It’s a bikepacker’s life for us! 🚲🚲
A cycling trip changes your every day life completely … Here, every now and then, we give you a little glimpse into our lives as bikepackers. Enjoy! 😊
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 13:
In the past year we have met many other bikepackers on our way. One thing we have noticed:
We are different than most of them… Why?
1. Our bikes are really heavy ⚖️ – after so many people asking about their weight, we actually weighed them: Christina’s bike plus luggage weighs 50kg, Jacob’s 60kg. Now you can imagine why we don’t like hills 😉!
You may wonder why they are so heavy…
In the picture you can see some of the things that probably not many bikepackers take with them, e.g. hiking boots, a super heavy small laptop, diaries, coffee machine, metal bottles,…
We try to make environmentally friendly choices, so we try to avoid buying plastic. We also bought the majority of our equipment second hand, paying less attention to its weight. While most other bikepackers literally count every gram, we have got plenty of glas jars with us 😂.
2. We are primarily tourists 📷 – our bikes are our means of transportation to get from A to B.
3. We are travelling for a longer period of time than most other bikepackers. ⏳
4. We don’t use click pedals, but actually cycle in barefoot shoes and woollen shoes 😉.
5. We don’t wear cycling clothes, apart from cycling shorts (we call them „nappies“ 😉) under our normal pairs of trousers.
6. We usually don’t cycle more than 70km on a cycling day. Our average might be 60km by now, at the beginning it was probably 50km.
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 12:
Take nothing, but pictures. Leave nothing, but footprints.
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 11:
We have had our first puncture…but we suppose after 9246 km that is OK 🙄. Nevertheless, we hope this is and will be our only flat tyre for the rest of our trip! 😁🚲🤞
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 10:
Our bikes are not only our means of transportation for getting from point A to B, but also: we couldn’t carry all our stuff without them! They are very essential to us getting anywhere on this tour! 😉
So from time to time we get them checked. That’s what we have done in Göteborg – we picked them up again today, have got new cassettes and new chains (so shiny! 😁), and are ready to move on tomorrow! 😎
Thanks at bikefixx for doing it within 2 days! 👌🚲
Still the case:
So far we haven’t had any big problems and still not a single flat tyre 😁💪💛! Fingers crossed!! 🤞
But:
Jacob’s front rack broke in Denmark… We put some of the „kitchen stuff“ from his two front bags in other bags, Jacob fixed it provisionally with two straps and we’ll just continue like this. It would be too risky to get it fixed for now. Fingers crossed it holds until we get home!!🤞
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 9:
Obstacles on the way
When we don’t follow official cycling routes with signs, we let ourselves lead by a navigation app. Most of the times that’s fine – but we have also come across the wildest suggestions of where to cycle and have ended up
– at beaches,
– in front of steps,
– at creeks without bridges,
– in front of steep hiking trails with huge gaps,
– at motorways,
– at private paths with barriers,…
Often it’s ok and we just have to take a street further on, but sometimes this has also „cost us“ many kilometres of detours and quite a few nerves 😉😅…
Some impressions.
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 8:
People keep asking us how much our bikes including our luggage weigh. We don’t know. And we are not sure we want to know. It’s probably something between 2 and 100kg 😉😜.
See for yourselves …
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 7:
Putting down our tent
The video was taken in September 2021, in Palavas-les-Flots in France.
Real life duration: 40 minutes.
Song: „The Outdoor Type“ by The Lemonheads, album „Car Button Cloth“. Copyright by Fire Records.
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 6:
We have got used to seeing our own bikes packed with lots of bags and sometimes we forget that people are amazed by the bikes‘ appearance… Until we see other bikepackers! 🚲
We have met quite a few of them – from Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, USA, Canada and Colombia. It’s always nice chatting with them, finding out what routes they are doing and what adventures they have already encountered.
The bikepacker in the picture is Volker from northern Germany. We met him in Biarritz, France, have been keeping in touch and met again in Spain and Portugal. He is a very impressive man, having cycled from the north of Germany to the south of Portugal in two and a half months, having managed almost 5000km!
We are hoping for many more bikepacker friendships liks this one 💛
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 5:
Putting up our tent
Our daily routines have shifted for this year. We don’t go to work every day and prepare ourselves in the morning. We have got different routines now – this is one of them 😊.
The video was taken in September, in Palavas-les-Flots in France. The ground was hard to work with and we haven’t got a hammer with us for the tent pegs 😉.
Real life duration: 26 minutes.
Song: „The Same Everyday“ by the Slackers, album „The Great Rocksteady Swindle“. Copyright by Hellcat Records.
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 4:
Taking a train with a bike…
It isn’t always easy, we know that from train rides in Germany. That’s also one of the reasons we tried to postpone the day of taking a train as long as possible.
With our pace being quite slow and having spent a long time in France with many rest/sightseeing days, we decided to finally take a train from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Coast. In fact two trains.
The first train ride was absolutely terrible:
– no elavators for bikes at the stations (but also not for wheelchairs or pushchairs) – so we had to carry our fully loaded bikes up and down the stairs
– steep steps to get on the train (very nice when you have to hurry because there are more bikes behind you and the train only stops for 3 minutes at the station)
– very narrow doors to get on the train and through to our carriage
– no space for luggage next to the bikes
The second one was already much better:
Same level floor to get on the train, spot for bikes close to the door with enough space for luggage – but still no elevators at the stations …
We have also already taken a train in Spain and are quite surprised about how well that went! No problems here… Why can’t it always be that easy? No wonder no one takes the bike with them on trains…
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 3:
Welcome to our home! We love the inside of our 3-people-tent, to us it feels like home wherever we are on our journey!
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 2:
Packing up for a day of cycling… Every time we pack our bikes, we are surprised that all our small and big bags fit! We have gotten used to cycling with all our luggage – now it even feels weird when we sometimes cycle without it.
A bikepacker’s life 🚲🚲 – number 1:
Laundry days… Being creative with hanging our clothes. We do have quite a lot of laundry days as we don’t have so many clothes with us. 🌞
Cycling for planet A 