What was my first bikepacking trip like?

I was sitting in a pub in 2015 when I first mentioned the idea of cycling to Paris. I’d had a few drinks at the time, so my friends must have thought I was joking because they all burst out laughing. I was 22 years old and other than a lad’s holiday to Magaluf when we were 18, I’d never been abroad alone before. It was easy to see why they thought it was funny.

I wasn’t joking though. I’d fallen in love with cycling during Bradley Wiggins’ back-to-back Tour de France and Olympics wins and had been spending my weekends ever since out on a road bike I had saved up to buy. 

I was obsessed with the idea of going to France. It felt like a place all inspiring cyclists should go, the home of cycling, brought to life every summer as hundreds of professional cyclists raced through the colourful, sunflower-filled countryside and over bigger mountains than anything I had ever seen in person.

I wouldn’t be able to go there and race though, so instead decided I would do something different. I would bikepack my way to Paris and back, propelling myself and all my belongings by two wheels and my legs. Before I could do that though I had to ask myself a few questions.

What is Bikepacking and what did I need? 

The difference between Bikepacking and Bicycle Touring is a contentious debate in the community, but to me, they’re the same thing. Both involve sticking some bags on a bike and cycling off into the distance for at least a few days. 

There were a few things I would need to get to start my first trip. I had a bike already but had to buy a rack to put over my back wheel and some pannier bags that would clip onto the rack and carry my stuff. Knowing I would be spending big portions of the trip away from towns and villages, I also had to carry anything I might need in an emergency such as spare bike parts, puncture repair kits and as many water bottles as I could fit onto my bike. The final thing I packed was my clothes. Two sets of cycling kits and a set of regular clothes for when I wasn’t on the bike.

How was I going to plan the route?

As this was my first cycle tour I was pretty naive in planning the trip. I had a week off work, so the only realistic destination would be Paris. Specifically, the Champs-Élysées where the Tour finishes each year. To get there I would catch a train to New Haven and then a ferry across to Dieppe, where my cycling would begin. Once in France I would cycle down to Paris and then loop back up via Le Harve, finishing with a couple of days riding along the coast. 

I’d decided I was going to stop with Airbnb hosts as accommodation. Airbnb at the time was still relatively new, and most of the hosts were people with a spare room you could stop in rather than the vast amounts of private apartments on there now. It was also a lot cheaper, with prices ranging from £3-£15. 

I pre-booked somewhere for each night, roughly 50 miles apart, and then to plan my route I literally just put the start and end location into Google Maps and followed that (A mistake I learned very quickly).

The Trip – Summer 2016

The next summer eventually came around and all of my mediocre planning was done. A friend, Ian, was coming with me. We set off early in the morning, filled with excitement and nerves, we navigated our way across the country with the bikes for the first time. Ian had been at university for the past couple of years so was pretty used to being independent by now, but at 22 I’d done very little for myself. Planning this trip and then actually having the guts to go through with it was a big step into the unknown for me. It’d be easy to point out that I wasn’t doing this alone, but Ian hadn’t even thought to bring a spare inner tube, so that clears up how much of the planning was done by me. 

It took us a day and a night to get to Dieppe, stopping with our first AirBnB host in New Haven before an early morning ferry. The port in New Haven is tiny compared to Dover, but it was a breeze getting through with the bikes, bypassing the long line of bars to make sure we were the first ones at the bar.

Day One – We hopped off the ferry at lunchtime on Monday and only had a short distance to ride to our first AirBnB, 26 miles. After a quick lunch, where I embarrassed myself by trying to order in French and ending up with 2 savlory sausages and corn on the cob, we began our ride. Straight out of Dieppe and into the countryside of northern France, the riding was easy with smooth roads and patient drivers, something we weren’t used to in England. It took us a few hours to cover the 26 miles, but we arrived early evening and were greeted by our first host, Justine. Justine and her husband were Interior Designers and Landscape gardeners and had built their house themselves. As you could guess, it was beautiful inside and out, and we sat in their garden watching the sunset whilst chatting with them both about their life in France.

Day Two – This would be the day the real cycling would begin. After a French breakfast provided by Justine, which was better than anything I’d ever eaten before, fresh home-baked croissants with fruit jam made from her garden, we set off early. It was more of the day before as we glided through mile after mile of countryside, treated with a warm clear day. Typically, we would take turns riding at the front whilst the other drafted (a cycling term for ridding close behind someone, which was more energy efficient). This was the day we realised following Google Maps wasn’t going to work as it kept directing us to busy A-Roads. Instead, we designed our own style of direction called town hopping. This involved finding around 8-10 small towns between you and the final destination and then following road signs from one to the next. As long as you knew the name of the next town it was pretty easy to navigate and most of the roads were quiet. 

We arrived late afternoon in Beauvais, where our next host lived. The new route and getting lost a few times, meant we had cycled more than we planned, and we finished the day one 70 miles, which was the most me or Ian had ever ridden in one go. Our hosts that night were a French family who were obsessed with cycling. We enjoyed a beer with them whilst they showed us photos of their trip to Paris earlier that year to watch the Tour.

Day 3 – Paris was our final destination on day 3, and knowing that we were going to have to cycle further than planned, we set off early. We also had a few tasks to deal with first. Ian’s tyre had deteriorated to the point he had a massive hole in it and kept getting punctures. In the first two days he had used up all my spare innertubes, so needed to get to a bike shop to get it fixed. We went off in search of one, but after an hour of cycling around to find the only one on Google, it turned out they only sold bikes and not spare parts so we had to give up. 

The delay with the bike shop had cost us all the extra time we had gained by leaving early, and as we made our way to Paris it quickly became apparent we wouldn’t be getting there until late evening. Our route planning didn’t go very well either. Town hopping works when you’re in the countryside, but doesn’t work when you’re cycling into a city, as the roads become a maze of numbers and junctions. After one unfortunate wrong turn, we ended up on a motorway and had to climb over a fence to get off. 

