Cycling from the Netherlands to Bosnia
Gaspard Bos
Senior AI Consultant | GPT Whisperer | Learning machine to play nice with human
? In thirty six days, from mid July to mid August 2022, I cycled from Rotterdam, the Netherlands to Neum; the only stretch of coast of the otherwise landlocked country Bosnia, where my partner was born (when it was still Yugoslavia). I took me a few years of dreaming about a big trip, and one month to prepare, estimate a route and gather the gear.
TLDR:
There's a video! ??
I wrote about the gear I used. ??
I wrote about my stats; km, vertical, time and calories. ??
All the way at the bottom are my takeaways. ??
Why did I do this?
Almost five years ago I bought a book called “Escape by Bike” while casually browsing through a bookstore. This is when the seed got planted. Joshua Cunningham describes the different bike setups that are needed for the different climates when crossing the Eurasian continent, with stunning landscape photos but also the realness of sleeping in a ditch. To me, the thought of exploring the world by bike in this way resonates a lot with my ideas about sustainability.
I used to be a bike nerd. I got into building fixies through my friends at uni, participated in a student team to build the world’s fastest recumbent bicycle, then got traumatised by a prolonged graduation project on an e-bike design, and after a crash with my fixie I went back to ‘ye olde Dutch citybike’. But this bicycle touring, or bike packing, is another dimension of travel that has rekindled my joy for the object. After picking up the book once more, I googled for a bicycle route from Rotterdam (my hometown) towards Asia and I found the blog of a guy called Henk van Dillen, who cycled from Rotterdam to Singapore. I could identify so easily with him that I decided summer 2022 was going to be the one.
I had been longing to escape for a while from my surroundings. Even though I agree with Jacqueline Jensen that “Travel isn’t the answer” (also a good book ), what happens when you stay in one place for too long is that the people around you cement your identity. People remember what you did, not what you want or are about to do. I think, If you feel like you need a (or to) change then travel is still one of the best ways to do that. You get to make new first impressions and then get seen in a different way, which helps you manifest the latent new versions of yourself.
What my trip looked like
Somehow those weird looks into the camera became a thing. It’s portrait because I shared this via Instagram first.
Whatever you’ve seen or known about bicycles is different when you come to the Netherlands. We’re a mostly flat country with really good cycling infrastructure. The people that I encountered on the campings in the Netherlands and for the largest part of Germany were not the hip bikepackers you see on Instagram. Let’s say I was on the younger edge of the spectrum and I’m past the 30s halfway mark, but it was still fun hanging out. The hippest dudes I met were an Irish guy, on my first day in the Biesbosch; he was cycling to Istanbul with a 21 speed cassette, and a German guy on one of the last days in Split; he had done a stretch of Dinarian mountains for 10 days, off-grid with solar panels and a hammock. That’s what I want to do next.
I ran into these people multiple times in Germany. We decided to share our camping gas to make a proper multi-pan meal.
I didn’t originally plan to end in Neum, August 15th, but I was happy to conclude my self-powered journey there. I was on a Koga Traveler roadbike with Ortlieb bags, which is something you can use to travel the whole world with, if you want. But the question is what kind of experiences you are seeking out. My only real limitation was to be back in the Netherlands in the beginning of September, and my only real trajectory was toward the Balkans because my partner would pick me up there with the car. That meant I was always re-considering options on where to go, how far to ride and how fast or slow, depending on how I (or the weather) was doing. Kind of sounds like freedom, doesn’t it?
After going over the Reschenpass and taking a day off in Algund, I decided to not go through the Dolomites but take the island's route. Next time, I will pick the other.
I would have done some training, were it not that I had an elective surgery, from which I had to recover until it was time to start riding. I did do a test ride from Rotterdam to Amsterdam before venturing off, but went a bit too hard too fast, and the result was that I started with knee pain at the start of my journey.
In the beginning I was in a hurry, then I took 4 days off in Mannheim on a friend’s couch to let my knees settle, and then I got excited about doing 100+km horizontal, 1000+m vertical, days again. First I was eating and sleeping very healthy, but when I got to Croatia I couldn’t help myself having the local rakia and ribe (distillate and fish).
