Is there a specific route or trail you want to hit up this summer? A distance or fitness goal of some sort? Planning a bicycle tour? Bikepacking?
Please share, I’m curious to see what all of you are getting up to for this summer!
Will do some kind of bikepacking here in germany. Havent decided on a route yet. Hope i can find one where i can just spend the nights in my tent
I’ve always wondered how difficult it is to wild camp in Europe. It’s pretty easy here in Canada, but most of our country is relatively empty and sparsely populated.
As far as I know it is Not allowed here in germany, but in my early twenties I had good luck just asking a local farmer if I may put my tent up on theire property, 90% seid yes.
Also if you are not bothering anyone and clean up after yourself most of the time people dont bother you
I’ve been cycling to work every day for a summer internship in Austin. I really enjoy it, does wonders for mental and physical health. Apparently COTA has a bike night but on a weekday so I’m not sure if I’ll try that out since it’s pretty far.
It’s hot here in Austin TX, so if you see someone speeding by on a Brompton with long flowing red hair, a tank top, and short shorts, there’s a likely chance it could be me.
I rode Kopenhagen -> Berlin in May (started as bikepacking, but it was colder than I expected, and I didn’t really have the right gear, so I switched to staying in BnBs for the last 2 days).
I don’t have any concrete plans for other longer tours right now. I’ll probably do the Altmühl Cycle Route over a long weekend, though. It’s pretty close to where I live, so I can just take regional trains to the starting point and back home at the destination.
The flexibility with bike touring is what I love most about it. Being able to switch between camping or accommodations, or just dragging your bike onto another form of transportation to get somewhere faster. Getting to choose what kind of distance you want to cover in a day, where to stop, what kind of routes you want to take…
That sounds like it was a dope trip despite the gear issues! I’d honestly say the only way to truly learn how to pack properly is to fuck it up a couple of times.
I started doing this two years ago, mostly because I couldn’t justify the emissions from flying just to go on holiday and looked for a more local alternative, but I’ve grown to really love the freedom and flexibility bikepacking gives.
My previous trips have always been in summer or early fall and my gear was oriented around that. I wasn’t really expecting the cold nights and strong winds of the Danish coast (especially since May last year was way hotter than this year) and just froze my balls off at night. I did it for two nights because I still appreciated the greater flexibility of just pitching a tent whenever I wanted, but on the third night I just gave in and booked an AirBnB.
It was still a super fun trip, though!
I am just in the process of buying my first road bike, so I’d love to be able to do a 50km tour by the end of the summer. Let’s see if I can make it!