hate hate hate hills and mountains and climbs of any sort. I was thinking Europe is a good starter, we can do longer weekend trips through Central Europe in the fall and spring. And of course ride to work to train muscles and the back side.

Any suggestions? we'll be camping and water to swim in would be nice.
I was thinking Normandy, the Netherlands or Norway. Everywhere further south seems to have way too many mountains.

Elis: Just go Coastal. Riding along the Northern Coast of Greece, per example, should be fine.
Or what about Rimi to Split? That shouldn't be too bad.

quote:

Originally posted by elAdi:
Elis: Just go Coastal.

Ditto. But in the spirit of the possibilities already mentioned (Normandy, Netherlands, etc). Why not start some place along the southern coast of the Netherlands like Vlissingen and work you way down to Normandy? That could be, depending on the weather, a beautiful trip.

It's looking more and more like Denmark. I've always wanted to see Christiania, there's two seas, and Denmark's highest mountain is a mere 170 meters. Sounds perfect!

Excellent. Expecting a short report and some pics here!

Have you guys ever used Bikemap ?

I just ran across it looking for routes through the Salzkammergut, we'll be spending the next week there. Looks nice, but are the routes good for other areas as well?

For everyone who's done some serious biking, how would you say the costs of cycle touring compare to "regular" traveling? Clearly you're saving a lot of money on transportation (and probably lodging, if you're going the tenting route).

I'm planning on doing a cycle tour of New Zealand this summer and was trying to figure out how much money I'm going to need, but the traditional "how much does a month in x country cost" estimates don't really seem to apply to this kind of traveling.

Arre. I haven't been to NZL in a long time, so I couldn't give you any numbers. So, this is probably more general than you'd like:
As you mention, you save all the money for transportation. So, per example, you take the most extensive Kiwi Experience package (hold on, I need to go throw......OK, back, can't believe I wrote that), you save an immediate NZL$ 1,899. In your pocket. With that money, you can buy a very decent tent for 500 dollars (and still have 1399 to spare). New Zealand is awesome to camp. There are plenty of cheap camping grounds and in rural areas, the farmers will let you camp in one of their meadows for free for sure. So, I'd say you'll also save 10-20 bucks a day on accommodation. That's another 3000 per month. You'll spend a little more on food (if you have a camping stove, you'll obviously be able to balance this out a bit) and much less on alcohol - generally you only make the mistake of trying to pedal 100 kilometers with a terrible hang over once or twice, then you learn your lesson that 2 beers is ENOUGH. Plus, because your body processes liquids more quickly and efficiently, you'll also be drunk on less. At least that seems to be the case with me.

Throw in another 200 - 300 extra bucks on emergency replacements (tires, cables, etc) - although the likelihood of this happening is usually slim.

So, yeah, generally speaking, you should save a lot of money, especially if you are willing to camp.