Adventure Cycling

What is adventure cycling?

Slowly over a number of years I’ve come to this understanding; call it my manifesto for adventure biking.

• I will cycle mainly off road. I do everything I can to avoid sharing space with cars: over 80% of cycling deaths involve a motor vehicle. My mantra is no traffic, low traffic, slow traffic. Off-road definitely does not (always) mean muddy and rocky paths in the middle of nowhere, much of the time this will be cycle paths or lovely gravel farm tracks.

• I will cycle in nature. I love forests (shinrin-yoku). Though anything goes from flat canal side tracks to high mountain plateaus and passes.

• I want to cycle from point to point, not in a circle. I want a journey and for me that means not ending up where you started. I’ll often do this in Denmark on even short rides: taking the train and cycling home.

• There should be something that connects the route to the land. I look for a purpose and not simply a destination. I’ll try to find culturally and naturally interesting routes and places. The routes could be historic shepherding tracks or pilgrimmage trails. Places are where people have made their impact: from tiny depopulated villages to hi-tech architecture in great metropolises.

• I’m no linguist but I try to understand places from the people that live there. Perhaps that is discussions over lunch on the marble quarrying industry in Carrara or attempting to order a coffee from an old couple in the remote Algarve mountains that hasn’t been a bar in decades.

• I take my own time. This is not a race. Every route (even those I’ve done two hundred times as fitness) is an experience. Stop and take pictures. On a bike you’re close to the world around you. Appreciate the warm sun or the biting cold wind. The scents of unknown flowers or fields of cabbages. The sounds of squealing pigs or villagers shouting.

• Wherever I go there will be some uncertainty. Perhaps this is what really creates the adventure. Is that stream ahead 5cm or a metre deep? Will I reach my destination before the temperature gets above 40°C? What if I encounter a wild animal? What happens if my bike fails and I can’t fix it. These are all plays on “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”. If you travel enough, adventure will find you. It’s your ability to respond that matters.

What adventure cycling is not

• It doesn’t have to be physically difficult. Almost anybody that can use a bike can go adventure cycling. In fact almost anybody that can be put on a bike can go adventure cycling: I’ve seen nursing home residents securely packed into the front of cargo bikes out and about around the hills of Odsherred in Denmark.

• It’s not necessarily expensive. I’ve certainly taken some expensive trips, but when I started on an old city bike it was just a way of keeping fit and avoiding the train: I could argue it saved me money. There’s hundreds of people out there cycling around the world on not much more than a few Euros a day.

• It’s not what people might normally call “adventure”. It’s not about 4000km of unsupported bivouacking in the remote forests of Kyrgyzstan eating berries and filtering your water through a LifeStraw. I appreciate the people that do it but I’ve got just as much time for anybody pushing themselves outside of their normal envelope, for example those nursing home residents above.

Somethings I’ve done

My approach to gravel cycling / adventure biking has manifested itself in my off-road trip on the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome, one week a year between 2018 and 2022. More recently I’ve done some trips in Denmark with an increasing bikepacking focus. And I’ve now started cycling home from the end of the world (2023-)