48 hour Ride eat sleep challenge

Ever sat in the office and ask yourself ” How far could I cycle this weekend and be home for dinner on Sunday?” Well I have, and often. I’m smack bang in the middle of a busy summer at work, sick of looking at smelly noisy planes, not cycling enough (mainly due to a recent knee infection) not camping enough and desperately m [...]

Transandalucia Pt 4: Feeling the cold...

What should of been a slick early morning get away from the closed hotel I’d been allowed to sleep in was delaying by half an hour stumbling around in the semi dark fixing a puncture (no comments about tubeless please Mr Rissik). With a quick stop at the fuel station for a sugar and artificial flavour breakfast I quickly got moving to g [...]

Transandalucia pt 3 MTB fun

My rest day in Ronda had me refreshed, and happy to have taken a hotel as the Spanish weather was anything but Spanish (but what can one expect in early February). Being in a tourist town was also a refreshing break from making a fool of myself with my 10 Spanish words every time I wanted a meal. The morning ride was a cheeky 600m ride up to [...]

Transandalucia Pt2 into Malaga

Refreshed from my day off it was time to hit the road again, the wintery storm was still in full swing but was forecast to die down by lunch time. But before lunchtime I had many muddy kilometers to get through. Though hard work the short climb out from Puerto El Bujeo on the boggy forrest road was a nice warm up for things to come. Between [...]

Transandalucia Pt1 (Seville-Cadiz)

It was a cool sunny morning in Seville, after a quick ride around the sights I was eager to get cracking. The decision a fortnight earlier to do my first bike-packing trip in Spain had brought with it a lot of last minute packing stress and making my own frame bags had taken much more time than I’d hoped. The constant packing and re-pac [...]

Packing list 3 weeks bikepacking in S...

Just a couple of days until I fly to Spain to cycle about 1200km (3 weeks) of the Trans-Andalusia mountainbike trail. This is my provisional packing list, based on wild camping down to about freezing point. List is excluding on bike cloths 1. Front roll/harness (2.8kg) : Msr Hubba 1p tent (only outer tent and footprint), Thermarest neo air m [...]

Make your own gear (MYOG) Bikepacking...

With the recent purchase and building of my new bike which is intended to be a mountainbike/ bikepacking monster. It was time to get serious about making my own gear. This is how my first frame bag turned out. So, how do you make a bike packing frame bag? Step 1: Google DIY/Homemade/MYOG bikepacking frame bag. See how other people did, get i [...]

Dragons, bicycles and life

When I recently mentioned on a forum that I’d “rescued” the frame for my new bike someone wrote: ” I think most of us are still reeling from the fact such a thing of beauty could in any way be rescued… it’s like the start of a fairy story, we want to know more, were there dragons involved…” So [...]

An unlikely journey : Visiting ”...

I’d booked the Ijmuiden-Newcastle ferry a week earlier and hadn’t been disappointed by the price. After another summer season working more than I’d like to I was ready to hit the road again. Lacking inspiration, funds and interest for a far away or long trip I went for something closer to home and the fact I hadn’t vis [...]

The Vennbahn by Brompton

A year later than planned I once again teamed up with TravellingTwo point 5 and Stijn for an Easter weekend of cycling the VennBahn. The VennBahn is a converted railway line running from Aachen in Germany to Troisvierges in Luxemburg via Belgium. The route is about 125km and apart from a couple of small hills and some detours its almost flat, [...]

Winter Cycling in Canada

December 2013 I took the next step in my winter cycle touring experiment by heading to Canada to attempt to cycle the Trans Labrador highway. The Trans Lab claims to be one of the longest stretches of road in Canada without services. This winter had the coldest December in more than 10 years, bringing with it extreme winds and temperatures [...]

‘The Canadian’ A journey ...

I’ve always found something strangely romantic about long distance train journeys, slowly meandering across continents in a classic form of mass public transport. Trains bring a touch of class, comfort, space and a social aspect long lost in the modern world of cheap, fast, anti-social cattle transport we call aviation. I arrived on t [...]