The Route

Q: Where are you going to go?
A: The world!*




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The initial plan

Our initial plan was to cycle from our homes in England down through Europe and then head East as far as we could before we caught a flight to New Zealand.  We'd hoped that this trip would take roughly 18 months, as we'd like to be back in the UK for Christmas 2019.

We spent a long time planning our route before we set off on our adventure.  A rough outline of the initial plan was:

  • England and Wales
  • France and Spain
  • The Alps, Dolomites and Slovenia
  • The Balkan Coast and Greece
  • Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan
  • The Stans' including the Pamir Highway
  • China
  • Southeast Asia
  • New Zealand

The change of plan

Having little experience of long-term cycle touring, we (Olly) had optimistically planned to average 85km a day with one day off a week. For us, we very quickly realised that this was not a sustainable way to cycle tour as it left us with very little time for exploring and quite exhausted.  After a couple of months, we decided to drop our daily distance to around 50km and not plan too far in advance.

Whilst in Switzerland in late October, traversing the Alps, we realised we might have left it too late in the year to complete the route through Europe that we had initially planned, which was cycling through the Alps and into the Dolomites and onto Slovenia. Snow was forecast, mountain passes, and campsites were closing and daylight hours had reduced significantly. We decided to cross the Splugen pass and drop down into Italy, hoping we could prolong Autumn. We then spent a couple of weeks cycling through some of the worst storms and rain that Italy had received in decades.  We thought ahead to Turkey and Georgia which we would be crossing in January and February. All of these factors resulted in us changing our plan significantly: we decided to book a flight to New Zealand from Rome and then reverse the trip.  We would get to visit the same countries, but the seasons would align better.  

Reversing the route was a very tough decision for us both, as we had liked the idea of cycling East, and changing our plan felt like we had failed on what we had set out to do. We are both now glad that we changed our plan. It is a trip we have planned and saved up for for a good while.  We hadn't set out to break any records, or prove anything, we just wanted to travel by bicycle, see the world and enjoy ourselves.

We have since realised that one of the most important things about cycle touring for us is being flexible and not planning too far in advance. 

We are now cycling home.

Olly

Route details

Leg one - UK - Distance 547km, ascent 3,390m

Leg two - France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy - Distance 4,225km, ascent 17,000m https://www.bikemap.net/en/r/4792953/

Leg three- New Zealand - Distance 2,805km, ascent 13,800m


*As far as we can get until we're turning out empty pockets.

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