I fell in love with cycling when I was a kid. Ten years old, I raced around the estate with my friends on a second-hand bike I’d had from a cousin. That bike was battered, covered in Pokémon stickers and about three sizes too big for me. Yet, it was my earliest passport to adventure. Freed from the confines of my garden, I was free to travel as far as my legs would pedal me. We toured the town, pulling wheelies and building jump ramps. We hit the trails through the woods and envisioned ourselves as MotoGP riders racing through the trees.
Eventually, the internet caught up with us and by the time I hit my teens, my bike was abandoned in my garage, broken and rusty. My free time with friends was no longer spent exploring our hometown, but playing Xbox online from the comfort of our homes.
It would be nearly another decade before I climbed back onto a bike. Again, it was a second-hand rust bucket, given to me by a friend so I could cycle to work in the summer and save £20 a week on bus fare. That summer was 2012 and I watched Bradley Wiggins become the first British rider to win the Tour de France, and then weeks later ride to Olympic gold in our home Games.
I was hooked on road cycling and spent the rest of that year saving every penny I could spare from my part-time job to buy my own road bike. It took me 6 months to save up the £350 I needed to buy that bike, a Claude Butler San Remo. Suddenly I had that freedom to explore again, but this time my legs would carry me further than the woods up the road. Mile after mile I explored the rest of the county, each Sunday ride getting longer and longer, 30…50…70…100 miles!
I streamlined myself in lycra, just like my heroes in Le Tour de France. Every ride I imagined myself as one of them, tucked low onto the handlebars as I descended and then out of my seat riding hard into the hills.
As I moved through that winter into 2013, I watched an interview with Sean Conway by GCN. He talked about something called bikepacking. Instantly I was intrigued and inspired. I’d raced through the country lanes near my home and I needed somewhere new to ride, and I could only think of one place I wanted to go. The place I had watched Wiggins ride to victory the previous summer, the home of cycling, France.
So in a pub one night I proudly told all my friends I was going to get on my bike and ride to Paris and back. Which is exactly what I went on to do that summer. 500 Miles of cycling in one week. I followed maps on my phone as I headed from one Airbnb to another, enjoying the glorious landscapes of northern France.
I caught the bug pretty quickly and within the next two years, I had trips through Wales and the Cotswolds, before I set off on a two-week tour of Europe in 2018. The experience I had built up from those earlier trips gave me the confidence to make this one a real adventure. I landed in Brussels with a bike and a tent, but no plans. For those 2 weeks, I followed my nose and wild camped where I saw fit as I rode through Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
After that, I took an unplanned break from bikepacking. I missed a summer due to not having enough time off work and then a worldwide pandemic led me down the backpacking route, completing the Coast to Coast and other national trails. Life was stressful and putting some boots on felt like an easier way of getting out the door than dealing with bike maintenance.
After such a long break away from the bike, it feels like the right time to dust it off and get back on the saddle. I’ve got 10 days off work this October and plan to head north to Scotland to spend that time cycling through the highlands. Today was the starting point of that trip. A nice easy ride on a weekend morning. Just like I took all those years ago.
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