There were some 37 degrees Celsius days (98.6 Fahrenheit) that got really challenging. Hot weather is what I was dreading the most after the heatwaves last summer, but once I braved a few of those days in Italy, I stopped getting up early to beat the heat and just carried more water and sunscreen. I never ate so much icecream over one summer in my life, not because of the heat, but just because I felt like a child who could get what he wanted.
I arrived to Porec in Croatia just in time to have icecream with friends from Rotterdam.
Even though I passed numerous touristic areas worthy of visiting (Venice is the most touristic place in the world isn’t it?) I kept my focus mostly on the road. I was in Peru two times and didn’t go to Machu Pichu. I was in Mexico for six weeks and didn’t go to Yucatan. The most (for lack of a better word) Instagrammable places have already been etched in my retina in such a way that it gives me the impulse to do something more original. It’s not the places themselves, because those are obviously amazing, but I think it has to do with my contrarian nature. I will rather try to create journeys based on happenstance to free my mind from expectations as much as possible or let some kind of activity such as surfing, hiking or cycling be the guide. I might still end up at a touristic spot but then at least the journey wasn't building up to hit that completion mark.
On the boat from Venice to Porec, someone was taking pictures with a telelens. I asked if they could send them to me.
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What I packed
My luggage including the bags weighed about 25 kg when I left, excluding food and drink and the bike itself. Halfway through the journey I did sent some things (like rain clothes and a full spare chain) back to NL or forward to Bosnia. But I also got a camping chair delivered in Italy and had a luxurious blackout 2-person trekking tent. I carried a laptop which I mostly used to plan out my routes and load new routes on my Garmin eTrex 30.?
?? There’s a cool online app called maps to gpx that was helpful when I decided to design my own routes. Google doesn’t offer cycling routes in the Balkans but walking routes can often do very well as long as you survey the terrain and road type on the satellite images.
In the countries I was passing, wild camping is forbidden, and although I sometimes act like a rebel, inside I’m a bit too much of an upstanding citizen to break those laws. In other words; since I knew I was going to be passing through populous land and staying at campsites, there would be power at almost every stop. So my strategy ended up being an XTorm powerbank for intermittent phone charging, a GP Charge Anyway for recharging the batteries of my Garmin and the laptop basically as a backup powerbank. With this setup I actually only really needed to find a power outlet roughly once every 3 days.
I initially tried to fix things on my handlebars and frame but using a setup of four bags made it much easier to pack and unpack stuff. I sent my rainclothes forward from Croatia to Bosnia. Another package that I sent back to NL from Italy (with excess spare materials) got lost.
Technology on the road
People might wonder why I brought my laptop and that this defeats the whole purpose of “getting away from it all”. I have a more modern view on achieving work-life integration (not balance) that digital work enables. I do agree with some important critiques on the “always on” culture. For example; that notifications are keeping us from doing deep work (the high cost of task switching ) or that when work is always a possibility our brains have difficulty relaxing (reaching a default mode network state). Although I agree in principle that we need time off, unplugging as a reflex won’t help you with your frustration with tech once you inevitably plug back in.
What I do is limit the influence that technology has on me by creating strong habits and systems that prevent me from being reactive to the detrimental distractions so I can be responsive to what’s really important. For example; I first keep track of my commitments and then block personal time in my calendar so that I can feel completely sure that I don't need to check emails or messages when I'm engaged in leisure activities. At the same time, having the option to plug in allowed me to be on the road longer while doing some work at the front and tail end, giving me more flexibility to plan.
In the end, it wasn’t technology or work that was distracting me from the journey but the fact that I had a knee injury that I needed to learn to understand and tend to, while still trying to advance to the Balkans.
Doing my taxes while enjoying the view.
Speaking of distracting technology… Besides eating more icecream that ever before, I also never used Instagram as much as on this trip, to chronicle what I was doing and sharing that with my private network of friends. I know there’s also apps like Polar Steps that specifically cater to this use case, but then you need to get your friends following you there as well.
I've gotten so many positive reactions to my stories and also when we saw each other again in real life. And I felt safe to share both the good and bad; both the stunning views of the Alps and pristine blue rivers as well as my knee issues, getting burnt on the camping stove, ants all over my food, roads through ugly industrial parts or heavy car traffic, etc.
