Eat, sleep, wash bib shorts, repeat: our cycle touring routines

Dipping into Bosnia and Herzegovina for a couple of days (more on this next blog!)

Having a career break, and doing something exciting was something we'd both wanted to do for a while. Life seems to go so quickly, and a break from our usual 9-5 routines, and only having limited adventures at the weekend, was something we were really craving.

We've now cycled for 53 days, and have slept in 51 different places. Over this time our lives have taken on a new rhythm, and although every day is different, we've developed new routines. These have changed somewhat depending on where we are, but we thought we'd do a short post on what a normal day may look like, complete with the less exciting parts! Our next blog post will be a return to the usual update of where we've been travelling; about our time in the Balkans.

Morning: a good day starts with porridge

Our days typically begin about 7, though this will depend strongly on where we're staying. Recently we've done our first couple of wild camps, and for these we like to be up at 6am, to avoid pesky early runners that may be about! If we're staying with WS hosts we fit in with their logistics, and if we've treated ourselves to an apartment, we're more likely to have a lie-in, enjoying not sleeping on the floor! We'll make porridge for breakfast on our camping stove, just with water, but we jazz it up with a Mars bar (helps to start the day healthily!), an apple and sultanas. It's been fantastic to mix this up when staying with WS hosts - soft boiled eggs were a particular thrill!

A brew with a view

We take the tent down, deflate our air mats, and pack up our panniers. We've certainly got quicker at this, but it's debatable if this is because we're more efficient, or we've just lost some of our stuff since we started (including towels- oops)! We have a bit of a routine for what goes where, and that helps keep track of most of our things.

Time to take the tent down after wildcamping

We put on a healthy dose of suncream; I think we've got through five bottles this trip, and with the the temperatures rising as we go south through the heatwave, we're being more liberal than ever with our application! We load up the routes on our Garmins; mine still works fairly well, despite breaking the screen in a small fall a few weeks ago.

Our cycling will start around 9am, and we'll follow the route we've plotted on Komoot the night before. Ideally there will be a supermarket en route, and one of us will wait with the bikes whilst the other gets lunch and dinner for the day.  For most of Europe,  Lidl has always been our preferred as it feels nicely familiar! This has changed as we've entered the Balkans, with far fewer Lidls! Our snacks have also changed as we've gone south. We'd like to say we get a selection of fruits, but in reality we are mostly sustained by chocolate and the (now not so) occasional Fanta. For our two days in Bosnia, we passed only one tiny shop, though it was pretty well stocked. 

Generally, it's very different to being at home and having a store cupboard of ingredients! It's a very hand-to-mouth existence, as we don't want to carry unnecessary weight. Lunch will nearly always be bread, cheese and tomatoes; mixing it up with curried hummus and chorizo. Dinner will often be spaghetti, pesto and a pepper as it's just so quick to make, and spaghetti doesnt take up much room in a pannier. We are tiring of this though, and mixing it up with tacos! Though it was a very sad time when I thought I'd bought some butter to fry off veg, from the fridge section, only for it to turn out to be live yeast... yum!

This is not butter

Afternoon: bread roll, cheese and tomatoes, anyone?

We try to cycle a little over half the distance before having lunch, then we can have a more relaxed stop without thinking about how much we have left to do! If it's really hot, we'll have a very long lunch break, ideally featuring some swimming! Our perfect lunch spot includes a bench, a bin and some shade. Though we usually find a much better spot about 200m further on from where we've stopped, which is mildly frustrating!

Bench - tick - shade - tick - bin - tick (better spot with a view 200m away... - tick)

In countries with lots of WS hosts we'd generally spend some of lunchtime messaging one or two WS hosts for the next night or two. This involves saying a little about what our trip involves and asking if we can stay. Overall, we've found people to be really responsive and have had many great stays as a result. After leaving Slovenia, WS hosts are much fewer and sadly our days no longer feature looking at the platform and reading the bios of the interesting people on there! We didn't have high expectations for WS, but it's been one of the big highlights of the trip, and made our time in Northern Europe so much fun.

After a long lunch break, that's been getting longer as the heat has increased, we get back on the bikes. We often suffer from what we call "heavy legs" post lunch, but this generally goes after a few minutes of spinning. Our ideal cycling distance is probably about 80 to 90km a day, and we'll have chosen a campsite/booking.com/WS showers at about the right distance. Occasionally, with slight navigational errors, and Lidl detours in can be a fair bit longer, and that makes the end of the day a little tiring!

Evening: chats with WS hosts, and planning the next day

It's always a nice moment when we've got to that day's destination. Finding out that the campsite has space for you (we rarely book in advance, and so far haven't been turned away), or found the WS address okay and we're there on the right day! It's only then that we stop our Garmins, and know that we've finished cycling for the day. We'll take the panniers off the bike and set up for the evening. We'll arrive any time from around 2pm if it's a short day, to 7pm, if we've had a long lunch break or have pushed the distance.

Making dinner with our WS hosts in Slovenia

Our MSR tent is quick to set up and we've got into a fairly good routine. We also start charging our electrical devices - phones and Garmins, but also Rhys' diabetes equipment! We have two battery packs with us, and we'll use these in the day, and then find a plug on the campsite, and hope it's still there in the morning!

Tent up and relax amongst the olive trees

The classic campsite charge situation

The shower after a day's ride is always so refreshing as it's amazing how dusty you become with a rather unappealing layering of suncream, sweat and dirt that sticks to the first two layers. Yum! We also rinse our cycling clothes and hang them on our little portable washing line, which keeps them that bit fresher for the next day's ride. It's such a luxury when we have access to a washing machine and properly clean our clothes - touring definitely makes you appreciate the simple things!

We'll cook our dinner, message friends back home and plot the next day's route, before hitting the hay around 10pm. We've definitely got more used to sleeping in a tent this trip, and after putting in some trusty earplugs, usually sleep pretty well.

Ready for bed

Thinking about our new lifestyle has made me realise that perhaps we haven't left 9-5 at all, as these are our predominant cycling hours, and we have quite a clear routine. However, the varying landscapes we pass through, the different people we meet and not knowing quite what each day brings, has certainly given us the adventure that we were looking for. Our trip has also helped us appreciate having fewer things, and shown us the importance of simple pleasures.