Telling people you’re leaving for Denmark on your bike leads to strange looks. The usual - how, why, where questions are followed by an inevitable “I don’t really get it but cool for you” type of response.
So how do you end up thinking that cycling over a thousand miles on your own sounds like a good idea?
Well the story goes back a few years and without giving you a complete life write up i’ll shorten it to a few key ideas. While living in London I was part of an awesome fitness group that worked out in the mornings before work aptly named ‘Project Awesome’ in that group I was introduced to a bunch of people who had completed trips and adventures. Upon finishing a road trip around the USA that consisted of driving over 5000 miles I thought back to those people/adventures and thought “yeah I could do something like that” it felt like a nice change from being in a car. Thus began the idea for my first cycle trip in California.
February 2016 I cycled the Pacific Coast route south from San Francisco to San Diego. Without question it stands as one of the best things I’ve ever decided to do. The combinations of freedom, self-sufficiency, journey, always-outdoors and epic scenery created an experience that I’ll likely always hold on a pedestal. I've wrote about the experience on my website(http://sambillingham.com) a number of times.
I filmed everyday of the cycle trip and while some might thing it detracts from the experience I found it gave me extra purpose and helped fight any loneliness that might arise. Full playlist here and 2min feature video. These videos are my most popular second only to a couple hiking videos I made while in Bali.
Back to the point of this post. While I don’t consider myself a cyclist and had no real desire to travel via bike that first trip became ‘one of the best things I’ve ever done’ and I promised myself from then on I would forever do at least one cycle trip every year.
2018 rolls around and it’s time to fire up the bicycle. Where to? A friend of mine moved to Copenhagen and we hadn’t seen each other in 2.5 years. I figured if you don’t go soon it would be another few years so time to make a trip. At first I thought I could get my friend to tag along for awhile too but that didn’t work out.
With the destination set the next question is where to start from. I thought about boxing the bike and flying to Amsterdam or somewhere else in Europe but figured it was all be a bit of a hassle, I might as well just cycle from home. Birmingham to Copenhagen sorted.
Why not fly there instead?
Sure, I could take a flight. But why do we fly places? Well I guess we fly because it’s way faster than any other way of getting there. If you’re not interested in getting somewhere quickly surely it’s better to not fly? We all know that it’s about the journey not destination right? 😉
Why on a bicycle? Could you road trip instead?
Sure, road trips are fun. There’s something special about the speed you travel on a bike. it’s fast enough that you can cover a decent distance in one day but slow enough that you still experience the places you travel through. If you’re not careful even in a car it can feel like island hoping.
With the why sorted the next question is how? Stay tuned if you’re keen to know how I go about preparing for a trip. What I take and how I plan the route.
p.s I’m part of sndbox cohort 2 which I’ll talk about more in another post. I was a little late to get started due to the cycle trip. I’ve been wanting to share more posts outside of my laptop club/devland 👨🏼💻 side for awhile and now it’s finally happening.