Traveling alone also helped. When I'm with others the phone is intrusive, but in this case I was capturing moments to be able to create the memories and get that social support through Instagram. And I definitely got some much needed support on handling my knee situation both from Instagram and other cyclists I met along the way. Thanks everyone, you know who you are. ??
What were the stats?
People asked me how many kms I made. Around 2000 total. I can't tell you exactly because I didn't start exporting my gpx files to Strava until I got to the Alps. Also; It’s not that easy to explain and compare the athletic effort that went into this trip. Especially since I told you how the goals of the trip were ambiguous. The way I like to define succes is “to discover one’s potential and then find and meet appropriate challenges to achieve a flow state.” It’s easier to cycle for 8 hours at a moderate pace than it is to cycle 4 hours above one’s personal limit, because the body uses different energy systems . The biggest challenge I surmounted was to learn how to do this kind of trip in the first place: Knowing how fast and far I would be able to go one day at a time, while enjoying being on the road.
This looks easy but it crossed a bunch of stone paths for which I wish I had fatter tires. Epic ride weather helped me to plan for weather conditions.
Riding consecutive days gets increasingly harder. I made a chart in which you can see riding days and resting days, the horizontal and vertical meters I logged, and the activity burn (calories) measured from my Oura ring (note: which does sleep better than exercise). You can see for example when I went to Dalheim (day 10), that my calorie burn is very high although the distance is one of the shortest. That is because I joined other cyclists and cycled too fast while my knees were still not recovered. You can also see that after 4 days of being stationary in Mannheim that I suddenly did two 100km + 400m vertical days with less calories burned.
I took more time for Day 23 across the Reschenpass in the Alps, 7h 27m, which had less vertical meters (about 1100m) than my first day in Croatia (day 29, about 1450m) cycling to the island of Cres which took less time; 6h 18m, but I burned more calories in the Alps. This can be explained due to the fact that Day 23 was the last of three consecutive days, while Day 29 followed after a day of rest. By that time I had also sent some luggage home and might have learned better climbing technique. The hardest days in my experience were Day 25 (also the longest) when I had to climb the last stretch from Trentro to Calceranica al Lago in 37 degrees Celsius and the final day to Neum (the second most vertical meters and fourth consecutive day) when I got lost in the beginning on Peljesac and had to push the bike up narrow gravel paths.
What did it cost?
About half of my average daily expenses, 50%, went to food during this trip (in the graph: that’s where the cash went). Only people in Ethopia spend that much of their expendable income on food. (source: Financial Times ). But of course, an accommodation price of 18.11*31=561.41 euros per month including utilities is very cheap in Europe. And not being able to stock up on food means that I was paying more for buying small quantities and on the go meals (especially icecreams). The other costs include sending things home with the post and massages. I didn't do so many touristic things except enjoying the scenery so these costs were very minimal. Ferries are a substantial amount because I decided to take the island's route.
Although making a trip like this can be very cheap on a day by day basis the initial investments I made for purchasing gear were quite high. I had only one month to look for gear so ended up buying a secondhand bike at a dealer which made it more expensive than it could have been but saved me a lot of time, also on possible repairs. My wardrobe consists mostly of secondhand clothing. I remember going hiking in Peru and the guide laughing at my "party clothes”. This time I decided to invest in Merino shirts which were also expensive. But after coming back from this trip, I don't want to wear anything else and did away more than half of my closet. The tent I was planning to bring broke and I am happy that I now have a blackout tent. Little is worth more to me than a good night's sleep. In terms of bike gear I never used a Garmin before but it's definitely better than navigating by map, which I've seen other cyclists do, let alone a smartphone that uses way too much energy.
Closing words
I dreamed about escaping by bike and cycling away into freedom and I will do it again when I can. I know people who live very different lives without a mortgage or steady job and I sometimes envy them. So I'm trying to cultivate a kind of work-life integration and look for work cultures that resonate with these kind of experiences. For example, I am a fan of the company Levels for the reason that they publish so much about these topics. See this blog from one of their founders . I also discovered that my own country is beautiful, which I plan to explore more by bike together with my partner. Finally, I hope that my inspiration and action will inspire you. Ride on!
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2 年wow, 36 days! Your cardio system rocks! Do you already know your next destination? :)
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2 年Inspiring! Thanks for sharing
Sportive by nature, scientist in mind.
2 年Proud of you, son!