How to Plan a 2-Month Cycling Adventure in 3 Weeks

How to Plan a 2-Month Cycling Adventure in 3 Weeks

Last-minute? We prefer spontaneous. The whole trip came about as Shanky and I were discussing a plan to travel for two months, initially we were interested in backpacking around Eastern Europe. I then suggested that we do at least a week of something adventurous; hiking, biking or sailing and Shanky said his favourite would be to cycle. Very quickly the “week of cycling” turned into the whole 2 months and once we checked out the Eurovelo routes, suddenly our route was over 3,000 kilometres.

So here we are and this is how the planning went down.

3 weeks to go: 

Route planning. We decided to do the trip and planned a route based on the Eurovelo 7 & 8. We wanted to travel through some of Eastern Europe and to visit Greece so that formed the end of the trip on the Eurovelo 8 from Ljubljana, Slovenia down to Athens. For the start-point we were looking for somewhere we could easily travel by train with our bikes from Amsterdam. Berlin seemed like a good choice and as it was on the Eurovelo 7 route it made sense to follow this path down to Austria. 

2 weeks to go:

Bought the bikes. We visited a few bicycle shops in Amsterdam, including Vakantie Fietser, which gave us a lot of useful tips and inspiration but we soon realised that usually people order in their touring or hybrid bikes to fit their frame size and requirements. This takes more than two weeks. So we nipped around a few Hans Struijk stores and luckily found two bikes which matched our needs well and bought them there and then.

1 week to go:

Padded shorts. We picked up the bikes, bought our fantastic 68l panniers (Vaude Karakorum), helmets, bike locks, iphone holder, GoPro, waterproofs, medical supplies but MOST importantly padded shorts. These are your life saver and by the end of most days still don’t seem padded enough. We have 3 pairs each for this trip. The men’s come in an all in one sexy boxer style but mine are simple lycra shorts. We didn’t quite fill our panniers but it’s good to have a bit of space. Shanky managed to fit a kilo of protein powder and I have two books, so there is room to breathe. 

2 days to go:

Final pack. We did a practice cycle for the FIRST time on our bikes and we did 50km but in the nice and flat Netherlands, so it wasn’t much of a warm up. Laid out all our essentials on the bed. Moved them onto the dining room table in order to sleep and then packed them into the bags. It went pretty well actually. 

1 day to go:

Train(s) to Berlin. Not as easy as I thought but not too bad. As it turns out it is extremely hard to lift or manoeuvre a bike once the pannier is laden down with all your stuff. Getting it on and off three steep steps onto a train is not easy, especially on the local Dutch trains which fill up with bikes pretty fast and the train guards get edgy about you all fitting. We had to skip one train from Amsterdam which we couldn’t squeeze on but we were ready for the next. Our main train to Berlin had an allocated ticket for our bikes which we booked in advance, so our bikes had a designated rack on a bicycle carriage. It was mild chaos when all 15 of us wielding bikes had to get on together and then we were in the wrong order for our bike racks. But at least we were all on the train. As it turned out mine had to be hung upright with a wheel hook which was a tight squeeze and a little nerve-racking to leave, but it did the job and we were able to sit down for 6 hours in peace. 

We arrived in Berlin at 10pm and it was quite exciting to be self-sufficient and to leave the station and cycle straight off. The streets were quiet and I thought my lights weren’t working (it turns out they are powered by the bike) so I wore Shanky’s helmet which has a light at the back, attached my head torch to the handlebars and wore my UV vest. So I was super lit up, which was great as we ended up going through some dark paths. We stayed at our friend’s Judith & Diego’s place so we had a place to park the bikes and rest up for the start of our trip.