We always knew that we would be returning home at some point, but we were still having a good time on the road when the time came to return. We were in Lisbon and flights were booked. Our friend’s/renter’s house was rebuilt and they had moved in, so our house was empty, the rent payments had stopped and we had some commitments to attend to.
It was a grand adventure for two quasi-old people, spanning 21 months, 15 countries, 4 continents and 8,700 miles (14,000 km) of riding. Those are the easily defined measures of the trip. By the time we got home, we had not slept in our own bed for 646 nights.
Over this past 21 months, we made up a bunch of plans on the fly. Once we told our friends they could say in our house until theirs was rebuilt, we really had no idea how long that would be or what we were going to do or where we were going to go. We initially thought we would be traveling for about one year, hence the name of this blog, and it ended up being almost two years. We didn’t really know much, but one thing led to another pretty easily. All we needed was a place to start.
Many things fell in our laps. A friend had a place in Tenerife and invited us to stay for a month. We cat-sat for old friends in England, dog-sat for another friend in Slovakia. Sometimes, one door closed only to have another open. A trip to Turkey for Chris didn’t pan out, so she decided to come on a trip to Brittany with me. From Brittany, we were planning to go to Finland. But that plan was interrupted by a tragic death in the family of our host, so we pivoted (literally) to ride our bikes over 2,000 miles to Slovakia on the EV6 to take care of Doris the dog for a month. I had always wanted to do that ride.
Openness to opportunity led us to many cool places and experiences. We also had no home to go back to, and so we were always thinking about where to go and what to do next. Our ears were open.
Countries we visited: England (3x), Portugal (2x), Spain (2x including Canary Islands), US, France (2x), Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Singapore, Australia (2x), New Zealand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
There were a lot of logistics in this trip, and that could easily have become overwhelming. But one lucky aspect about riding a long-distance bike trip is that you go slowly enough that you don’t chew through countries in a week like people can with cars and planes. Each day is a nibble. Once we decided on a country, we settled on our start and end points, figured out the overall distances and the time it would take and then we chipped away at it day by day, allowing for corrections and spontaneous changes. Time was not that urgent until we had to make a flight or when our visas were expiring.
We found places to stay a couple days in advance if we needed to, also based on how we felt at the time. We did a mix of camping and hotels, mostly based on weather but also on location. If we wanted to visit a city, it was so much easier to get an apartment right in the old town so we could explore more easily. We used booking.com for most hotel and apartment reservations. With a few exceptions, most campgrounds, even “full ones”, had space for bike tourists with no reservation and so it was relaxing to just pull up and get a spot. We also took trains and buses from time to time, either to get to parts of the country we were interested in or to bypass unpleasant roads or weather.
It was nice plotting our progress each day on a map. Since we didn’t really have time or inclination to research all the places we passed though, we were often surprised and delighted by what we experienced. While some destinations were awe inspiring and lovely, we were just as likely to be gobsmacked by multiple beautiful amazing random events, places and/or people along the way. Each day was an adventure with mostly wonderful surprises.
Normal life is not like that. Life destinations can be kind of murky and fickle and it’s hard sometimes to really quantify progress made. Unpleasant parts sometimes just have to be suffered through, even for long periods. There is no train to get around hard times. The routineness of normal life has a tendency to make life fly by unnoticed and under appreciated.
And so, if someone had magically given us another six months more to travel around the world, I think we both would’ve taken it. One thing about travel is that, if you like it, each new place you explore only suggests other places you would like to explore instead of getting tired of travel in general. And this adventure we have led these past 21 months became our life. It wasn’t a vacation from life, it was just living each day somewhere different and traveling by bike.
“Are you happy to be home?” We’ve been asked that a few times. And it’s complicated since it will take a bit of time for us to move back into our life here. We are back in our house, but it will take a few days or weeks for us to fully arrive back home. Our house was spotless and perfectly as we left it, but all our clothes were in boxes in a room outside and drawers and closets were empty. Do we really need all this stuff!? I used my camping quilt from the trip the first night in our house, since I didn’t have the energy to find the comforter. I’m now shopping for lower rates on insurance, a dull task I was able to delay for 21 months.
The second question is mostly “where are you planning to go next?” And we don’t know and don’t have anything planned, yet. “What was your favorite place?” That question will have to wait for its own post to come in the next week or so. It requires some thought.
This chapter of our life is over but you never know what tomorrow will bring. Stay tuned.
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