I was listening to Andrew P Sykes’ excellent Cycling Europe podcast recently when I heard him say that one of the bike touring lessons that he had learnt rather late is that you should be ready to take public transport during your bike tour.
Yet I know many bike tourists who feel that they have to cycle every last kilometre of their route as if to do otherwise is to ‘cheat’ and devalue the whole effort. As if on their return home, they will be exposed as a fraud and spend the rest of their life in ignominy, people turning their backs on them as they walk past.
If you find yourself thinking like that, let me give you a simple bit of advice:
No you don’t.
The fact that you are out there at all touring automatically makes you awesome. The very first mile that you ride is one mile more than most of your friends and peers will ever ride in their lives. If you ‘skip’ one section, no one else really cares.
The wonderful Anne Mustoe wrote books about travelling around the world on a bicycle. She freely admitted to taking buses, trains, boats and planes when it suited and no one called her a sham.
Unless you are trying to set a record for riding round the world, the point of bike touring is to have a good time. Have a holiday. Have fun. Your bike tours should be designed or flexible enough to maximise the possibilities for that.
Yes, you want to see the world up close and at a slow pace: that is indeed the beauty of bike touring. But as beautiful as the world is, there are some parts of it that are best seen from a bus or train seat or even a boat deck and all the more enjoyable for that.
The reason why I can give this advice is that it took me many years to learn it, and I still have to remind myself. I have flogged my aching limbs through boring and/or unpleasant stretches of road just to be able to say ‘I did it…’. To absolutely no one. I have soaked and frozen myself in foul weather when not feeling 100%.
My epiphany came a few years ago, in Montenegro, when I was feeling low with the after effects of food poisoning. My planned route for that day had a lot of climbs. And the weather forecast was miserable for the whole day: not just rain but high winds and thunderstorms. After a night of mulling it, I rode to the nearby train station, and covered the distance in less than an hour… for a princely five Euros… in a train with dedicated space for bikes…. After a solid day of rest at my destination, I was ready to go again…
In Norway, I twice walked up to a bus driver and asked if there was any way that I could load my bike, each time expecting to be swatted away. Both times, the driver cheerfully said yes, and the second time, he even refused to take payment.
It might not always be feasible, but it is worth keeping in your head when planning or when on the road and things are not turning out the way you expected. Here are a few examples of when you should consider it:
- When your route involves you having to do a long stretch along a busy road;
- When your route passes through what looks like an extremely boring stretch of landscape;
- When you are trying to jam a lot into a short period of time, and taking public transport might just make your life easier and allow you to spend time in landscapes or towns that are more important to you – I should have done this when travelling from Oslo to Stavanger: I could have cut out the first three days of riding through the relatively uninteresting terrain around Oslo and saved time to ride a bit more around the much more beautiful area near Stavanger;
- When the weather is looking awful all day;
- When you are in a heatwave and riding your planned route looks no fun at all and borderline or actually dangerous;
- When rain, fog, low cloud make the beautiful scenery that you were looking forward to disappear, negating the reason for riding through it – Alps? What Alps?
- When you are feeling ill, you have muscle pain or are just plain exhausted;
- When your bike has a problem and you are concerned that it might not make it to the nearest bike mechanic.
Practicalities
The good news is that taking public transport might be easier and cheaper than you might expect. As I discovered in Norway, on rural bus routes with not many passengers, bus drivers can be ready to let you take your bike for free or a minimal charge. In many bike-mad countries like my home in Belgium, there is an additional cost of taking a bike on a train but it is set deliberately low to encourage people to visit the country.
You can either make using public transport a planned part of your trip when designing your route or improvise according to necessity in some of the situations listed above.
Google Maps and other mapping devices can be helpful with this, indicating nearby public transport routes. You can then check the rules on the website of the transport provider or do as I did and ask directly.
Sometimes the website is not very clear – Portuguese trains were a nightmare to decipher and a nightmare to get a ticket for – so asking the locals can be a good idea or if you are not yet there, finding a local bike forum such as on Facebook. For trains, Wobbly Ride as ever is a great resource for those living in Europe.
Some trains or buses might not have dedicated space for bikes and can require you to remove the front – and possibly rear – wheel for travel and place the bike in a bag.
This is actually pretty easy and if you search on the internet, you can buy lightweight and portable bags that stow easily in your luggage, such as this one from La Virgule.
I hope that this is helpful. Have any comments or questions? Please make them below: it really helps and your email address will not be published.
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