2000 km biking, many train rides and 67 days later we arrived back home. I didn’t have the time, or the energy to keep a blog, like I had hoped, however I did post to Instagram all the way through. You can check out the adventure below.
The journey was incredible! We saw more than we thought we would, traveled farther than we planned and explored so much.
Our journey took us from Amsterdam south through Antwerp, Gent, Dunkirk, Calais, Dieppe, Heurteaville, Lisieux, Caen, Mont Saint-Michel, Saint Malo, Jersey, Rennes, Nantes, Bordeaux, Arcachon, Toulouse, Carcasson, Beziers, Lyon, Nancy, Luxembourg, Brussels and back to Amsterdam. And we travelled though many, many, many smaller hamlets, towns and villages along the way.
We camped more than half the trip, carrying our tent and kit on the bikes, shopping for groceries each night and moving on most days. At times, we would stay a few days in a campsite and explore without the extra weight on the bikes – a luxury for sure! In the larger centers, we booked hotels so we were closer to the historic districts we wanted to visit.
We learned so much! Next trip we will book one season – not summer sliding into fall – it got quite cold at night towards the end. We will also pick areas that we want to explore, set up camp for a few days and head out during the day on shorter trips. This way, we should be able to spend more time exploring and less time riding between campsites. We will look for municipal campsites and farms. The smaller sites seemed friendlier overall. We will have a more defined plan for what happens when we lose each other – as happened in Liege. Train travel with bikes was a lesson in patience!
We both agree that the neither of us want to stay in the larger cities for very long. The crowds are crazy and we find that most of the cities have lost their charm over the centuries.
For me, I learned that I can do it! My family had bets about how long I would last – the most generous person said 1 week. I proved them and myself, frankly, wrong, I found that I really loved being/living outdoors. I will be in better shape for the next one as I slowed Dave down more than he or I wanted. Nevertheless, I did it! It was the hardest, most physical thing that I have ever done. There were tears, there were sore muscles and we had a few squabbles – mainly about navigation. We also learned that I have to have snacks! Me hungry, sore and tired is not a good combination.