The holiday blues you get in the days following a bikepacking trip are like none I’ve ever experienced. You become so reliant on and in tune with the minimal kit you’re carrying that acts like cooking and bathing become simplified and require very little thought. On returning to a full kitchen, or a bathroom full of products, it can feel unnecessary and overcomplicated and you end up missing the lack of options. A task that you’ve been completing on autopilot is now engaging your brain, taking up space in your head; space that you didn’t realise you needed until it became available.
The same goes with getting dressed – on a bikepacking trip you have mastered the art layering and know instinctively which items you need to wear for all weathers, because (hopefully) you have planned your kit perfectly. Getting home to a full drawer of varying weights of base layers and it can be very hard to make choices.
It’s not all bad on the return to reality though. In my experience, having completed a long bikepacking trip my perception of comfort, effort, fatigue and everything else that plays a part in a bike ride has drastically changed. I strongly believe that you can keep going indefinitely if you just keep putting fuel in and you keep your mindset positive. This new found resilience and self confidence can spill over into other areas of your life, because if you feel strong, independent and confident deep in your core, it naturally presents itself when you need it.
It turns out that the overcomplications in life are reversible. The drawer full of too-many options of base layer can be reduced. If you invest in merino, you probably don’t need more than one base for the rest of your cycling career. Knowing what to eat, when, and how much of it on a bike ride is something that requires no thought after getting to know yourself so well on a big trip. My tool kit is now so finely tuned that I never find myself lacking the right bits on a ride.
I learnt a lot during this trip, and on reflection I think the biggest lesson was that I’m far more interested in the scenery between points than just linking nice places together. Planning point-to-point routes somewhere new is challenging, and although there is a real sense of adventure in taking a chance on a route that looks logical on a map, it’s quite likely that the slightly harder option is the prettier route. Making a Google Map with essential information starred on it is advisable, so you don’t get caught out in an area with no signal needing a pharmacy, a bike shop or emergency accommodation.
Finally, who you take the journey with is the most crucial choice you will make. Me and Rhys have never tired of each other’s company, we are equally considerate of each other, but we are motivated by different things. He wants to bag famous climbs, reach the highest point accessible, and generally just use every moment on the bike productively. He is an efficient rider. In contrast, I could lose an hour of my day to watching a train of caterpillars if left to my own devices. I will stop at 5 different shops to see how the biscuit selection differs. I would take a rough river path over a HC climb and not get FOMO about the unbagged summit. Yet, despite our differences, I think we make the perfect team. He was forced to slow down a bit, and the memories that stand out the most are the ones where we stopped to look over a bridge, explore the path next to the planned route, or where we would crawl through a town taking in the surrounding activity. In turn, he has taught me how to fit more of my bikcrastination in, by riding efficiently through the sections of a route that I have no reason or desire to stop on. If I commit to covering a certain distance in a timely fashion, I get longer to mess around at the destination.
This isn’t the end of my bikepacking diaries, it’s actually just the beginning! If you’ve enjoyed reading about my first ever trip then you’ll really enjoy the next one, as the route was far more challenging, there was much more off-road riding, and most importantly… I took a proper camera. If you want to hear about the next trip you’ll have to sign up to the Members’ Newsletter:
Home › Forums › Spanish Bikepacking Diary: Lessons Learned
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