The Best 5 Months of My Life (Tour Content)

Proper staunch effort, fantastic.

Looks like you spent a bit of time off the bike- did you have to make any special efforts for bike security?

Best thread in ages

I’m sitting here thinking, just, well done. It takes bravery to do something that epic. I’m insanely jealous.

Epic trip and good write up – I’d say you’re easily a good enough writer to turn that into a longer more detailed version if you CBA.

Some of my photos I may have added a little filter to bring out the colours, but believe me this one didn’t need a filter

So what happened to the tyre?

Awesome, absolutely bloody awesome.

Best bit for me is the bike choice and the off-road/singletrack/fun part. I guess it would have been tempting to to just stick to the roads and chip away at the massive distance.

@stwhannah – this would make a great magazine article.

I approve of this sort of thing.

Superb effort!

I bet you were a lot fitter and faster when you got home!

Did much stuff break?

Would you do anything different next time?

Fabulous thread.
Certainly was a trip of a lifetime.

How easy was it to find fresh water to keep hydrated?

@ricko1984

• What’s the story with the zip ties and the tyre/rim?
• Why no pictures of the dogs?
• How was riding the single track with such a loaded bike?
• What would you do differently next time?

OK, fine.  I’ll stop using the car to go to the trails and just ride there instead!

Fantastic effort and it looks like an amazing trip.

Thread of the year and its only March.

Absolutely brilliant mate!! very very jealous.

You need to run a Q&A with all the questions.

Awesome adventure. What’s your packing list as I take more than that for an overnight!

This would make a great series of articles in the mag.

@ricko1984 do you realise the negative effect your post has had on the UK’s national productivity? How many people do you think are right now looking at maps and Komoot? How many are spending hours speccing the ideal singletrack bikepacking setup?

That looks amazing.  What a trip!

Thanks for the photos and write up.

That looks and sounds an amazing trip, thanks for sharing!

Fantastic trip and pics. I have been lucky enough to do three multi-month tours. Road based. There is a sense of freedom that comes from having no appointments or dealines. Just packing the bike, riding, camping, repeat. First one was 11 weeks. Using paper maps. No mobile phone. Only contact was using my netbook when I got wifi in any small towns I passed through. Once is never enough.  Domestic arrangements mean I’m unable to do long tours right now. Managed a month last year but I will do another in a few years.

Amazing trip!

Best bit for me is the bike choice and the off-road/singletrack/fun part. I guess it would have been tempting to to just stick to the roads and chip away at the massive distance.

100% this, makes it much closer to something I can relate to.

I bet your bicep/glove/knee tanlines were incredibly defined by the end of it!

Awesome thread, thank you for taking the time to post.

Can you show us the route on a map somehow? (turn it into a Strava segment maybe 😉 )

Fantastic achievement!

I gave up a hiking trip in Greece due to the dogs, so kudos for persevering!

I thought this would be worth a read and am glad I came back to it when I had the time… I’m slightly jealous (having cancelled both my personal biggish – but nowhere near as a big as yours – ride plans due to COVID and post financial crash job loss). I’m also impressed by the commitment to ride big, wild stuff on your own. I think that’s quite something and I know it would have held me back. Thanks for sharing

oops..didn’t mean to post those last photos twice

Anyways thanks again all for taking an interest in the trip and nice to know that my little weird idea dreamed up a couple of years ago struck a chord with so many of you.

Now I’ve had a chance to go through your questions, I’ll start responding to them:

For powering electronics essentially I had 2No sets of Eneloop Pro batteries for my GPS that I rotated after charging in a mini charger that I had. I would usually get 3-4 days life out of each set. The same charger also charged the batteries for my head torch.

My phone had 2No sets of batteries that again I would rotate after charging. With the phone mostly switched off or in flight mode, again I would get 3-4 days out of a battery.

The above would be charged up whenever I stayed in some accommodation or dropped by a cafe/ restaurant.

For a music obsessive like myself it was also important to have an MP3 player to listen to music in my tent at night, although the temperamental like b@gger wouldn’t turn on sometimes.

I also had a backup powerpack, which also doubled as the battery for my Magicshine light, but I didn’t end up using it that much in all honesty.

Generally had no issues with running out of power, unless on the occasion that I arrived somewhere I hadn’t anticipated different plug sockets (Such as arriving in Switzerland or older Italian residences) and so would have to find a shop next day that sold an adapter.

I’m currently bring my GPX’s up to date to take account of unplanned route changes, which there were quite a lot of.

I’d plan my routes using the Komoot mtb planning function and cross reference that against Google Maps/ Streetview, itineraries off mtb websites and scouring Youtube videos.

In general I’d have a fairly good idea what I was letting myself in for, but sometimes it just wasn’t possible with the information available. This led to some surprises both good and bad.

