Stop Asking People How They Plan Their Bicycle Touring Routes

I get asked a LOT how I plan my bikepacking and bicycle touring routes.

I try to answer these questions nicely as possible- “Oh I just google whatever premade routes exist in the area”; “It’s kinda hard to explain”; “I copied the Strava routes from a friend of a stranger I met while traveling in Seattle”; “I found some websites online that listed a few good trails.” I know people ask “how did you plan your bicycle touring route?” with good intentions, but I am pleading for you to stop asking.

The reason I ask you to stop is because you are, innocently, but deeply missing the reality of the bicycle touring experience- you cannot plan every single detail ahead of time. A lot of bikepacking and bicycle touring is a hodgepodge of several factors, including but not limited to: where you will be sleeping that night (wild camping, a specific campground, a Warmshowers host, at a friends’, at a hotel/hostel); random food and grocery stops along the way; tourist/sightseeing destinations that piqued your interest; the weather; your health/energy status; the type of biking you want to do (gravel, mountain, road etc.); if you are biking alone or with people (therefore forcing you to balance the wants and needs of someone else and yourself); travel time constraints (such as visas, pre-booked flights etc.); the gear that you have; your general comfort level based on the type of terrain you may cross; the navigation app you are using (Strava, Komoot, Ride with GPS, Apple Maps etc.), and if you pay for a premium subscription; and if there are any premade routes in the area you are touring to follow. The list could go on and on.

I don’t mean to sound like an ansshole about this topic. I, too, used to think I had to map out every detail of a bicycle tour. When I was about one week away from departing from Atlanta, GA to bike home to Baltimore, MD, for 1.5 months, I was stressed about booking each campsite in advance, wondering if I should average 40 miles a day or 55 miles a day but not knowing if I could actually do those miles. A friend at my local bike co-op overheard me talking to someone about booking campgrounds in South Carolina several weeks in advance, and he quickly stepped in and told me to stop. He said there is no way I will know if I can and/or want to go these campgrounds ahead of time. Bikepacking is far too unpredictable to be planning destinations three weeks in advance on some multi-faceted and color-coded spreadsheet. I took his advice and stopped planning. Now, I share that advice with everyone else.

I understand the fear of not having every detail planned. I understand the fear of wanting to “perfect” your trip so that you are never on an unsafe road, never too far from a grocery store or water, never stuck in a remote area where a wild animal may attack you for your food. The thing is, you NEED to let go of your sense of control. Anything can and will happen on your adventure. Plus, a bicycle touring route is uniquely created by the person who undergoes this adventure. Many countries have some predetermined bike routes for you to follow. New Zealand has some outlined here that I will be touching on a bit on my tour. Europe has their large web of Eurovelo routes across the continent. The USA has the ACA routes, bikepacking.com routes (which includes other continents as well), bikepackingroots.com and ECG (East Coast Greenway) and probably more that I don’t even know of. I remember someone I briefly met in Vancouver telling me there was a good, premade bikepacking route in Taiwan. Did either of us know the name for that route? No. But with the Google search “bikepacking route around Taiwain” I found this website that seems to highlight a route around the country. I’ve also heard of a lot of people biking around Iceland. Whenever I decide to finally bike that country, I will probably google “bikepacking routes in Iceland” and find articles such as this pop up as a starting point for my own adventure, as well as probably reach out to a Warmshowers family who hosted me for three nights in Seattle who biked the island and ask for their input. Maybe they will send me their Strava profiles and the month/year they biked the country (a friend of theirs sent me their Strava routes for New Zealand before I even thought to ask), and I will copy those over as a potential rough guideline. Maybe I will bike the country for a month, so I will plan my route to be approximately 60 miles a day with one rest day a week, and at least three rest days in each notable city/area I want to stay in. I might have some friends who can only join for two weeks, so if that is the case, we will tailor our trip to include the most awesome parts to make the best use of their limited time, and I will do the rest however I see fit with my extra two weeks. I hope you are starting to see the picture here… Planning is not a straight forward process.

So when you feel the urge to reach out to a stranger asking to copy their bike routes, please know that many of us can’t quite share our routes with you. I would happily share my Strava routes with a close friend, but not to strangers (because I don’t want strangers following me), but it’s not even a guarantee if all my rides will be uploaded to Strava (it’s an automatic setting I have connected between my Komoot app, Wahoo ELMNT GPS and Strava that is dependent on WiFi and my devices being connected and turned on). I could send them my Komoot folders, but those are a mess, often times with a single day of the trip including 4 different rides, because I changed my mind several times in the mornings, wanting to save a couple of downloaded routes in case I want to change my plan in the middle of the day. So even if I were to send you my routes, there is no guarantee that they are organized, understandable, or useful to you.

To conclude. It is not a cardinal sin to ask someone for their bike routes (perhaps I am unnecessarily vexed about this subject, given that my DMs can often become flooded at any moment which can get quite overwhelming). If you want to go on a bike tour, you will have to do your own research. You will have to plan it according to your wants and needs, and learn to be okay without having an exact plan. I would recommend the following steps for planning your own bike tour (and noting a few different options in case you decide to change your course):

• Google/YouTube search
• Following Komoot/Strava/Ride with GPS profiles of popular tourists
• Saving official, premade routes from established organizations/trails (ex. Eurovelo for Europe, the Te Araroa for New Zealand)
• Referencing bikepacking.com

I wish you the best with your adventures- and just remember, you can purchase self-guided tours (as a different option) from many small companies wherever in the world you want to go!