When we did eventually get back onto a cycle legal road, things didn’t get much better when at 8 pm, and still not in Paris yet, my chain snapped. A problem I had not foreseen and had no idea how to fix. Luckily Ian’s mum had given him a chain tool, and despite a few failed attempts and a couple of hours working out how to use it properly, we did eventually get it fixed by 10 pm. 

After all of the faffing about, the day felt like a disaster. We’d underestimated the distance again, finishing on 90 miles, and had multiple mechanical issues which took up most of the day. I’d be pretty keen to put this down as the worst day of the trip if it wasn’t for that final hour riding through Paris. The city comes alive at night, and the bikes took us to places most tourists wouldn’t see. The ride along the river, past the Eiffel Tower, lit up like a golden arrow into the sky, felt almost romantic as we passed locals outside bars laughing into the night. The city was bursting with people out enjoying themselves.

Day 4 – After the disastrous events of the day before, we treated ourselves to a morning off the bikes and took the metro into the city to spend a few hours looking around. We visited the Champs-Élysées and the Eiffel Tower, before heading to Notre Dame. France was still on high alert after the Charlie Hebdo shooting the year before, and just the previous day, Disneyland had been evacuated due to a bomb scare. Everywhere we turned there were armed police and military. 

Despite the tension of the police, we did manage to enjoy the few hours of relaxing in the city, but eventually had to go back for our bikes and start riding again. Our next AirBnB was 28 miles along a cycle route from the city, so navigating it was pretty easy, and the cycling was no sweat.

Day 5 – By the fifth day we were settled into our bikepacking life on the road. This had been our longest pre-planned ride, so we knew it was probably going to be another 90 miles again. The town hopping navigation was back to working well, and we built a good habit of riding hard for an hour and then stopping for some food and a break, which varied between 10 minutes too an hour. It was a bit of a slog again, and we didn’t arrive at our AirBnB in Rouen until 11 pm again. Our host that night was an old French lady who lived alone in a tower block. It had been the only available option on AirBnB and had also only cost us £3 each. Her apartment was a little dated (by about 40 years) but she was a lovely host, waiting outside in the dark to greet us and then offering to cook us dinner so we could get a shower before bed. Despite her age, she was still a keen cyclist and told us she was riding to Dieppe the next day to visit a friend. An 80-mile round trip.

Day 6 – Day 6 was a shorter ride of 67 miles, heading west to the coastal town of Le Harve. It was the only day we weren’t treated to glorious sunshine, so other than a quick tour around Rouen so Ian could look at the old buildings, we spent most of the day riding. This meant we actually arrived on time for once, although we did surprise our host, who showed us to our room and then quickly went out to stop with a friend. Difficult to tell because of the language barrier, but we think she was expecting a male and female guest from the booking (my profile picture was a picture of me and my mum for some reason) and probably didn’t fancy having two 6’4 lads she couldn’t understand staying with her. She left us to enjoy her apartment with its balcony overlooking the town, and we managed to get some time to relax and watch the British Cycling team win gold at the Rio Olympics on TV. We were only distracted when we got a text from the host asking us if we could feed the guinea pig in her daughter’s bedroom.

Day 7 – The final day. The week had flown by in no time. Getting onto the bike was rough that morning, with saddle sores making me want to do nothing more than sit on a comfy chair in a French bakery. We had to crack on though, and after 10 miles the pain eased and the riding became easier and bearable. All we had to do was follow the coast as we went up and down different cliff roads, riding hard uphill and cruising on the downhills. It was Sunday so every beachside town we stopped in was full of people out enjoying the sun. It made for interesting riding as we regularly found new places to stop for a drink or an ice cream. 

The ride for the day was another long one, finishing on 84 miles, our 3rd longest day of the trip. Arriving in Dieppe at 8 pm, a couple of hours before our ferry, we sat on top of a cliff and watched the golden lights of the harbour, sparkling on the black sea. 

Our ferry that night was slightly longer than the one on the way to France. Leaving at midnight, it arrived back in England at 6 AM. We managed to get a few hours sleep on the ferry after bagging a couple of comfy chairs, before being awoken by the sound of a loud horn as we came into the port. 

From New Haven, it was a case of getting back to Brighton and then getting on the train home. That final morning probably turned out to be the easiest day navigating as we just followed the cycle path we had ridden 7 days before.

In total we rode over 500 miles across the week. We thought we had planned the trip to a tee with accommodation booked and the route planned in full, but the reality on the road was very different. I learnt so much about bikepacking and myself on that trip. Things went wrong, at certain times it felt like a disaster, but I got through it all in the end.

A lot of people are amazed when I tell them about this trip. Some because they are impressed by someone riding 500 miles, but others just look at you like ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?!’. I even get a few comments from people saying ‘I’d rather be on a beach somewhere’. It would be easy to look at the times everything went wrong, and yes, they are a pain in the arse at the time and not relaxing at all. However, when it’s all going right there is nothing like it. It’s a freedom you do not get sat on a beach sunbathing. You go back to such a basic form of living, dependent on ensuring you have life’s basics of food, shelter and water, that every other worry in life seems irrelevant, and in a way that is so freeing.

If you’ve enjoyed this brief look back on my first bikepacking trip then why not give this page a follow. Whilst reflecting on the trip I’ve documented as much of it as I can, adding a lot more detail than I’ve shared here. I’m planning to share that with you at some point so keep an eye out for it.

As always, if you could share this post or recommend it to a friend that would go a long way to helping me grow this blog. It takes up a lot of my time writing and editing these posts to share with you to enjoy, so any help you offer in spreading the word would be appreciated very much!