Photo by Tom Allen

Here are five reasons I’d urge all experienced (or budding) cycle-tourists to give it a shot:

1. Challenge: Winter cycle touring throws a lot of new considerations into the mix. After 18 months on the road in more temperate climes, I needed to push myself, broaden my experience and learn some new skills.
2. Beauty: The ethereal sunlight and snow-clad lands of the far north might be as familiar to locals as grey skies and patchwork fields are back home, but for me this harsh spectacle was rarely short of breathtaking.
3. Solitude: This region is sparsely populated, and the back country is all but deserted during winter, save for a few skiers and skidoo enthusiasts. Need a place to unwind and reflect? Head for the Arctic.
4. Hospitality: “We’re as cold as the weather”, said one Norwegian lady. But, although a world away from the hospitality of the Middle East, I was often taken in from the bitter cold for food and a place to sleep.
5. Safety: If you do get into a pickle, the fact is that you’re still on the road, probably in range of mobile phone signal, and therefore never far from help. You’re not so far from home. It’s not a polar expedition, even though your clothing, camping setup and ice-beard might have a lot in common with one.

Not convinced? Excellent! Here are some handy reasons why it’s a really silly idea…

Continue reading this article @ Tom’s Bike Trip

The plan was extremely simple: cycle to a river, float down it, ride home. It would be the first time I’d paddled a watercraft since a school trip when I was 10, so it wouldn’t be anything earth-shaking, and I still hadn’t shaken off the nasty infection that had taken me out a few weeks previously. But it would be a proof of concept, at least — first-hand evidence of the feasibility of a bike-rafting trip.

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Photo: tomsbiketrip.com

I felt compelled to write to your organisation after spending several days cycling from Dover to the East Midlands, having just arrived from continental Europe. My intention was to make this journey as enjoyable and safe as possible, rather than to cover the distance in the minimum possible amount of time. Naturally therefore I looked to the National Cycle Network, in search of off-road and quiet routes through the country.

Flickr photo by tom.ride-earth.org.uk

May I, then, congratulate you on having constructed one of the most comprehensive cycling infrastructures that I have come across during my bicycle travels in 34 countries.

The UK’s cycling provisions stand out for many reasons. The first and most obvious is that they exist. From a global perspective, this immediately puts the UK far ahead of the game. Given everything I’ve seen here, from long-distance routes spanning Britain in her entirety, to urban awareness schemes in almost every significant settlement, to safe cycle-paths between particular amenities and points of interest, it’s difficult to understand why the system is on the receiving end of such constant criticism in the media. I guess people don’t realise how lucky they are!

Continue reading this letter @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

Cappucino

Trav­el­ling with a part­ner drastic­ally changes the dynamic of bicycle tour­ing. I can’t deny I’ve enjoyed this rel­at­ive hedon­ism, because I am pas­sion­ate about food and cook­ing when I have the oppor­tun­ity to par­take of it, and these are three of the culin­ary spe­ci­al­it­ies of Italy, which also remain very afford­able as long as you avoid the tour­ist hot­spots — which on a bike trip is rel­at­ively easy.

It’s been a wholly dif­fer­ent exper­i­ence, in fact, this final ride. In all hon­esty, I’d made up my mind to put my own desires and ways of doing things to the back of my mind. This was to be Tenny’s trip, not mine – I’ve spent plenty of time explor­ing Europe in the past, so it was my job to gently coax her through the pro­cess of trav­el­ling to Eng­land and enjoy­ing the exper­i­ence of get­ting there by bicycle (and carry all the luggage).

She is still very much find­ing her feet, and it’s been quite a test, as we’re not well matched in stam­ina or exper­i­ence, but after a month I can feel that she is begin­ning to adapt, and to learn the les­sons I learnt when I star­ted out; the biggest of which is that the point of trav­el­ling by bicycle is not to reach a des­tin­a­tion, but to watch the world unfold on the way there. For someone like her who has only ever boarded a vehicle in anti­cip­a­tion of reach­ing the end of the jour­ney – and that’s most people alive today – it’s actu­ally a far more dif­fi­cult adapt­a­tion than it sounds.

Stealth-Camping in Puglia

We’ve wild-camped a few times, which is some­thing Andy and Mark and I never did in West­ern Europe (aside from one night in a coun­try park on the out­skirts of Hunt­ing­don). Back then, we had developed a highly refined pro­cess of giv­ing local people the oppor­tun­ity to help us find a field/shed/garden/garage to sleep in, which was a great way of get­ting ourselves into all sorts of unusual situ­ations, and we were all very much on the same wavelength when it came to want­ing to do that.

Continue reading this article on Tom’s Blog, Ride Earth.

Istanbul's Golden Horn

Com­ing back to this once-familiar con­tin­ent has been a shock. Not in the sense that leav­ing was, because everything new for me now was once nor­mal, so it’s more of a punch in the belly than a slap in the face. Two weeks in Italy has dredged the depths of my memor­ies, and float­ing to the sur­face are the deeply-sunk taken-for-granteds, the ingrained atti­tudes and the styles of liv­ing I’d been per­fectly used to in what now feels like a dis­tant and quite child­ish dream.