Croatia in particular had a knack for paths/ dirt loads disappearing into nothing, usually with a nice big spiders web across it to catch unsuspecting cyclists. This was a shame as there is so much potential for great mtb riding in the country. To balance it out though Croatia also had some of my favourite trails of the tour.

Holy cow. Amazing. You weren’t kidding when you said you were going light!

Wow. Awesome.

Looks amazing. Makes me want to do something similar again.

Think I’ve ridden that path before.

Awesome stuff, thanks for sharing!

I did a lot more wild camping earlier on in the tour.

Generally it was fine, but I tried to keep myself out of view, which led to some less than ideal dirt patches in woodland. Still it’s all part of the fun though and I did end up having some pretty nice spots as well, such as below:

Later on after my second round of being sick and heading into increasingly wilder places in the south (With wilder animals) my resolve cracked and I mostly stuck to official accommodation.

With regards to the dog situation, if I weren’t far enough away to get a good head start, I’d usually just stop, get off my bike, place it between me & them and calmly talk to them. Usually after a bit they’d calm down/ lose interest and wonder off. Sometimes a local would step in to give the dogs a good talking to and I’d make my escape.

Always kept some stones in my top tube bag just in case they didn’t get the message.

With regards to the bike its always difficult to choose one that meets all kinds of riding you’d encounter on a tour such as this, but yeah I think I chose right with the full suss.

It definitely came into it’s own on a lot of the trails in the alps and some of the rockfests in Croatia, but even if the going was smooth or asphalt I never felt begrudging of the knobbly tyres. I just accepted it as part of the package, along with the funny looks from the other tourer’s I met along the way 😉.

Nice one Alpin, somewhere in the Ritten?

Packing list for the weight weenies:

Alpkit 20L bar bag

Ortileb 11L seat bag

Revelate 4L frame bag

Revelate jerrycan bag

Btwin gas tank bag

Salomon 20L backpack

Trekkertent Stealth 1 tent with carbon posts

Thermarest Neoair XLite Torso length sleeping pad

Mammot Hydrogen down sleeping bag

Sea to Summit dry bag

1 x Lightweight running boxers

1 x Decathlon running trousers

1 x Icebreaker long sleeve top

1 x Knee length compression socks

Montane down jacket

Some Amazon aqua shoes

Small Karrimor dry bag

1 x Endura padded shorts

1 x Endura Singletrack Lite shorts

1 x Endura long sleeve top

1 x socks

Scarpa Crux shoes

Giro Montaro helmet

Rab Nexus hooded mid layer

Endura Hummvee Lite gloves

Montane Minimus jacket

Gorewear Paclite waterproof trousers

Sealskin gloves

TLD knee pads

Lightweight buff

Ray Ban Wayfarer sunglasses

Inov8 2L bladder

Katadyn BeFree 1L filter bottle

2 x spare bladder bite nipples

Udderly Smooth chamois cream

SPF 50 sun cream

Handgel

Toothbrush and toothpaste

Wet wipes

Small bottle of shower gel

Microfibre towel

The Deuce #2 UL trowel

Toilet roll

Vango compact stove

Gas canister

Toaks 450L titanium mug

Plastic spoon

Leatherman tool

Black diamond headtorch with spare rechargeable batteries

Cateye rear light

Magicshine Monteer 3500 front light with helmet mount and 5,200mAh battery/ powerpack

Garmin Etrex 30 GPS with spare Eneloop Pro rechargeable batteries

Small battery charger

Plug adapter and leads

Samsung Galaxy XCover phone with spare battery

Waterproof phone case

Sandisk Clip MP3 player

Paper and a pencil

PDF phrase sheet

PDF itinerary/ information sheet

Copies of important documents

Passport

2 x debit cards, 1 x credit card, driving licence and GHIC card

Toolwrap with multi tool, tubeless repair kit, tube repair kit, tyre levers, shock pump, tyre pump, cassette tool, wire cutters, small adjustable spanner, dry lube, rag, 2No spare mech hangers, 3no spare brake pads, spare cable, zip ties, wrap of duct tape, dental floss, spare spokes.

Super glue, repair patches for tent/ sleeping mat

First aid kit, various pills/ gels, moisturiser cream, lip balm

Ankle support

Knee support

Yes I did only wear one pair of padded shorts for the whole trip!

Good lord, some trip tht. Quite inspirational and (selfishly) depressing at the same time. Liking the bike choice.

How was it landing back in the UK, dare I ask?

Jimmy – quite an adjustment to say the least.

I think I spent the whole of November and December in perpetual holiday blues mode, after the initial ‘its nice to be back’ honeymoon period. It didn’t help though coming back to what seemed like the most miserable winter in recent memory.

Hence any fitness I did have has kind of gone off a cliff and now probably in the worst shape I have been in a long time. I’m confident though that as spring progresses I’ll get it back.