Resting in town square

Well, it was always going to be like this. On pre­vi­ous, fleet­ing vis­its such as when I hitched home and back to Armenia last sum­mer, I was on a mis­sion. I didn’t spend too much time dwell­ing on what I saw. Yes, everything looked cleaner, shi­nier, richer, of course, as it flashed past the win­dow of the car or truck or train.

But fully immersed in a slow bike trip, it’s hard not to linger on the dif­fer­ences. Europe feels less like a deserving home for me and the fel­low inhab­it­ants than it did before. Instead it feels like an enclave, a fenced play­ground; on one side, the rest of the world, those with noth­ing, Europe and the tiny lofty West com­ing to them — one-way, daily — through tele­vi­sion news and sub­titled Hol­ly­wood. On the other side of the bur­eau­cratic bar­rier — that’s the 1,792 bor­der con­trol points, the infra-red cam­eras, the razor-wire fences and the men with guns pro­tect­ing the European Union from the ungrate­ful hordes of asylum-seekers whose com­pan­ions have died in deserts and at sea in the hope of liv­ing in a chip­board box attached to an aban­doned build­ing in an Italian port — people seem to wander around, half-asleep, dis­trac­ted by iPhones and Face­book and own­ing a small car and where to buy the cheapest tomatoes.

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As a guy on your own, it seems you very quickly slip into a target-oriented kind of stupor. Sure, this equals large dis­tances covered and for­mid­able chal­lenges over­come. Man’s indom­it­able spirit, and all that. But this time – for this last, envi­able stretch of footloose free­dom between here and the fin­ish line – I’m determ­ined to slow it all down as much as possible.

Pit stop during one of Tom's adventures / photo by Tom

Many times I’ve often found myself day­dream­ing about what it would be like to ride home through Europe. Now Tenny and I find ourselves at the port of Bari in south­ern Italy, Europe’s giant open-air museum.

I must admit I was sur­prised to find that sum­mer is still very much in full swing here – so much so that many of the res­id­ents are escap­ing the heat and humid­ity in other parts of Italy or abroad. Today’s a sticky 36-degree day, and the nar­row streets are hot and quiet, shut­ters drawn, park­ing spaces empty.

Continue reading this article on Tom’s blog, Ride Earth.

Sleeping under the Saharan stars / Flickr photo by tom-ride-earth.org

Andy and I managed to procure product sponsorship for most of our major pieces of equipment, and this article will explain how we went about it, and what worked and what didn’t. I hope that it will save you some time and increase your chances of success.

But before deciding whether or not to pursue sponsorship for your trip, you need to decide whether your time would be better spent working in a full-time job to earn the equivalent amount of money. Seeking sponsorship is an intensely time-consuming, frustrating and regularly disappointing process, for which you will need skin like old boot leather, the persistence of black shower mould and absolutely no hobbies or significant others to attend to.

Continue reading this article @ Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

Evening campfire / Flickr photo by Tom Allen

I thought I’d single-handedly hit upon a brilliant and novel way to travel that ticked all the boxes – the great outdoors, sleeping rough, the physical challenge, and using my own initiative to get to my destination.

In short, I was embarrassingly naive.

I soon came to realise that, on the whole, all good ideas have already been thought of. My ever-growing travel plans and long hours scrutinizing world maps were entirely insignificant. Thomas Stevens cycled round the world more than 120 years ago. Thousands more have done so since. Hundreds of books had been published, online communities created. My trip was a drop in the ocean.

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Packing in Moscow / Flickr photo by Tom Allen

Choosing to travel exclusively by land meant that the excursion was really much more than just a bike ride in Mongolia. It was also an opportunity to spend a few days watching the world go by, and to experience one of the world’s great train journeys – the Trans-Mongolian from Moscow to Ulaan Baatar (and back). There was also the logistical challenge of it all – anyone who’s been to the Caucasus will know that the borders are in something of a pickle.

96-hour train journey back to Moscow

Having no need to visit any Siberian cities on our return leg, we took a coupé (a 4-berth compartment) on the direct train to Moscow from the Mongolian capital. As luck would have it, nobody else was booked in the same compartment, so we had no issues with our luggage – a bike box, 3 drybags, a pannier, two bar-bags and six wheels were all safely stowed away with room to sleep.

Not long into the 96-hour journey I began to crave company…

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth – Tom’s World Bicycle Travel Blog

This, my first ever bike trip, was about trial-and-error, climbing the steep learning curve of our inexperience. It was the most fun I’d ever had on a bike, or ever have since.

Until, that is, I took my bike to Mongolia.

Tom in Mongolia / Flickr photo by ride-earth

The last few weeks of riding have fulfilled the desire that inspired the very conception of Ride Earth – to ‘take mountain-biking to it’s logical conclusion’, as we originally put it. One of the intrinsic attractions of bicycle-travel is the feeling of liberty, to go at your own pace, under your own steam, on a route of your choosing, but in practice you are generally limited to roads or tracks, be they paved or unpaved. Out on the vast steppes of North-East Asia, it is possible to take a bearing to the next settlement and then to quite literally follow the compass.

Continue reading this article @ Ride Earth